Download or read book Our Government Is Broke written by Steve Hess and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-02 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government's debt is $28 trillion, up 225% since 2006. The White House's Office of Management and Budget forecasts deficits of over $1.4 trillion every year as far as the eye can see. By year 2026, it forecasts that the national debt will climb close to $40 trillion. The government's Interest expense was $371 billion in 2020 and will grow to at least $768 billion within the next five years. Our U.S. Congress is unwilling and unable to balance the federal budget. As the federal government continues to grow by leaps and bounds, they are now involved in just about every aspect of our lives. It is obvious the states need to take back their power before we end up with a socialist regime in Washington DC. Is this the kind curse we want to pass on to our children and grandkids? Here's the good news. We have one last chance to avoid financial Armageddon and regain our freedom. Article V of our Constitution says that the 50 states can take matters into their own hands by way of a Convention of States that would lead to amending the Constitution to do these three things: Force Congress to balance the budget. Create term limits for elected officials. Limit the federal government's jurisdiction over the states. As of June 2021, 15 states have approved of, and petitioned Congress for the Convention. The Constitution calls for 34 states to approve this issue in order to move forward with a Convention. Many states are currently debating this issue, and success is dependent on grass roots participation. That's why you'll want to get involved as soon as possible. Let's return America to a land of greatness!!

Download or read book Our Government Is Broke written by Steve Hess and published by Abbott Press. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists, business executives, and small business owners continue to warn Washington about the dangers of runaway deficit spending. If it continues, it could cost Americans their freedom. The national debt is well over $16.5 trillion and growing, and it seems that its only a matter of time before the United States slips into a deep recession or depression. Additionally, the Social Security program may soon go bankrupt, stock markets could crash and wipe out retirement accounts, and inflation may drive up the cost of goods and services. Steve Hess, a longtime executive and taxpayer, outlines the countrys problems in plain English. His ultimate goal is to get people to act so that future generations dont have to carry the burden of repaying governmental debt and rebuilding the nation. Taxpayers must act to fix things, and they must encourage their friends and neighbors to get involvedbefore its too late.

Download or read book America the Broke written by Gerald J. Swanson and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2004-08-03 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dirty little secret that neither George W. Bush nor Congress are willing to confront—that America’s reckless spending, disastrous deficits, and exploding debt are speeding our great nation to financial ruin. Imagine a world in which you lose your job because your company goes under, your retirement money disappears, the value of your home tumbles overnight, your bank stops allowing cash withdrawals, and your ATM card is canceled. The price of groceries has risen so fast that you don’t have the money to pay for them at the check-out counter . . . and the country is bankrupt. That is exactly the future that economist Gerald J. Swanson sees America hurtling toward—unless we rein in our country’s reckless spending. In America the Broke, Swanson, coauthor of the runaway New York Times bestseller Bankruptcy 1995, argues that the United States is on the brink of financial collapse. Thanks to George W. Bush’s two tax cuts, the White House and Congress’ escalation of domestic spending, two wars, and an economic recession, what was a $200 billion annual surplus three years ago under Bill Clinton has become a river of red ink. The White House’s official projected deficit for 2004 is $521 billion—the largest deficit in U.S. history. With a national debt spiraling upward of $7.3 trillion, a huge trade deficit, and personal debt at an all-time high, we are standing at the edge of a financial abyss that could undermine the financial security of our families and our children’s children. “Deficits don’t matter,” claim Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush Administration. But the facts revealed in America the Broke paint an alarming picture. Next year’s projected deficit will exceed the amount all our cities spend on police, fire protection, medical care, and every other civil service in an entire year. It is more than we could save from abolishing Medicare and Medicaid completely. The real deficit—the deficit the government doesn’t want you to know about—including the hidden funds we “borrow” from Social Security is nearly $1 trillion. Rising interest rates alone could trigger staggering payments on our skyrocketing debt, soaking up every dollar the government takes in, leaving America bankrupt. What does this mean for you and me? If the dollar goes into free fall, banks could close, businesses go bankrupt, real estate values crumble, and middle-class families could lose everything they own. But there is hope. We can save ourselves—if we demand that our political leaders act now to eliminate the deficit and reduce the debt. In a year of deficit denial, America the Broke is a critical wake-up call regarding our government’s reckless deficit spending—as well as a blueprint for rescuing our economy and saving our country

