An analysis by “Economic Collapse” begins with this paragraph:

“Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don’t make dramatic changes immediately. If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them. Just ‘tweaking’ things here and there is not going to fix this economy. We truly do need a fundamental change in direction. America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding. If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable …”

The following conditions in 2011, according to the analyst, “are almost too crazy to believe …”

– “A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be ‘low income’ or are living in poverty …
– “Approximately 57 percent of all children living in the United States are living in homes that are considered to be ‘low income’ or impoverished …
– “The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks …
– “If the number of Americans that wanted jobs was the same today as it was back in 2007, the ‘official’ unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent …
– “One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers …
– “There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States than there were back in 2000, even though we have added 30 million more people to the population since then …
– “A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be unemployed …
– “According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages …
– “Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent in that age group had a job …
– “19 percent of those men between the ages of 25 and 54 are now living with their parents …
– “One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage payment or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job …
– “The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year …
– “In Stockton, California, home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were when the housing market peaked …
– “If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $ 6,000 …
– “If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards …
– “According to Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5 % of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3% …
– “One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debts …
– “The retirement crisis in the United States continues to get worse. According to the Employment Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $ 10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $ 1,000 saved for retirement …
– “Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line …
– “According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12-month period …
– “Today, the ‘too big to fail’ banks are larger than ever …
– “The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined …
– “If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of less than zero …
– “Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty, and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty …
– “Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps, and one out of every four American children is on food stamps …
– “For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. This is the third straight year that the deficit has topped one trillion dollars …
– “If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt …
– “The U.S. national debt has been increasing y an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration …
– “During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time Washington took office to the time that Clinton took office …”-

One of our big problems is the so-called “Federal Reserve”. The Fed is a perpetual debt machine owned and operated by non-government entities – although most Americans are not aware of it.

An even bigger problem is the so-called “military-industrial complex”. Eisenhower’s parting words warned us about the economic cost of a thriving weapons industry, but he kept us in the dark about the cost in human lives.

But the biggest problem facing us is joblessness. Every one of the conditions stated above could be rectified if only we could create about 30 or 40 million decent jobs.

But aren’t those the 30 or 40 million employment opportunities we’ve been offering to just about everyone in Congress as well as to everyone in the past three administrations?

We, along with about 300 million embattled Americans, have two overriding problems – we don’t have the political clout of either the “Fed”or the “military-industrial complex”.