Surely we must consider there were fewer people in the U.S. during the great depression, but these statistics are overwhelming regardless. Consider.
- There were 12.8 million Americans unemployed during the Great Depression. These were the men pictured in those soup lines. This is estimated, because the Department of Labor did not keep official unemployment numbers until 1940. That comes to 24.9% of the Labor Force.
- Today, there are 46 million Americans unemployed. This is the U3 number that is reported, which comes to 5.1% of the Labor Force. It does not include the people who have stopped looking for work, so it actually makes the economy look better than it really is.
- Today, there are 94 million people not working or not participating in the Labor Force, this is the highest this number has been (or the lowest labor force participation rate) since 1977. This is the U6 unemployment number, which comes to about 14%. It includes all the working age people who are currently not working.
- Those 94 million not looking for work are not starving; they have become official dependents of the government
- 94 million not looking for work, 8 million officially called unemployed, equals 40% of the population not working.
- Sixty-two percent of the labor force is working; 38% not working
- Today, there are 123 million households in America and 23 million of them are on food stamps. Therefore 19% of all households in America require food stamp assistance to survive. So food stamps have replaced soup lines, so they are not seen. We do not see hungry people in the U.S. today, so we do not know how bad the economy really is.
- In 1933, there were approximately 126 million Americans living in 30 million households.
- In 1933 there were no food stamps
- In 1933 there was no welfare
- In 1933 if you did not work you didn't eat
- In 1933 there was no incentive to stay at home and collect welfare, because if you didn't work you didn't eat. You see, people did not give up looking for work, because they needed to feed themselves and their families.
- In 1933 people didn't become dependents of the state
- In 2015, greater than 109,631,000 live in households receiving federal welfare benefits, according to the Census Bureau. That equals 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the U.S.
- In 1933, you had to work, you had to walk to and stand in, soup lines to receive charity
- In 2015, you can be among the 94 million not working and have a roof over your head, have a cell phone, a car, your home is probably air-conditioned, and you're eating as much as you want.
- Daily Caller: "Fifty-one percent of working Americans make less than $30,000 a year." This data from the Social Security Administration. That's $2,500 a month before taxes. That is just above the federal poverty level for a family of five. "The new numbers come from the National Wage Index, which SSA updates each year based on reported wages subject to the federal income tax." So half the folks who are working don't have any disposable income, and therefore are unable to propel the economy.
Then you can add the following, and it gets even worse.
- Open borders so anyone can get in, legal or not
- Our borders are flooded with low skilled, low educated people who cannot command any kind of a decent wage because they're not qualified, and most qualify for entitlements that we pay for
- People who work are paying for it, whether they want to or not.
- Government controlling what kids learn, and not parents. It's called Common Core, although most schools won't call it that because 54% of Americans hate Common Core. It's faceless bureaucrats in Washington deciding what kids should learn instead of parents.
- We are $18 trillion in debt
- We are printing money left and right and dumping it into the stock market (called quantitative easing) to maintain the stock market bubble that is going to pop some day
- We are paying people not to work
What these statistics show, other than that we are in a depression, is that liberals like Obama are buying votes. That's why we have 94 million people not working and they are all eating; they are all living comfortably off the government, and that's why these numbers keep getting worse; that's why so many people vote for liberal democrats, and why Bernie Sanders even has credibility in the democratic party despite publicly claiming to be a socialist who hates capitalism. That's why Obama got elected two times. He, in essence, bought votes with our money. That's what FDR did too.
And don't get me wrong, I do want to help the needy. I'm all for charity. However, the best way to help the poor is not by giving them something for nothing. The poor must work for what they receive. We need to put them to work if they receive assistance. We need to make the poor uncomfortable so they have an incentive to keep looking for work.
Look, these statistics show that, even adjusting for the population increase, current abysmal economic statistics are far worse than during the Great Depression. We have more people not working, and more people not looking for work. And it isn't getting better, won't get better, by creating more programs that take from those who work to create more government programs that give to people who quit looking for work; who have no incentive to look for work.
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