Student Loan Debt Hell: 21 Statistics That Will Make You Think Twice About Going To College

Is going to college a worthwhile investment?  Is the education that our young people are receiving at our colleges and universities really worth all of the time, money and effort that is required?  Decades ago, a college education was quite inexpensive and it was almost an automatic ticket to the middle class.  But today all of that has changed.  At this point, college education is a big business.  There are currently more than 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation throughout the United States.  There are quite a few "institutions of higher learning" that now charge $40,000 or even $50,000 a year for tuition.  That does not even count room and board and other living expenses. 
Meanwhile, as you will see from the statistics posted below, the quality of education at our colleges and universities has deteriorated badly.  When graduation finally arrives, many of our college students have actually learned very little, they find themselves unable to get good jobs and yet they end up trapped in student loan debt hell for essentially the rest of their lives.


Across America today, "guidance counselors" are pushing millions of high school students to go to the very best colleges that they can get into, but they rarely warn them about how much it is going to cost or about the sad reality that they could end up being burdened by massive debt loads for decades to come.

Yes, college is a ton of fun and it is a really unique experience.  If you can get someone else to pay for it then you should definitely consider going.

There are also many careers which absolutely require a college degree.  Depending on your career goals, you may not have much of a choice of whether to go to college or not.

But that doesn't mean that you have to go to student loan debt hell.

You don't have to go to the most expensive school that you can get into.

You don't have to take out huge student loans.

There is no shame in picking a school based on affordability.

The truth is that pretty much wherever you go to school the quality of the education is going to be rather pathetic.  A highly trained cat could pass most college courses in the United States today.

Personally, I have had the chance to spend quite a number of years on college campuses.  I enjoyed my time and I have some pretty pieces of parchment to put up on the wall.  I have seen with my own eyes what goes on at our institutions of higher learning.  In a previous article, I described what life is like for most "average students" enrolled in our colleges and universities today....

The vast majority of college students in America spend two to four hours a day in the classroom and maybe an hour or two outside the classroom studying. The remainder of the time these "students" are out drinking beer, partying, chasing after sex partners, going to sporting events, playing video games, hanging out with friends, chatting on Facebook or getting into trouble. When they say that college is the most fun that most people will ever have in their lives they mean it. It is basically one huge party.

If you are a parent and you are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars every year to pay for college you need to know the truth.

You are being ripped off.

Sadly, a college education just is not that good of an investment anymore.  Tuition costs have absolutely skyrocketed even as the quality of education has plummeted.

A college education is not worth getting locked into crippling student loan payments for the next 30 years.
Even many university professors are now acknowledging that student loan debt has become a horrific societal problem. Just check out what one professor was quoted as saying in a recent article in The Huffington Post....

“Thirty years ago, college was a wise, modest investment,” says Fabio Rojas, a professor of sociology at Indiana University. He studies the politics of higher education. “Now, it’s a lifetime lock-in, an albatross you can’t escape.”

Anyone that is thinking of going to college needs to do a cost/benefit analysis.

Is it really going to be worth it?

For some people the answer will be "yes" and for some people the answer will be "no".

But sadly, hardly anyone that goes to college these days gets a "good" education.

To get an idea of just how "dumbed down" we have become as a nation, just check out this Harvard entrance exam from 1869.

I wouldn't have a prayer of passing that exam.

What about you?

We really do need to rethink our approach to higher education in this country.

Posted below are 21 statistics about college tuition, student loan debt and the quality of college education in the United States....

#1 Since 1978, the cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent.

#2 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.

#3 Approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.

#4 Americans have accumulated well over $900 billion in student loan debt. That figure is higher than the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.

#5 The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.

#6 According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses", 45 percent of U.S. college students exhibit "no significant gains in learning" after two years in college.

#7 Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.

#8 35% of U.S. college students spend 5 hours or less studying per week.

#9 50% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.

#10 32% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages in a week.

#11 U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.

#12 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor's degree within four years.

#13 Nearly half of all the graduate science students enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States are foreigners.

#14 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.

#15 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don't even require college degrees.

#16 In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.

#17 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#18 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.

#19 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespersons have a college degree.

#20 Once they get out into the "real world", 70% of college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the "real world" while they were still in school.

#21 Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.

There are millions of young college graduates running around out there that are wondering where all of the "good jobs" are.  All of their lives they were promised that if they worked really hard and got good grades that the system would reward them.

Sometimes when you do everything right you still can't get a job. A while back The Huffington Post featured the story of Kyle Daley - a highly qualified UCLA graduate who had been unemployed for 19 months at the time....

