Home » Posts tagged 'stress' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: stress

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

Today, America is nearly 70 trillion dollars in debt, and that debt is shooting higher at an exponential rate.  Usually most of the focus in on the national debt, which is now 21 trillion dollars and rising, but when you total all forms of debt in our society together it comes to a grand total just short of 70 trillion dollars.  Many people seem to believe that the debt imbalances that existed prior to the great financial crisis of 2008 have been solved, but that is not the case at all.  We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in history, and with each passing day that mountain of debt just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.  It simply is not mathematically possible for debt to keep on growing at a pace that is many times greater than GDP growth, and at some point this absurd bubble will come to an abrupt end.  So those that are forecasting many years of prosperity to come are simply being delusional.  Our current standard of living is very heavily fueled by debt, and at some point we are going to hit a wall.

Let’s talk about consumer debt first.  Excluding mortgage debt, consumer debt is projected to hit the 4 trillion dollar mark by the end of the year

Americans are in a borrowing mood, and their total tab for consumer debt could reach a record $4 trillion by the end of 2018.

That’s according to LendingTree, a loan comparison website, which analyzed data from the Federal Reserve on nonmortgage debts including credit cards, and auto, personal and student loans.

Americans owe more than 26 percent of their annual income to this debt. That’s up from 22 percent in 2010. It’s also higher than debt levels during the mid-2000s when credit availability soared.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

78 Percent Of U.S. Workers Are Living ‘Paycheck To Paycheck’ And 71 Percent Of Them Are In Debt

78 Percent Of U.S. Workers Are Living ‘Paycheck To Paycheck’ And 71 Percent Of Them Are In Debt

Are you living paycheck to paycheck?  Is so, you are just like most other hard working Americans.  As you will see below, 78 percent of full-time workers in the United States say that they are living paycheck to paycheck.  That is the highest figure ever recorded, and it is yet more evidence that the middle class is under an increasing amount of stress.  The cost of living is rising at a much faster pace than our paychecks are, and more families are falling out of the middle class with each passing month.  Unfortunately, this is something that the mainstream media really doesn’t want to talk about these days.  Instead, they just keep having us focus on the soaring financial markets which are being grossly artificially inflated by global central banks.

When I came across the numbers that I am about to share with you I was actually quite stunned.  I knew that things were not great in “the real economy”, but I didn’t expect that the number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck would actually be rising.  But that is precisely what a brand new survey that was just released by CareerBuilder is saying…

Seventy-eight percent of full-time workers said they live paycheck to paycheck, up from 75 percent last year, according to a recent report from CareerBuilder.

Overall, 71 percent of all U.S. workers said they’re now in debt, up from 68 percent a year ago, CareerBuilder said.

While 46 percent said their debt is manageable, 56 percent said they were in over their heads. About 56 percent also save $100 or less each month, according to CareerBuilder.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The psychological dimension to sustainability | Feasta

The psychological dimension to sustainability | Feasta.

As the 21st century unfolds it is increasingly clear that we are entering more deeply into times of travail. The symptoms, both personal and social, of systemic stress are all about. At the political level we see the re-emergence of various fundamentalisms, nationalisms, far-right politics and the normalisation of the Orwellian permanent ‘war on terror’ and subsequent justification for constant state surveillance of citizens. Authoritarian government in the East and post-democracy in the West now exist side by side. Politics is contracted to a regime of technocratric management of the global economy. The capitalist economic system lurches into continual instability kept afloat only by measures such as quantitative easing and the imposed socialisation of elite debts. At the social level inequality, insecurity, new forms of apartheid and social exclusion, slavery and trafficking, and vast enforced movements of people in search of economic security further accentuate the instability of the world. Hovering above all of this disorder ecological crisis grows. The term Climate Change may suggest that only the weather is in question but climate is everything – food, water, temperature, nature itself. Half of all vertebrate life-forms have become extinct in the last forty years.

What is all of this doing to us today? These interlocking problems are not just ‘out there’. We are also being affected at a deep personal level. Not only are we now in the age of social and ecological unsustainability; we must also acknowledge that we are in the age of psychological unsustainability. We must acknowledge the pain and distress of this. All of this social and natural dis-order is taking a toll on our human well-being. Our emotions are picking up this systemic collapse long before our rational minds can. Symptoms of stress and distress are all about us – the exponential rise of labelled ‘mental illnesses’ (fuelled by pharmaceutical companies), of addiction, of despair. Many of us are anxious or depressed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress