The Otium Post

The Otium Post

31/01/2017

PLEASE NOTE CHANGES TO THIS BLOG


PLEASE NOTE CHANGES TO THIS BLOG


The original purpose of  The Otium Post when it was created in Nov 2013 was to aid Norwegian Ex-pats in their retirements around the world. At the end of Jan 2017 we have had 88.000 visitors from many different parts of the world.

This will from 2017 continue exclusively for such subjects, and a new blog has been created from 1 January 2017 to support Human Synthesis in our world transition to real democracy and freedom from global domination.

The bulk of articles from sources around the world remains in The Otium Post as an archive of reference material going back to Nov. 2013.


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Here are the links to the new blogs.


Human Synthesis:

 The Otium Guard :

 Earth Condition :




Enjoy!
The Otium Post


17/01/2017

Emigrant1 - For Norwegian Ex-pats




Direkte lenke til Emigrant1 for medlemmer :>


Harald Okland
Som tidligere styremedlem i e1 og pr siste to- år admin i fb gruppa N P.U-GLOBALT registreres et relativt sett nytt styre i e1.De bør etter mitt syn søke bistand i nordalliansens mer erfarne og juridske kompetanse,for felles sak og målsetting.Om de to nevnte org enes vil jeg som leder av vår 250 medlemmer oppfordre til økonomisk støtte vedr en sak mot den norske statsmakt,der har lagt saken om kildeskatt død.

 

Dere lurer sikkert på hva som skjer?
I styret har vi en jurist som gir oss gode råd, og jeg tror vi ganske snart kan fortelle hva vi gjør videre. Går det som vi håper ender saken opp i Menneskerettighetsdomstolen i Strasbourg, det er det eneste stedet vi kan forvente å vinne frem. Det vil nok koste noe, noen tall har vi ikke, men når vi vet kostnadene så håper vi at de fleste vil bidra ettet evne. Vi må gjøre oppmerksom på at vi er i en tidlig fase, det er veldig mye usikkerhet i bildet inntil vi har alt avklart, så ingen grunn til feiring enda. Ha en fin helg!



Tore Christiansen Saken maa helt til Hoyesterett og deres dom, foer ECHR i det hele tatt vil vurdere om de aksepterer saken. De er meget stresset med hundrevis av menneskerettighets saker innsendt gratis fra innvandrere til Europa,saa saken kommer helt paa bunnen og vil ta lang tid og koste penger til Advokat,som VI maa betale.
 

Tore Christiansen Mente ikke dette negativt men bare av erfaring da jeg selv tok dette til ECHR i 2010 men ble avvist da de mente jeg ikke hadde brukt ALLE muligheter og derfor ikke kunne fremvise domsavgjørelse fra Høyesterett. Men som Ragnar sier må man gå rett til Høyesterett som så formidler SIN mening til ECHR sine dommere,FØR vi får sendt inn VÅR mening og vår søknad om behandling. M.a.o. saken er avgjort før ECHR sine dommere mottar søknaden fra oss. Catch 22 situasjon.

Tore Christiansen Ragnar..Som jeg sa,saa maa vi ha en formell domsavsigelse fra Hoyesterett til vedleggelse vaar soeknad til ECHR om behandling. Problemet er bare at ECHR sine dommere faar foerst Norsk Hoyesteretts versjon av saken til diskusjon (og konklusjon) foer vi kan sende inn VAAR versjon Paa dette tidspunkt KAN ECHR sine dommere allerede ha gjoert seg opp sin EGEN mening om saken. Dette blir som en collusion mellom annklager og forsvarer.


Tore Christiansen Ragnar. Nettopp p.gr. av at ECHR har gjort det lovlig med consultasjon med VÅRE Høyesterettsdommere ,( for å spare tid) FØR de mottar VÅR søknad, med VÅRT synspunkt, blir våre advokatkostnader som å kaste penger i vinden. Vi må på en eller annen måte saksøke Norge.. Kanskje fra England?



