by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
The middle class in the United States has been steadily shrinking, and the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us has grown to absurd proportions. But it wasn’t always this way. When I was growing up in the 1980s, it seemed like almost everyone was middle class. Of course there were wealthy people and poor people in the 1980s too, but the vast majority of the population was comfortably somewhere in the middle. Sadly, things have changed so much since that time. Today, most of the people that I know are struggling. According to a report that was just released, in all 50 states it now takes an income of more than $100,000 in order for a family of four to live “the American Dream”…
A new report from GOBankingRates used that framework to analyze how much money a family of two adults and two children would need in each state to own a home, a car and a pet. The report tallied estimated annual essential expenses for such a family and then doubled that figure.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer inflation remained persistently high last month, boosted by gas, rents, auto insurance and other items, the government said Wednesday in a report that will likely give pause to the Federal Reserve as it weighs when and by how much to cut interest rates this year.
As inflation continues to tick up in spite of a higher interest rates, it may be time to take a second look at your investments. Stocks tumbled Wednesday as updated inflation data dimmed the chances for rate cuts in 2024, demonstrating how rising inflation can threaten your investment assets.
Social Security beneficiaries should expect a higher cost-of-living adjustment next year after the government reported a rise in inflation in March, according to an advocacy group.
On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack responded to a question on if spending in the Inflation Reduction Act will create inflationary pressure by stating that “One of the things that I think is missed about the IRA is the fact that it’s paced. It’s not as if all this money is all of a sudden showing up in the economy.”
American voters are growing more supportive of Joe Biden’s handling of the US economy, but remain unsettled by persistent inflation, especially rising petrol prices, according to a new Financial Times poll.
Can you imagine paying seven dollars for a gallon of gasoline? It could soon happen, because it appears that Israel is about to strike Iran, and that is likely to cause events in the Middle East to spiral completely out of control. Right now, approximately one-fifth of all oil used in the world goes through the Strait of Hormuz. An apocalyptic war in the region could potentially close the Strait of Hormuz until the conflict is resolved one way or the other. In addition, oil infrastructure could be destroyed in Iran and other nations in the Middle East as the fighting rages, and that could substantially reduce global oil production for an extended period of time. Our way of life depends on cheap oil, and so if a major regional war in the Middle East causes the price of oil to go skyrocketing that is going to deeply affect all of us.
On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated that it will be difficult to reach 2% inflation and one reason is “We have a trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus in the CHIPS Act, the Infrastructure Act, and the IRA.”
Iran’s response this weekend appeared relatively mild. Armstrong called it a “test attack.” What happens next? I’m told that in hand-to-hand combat, you “feint” (jab?) so you can discover what your opponent’s reaction will be. Perhaps when the Biden-Handlers are distracted by some other event, somewhere else in the world, the real attack will come. Another question: how bad is the (microclot-caused?) brainfog inside the IDF? Were they all force-vaxxed-and-boosted too, just like the US service members tragically were by Biden-Handler-Lloyd-Austin?
Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle recently wrote that the best argument made in favor of limiting the size of the stimulus during the Great Recession—part of a larger conversation about austerity—was one of ethos. “We weren’t spending the money in theory,” she wrote, “or in 1945, when an ethos of fiscal responsibility prevailed. We were spending it in the 21st century, when that ethos had collapsed, so there was a considerable chance that when the good times finally rolled around, no politician would willingly undertake the sacrifices necessary to get the budget back in shape.”