I spent my time at UCLA preparing for the outside world. I had internships in congressional offices, political action committees, non-profits and even as a personal intern to a successful venture capitalist. These weren't the run-of-the-mill office internships; I worked in marketing, press relations, research and analysis. Additionally, the mayor and city council of my hometown appointed me to serve on two citywide governing bodies, the planning commission and the open government commission. I used to think that given my experience, finding work after graduation would be easy.
At this point, however, looking for a job is my job. I recently counted the number of job applications I have sent out over the past year -- it amounts to several hundred. I have tried to find part-time work at local stores or restaurants, only to be turned away. Apparently, having a college degree implies that I might bail out quickly when a better opportunity comes along.

The sad truth is that a college degree is not an automatic ticket to the middle class any longer.

But for millions of young Americans a college degree is an automatic ticket to student loan debt hell.

Student loan debt is one of the most insidious forms of debt.  You can't get away from student loan debt no matter what you do.  Federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts, and many recent grads end up with loan payments that absolutely devastate them financially at a time when they are struggling to get on their feet and make something of themselves.

So are you still sure that you want to go to college?

Another open secret is that most of our colleges and universities are little more than indoctrination centers. 

Most people would be absolutely shocked at how much unfiltered propaganda is being pounded into the heads of our young people.

At most colleges and universities, when it comes to the "big questions" there is a "right answer" and there is virtually no discussion of any other alternatives.

In most fields there is an "orthodoxy" that you had better adhere to if you want to get good grades.

Let's just say that "independent thought" and "critical thinking" are not really encouraged at most of our institutions of higher learning.

Am I bitter because I didn't do well?  No, I actually did extremely well in school.  I have seen the system from the inside.  I know how it works.

It is a giant fraud.

If you want to go to college because you want to have a good time or because it will help you get your career started then by all means go for it.

Just realize what you are signing up for.

Read this article and more at: theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Food and Energy Inflation is Not Transitory

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake on Wensday held his first press conference in history. The press conference took place shortly after the Fed announced its decision to leave the Fed Funds Rate at a record low of 0% to 0.25%, where it has been for an unprecedented 28 months. The U.S. economy is flooded with U.S. dollars and is close to overdosing on excess liquidity. The fact that our financial markets are not falling on the possibility of the Fed not unleashing QE3 immediately at the end of QE2, shows that we could be on the verge of hyperinflation with or without QE3.

The Federal reserve currently has a mandate of both maintaining price stability and facilitating job creation. However, central banks don't have the ability to create real employment. If any jobs happen to be created as a result of a central bank's policies, they are only temporary jobs created due to the errors and distortions of phony asset bubbles. All phony asset bubbles that are fueled by monetary inflation eventually burst, sending unemployment through the roof.

Almost every major central bank besides the Federal Reserve, understands the truth about job creation, and has a mandate that focuses solely on keeping price inflation low. The Bank of Japan, Swiss National Bank, Bank of Canada and the bank of New Zealand all have mandates that are entirely about low inflation and don't even mention the creation of jobs or the rate of employment. Bernanke said on Wednesday that, "while it is very, very important for us to try to help the economy create jobs and to support the recovery, I think every central banker understands that keeping inflation low and stable is absolutely essential to a successful economy."

Bernanke has decided to go down a route that no central banker has ever gone before. Bernanke has literally invented countless ways to create inflation that nobody else has ever thought of. If keeping inflation low was ever Bernanke's slightest concern, the Fed Funds Rate would currently be north of 5% and the U.S. economy would be in a steep recession. Bernanke has never once thought about keeping inflation low. He has literally implemented every measure he could possibly think of to create as much inflation as possible, while outright lying to the American public and saying that he isn't printing money and that inflation is under control.

Bernanke would like the public to believe that his policies of expanding the money supply through cheap and easy money will cause the U.S. economy to recover and unemployment to decline back to pre-crisis levels, and that right before price inflation spirals out of control, he can raise interest rates and prevent massive price inflation without disrupting the recovery. Unfortunately, this is impossible because the recovery isn't real and massive price inflation is already here. Bernanke's policies may have created 1 million artificial jobs since December of 2009, after 8.75 million jobs were lost in the previous two years, but he did this at the expense of 310 million Americans already seeing double-digit percentage increases in food and energy prices.