14/01/2017

HELLOOO, does'nt anyone care? ( Nov. 2009 )


HELLOOO, does'nt anyone care?

Her er litt nostalgi vedr. Kildeskattens innførelse i 2010


Skrevet i november 2009.


Translator (click here)

The more I consider the fate of 'the minimum pensioners', the more I see the monstrosity in the consequences it has for us. Why are the weak and defenseless in society hung out in this way? And the worse thing is that no one seem to care! In Norway they think only of themselves.

First, their low but still statutory minimum pension was reduced by the 15% source tax which they have no possibility receiving a refund of the tax in their country of residence. Additionally,all deduction rights were removed, including the minimum deduction rule and also the special allowances for age. Something so brilliantly malicious!

I strongly doubt the legitimacy of this decision, specifically designed for the minimum pensioners domiciled abroad. One can not deprive a group of humans their justful rights just because they have chosen to settle in another country. Nor can the result of a new law reduce their pension to become less than that of their counterparts in Norway.

As the expatriate pensioners now have the status of being taxable to Norway, they should also be entitled to claim their rights as taxpayers, i.e the minimum deduction rule must still apply, as well as other special allowance rules. It can not possibly be legal to separate the tax claims from the current rules only for a group of citizens just because they are domiciled outside Norway.

Norway, in accordance with a tax treaty with Brazil has the right and now also deducts tax from the minimum pensioners,it does not give the tax authorities in Brazil the opportunity to either tax or refund tax deducted in Norway. In order for us to be equated with the minimum pensioners conditions in Norway,we have thus received the following paragraph in the letter from the Treasury Department which should also be applicable outside the EU:

"If the tax payer after the introduction of source tax on pension is subject to taxation in Norway of all or virtually all their income, the tax limitation rule will apply . It therefore allows the tax payer not to pay income tax or National Insurance contributions to Norway. "

Note also that Brazil has very strong laws on the protection of citizens' rights and privacy, more than is the case in Norway. These laws cover not only national citizens but also to foreigners residing in Brazil. It therefore does not allow public access to private tax affairs or bank accounts. For this reason, the finance minister's intervention in Brazilian tax matters with a demand for a common bi-lateral tax collection system from the 'minimum pensioners' domiciled in Brazil is not acceptable.

I will in this context also mention the supreme court decision of 11 December. 2009 in the Stolt-Nilsen case where the Supreme Court considered whether the Norwegian state were entitled to demand a copy of the British taxpayer's tax returns and final tax settlement as proof that the taxpayer was a resident of the UK for the purpose of tax treaty. The Supreme Court ruled in conclusion that the Norwegian state was not entitled to make such a claim as proof of tax residency in the United Kingdom.

Most minimum pensioners in Norway can not survive without additional support for housing expenses, medicines and free medical insurance. This support has been completely removed for the 'minimum pensioners' domiciled abroad, who must arrange for private health insurance and medicines locally in their country of domicile.

Another factor that the Ministry of Finance was not aware of when they took their hasty decision to introduce this source tax for the minimum pensioners, are that they now fall below the minimum income required by Brazil for a retirement visa, in Brazil the minimum income requirement is U.S. $ 2,000. - Considering my total tax deductions as from 1 January, I am now under this minimum income requirement and is at risk to not have my visa renewed.

The 'minimum pensioners' as a group should have retained the same rights as their countrymen living in Norway, furthermore,this new tax should not be applied retroactively for pensioners already moved abroad several years ago. This decision is also against the Norwegian constitution, paragraph § 97 which states that 'no new law shall have retroactive effect'. Denmark took the sensible decision not to impose the source tax retroactively but only from the date of the introduction of their source tax. Those of us who moved out several years ago relied on the predictability of our pensions and have made our new lives here that can not easily be changed. Several have entered into marriages with citizens of their new country of domicile and also have children who attend school here.