Download or read book Broke in America written by Joanne Samuel Goldblum and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FOREWORD INDIES FINALIST — POLITICAL & SOCIAL SCIENCES NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS SILVER MEDALIST — SOCIAL CHANGE & SOCIAL JUSTICE ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARD 1ST RUNNER UP — CULTURE & MONTAIGNE MEDAL NOMINEE "A valuable resource in the fight against poverty." —Publishers Weekly "An exploration of why so many Americans are struggling financially . . . A down-to-earth overview of the causes and effects of poverty and possible remedies." —Kirkus Reviews Water. Food. Housing. The most basic and crucial needs for survival, yet 40 percent of people in the United States don't have the resources to get them. With key policy changes, we could eradicate poverty in this country within our lifetime—but we need to get started now. Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line—about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it's actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped—not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to. Poverty is close to inevitable for low-wage workers and their children, and a large percentage of these people, despite qualifying for it, do not receive government aid. From Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America offers an eye-opening and galvanizing look at life in poverty in this country: how circumstances and public policy conspire to keep people poor, and the concrete steps we can take to end poverty for good. In clear, accessible prose, Goldblum and Shaddox detail the ways the current system is broken and how it's failing so many of us. They also highlight outdated and ineffective policies that are causing or contributing to this unnecessary problem. Every chapter features action items readers can use to combat poverty—both nationwide and in our local communities, including the most effective public policies you can support and how to work hand-in-hand with representatives to affect change. So far, our attempted solutions have fallen short because they try to "fix" poor people rather than address the underlying problems. Fortunately, it's much easier to fix policy than people. Essential and timely, Broke in America offers a crucial road map for securing a brighter future.

Download or read book California Crackup written by Joe Mathews and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "California Crackup is brilliant. It cuts through the familiar tangle of diagnoses and quick-fix solutions to provide a comprehensive and persuasive analysis of California's dysfunctional governmental system. Paul and Mathews have coolly laid out a complicated story, made it readable, sometimes even comedic. It is the best discussion of the issue I've seen in over three decades."--Peter Schrag, author of California: America's High-Stakes Experiment "I know of no other work that combines so succinctly and enjoyably a historical summary of California's existing problems with such a sweeping and provocative program of reform."--Ethan Rarick, University of California, Berkeley "Mark Paul and Joe Mathews have produced an indispensable guide to California's crisis of governance--and they have done so with humor, scholarship, fairness and storytelling verve. Every Californian should read this book."--Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars "Mark Paul... has a talent for presenting California Big Think stuff in an easily accessible and always readable way...[offering] clear and creative insights on the subject of California's collapse."--CalBuzz "Joe Mathews has done an artful, fascinating, and convincing job of connecting the California of today's Schwarzenegger era to the long history that made his rise possible.--James Fallows,The Atlantic Monthly on Mathews' book, The People's Machine

Download or read book Why America Is Bankrupt written by Peter Jedick and published by . This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is in trouble. Our massive national debt is eating up our country's wealth at an alarming rate. Best-selling author and historian Peter Jedick argues that the Federal Government must stop creating the crime ridden neighborhoods in our major cities that are bankrupting our country. He uses examples from his careers as a fireman, substitute teacher and cab driver to explain how over the last 50 years Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" caused our $18 trillion debt. As our national debt and our national poverty rate both soar to historic heights, Jedick offers a wide range of innovative ideas on how to fix our broken political system, just in time for the 2016 Presidential campaign.

Download or read book The Lords of Easy Money written by Christopher Leonard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ​ The New York Times bestselling business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies​ ​spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk. If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us. But the Fed also has a unique power to reshape the American economy for the worse, which it did, fatefully, on November 4, 2010 through a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway...and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in two short months. Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, stock prices are trading far above what’s justified by actual corporate profits, corporate debt in America is at an all-time high, and this debt is being traded by big banks on Wall Street, leaving them vulnerable—just as they were during the mortgage boom. Middle-class wages have barely budged in a decade, and consumers are buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. The Lords of Easy Money tells the shocking, riveting tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. This will be the first inside story of how we really got here—and why we face a frightening future.

Download or read book Broke written by Glenn Beck and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glenn Beck, the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Reset, showcases his distinctive humor in taking on the political landscape in his fight to fix America—before it’s too late. As the most important presidential election in our history looms, ask yourself: Are America’s finances in better shape than they were four years ago? Or are we still BROKE? THE FACTS. THE FUTURE. THE FIGHT TO FIX AMERICA—BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. Our nation is financially broke, but that’s just a side effect of our broken spirit, our broken faith in government, the broken promises by our leaders, and a broken political system that has centralized power at the expense of individual rights. How did we get into this mess? Glenn Beck thinks the answer is pretty simple: Because we’ve turned our backs on the Constitution. Few of us have ever seen the whole picture, and politicians have done everything in their power to hide the truth. Broke exposes what we’re really facing—and how to fix it. Packed with great stories from history, invaluable teachable moments, and Glenn Beck’s trademark combination of entertainment and enlightenment, Broke makes the case that when you’re traveling in the wrong direction, slight course corrections won’t cut it—you need to take drastic action. Through a return to individual rights, an uncompromising adherence to the Constitution, and a complete rethinking about the role of government in a free society, Glenn exposes the idea of “transformation” for the progressive smokescreen that it is, and instead builds a compelling case that restoration is the only way forward. With this awareness, it’s much easier to develop a realistic plan for uniting all Americans around the concept of shared sacrifice. After all, this generation may not be asked to storm beaches, but we are being asked to do something just as critical to preserving freedom.