Since after the real estate burst in late-2008, the primary economic concern of Americans has been finding a stable job in order to make mortgage payments and put food on the table. Under the pressure of Congress, the Fed printed enough money to prevent a much needed recession that would be healthy for the long-term U.S. economy. In its attempt to reinflate the Real Estate bubble, the Fed has been destroying the free market and creating new economic distortions, which caused an artificial bounce in the rate of employment. Unfortunately, when you add together the money the Fed has either printed or committed for bailouts and stimulus programs, over $4 million has been spent for each job created. The Fed would have been better off just crediting the bank accounts of unemployed Americans with the average U.S. income.

When asked about rising gas prices, NIA is very happy that Chairman Bernanke acknowledged that gas prices "have risen quite significantly" and are "creating a great deal of financial hardship for a lot of people". Bernanke admitted that gas is a "necessity" as "people need to drive to work" for the artificial jobs Bernanke created at a cost of $4 million per job. However, Bernanke seemed to be confused when he said "higher gas prices add to inflation". The truth is, Bernanke's zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing are the inflation, and inflation leads to higher gas prices.

Bernanke is directly responsible for gas prices rising back to $3.87 per gallon, yet refuses to admit it. Bernanke placed the blame on the growing global and emerging market economies and their strong demand for oil. He said that America's demand for oil is going down, which NIA believes is actually due to the U.S. dollar losing its purchasing power and Americans seeing their standard of living decline. Bernanke said there is nothing that he can do about rising oil and gas prices "without derailing growth entirely". The truth is, Bernanke already derailed growth entirely when he derailed the free market. It is impossible to see real economic growth when a government and central bank is interfering in every aspect of the economy and impeding the free market in every possible way. All nominal GDP growth in the U.S., along with growth in retail sales, is solely due to inflation. Even when the government adjusts GDP and retail sales growth to the rate of inflation, it is based off of the consumer price index, which NIA believes is currently understating price inflation by approximately 4%.

Although Bernanke denies he has the ability to reduce gas prices, he claims he can prevent "gas prices from passing into other prices and wages throughout the economy and creating a broader inflation which will be much more difficult to extinguish." Bernanke obviously doesn't want Americans to see higher wages because he believes it could lead to broader inflation, but NIA believes rising wages would be a good thing. Inflation hurts Americans most when the rate of inflation is far outpacing wage increases. The fact is, the U.S. is already experiencing broad inflation even without wage increases.

Bernanke's brand new favorite word as of late seems to be "transitory", which he used about a dozen times during his press conference. Despite what Bernanke says, NIA strongly believes that rising food and gas prices are not transitory. Bernanke likes the word "transitory" because he can use it to try and pretend that rising food and gas prices are only just a temporary phenomenon and that their current high levels aren't here to stay. Many Americans can remember the day 40 years ago when a can of Coca-Cola cost a dime and a Hershey chocolate bar cost a nickel, with a gallon of gas back then costing only thirty-five cents. Have rising food and gas prices over the past four decades been transitory?

NIA first predicted two years ago in its documentary 'Hyperinflation Nation', that rising food and gas prices would soon become the primary concern of all American citizens as a result of the Fed's dangerous and destructive monitary policies. Bernanke back then claimed that inflation would not be a problem and said that the U.S. risked deflation. If Bernanke has been so wrong about the inflation that Americans are faced with today, NIA doesn't see how anybody can possibly believe that Bernanke will be right and that current high food and gas prices aren't here to stay. In our opinion, the food and gas price inflation that Americans have experienced over the past 40 years, is likely to occur all over again during the next 4 years. NIA believes that 4 years from now, Americans will look back at the good old days of having cheap $4 a gallon gas.

The last thing the U.S. government wants is for the American public to realize that Bernanke is responsible for rising food and gas prices. If the public demanded to end the Federal Reserve, the government will no longer be able to spend recklessly knowing that the Fed will be there to monetize their deficit spending. In an attempt to make up excuses for rising gas prices and deflect attention away from the Fed, Congress has been pressuring the U.S. Attorney General to investigate the matter. Attorney General Eric Holder just announced the formation of the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group. The stated purpose of this working group is to monitor the oil and gas markets for potential violations of criminal or civil laws to safeguard against unlawful consumer harm.

