An organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products

Interesting set of stats.  Use caution though!

Just as a reminder, Real inflation, the stuff that you and I buy every day is higher than we read in the paper.  Shadowstats uses the method from 1980 (Remember the misery index?).  The impact is seen in the real GDP chart at the end.  We are in a period of negative growth.  Way to go USA.  And just think about life in the UK, where they are on the verge of a third recession.

My reading this week is Planet Ponzi.  An excellent and easy read.  http://planetponzi.com/

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

…not since 1928 through 1932 have the American people been more significantly worse off at the end of a five-year period than they were at the beginning. The telling statistics:

A) Since January 2008 the employment age population has increased by 11.7 million, yet there are 3.0 million fewer American employed. (146.3 million in January 2008 vs. 143.3 million in December 2012) Factoring the population growth and 2008 labor participation rate the unemployment rate for December 2012 would be 11.4% as compared to 4.9% in December of 2007.

B) At the end of 2007, the median household income was $54,489.00 (inflation adjusted); at the beginning of 2012 it had dropped to $50,020.00 (a decline of nearly 9%). The most precipitous plunge over a similar period since the Census Bureau started issuing that statistic. While American incomes were rapidly eroding, the cost of living continued to rise as the commodity price index (basket of food, fuel and other essential commodities) rose 20% from December 2007 to September 2012.

C) The average net worth of all American households from 2007 through the beginning of 2011 took a nose-drive, dropping by nearly 40%, a drop driven in great part by a devastating collapse in the median value of their homes ($250,000.00 in 2007 vs. $173,000 in 2012; a decline of 30%).

D) In December 2007, 26.5 million Americans were on food stamps at a cost of $30 Billion. As of December 2012, 47.7 million were accessing the food stamp program (increase of 80%) at a cost in excess of $70 billion. Further the government calculated 38.0 million Americans were living in poverty at the end of 2007 (poverty rate of 13.0%); however, by the beginning of 2012, 49.7 million were living in poverty and the rate had increased to 16.1%.

E) The nation's growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the past five years has also been the most anemic since the depression years. The GDP (adjusted for inflation) in 2007 was $15.5 trillion; in 2012 it is estimated to be $16.0 trillion, a difference of just .5 trillion -- a growth rate of 3 % over five years or an annual rate of a miniscule .6%.

F) While the nation's growth rate has been stagnant, spending by governments at all levels has increased dramatically from $4.9 trillion in 2007 to $6.2 trillion in 2012, a jump of 26.5% which is driven entirely by the federal government as it has increased its spending by nearly 41% over this period. This has resulted in the total national debt rising from $9.2 trillion at the beginning of January 2008 to $16.45 trillion as of today. (a staggering 79% increase).

G) In keeping with the pattern established by the five-year plans of the Soviet Union, there are three groups that have fared well over the past five years: federal bureaucrats, Democratic Party loyalists, and crony capitalists in bed with the Obama regime. Since December of 2007 there has been an increase of nearly 12% in new government jobs created (1.97 million vs. 2.2 million today). Further, the average total compensation for federal government employees increased nearly 9% to $126,200 by the beginning of 2011. Additionally, the number of government workers earning more than $150,000.00 has more than doubled over this same period. By comparison, the average total compensation for those in the private sector was $62,100.00 at the beginning of 2011, 49% of what the average federal employee realizes.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/the_worst_five_years.html#ixzz2J6VP1oLS

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/gross-domestic-product-charts

Erwin Schrodinger [..] has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment -- that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatim as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products.