It's no secret that greed and mismanagement in Washington and on Wall Street has nearly destroyed the American Way of life.  Their tax and offshoring of jobs policies are decimating the working class. Washington has mortgaged your future!

This site will provide tools you can use to regain your economic freedom and perhaps learn some new tricks about learning how to live better on less.

 Washington has no bailout plan for the average citizen - it's up to you.  Review the Urban Survivor resources we offer on this site.  We add new information weekly AND sign up for our free weekly Poor Man Bulletin and get three free reports in your inbox automatically...sign up below or send an email to: brucebulletin-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

 Remember - You can't buy life insurance after you're dead!

How to Survive the Coming Food Shortage

http://tinyurl.com/PMFoodShortage

• See our updated posts in our Guest Column tab from a woman who grew up

under the Nazis plus an experts take on becoming an expatriate...

• Also, see the new FTC video on updated laws - click on the Consumer Rights Tab!
• Scroll down further to find proof that our Middle Class is TRULY shrinking!
• Also read How Government Stupidity Ruins Freedom & the Economy...scroll down.

Poor Man’s Guide to Freedom 

 Perhaps the most important piece I’ve ever written.  Even though it’s a concise 27-pages, it is packed with essential how-to steps you need to take to restore your personal freedom during these socialistic and financially devastating times. Many online resources included too.  No charge!

Unless you’ve been asleep for the last 30-years, you may have witnessed the slow, but sure, erosion of our Bill of Rights.  No-knock warrants, seizure laws, anti-gun laws, spying on citizens and more have undermined our Constitution and the government has become the master instead of the servant.

   Few will argue that severe consequences of our government’s debt binge are looming…deflation/inflation, more government controls, etc.  Spending our country into oblivion doesn’t seem the right course of action to me.  More countries favor dumping the dollar as the international currency of choice and that usually means a borrower becomes a servant or slave of sorts (meaning you and I).  If OPEC, for instance, chooses another currency as its standard, watch for cataclysmic changes in this country.

   Virtually every government administration lies about economic statistics.  For example, government stats show average unemployment figures at less than 10% but in reality (due to their faulty accounting methods) it’s probably closer to 20%.  Personal bankruptcies are growing and soon, commercial real estate will take a major hit. Private Property rights have been one of the key elements to the success of this country.  Are we doomed to becoming serfs or ‘tenant farmers’ on our property? 

   You’ll find some of my ideas thought provoking at the very least.  Feel free to pass this along to your friends.

Poor Man’s Guide to Restoring Your Freedom

http://tinyurl.com/FreedomPDF

>>><<<

You'll find valuable DIY links for building your own alternative energy devices, how-to articles, my frequent 'politically incorrect' perspectives on American politics and links to my blog and other useful services.

I've created the Poor Man's Recession Survival Kit on a CD ROM which will give you many, many tools you can put to use for tackling the problems of layoffs, tight budgets, the underground economy means of making a living and much more.

The Poor Man II & III series is now available. See our NewProducts tab.  You can order them using your PayPal account and my email address or go to:

http://www.OldBookNook.Com

Bruce’s Instant Stimulus Package

1. Revamp the tax system whereby the 1^st $25,000 of income of individual taxpayers is exempt from any kind of taxes, state or federal.  People need every cent to survive and this would provide an instant ‘raise’ which would help the economy.  After $25K, a flat rate of 12% and all non-profits, foreign corporations, domestic corporations would have to pay 12% if they’re doing business in the US.
2. The government would begin selling off unused assets, especially land and buildings.  A modern version of the homestead act would take place whereby average citizens would have 1^st dibs on small plots of land, homes and buildings.  Speculators and investors would be next.
3. I would initiate an immediate across the board 10% pay cut for all federal politicians and cabinet holders.  Government workers would have fewer federal days off and would have to contribute at least 25% of their pay toward health benefits.
4. Immediate tort reform – no more stupid lawsuits.  If you file a frivolous lawsuit and lose, you pay the legal expenses for all.
5. A national health insurance plan, covering at least the basics, would be funded via an additional premium on auto and/or home owners insurance based on a sliding scale.  This would create a very large pool of health subscribers and keep costs down.
6. Massive cuts in military operations overseas.  We don’t need soldiers stationed in 140 countries.
7. Like the Manhattan Project of WWII, the government would devote significant resources to putting people back to work in decent jobs by way of making the US energy independent…jobs in creating a national rail service, energy alternatives and rebuilding of our infrastructure (perhaps like the CCC of the Depression era) would be implemented.
8. For a 10-year period, I’d suspend Congress.  Eliminate their high pay and perks.  The governors from each state would be used; appointing non-partisan representatives to help with decision-making.
9. I would decriminalize marijuana.  We spend too much money incarcerating people for a non-narcotic weed and despite government propaganda, it’s never been proven to lead to hard drug use.  Its sale would be regulated and taxed, adding more revenue while decreasing expenses on law enforcement and prisons.
10.  Finally, my mother would become the National Budget Manager…as a Depression-era woman, she knows how to squeeze a dollar from a dime!