NIA considers this to be complete insanity. Any government interference in the oil markets will only drive oil prices up even higher. Oil prices are rising solely do to supply and demand. Demand is going through the roof because the Federal Reserve is creating a lot of inflation, and inflation always gravitates to the goods that Americans need the most to live and survive. Oil supplies are falling because President Obama has ordered U.S. troops to occupy Libya. In the past we at least made up excuses to invade countries like Iraq over oil by claiming they had weapons of mass destruction. Today, the U.S. government doesn't even bother. Obama campaigned as an anti-war President, saying he would bring our troops home from the middle-east. Instead, he has increased our middle-east troop levels, and the sheep who voted for him are showing absolutely no signs of outrage.

http://inflation.us/

How the Inflationistas Have Shaped Fed Policy

Ben Bernanke's press conference yesterday seems to have left observers with one crucial take-away. As noted by Tim Duy:

The most interesting comments came in response to questions about whether the Fed should do more to lower unemployment and if QE2 is effective, shouldn’t the program continue? Here was a more hawkish Bernanke. As I noted earlier, growth forecasts returned to the pre-QE2 range, which should be a red flag. Unemployment remains high, with only moderate job creation. Core-inflation remains low, while the impulse from commodity prices on headline inflation is expected to be temporary. ...So why not do more? Because the Fed needs “to pay attention to both sides of the mandate” and the “tradeoffs are less attractive.”

Apparently the threat of headline deflation off the table, Bernanke is not inclined to pursue sustained easing despite low core inflation and high unemployment.

Numerous observers (see e.g. Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong) have noted that any concern about inflation by the Fed right now is a bit ridiculous. In fact, the more "hawkish" Bernanke on the topic of further expansionary actions by the Fed seems at odds with the Fed's own data and projections. Most significantly to me, it also seems at odds with Bernanke's remarkably detailed and perceptive explanation of exactly why he finds the long-term unemployment problem to be so very "distressing":

BERNANKE: You're absolutely right. Long-term unemployment in the current economy is the worst, really, the worst it's been in the post-war period. Currently, something like 45 percent of all the unemployed have been unemployed for six months or longer. And we know the consequences of that can be very distressing, because people who are out of work for a long time, their skills tend to atrophy; they lose contacts with -- with the labor market, with their other people working, the networks that they have built up. Very concerning.

These are not the remarks of someone who doesn't care about the plight of the unemployed. And this not is the sort of detailed description of the permanent harm that unemployment wreaks on individuals that we would typically expect from someone who's principally worried about inflation. So why the talk about the potential dangers of inflation?

I believe that Bernanke's references to the Fed's "dual mandate", and most importantly, the hard reality confirmed in this press conference that there will be no further easing by the Fed, are the direct result of politics, not economics.

The noise that has been generated about the Fed's expansionary actions over the past 3 years is substantial, and has only gotten louder in recent months. This has not gone unnnoticed within the Fed. Some loud voices in the business press, as well as many prominent politicians (mostly Republican), have been squawking incessantly about the awful dangers (imaginary though they may be) of the Fed's expansionary policies. And I think that this, unfortunately, has had a direct impact on Fed policy. I think that there are genuine concerns at the Fed about its reputation and its independence, and that protecting both of those has forced Bernanke into the position of acknowledging the concerns of the Fed's critics, even though from a purely economic perspective they are absolutely misguided.

In short, I believe that we are seeing a Fed that is sensitive to the political winds swirling around its actions, and that the inflationistas out there have had a real impact on Fed policy -- not because they have good economic arguments, but because they have a frightening amount of political power. And perhaps that should be the most concerning thing of all.

If You Are Against Raising The Debt Ceiling You Are Part Of Al-Qaeda?

Are you against raising the debt ceiling?  If so, according to former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill you are actually part of al-Qaeda.  Yes, seriously.  During an interview on Bloomberg TV the other day, O'Neill actually made the following statement:

"The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al-Qaeda terrorists. Really. They're really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are looney, who would put our credit at risk." 

For a high ranking Bush administration official to equate Tea Party activists with al-Qaeda is extremely frightening.  Just remember what the Bush administration did to anyone supposedly associated with al-Qaeda.  They shipped them off to Guantanamo Bay and waterboarded them into oblivion.  It also shows how out of touch the Bush administration really was with the conservative base of the Republican Party.  The Bush administration ran up record setting deficit after record setting deficit and now any conservatives that dare to want some assurances that we are actually going to do something about our rampant debt problem are labeled as "al-Qaeda terrorists".  Of course the Obama administration is essentially doing the exact same thing.  The current Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been running around frothing at the mouth and declaring that we are going to experience financial armageddon if the debt ceiling is not raised.  This whole episode is yet another example that shows what a fraud the false left/right political paradigm in this country really is.

The debt ceiling is one of the only points of leverage that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has available.  If the Republicans want to make a stand on the national debt, they need to do it somewhere.  John Boehner already caved badly when it came to the 2011 budget.  The Republicans are running out of opportunities to make a statement before the 2012 election.