In my opinion,the minimum pensioners who settled abroad should on the contrary be rewarded with a 15% 'flagged out tax' for saving the government future health and extra costs in Norway. Considering the oncoming 'old peoples wave' expecting to break in 2014,any other country would have been delighted to allow their senior citizens to retire to countries outside of Norway even with some financial benefits on their way.

In 2011 comes further trials with the new pension reform obligating us to submit a tax return on a yearly basis with who knows what subtlety of information requirements from the Brazilian tax authorities, which adds significant costs and psychological pressure on the old and infirm before they are allowed to receive their pensions. All this because the finance minister in his ignorance of conditions outside Norway have made the retirement a hell for a small group of people

Let me provide some information about the facts:

1.Brasil is a country with 186 million inhabitants, Norway's population would fit into a medium sized city here. The systems that control this population is not necessarily as flexible as the Norwegian tax system, nor have the employees much education and has been instructed to perform few and simple tasks to carry out in his position,which must be followed to the letter and allows NO variations which could cost them their job . Moreover, for the economy to go around in this vast country, they employ people with little or no education at the lowest possible wage of R$ 450 per month or approx. US$ 250.- With this salary only the bare essentials are done and there are no prizes for trying to do something out of the ordinary which you are unfamiliar with, it will only cause trouble.

2.The minimum pensioners normally live in resort towns along the coast which lie many hours of travel from capital cities or larger cities where you only have access to tax officials of lower rank and experience. If able to connect with a more senior official in one of the major cities, he will often use the Brazilian 'jeito' rather than to try to solve your problem. He often have no idea what or where Norway is, far less familiar with the contents of a tax treaty signed with Norway in 1980, and have no idea about the 15% source tax which has not yet been re-negotiated by Norway and which, in addition deprives Brazil of significant tax income. As most of us speak the language rather poorly it means that we must engage both an interpreter as well as a lawyer to be present at such meetings with the Brazilian tax authorities. These visits can easily cost a couple of months pension.

3.The minister of finance's demand for a 'Certificate of Residence' from the tax authorities as well as confirming this non-renegotiated tax treaty between Norway and Brazil, is an impossible task, where the minimum pensioners are given administrative duties. This also conflicts with Norwegian law. I have submitted proof of residence as well as tax identification reference (CPF) which all domiciled foreigners must have in Brazil. Further, I have submitted passwords certified copy of my tax status as 'REGULAR' which means that I am up-to-date with my tax. The Norwegian government pension office has sent my pension payment advice to my address for 8 years and in addittion a 'living-certificate' every year, so they should have registered my residence. Yet this is not accepted by the Norwegian Finance Minister and the 15% tax deduction continues.

I received the initial advice from the tax office about the source tax via a form I received from the Norwegian tax tax office at the end of November 2009. I responded with several e-mails and faxes from the 1st December, but received negative responses in the post only 3 months afterwards. Since then I have fought with all the tax departments which all make the same unrealistic requests and would not listen or help in my desperate financial situation.

I have sent extensive faxes and e-mails to both the prime minister, the finance minister, the Norwegian tax office and our House of Parliament but with very little feedback. It does not appear that anyone is interested in our fate and that our small group of senior citizens residing abroad will be an acceptable 'sausage in the slaughter house ' as a sacrifice on the alter of the source tax.


Thank you for your attention ..
 
Tore Christiansen
Sao Paulo – Brazil



Note. This letter was sent to all the members of the Norwegian Parliament as well as
to the Norwegian Inland Revenue Department and other government departments.





12/01/2017

"KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE, YOUR ENEMIES EVEN CLOSER" - Project Syndicate

"KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE, YOUR ENEMIES EVEN CLOSER"


Keep your eyes on this FAKE NEWS  publication for and by the Global Elite featuring the views of the miscreants of the world.    Called  "Project Syndicate"  Funded by the Soros Project and others.


 A few of the ´global elite´ miscreants

 The make up of a globalist


 Some of the most destructive members of the ´global elite´ are contributors :






 Project Syndicate have connections with more fake media around the world:





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Commentary:

Project Syndicate´s headline is "The global populist revolt" and what danger lies ahead with the new international disorder. (Which the ´global elite´ has the main blame for.)

(click any graphics to enlarge)

Administrator
THE OTIUM POST





10/01/2017

Privatization of Water as an Owned Commodity Rather Than a Universal Human Right

Privatization of Water as an Owned Commodity Rather Than a Universal Human Right

By Joachim Hagopian  Global Research, June 25, 2016
Theme:    First published in April 2014

There is no greater natural resource on this earth than water. As the sustenance of all life, water keeps every living and breathing organism, every plant, every animal and every human being on this planet alive. In the same way that without air to breathe, without water we humans cannot sustain life for more than a few days.


Due to global warming, widespread drought and increasingly polluted water systems, the projected availability of clean freshwater in years to come to meet the rising demands of a growing global population is among the most daunting human challenges of this century. By 2015 a 17% increase in global water demand is projected just for increasing agriculturally produced food. By the same year 2025, the growing global population will increase water consumption needs by a whopping 40%. While oil played the keenly critical role during the twentieth century, water is being deemed the most valued precious natural resource of the twenty-first century.

As such, several years ago the United Nations declared access to clean drinking water a universal human right. Conversely, willfully denying it is considered a serious human rights violation that denies life itself. And any calculated decision denying people their universal right to life is nothing short of a murderous, shameful crime against humanity.
Despite the human air pollution that has long been dirtying our lungs, while also causing global warming, climate change and increasing catastrophic natural disasters, not to mention the growing global health hazard for us humans, the very thought of making clean air a precious commodity that can opportunistically be packaged and sold by the same corporations that have been ruining our air, that very notion would instantly be criticized, scorned and ridiculed.

Yet that is exactly what has been happening for the last thirty years now all over this planet with the earth’s preciously dwindling freshwater drinking supply. The World Bank has been financing global privatization of the earth’s water supply making clean water that is so necessary for survival an unaffordable private commodity for the poorest people on earth to even access. They are literally dying of thirst and disease because of greedy psychopathic corporate profiteers once again placing theft and greed over human welfare and life itself.
But then that is the globalist agenda – thinning the human herd down from near seven billion currently to as low as just half a billion. That means 13 out of 14 of us alive today according to their diabolical oligarch plan simply must die within the next few years. And what better way to rapidly kill off the human population than taking full ownership and control over the earth’s limited diminishing water supply.

More people on this planet are dying presently from waterborne disease from dirty water than are dying from all wars and violence worldwide combined. Every hour 240 babies die from unsafe water. 1.5 million children under five years of age die every year from cholera and typhoid fever due to unsanitary water conditions. These incredibly sad, alarming facts illustrate just how significant and critical a clean freshwater supply is to staying alive on this planet. Taking control over the earth’s clean water supply is achieved by turning water into a privately owned commodity that only the largest corporations and banks control. Simply making water unaffordable and thereby inaccessible to the poorest people on the planet is one extremely effective, albeit most sinister way to reduce the so called overpopulation problem.

Three primary ways that the human population decreases significantly every year is death caused by starvation and malnutrition (including lack of drinkable water) at between seven to eight millionpeople, diseases that kill between two to three million (with mounting threats of infectious diseases becoming pandemics) and upwards of near a half million dying each year from war.

Behind closed doors oligarchic globalists periodically meet and discuss what is best for humanity and the planet according to them and their megalomaniacal self-interests. For many years now this all important topic of water privatization and control as a convenient and most effective means of addressing the overpopulation problem has been regularly tabled for discussion… along with related topics like geo-engineering, GMO’s, vaccines, overuse of antibiotics, planned wars over oil and water, devising global policies designed to increase political destabilization, poverty and undermine economies, nuclear radiation and a host of other means for culling the human population.