Download or read book Broke written by Katherine Porter and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About 1.5 million households filed bankruptcy in the last year, making bankruptcy as common as college graduation and divorce. The recession has pushed more and more families into financial collapse—with unemployment, declines in retirement wealth, and falling house values destabilizing the American middle class. Broke explores the consequences of this unprecedented growth in consumer debt and shows how excessive borrowing undermines the prosperity of middle class America. While the recession that began in mid-2007 has widened the scope of the financial pain caused by overindebtedness, the problem predated that large-scale economic meltdown. And by all indicators, consumer debt will be a defining feature of middle-class families for years to come. The staples of middle-class life—going to college, buying a house, starting a small business—carry with them more financial risk than ever before, requiring more borrowing and new riskier forms of borrowing. This book reveals the people behind the statistics, looking closely at how people get to the point of serious financial distress, the hardships of dealing with overwhelming debt, and the difficulty of righting one's financial life. In telling the stories of financial failures, this book exposes an all-too-real part of middle-class life that is often lost in the success stories that dominate the American economic narrative. Authored by experts in several disciplines, including economics, law, political science, psychology, and sociology, Broke presents analyses from an original, proprietary data set of unprecedented scope and detail, the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Topics include class status, home ownership, educational attainment, impacts of self-employment, gender differences, economic security, and the emotional costs of bankruptcy. The book makes judicious use of illustrations to present key findings and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the data for contemporary policy debates.

Download or read book The Age of Acrimony written by Jon Grinspan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A penetrating, character-filled history “in the manner of David McCullough” (WSJ), revealing the deep roots of our tormented present-day politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility in the process. They built a calmer, cleaner democracy, but also a more distant one. Americans' voting rates crashed and never fully recovered. This is the origin story of the “normal” politics of the 20th century. Only by exploring where that civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of 19th-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William “Pig Iron” Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself.

Download or read book Failure by Design written by Josh Bivens and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Failure by Design, the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens takes a step back from the acclaimed State of Working America series, building on its wealth of data to relate a compelling narrative of the U.S. economy’s struggle to emerge from the Great Recession of 2008. Bivens explains the causes and impact on working Americans of the most catastrophic economic policy failure since the 1920s. As outlined clearly here, economic growth since the late 1970s has been slow and inequitably distributed, largely as a result of poor policy choices. These choices only got worse in the 2000s, leading to an anemic economic expansion. What growth we did see in the economy was fueled by staggering increases in private-sector debt and a housing bubble that artificially inflated wealth by trillions of dollars. As had been predicted, the bursting of the housing bubble had disastrous consequences for the broader economy, spurring a financial crisis and a rise in joblessness that dwarfed those resulting from any recession since the Great Depression. The fallout from the Great Recession makes it near certain that there will be yet another lost decade of income growth for typical families, whose incomes had not been boosted by the previous decade’s sluggish and localized economic expansion. In its broad narrative of how the economy has failed to deliver for most Americans over much of the past three decades, Failure by Design also offers compelling graphic evidence on jobs, incomes, wages, and other measures of economic well-being most relevant to low- and middle-income workers. Josh Bivens tracks these trends carefully, giving a lesson in economic history that is readable yet rigorous in its analysis. Intended as both a stand-alone volume and a companion to the new State of Working America website that presents all of the data underlying this cogent analysis, Failure by Design will become required reading as a road map to the economic problems that confront working Americans.

Download or read book The Broken Branch written by Thomas E. Mann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two nationally renowned congressional scholars review the evolution of Congress from the early days of the republic to 2006, arguing that extreme partisanship and a disregard for institutional procedures are responsible for the institution's current state of dysfunction.

Download or read book America s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb written by Peter Ferrara and published by Broadside Books. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Record-shattering government spending, taxes, deficits, and debt threaten a downward spiral in the American people's standard of living, ultimately stealing the American dream. The welfare state is melting down. State and local governments are reeling under the burden of runaway public-employee pensions, dysfunctional education bureaucracies, and belligerent public-sector unions. In the past, the state governments have turned to the federal government to bail them out. But the federal government is broke. In chilling detail, former Reagan administration adviser Peter Ferrara documents the looming collapse of the American social safety net and describes what will happen when the government goes bankrupt. He also introduces us to his vision for the way forward: a new concept that he calls "prosperity independence." Ferrara supports sweeping tax reform to maximize economic growth, and fundamental entitlement reform to replace our outdated redistribution-based welfare state with a modernized comprehensive social safety net. Utilizing modern capital, labor, and insurance markets, these reforms will accomplish far more than our current entitlement programs could ever hope to do, at a fraction of the cost. In addition to balancing our national budget and cutting back on government power, control, taxation, and spending, America will finally win the War on Poverty. Ferrara also shows how our nation can enjoy a new generation-long economic boom, once again leading the world in economic growth and abundance.