Not that Boehner and the rest of the "establishment Republicans" are much interested in seriously cutting the budget.  If they were, they would have done it during the Bush years.

But there are millions of Americans (and a few members of Congress) associated with the Tea Party movement that are deeply troubled by our soaring budget deficits and that desperately want something done before it is too late.

If the U.S. government keeps running up debt like it is right now, it is going to completely destroy our economy.  America has a debt problem unlike anything ever seen in the history of the world.  If left unchecked, it is going to destroy the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.

Something needs to be done.

Yes, if the debt ceiling is not raised, the financial world will throw a fit.  There may even be a bit of a panic.  But you can't really blame those associated with the Tea Party for wanting some assurances about getting the debt under control before agreeing to raise the debt ceiling yet again.

Our national debt is a horrific national crisis.  It threatens to destroy everything that our forefathers built.
But members of the political establishment such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill don't have much patience for those that want to question the status quo.

Look, when any member of the Bush administration uses the words "al-Qaeda" in relation to a group of people you need to pay careful attention.

Do you remember how the Bush administration treated anyone that was accused of being part of al-Qaeda?  The following are some of the kinder things that they would do to them according to official U.S. government memos....

*Forced nudity
*"Walling", which is slamming a prisoner into a wall
*"Cramped confinement" which means "placement of the individual in a confined space"
*Stinging insects placed inside "a confinement box"
*Waterboarding - one of the memos actually admits that "the use of waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death"
*Sleep deprivation for several days
*Sleep deprivation while wearing a diaper
*The use of "stress positions" to cause "muscle fatigue"
*"Dietary manipulation"
*Facial and abdominal slapping

There are a lot worse things that they would do to "members of al-Qaeda" but they cannot be printed in this space.

So when Paul O'Neill says that you are part of al-Qaeda, let's just say that he does not plan to invite you out for a Sunday picnic.

This is yet another example of how dirty politics in America is becoming.  Liberals hate conservatives and conservatives hate liberals.  They both hate libertarians and libertarians hate them.  America is a deeply, deeply divided nation and hatred and bitterness are growing at a staggering pace.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt and the plans put forward by both the Democrats and the Republicans are total jokes.  Nobody seems to have any idea how to get out of this mess.

We have accumulated the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect our children and our grandchildren to pay it off.

What we have done to future generations is absolutely inexcusable.

In a previous article on U.S. government finances, I detailed some absolutely horrifying statistics about U.S. government debt....

#1 If you divide the national debt up equally among all U.S. households, each one owes a staggering $125,475.18.

#2 The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.

#3 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

#4 In the new budget that the Obama administration has proposed, the U.S. government would spend 3.7 trillion dollars in 2012 and by 2021 the U.S. government would be spending a whopping 5.6 trillion dollars per year.

#5 The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.

#6 The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.

#7 The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.

#8 The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.

#9 The U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#10 Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the U.S. government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.

#11 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.  But this year alone the U.S. government is going to go about 1.6 trillion dollars more into debt.

#12 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

You would think that our politicians would be working night and day to solve this problem.

But instead, anyone that is actually serious enough to want to pause before raising the debt ceiling again is called an "al-Qaeda terrorist".

Even if you are against the Tea Party and in favor of raising the debt ceiling immediately, you should still be extremely concerned when a former high ranking member of the government equates a group of Americans with "al-Qaeda" just because of their political beliefs.

Our country is being transformed. Liberty and freedom are dying. Today, when Americans are concerned about the national debt they are called "terrorists", but when our women and our children are sexually molested at "security checkpoints" it is called "patriotic".

Just check out what happened to a former Miss America as she went through "airport security" recently. 

This video is incredibly upsetting....

Read this article and more at: endoftheamericandream.com

Trump 'Trumped' The President

What fun this morning has been…seems Donald Trump has forced Dear Leader’s hand, he has been the only one to do so in all these years, if in fact this is the real birth certificate..time will tell that one way or the other for sure.

Trump’s statement here sums it all up nicely, I loved it, the msm still go berserk with his honesty, something they can’t handle – on both sides of the elitist aisles.

I say too danged bad, deal with it!

Here’s a copy of the long form Obama released today.

Obama is real busy dealing with more important ‘stuff’ today as he stated in the statement he released this morning – yep, he’s off to tape a show with Oprah along with wife in tow to Chicago and of course do three fund-raisers this evening, nothing like the Campaigner-in-Chief we have running this country – INTO the GROUND!