Time Magazine reported how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been financing research at the University of North Carolina among 78 others to develop ultrasound infertility contraception techniques to sterilize male sperm. At a 2010 TED conference Bill Gates spoke openly of depopulating the total of 6.8 billion people living on earth by up to “10 to 15%” using both of his heavily funded vaccine and contraception programs that will render much of the global population infertile. Meanwhile, billionaire Ted Turner went even further, offering his public opinion to decrease the world population by 70% down to “two billion.” It too is on tape.

Calls to begin sterilizing the human population began surfacing back in the mid-1970’s with Henry Kissinger as former Secretary of State and high ranking Bilderberg member in his declassified National Security Council document (1974) entitled “The Implications of World-wide PopulationGrowth on the Security and External Interests of the United States.” This document emphasized highest priority given to implementing birth control programs targeting thirteen Third World nations mostly in South America. Extraordinary resources were allocated through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) pushing the carrot stick of additional financial aid to countries willing to enact sterilization and depopulation programs.

More overt evidence of the callous contempt that globalist oligarchs have toward us 99%-ers is captured in a statement written by Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband in the forward of his book, “I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus” to reduce the human population. It seems readily discernable that an explicit globalist agenda for a New World Order openly propagated with repeated references by President Goerge Bush senior includes depopulation through various means, water control through privatization just one of many in the power elite’s arsenal.

Humans have been dying from lack of clean water for a long time now and will only continue dying at an even greater frequency if the plan to privatize water continues to unfold unchecked and without opposition. Fortunately forces have been mobilizing to combat water privatization. Just last week on the heels of the World Bank annual convening in Washington DC for several days ofconferencing, an international coalition of anti-privatization water rights groups from India and America sent a formal message calling on the World Bank to end its destructive practice of privatizing water around the world under the guise of developmental progress. The Bank’s DC meetings had been touting lies and disinformation in an attempt to paint a glowing report showcasing the so called efficacy and successes that turning water rights over to the private sector have accomplished in recent years. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) as the planet’s largest funding source for water privatization provides loans and financing to Third World nations for private water management companies to take charge of municipal, regional and national water rights.

The director of a global advocacy group called Corporate Accountability International, Shayda Naficy, pointed out that 75% of expenses for running a water utility company should go to infrastructure. In nation after nation private companies have placed the priority of making a profit over the need to invest in necessary infrastructure to connect and adequately service water customers. In efforts to maximize cost efficiency as well as profits, water prices invariably go up and fast become out of reach for poorest customers. Cutting off the water supply to thousands of low income families unable to pay for their rising costs has become the all too frequent inevitable result. The World Bank’s 34 percent failure rate for all private water and sewerage contracts between 2000 and 2010 far surpasses its single digit failure rates in the telecommunications, energy and transportation industries.

Critics maintain that the public sector is far more accountable to its public constituents than private sector businesses that only answer to its board of directors to show sufficient profits. Corruption becomes commonplace. Additionally, a conflict of interest exists when the IFC acts as both a money lender and consultant to foreign municipalities in assigning no bid contracts to favored private water utility companies.

To best illustrate typical scenarios where water privatization is either not working or already proved a failure deserve close examination. The good news is that in recent years people in various parts of the world have been mobilizing successful efforts and campaigns to stop water privatization in their own backyards. Presently in a number of regions in India, citizens are banding together to confront and fight the myriad of problems with water privatization in their country.

Recently in Nagpur, central India’s largest city where the country’s first municipal partnership with a private utility company is being played out, major tensions have erupted. Three years ago the city signed a 25-year contract with Veolia Water to supply the city of 2.7 million residents with 24 hour-7-days a week water service. Instead unforeseen delays driving up prices manyfold along with unfair water distribution and frequent service breakdowns have led to widespread angry protests in the streets and charges of corruption. City officials point to a series of serious contract violations. Again cutting corners by refusing to invest in the needed infrastructure appears to be the primary cause for this failed project. The Corporate Accountability International’s 2012 report called “Shutting the Spigot on Private Water: The Case for the World Bank to Divest” cites a number of similar cases where privatization has proven ineffective.