Download or read book Broke written by Jodie Adams Kirshner and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Essential...in showcasing people who are persistent, clever, flawed, loving, struggling and full of contradictions, Broke affirms why it’s worth solving the hardest problems in our most challenging cities in the first place. " —Anna Clark, The New York Times "Through in-depth reporting of structural inequality as it affects real people in Detroit, Jodie Adams Kirshner's Broke examines one side of the economic divide in America" —Salon "What Broke really tells us is how systems of government, law and finance can crush even the hardiest of boot-strap pullers." —Brian Alexander, author of Glass House A galvanizing, narrative account of a city’s bankruptcy and its aftermath told through the lives of seven valiantly struggling Detroiters Bankruptcy and the austerity it represents have become a common "solution" for struggling American cities. What do the spending cuts and limited resources do to the lives of city residents? In Broke, Jodie Adams Kirshner follows seven Detroiters as they navigate life during and after their city's bankruptcy. Reggie loses his savings trying to make a habitable home for his family. Cindy fights drug use, prostitution, and dumping on her block. Lola commutes two hours a day to her suburban job. For them, financial issues are mired within the larger ramifications of poor urban policies, restorative negligence on the state and federal level and—even before the decision to declare Detroit bankrupt in 2013—the root causes of a city’s fiscal demise. Like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Broke looks at what municipal distress means, not just on paper but in practical—and personal—terms. More than 40 percent of Detroit’s 700,000 residents fall below the poverty line. Post-bankruptcy, they struggle with a broken real estate market, school system, and job market—and their lives have not improved. Detroit is emblematic. Kirshner makes a powerful argument that cities—the economic engine of America—are never quite given the aid that they need by either the state or federal government for their residents to survive, not to mention flourish. Success for all America’s citizens depends on equity of opportunity.

Download or read book Lords of Finance written by Liaquat Ahamed and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.

Download or read book Broke and Patriotic written by Francesco Duina and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are poor Americans so patriotic? They have significantly worse social benefits compared to other Western nations, and studies show that the American Dream of upward mobility is, for them, largely a myth. So why do these people love their country? Why have they not risen up to demand more from a system that is failing them? In Broke and Patriotic, Francesco Duina contends that the best way to answer these questions is to speak directly to America's most impoverished. Spending time in bus stations, Laundromats, senior citizen centers, homeless shelters, public libraries, and fast food restaurants, Duina conducted over sixty revealing interviews in which his participants explain how they view themselves and their country. He masterfully weaves their words into three narratives. First, America's poor still see their country as the "last hope" for themselves and the world: America offers its people a sense of dignity, closeness to God, and answers to most of humanity's problems. Second, America is still the "land of milk and honey:" a very rich and generous country where those who work hard can succeed. Third, America is the freest country on earth where self-determination is still possible. This book offers a stirring portrait of the people left behind by their country and left out of the national conversation. By giving them a voice, Duina sheds new light on a sector of American society that we are only beginning to recognize as a powerful force in shaping the country's future.

Download or read book After the Ivory Tower Falls written by Will Bunch and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Will Bunch, the epic untold story of college—the great political and cultural fault line of American life Winner of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award | Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction | "This book is simply terrific." —Heather Cox Richardson | "Ambitious and engrossing." —New York Times Book Review | "A must-read." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. And these two tribes—the resentful “non-college” crowd and their diploma-bearing yet increasingly disillusioned adversaries—seem on the brink of a civil war. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy" of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat. In After the Ivory Tower Falls, award-winning journalist Will Bunch embarks on a deeply reported journey to the heart of the American Dream. That journey begins in Gambier, Ohio, home to affluent, liberal Kenyon College, a tiny speck of Democratic blue amidst the vast red swath of white, post-industrial, rural midwestern America. To understand “the college question,” there is no better entry point than Gambier, where a world-class institution caters to elite students amidst a sea of economic despair. From there, Bunch traces the history of college in the U.S., from the landmark GI Bill through the culture wars of the 60’s and 70’s, which found their start on college campuses. We see how resentment of college-educated elites morphed into a rejection of knowledge itself—and how the explosion in student loan debt fueled major social movements like Occupy Wall Street. Bunch then takes a question we need to ask all over again—what, and who, is college even for?—and pushes it into the 21st century by proposing a new model that works for all Americans. The sum total is a stunning work of journalism, one that lays bare the root of our political, cultural, and economic division—and charts a path forward for America.