’12 cannot get here soon enough.

Update: El Rushbo weighs in here, well worth your time, I got a kick out of it. Hope you do as well.



“Trump does not eat crow, he eats other people’s lunches,” he added. “He does not eat crow. You could tell – the networks did not want to leave the Trump presser.”

Priceless.

http://angrywhitedude.com/?p=7097

China's Energy Use And Carbon Emissions To Level Off By 2035

From "A surprise: China’s energy consumption will stabilize" on ScienceBlog, April 27, 2011:

Yet according to this new forecast, the steeply rising curve of energy demand in China will begin to moderate between 2030 and 2035 and flatten thereafter. There will come a time — within the next two decades — when the number of people in China acquiring cars, larger homes, and other accouterments of industrialized societies will peak. It’s a phenomenon known as saturation. “Once nearly every household owns a refrigerator, a washing machine, air conditioners and other appliances, and once housing area per capita has stabilized, per household electricity growth will slow,” [Mark] Levine [co-author of the report, "China’s Energy and Carbon Emissions Outlook to 2050"] explains.

Similarly, China will reach saturation in road and rail construction before the 2030-2035 time frame, resulting in very large decreases in iron and steel demand. Additionally, other energy-intensive industries will see demand for their products flatten

.Read the full article here.

The full 63-page PDF report is available here.

Government Creates Poverty

The U.S. government has "helped" no group more than it has "helped" the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, "Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans."


Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs.

The result?

Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers.

Nevertheless, Indian activists want more government "help."

It is intuitive to assume that, when people struggle, government "help" is the answer. The opposite is true. American groups who are helped the most, do the worst.

Consider the Lumbees of Robeson County, N.C. -- a tribe not recognized as sovereign by the government and therefore ineligible for most of the "help" given other tribes. The Lumbees do much better than those recognized tribes.

Lumbees own their homes and succeed in business. They include real estate developer Jim Thomas, who used to own the Sacramento Kings, and Jack Lowery, who helped start the Cracker Barrel Restaurants.

Lumbees started the first Indian-owned bank, which now has 12 branches.

The Lumbees' wealth is not from casino money.

"We don't have any casinos. We have 12 banks," says Ben Chavis, another successful Lumbee businessman. He also points out that Robeson County looks different from most Indian reservations.

"There's mansions. They look like English manors. I can take you to one neighborhood where my people are from and show you nicer homes than the whole Sioux reservation."

Despite this success, professional "victims" activists want Congress to make the Lumbees dependent -- like other tribes. U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., has introduced the Lumbee Recognition Act, which would give the Lumbees the same "help" other tribes get -- about $80 million a year. Some members of the tribe support the bill.

Of course they do. People like to freeload.

Lawyer Elizabeth Homer, who used to be the U.S. Interior Department's director of Indian land trusts, say the Lumbees ought to get federal recognition.

"The Lumbees have been neglected and left out of the system, and have been petitioning for 100 years. ... They're entitled, by the way."

People like Homer will never get it. Lumbees do well because they've divorced themselves from government handouts. Washington's neglect was a godsend.

Some Lumbees don't want the handout.

"We shouldn't take it!" Chavis said. He says if federal money comes, members of his tribe "are going to become welfare cases. It's going to stifle creativity. On the reservations, they haven't trained to be capitalists. They've been trained to be communists."

Tribal governments and the Bureau of Indian Affairs manage most Indian land. Indians compete to serve on tribal councils because they can give out the government's money. Instead of seeking to become entrepreneurs, members of tribes aspire to become bureaucrats.

"You can help your girlfriend; you can help your girlfriend's mama. It's a great program!" Chavis said sarcastically.

Because a government trust controls most Indian property, individuals rarely build nice homes or businesses. "No individual on the reservation owns the land. So they can't develop it," Chavis added. "Look at my tribe. We have title and deeds to our land. That's the secret. I raise cattle. I can do what I want to because it's my private property."

I did a TV segment on the Lumbees that I included in a special called "Freeloaders." That won me the predictable vitriol. Apparently, I'm ignorant of history and a racist.

The criticism misses the point. Yes, many years ago white people stole the Indians' land and caused great misery. And yes, the government signed treaties with the tribes that make Indians "special." But that "specialness" has brought the Indians socialism. It's what keeps them dependent and poor.

On the other hand, because the U.S. government never signed a treaty with the Lumbees, they aren't so "special" in its eyes.

That left them mostly free.

Freedom lets them prosper.

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