Decades of economic deceptions will bring a much lower standard of living in America

This article clearly explains much of what you need to know about the American economy. If you wonder why the economy has been reported as being so good over the years but you cannot make ends meet or find a good job this article just might clear up the matter for you. You have been lied to by your government for decades.

Now add to the facts in this article the $10 Billion and rising national debt, the over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities coming due, rising taxes, rising food and energy prices caused by environmental radicals and carbon loons, and the cost of socialism and wars and you will understand that things are going to get much worse very soon. America’s standard of living will be less than half of what it is today within a decade.

Don’t feel too bad much of the rest of the world will do almost as bad except for the rich elite, energy exporters and developing nations with nukes.

Can you live on half of your income or worse adjusted for inflation in the future? You better start thinking about how you will do that, because you certainly will if you survive the upheavals.

Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know KEVIN PHILLIPS / Harper’s Magazine v.316, n.1896 1may2008

The real numbers, to most economically minded Americans, would be a face full of cold water. Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today’s U.S. unemployment rate is somewhere between 9 percent and 12 percent; the inflation rate is as high as 7 or even 10 percent; economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a huge surge in the wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession. If what we have been sold in recent years has been delusional “Pollyanna Creep,” what we really need today is a picture of our economy ex-distortion. For what it would reveal is a nation in deep difficulty not just domestically but globally.

Undermeasurement of inflation, in particular, hangs over our heads like a guillotine. To acknowledge it would send interest rates climbing, and thereby would endanger the viability of the massive buildup of public and private debt (from less than $11 trillion in 1987 to $49 trillion last year) that props up the American economy. Moreover, the rising cost of pensions, benefits, borrowing, and interest payments—all indexed or related to inflation—could join with the cost of financial bailouts to overwhelm the federal budget. As inflation and interest rates have been kept artificially suppressed, the United States has been indentured to its volatile financial sector, with its predilection for leverage and risky buccaneering.

Arguably, the unraveling has already begun. As Robert Hardaway, a professor at the University of Denver, pointed out last September, the subprime lending crisis “can be directly traced back to the [1983] BLS decision to exclude the price of housing from the CPI. . .With the illusion of low inflation inducing lenders to offer 6 percent loans, not only has speculation run rampant on the expectations of ever-rising home prices, but home buyers by the millions have been tricked into buying homes even though they only qualified for the teaser rates.” Were mainstream interest rates to jump into the 7 to 9 percent range—which could happen if inflation were to spur new concern—both Washington and Wall Street would be walking in quicksand. The make-believe economy of the past two decades, with its asset bubbles, massive borrowing, and rampant data distortion, would be in serious jeopardy. The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope.

The credit markets are fearful, and the financial markets are nervous. If gloom continues, our humbugged nation may truly regret losing sight of history, risk, and common sense.