Bold and empowered citizens in Bolivia in the year 2000 made headlines around the globe when they were victorious in kicking out privatized water there in the form of the Bechtel, the fifth largest private corporation on the planet. Impassioned protestors in Bolivia’s third-largest city managed to oppose Bechtel’s increasing prices and demanded that the company abandon its hold on their city’s municipal water supply, eventually driving the powerful scandalous giant out of the country. Though big business efforts to buy and control water rights in many Latin American nations have each had their turn in nations like Equator and Brazil, only Chile water services are privatized. Ultimately local residents virtually everywhere privatization has attempted to take hold has been met with such strong resistance from consumers who realize their private utility company has failed miserably in delivering quality service at affordable prices.

The story is always the same. That is why advocacy groups like Corporate Accountability International is proactively working toward educating governments and citizens worldwide to ensure water remains under the public domain. The exhaustive and expensive legal process of ending long term contracts and successfully removing privatized foreign corporations once established in a city, state or country is formidable. It is obviously in the best interests of people around the world to ensure privatization of their water supply never gets a local foothold in the first place.

Nestlé corporation’s marketing campaign targeted wealthy Pakistanis in Lahore, and its brand of bottled water ‘Pure Life’ became a status symbol for the rich. To bottle its product, Nestlé busily dried up local underground springs that subsequently caused the village poor unable to buy the bottled water stolen from their springs to end up consuming contaminated water. Nestlé went on to extracting water from two deep wells in Bhati Dilwan village, forcing them to turn to bottled water. A similar story emerged from Nigeria where a single bottled water exceeds the average daily income of a Nigerian citizen. Nestlé is notorious for draining local water supplies used to bottle its water brands, then charge unaffordable prices to the local population whose clean water supply was stolen from them.

Corporate Watch released a report exposing some of the unethical and illegal practices that Nestlé has long been committing around the globe, completely disregarding public health concerns while destroying natural environments to ensure huge annual profits of $35 billion just from water bottle sales alone. In Brazil’s Serra da Mantiqueira region where the groundwater is rich in mineral content containing medicinal properties, over-pumping has depleted its valuable water resources and caused permanent damage to the natural environment. and long-term damage.

Nestlé has also allegedly been involved in human trafficking of child slave labor. A BBC investigative report claimed that “hundreds of thousands of children in Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo were being purchased from their destitute parents and shipped to the Ivory Coast to be sold as slaves to cocoa farms.” Yet Nestlé likely bought the cocoa from the Ivory Coast and Ghana knowing it was produced using child slaves.

Finally, Nestlé owns or leases fifty spring sites throughout America. Nestlé controls a third of the domestic market for bottled water in the US. The company is notorious for unlawful extraction of spring water while engaging in price-gouging and reeking havoc in numerous communities. An example of the trouble Nestlé typically causes is Colorado where 80% of the citizens of Aurora were opposed to Nestlé’s presence, fully aware of the company’s terrible reputation for damaging communities and natural environments. Yet the city council voted in favor 7 to 4 to let the devastation begin and over the next decade Nestlé extracted 650 million gallons of precious Arkansas River valley water that went into its Arrowhead Springs brand of bottled water. For years the embattled townspeople of Aurora fought to rid the company predator from destroying their precious aquifers. Additionally, the plastic non-biodegradable bottles are major pollutants that stay toxically intact for a full millennium.

The cumulative grave effects of privatizing water as a global commodity are appalling. The underprivileged residents of Jakarta, Manila and Nairobi pay 5 to 10 times more for water than those living in high-income areas of those same cities. People living in the Third World slums even pay more for water than upscale New Yorkers and Londoners. This kind of unfairness and inequity is obscene. Women in places in Africa where privatized water is beyond their limit walk miles to obtain dirty water from rivers and then too often die along with their children from contamination and disease. Asian farmers are losing their livelihoods if they are unable to receive state funded irrigation. The human suffering caused globally by wealthy private corporations from North America and Europe exploiting people from Third World nations for pure profit is nothing less than pure psychopathic evil.