The Poor Man is a

Green Irene

Eco-Consultant

 http://GreenIrene.Com/PoorMan

Terrific No cost fundraising program

for your school, church, or group!

 Take our online Survey below!

 Why We Need Change in this Country-Now!

“Only Unqualified applicants will be considered.”

--Ad for US Forest Service-1994

Stupidity in Government Grows, Economy Declines

   There is a distinct correlation between idiocy in government and law and why our country is in decline and why the middle class is shrinking.  Not many years ago a young man was denied a position as a police officer.  Although he’d passed his training with flying colors, the hiring board decided his IQ of 120 was too high.

   Courts upheld this and many other stupid so-called diversity laws which has allowed the government and the legal industry to grow while individual freedoms have eroded.  Freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of speech have been increasingly abridged. 

   An odd example…The Boy Scouts of America won their Supreme Court case to ban homosexual scout leaders despite the opposition feeling that “the State has a compelling interest in eradicating invidious private discrimination.”  A Gay Rights group file a brief in SUPPORT of the scouts.  The group didn’t approve of the ban but wanted to retain their own freedom to keep heterosexuals out of their organization.  As the scouts put it…”A Society in which each and every organization must be equally diverse is a society which has destroyed diversity.”

   Misguided stupidity by Congress, in its goal to please all, has ruined the United States.  According to statistician Aaron Wildavsky, if you examine all of the protected classes, they add up to 374% of the population, rendering it impossible to hire or fire anyone because each must be protected.

  We’ve perverted the Constitution and as a nation, we’ve abandoned the notion of personal responsibility…our national motto has become When in doubt…sue!  As one sage put it, “any genuine contest between liberty and equality is a contest liberty must lose.” 

The Bill of Rights was designed to protect us from the government.

   It’s been proven that the more lawyers a country has , the bigger the drain on the economy.  Lawyers are like beavers…they get into the main stream and damn everything up.  Each lawyer in this country represents a $2.5 million loss to the economy.  The enormous slate of laws in this country adds to cost of everything and destroys entrepreneurship, the backbone of America.  This is why we’re fallen so far behind the Chinese and other countries. 

   Congress, made up of too many lawyers, has shackled our economy with its shady backroom deals with corporate America and this ultimately, has destroyed the middle class, our jobs and our country.

America locks up too many people, some for acts that should not even be criminal. No other rich country is nearly as punitive as the Land of the Free.

   Here’s my final example of government stupidity in action.  In 1994, the ABC program, 20/20 showed a Department of Defense memo that stated “In the future, special permission will be required for the promotion of all white men without disabilities.” 

Volumes can be filled with examples of how government has destroyed this country but it all leads to what the Poor Man has been saying since 1985…We don’t need another election, we need another revolution!

 (C) and (TM) 2008 PoorMan Recession Survival Center

 

 

 

  If you think the economy is going to recover in the next year or so, I believe you’re sadly mistaken.  For a terrific (short, 30-minute version), non-partisan video insight into our national debt and disastrous course our government has taken…watch I.O.U.S. at:

www.iousathemovie.com

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

•    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
•    61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
•    66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
•    36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
•    A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
•    24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
•    Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
•    Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
•    For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
•    In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
•    As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
•    The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
•    Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
•    In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
•    The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
•    In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
•    More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
•    or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
•    This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
•    Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
•    Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
•    The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job?

 The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much.

The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.