Taking on global privatization of water for the well being and greater good of the people is but an example of the monumental work that needs to be done. Only if informed, caring and committed human beings collectively come together worldwide to take a global stand against this gravest of life and death issues facing humanity can this oligarch agenda be stopped dead in its tracks. As global human rights activists it is up to us to end the global corporate malevolence and malfeasance from further damaging and afflicting our planet like never before. 

With the recent formal finding that Americans no longer live in a democracy but an oligarchy, as if we did not already painfully know, it becomes even more “formally” imperative now that we as ordinary citizens of the world take the vested interest in preserving life on our only planet before it becomes too late. It is high time we take back our planet once and for all from the oligarchic corporatocracy bent on insidiously making our earthly home increasingly uninhabitable for all life forms.

Mass extinction of plant and animal species that have thrived on this planet for millions of years is silently, invisibly taking place every single day right before our eyes. At ever-perilous stake now is our own human species as well as all living species inhabiting this earth, suffering at the hands of national governments that have corruptly co-opted with the banking cabal-owned transnational corporations and for too many decades been systematically destroying the richly diverse natural ecosystems of all earthly life forms on an unprecedented scale.

Since governmental co-opting with global fortune 500 corporations has been polluting and poisoning the earth’s skies, its waters, food sources and seeds for so long, global theft and destruction has us humans and all life forms teetering now on the brink of complete self-annihilation and extinction, human-induced for the first time on a massive never before seen scale. It is time to hold the oligarchy in the form of corporations responsible for all the damage they have reeked on this earth. No more grotesque “Abama-nations” of bank and Wall Street bailouts at taxpayer expense. Since the 99% in debt to the hilt have been squeezed dry, while the 1% have made this planet nearly unlivable as the only ones filthily richly profiting from their plundering this earth, the transnationals are the sole entities with the financial capital and means to clean up the very mess they created. It is only fair then that after an entire century of mucking the planet up at our expense, that they now need to finally be held accountable for repairing the destruction they directly caused and obscenely profited from.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. His written manuscript based on his military experience examines leadership and national security issues and can be consulted at http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist working in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now focuses on writing.
 

Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families

37 Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families

By The Economic Collapse  Global Research, March 20, 2016
First published in October 2012
 
Have you ever laid in bed awake at night with a knot in your stomach because you didn’t know how your family was possibly going to make it through the next month financially?  Have you ever felt the desperation of not being able to provide the basic necessities for your family even though you tried as hard as you could?  All over America tonight, there are millions of desperate families that are being ripped apart by this economy.  There aren’t nearly enough jobs, and millions of Americans that actually do have jobs aren’t making enough to even provide the basics for their families. 

















When you have tried everything that you can think of and nothing works, it can be absolutely soul crushing.  Today, one of my regular readers explained that he was not going to be online for a while because his power had been turned off.  He has been out of work for quite a while, and eventually the money runs out.  Have you ever been there?  If you have ever experienced that moment, you know that it stays with you for the rest of your life.  If you are single that is bad enough, but when you have to look into the eyes of your children and explain to them why there won’t be any dinner tonight or why they have to move into a homeless shelter it can feel like someone has driven a stake into your heart.  In this article you will find a lot of very shocking economic statistics.  But please remember that behind each statistic are the tragic stories of millions of desperately hurting American families.
Over the past decade, things have steadily gotten worse for American families no matter what our politicians have tried.  Poverty and government dependence continue to rise.  The cost of living continues to go up and incomes continue to go down.  It is truly frightening to think about what this country is going to look like if current trends continue.




The following are 37 facts that show how cruel this economy has been to millions of desperate American families…

1. One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
2. A different recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.
3. In the United States today, there are close to 10 million households that do not have a single bank account.  That number has increased by about a million since 2009.
4. Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.
5. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.
6. Median household income has fallen for four years in a row.  Overall, it has declined by more than $4000 over the past four years.
7. 62 percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
8. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of middle class Americans say that it is more difficult to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.
9. In the United States today, 77 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
10. In the United States today, more than 41 percent of all working age Americans are not working.
11. Since January 2009, the “labor force” in the United States has increased by 827,000, but “those not in the labor force” has increased by 8,208,000.  This is how they have gotten the unemployment numbers to “come down”.
12. Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
13. Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.
14. Right now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
15. At this point, less than 25 percent of all jobs in the United States are “good jobs”, and that number continues to shrink.
16. There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
17. According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.
18. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
19. In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
20. Health insurance premiums rose faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once again in 2012.  In fact, it has been happening for a very long time.
21. According to one recent survey, approximately 10 percent of all employers in the United States plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now.
22. Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned.  By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
23. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
24. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.
25. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.
26. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
27. Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living at home with their parents.
28. The percentage of Americans that find that they are able to retire when they reach retirement age continues to decline.  According to one new survey, 70 percent of middle class Americans plan to work during retirement and 30 percent plan to work until they are at least 80 years old.
29. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
30. In 2010, the number of jobs created at new businesses in the United States was less than half of what it was back in the year 2000.
31. Back in 2007, 19.2 percent of all American families had a net worth of zero or less than zero.  By 2010, that figure had soared to 32.5 percent.
32. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
33. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.
34. In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, 46.7 million Americans are on food stamps.
35. Approximately one-fourth of all children in the United States are enrolled in the food stamp program.
36. Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.
37. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.
What makes all of this even more frightening is that many homeless shelters and food banks around the nation are so overloaded at this point that they are already over capacity.  Just consider this example

When Janice Coe, a homeless advocate in Loudoun County, learned through her prayer group that a young woman was sleeping in the New Carrollton Metro station with a toddler and a 2-month-old, she sprang into action.
Coe contacted the young woman and arranged for her to take the train to Virginia, where she put the little family up in a Comfort Suites hotel. Then Coe began calling shelters to see who could take them.
Despite several phone calls, she came up empty. Coe was shocked to learn that many of the local shelters that cater to families were full, including Good Shepherd Alliance, where Coe was once director of social services.
“I don’t know why nobody will take this girl in,” Coe said. “The baby still had a hospital bracelet on her wrist.”
Keep in mind that Loudoun Country is smack dab in the middle of one of the wealthiest areas of Virginia. So if things are that bad in the wealthy areas, exactly how bad are things getting in many of the poorer areas?

Unfortunately, things continue to get worse for this economy.  DuPont has just announced plans to eliminate 1,500 jobs.  There are more major layoff announcements almost every single day.  So how bad will things get when our crumbling economic system finally collapses?  When kind of chaos will be unleashed all over the nation when millions upon millions of Americans finally lose all hope?

In the introduction to this article, I mentioned that one of my regular readers has had his lights turned off.  The following is how he described his situation

No gas, no water, no electricity at my house. Couldn’t pay the bills. I’m broke. Desperately searching for any means of income, or at least enough cash to get the juice (electricity) restored.
Typing this missive in a dark house using the battery on my laptop. Feels like I’m camping out at home. Hope to get this situation fixed tomorrow… somehow. Needless to say, I *…. hate this.
I was ready for this, but it is still a major league inconvenience. For those of you who DO have power, etc. – and are not ready… oh brother. You need to get ready. Seriously, you do. Because what I’m going through is just an inconvenience. It may someday be a normal occurence. Ugh. (expletives deleted)
Hopefully a way can be found to get his situation turned around, but the truth is that there are tens of millions of other similar stories out there in America today.
What about you?  What are things like in your neck of the woods?  Please feel free to share your thoughts below…