The primary cause of the west's demographic problem is kleptocracy

[Swordsmyth]

With nearly 40% of young adults in California living with their parents and a $1.6 trillion student debt crisis taking more than just a little bite out of disposable income (and any hope of saving for many), economist Gary Kimbrough of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has thrown together a ton of interesting data to answer the question: "What are the economic realities for young adults, and how have they changed from prior decades?"

While much of Kimbrough's analysis was done in February, he's revisited his work ahead of a January presentation on the topic of young adults living at home.
Living at home

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Household formation is way down for 20-34 year olds.

In 1960 and 1970, over 70% of men and women age 20-34 (excluding those in group quarters) were heads of household/householders or spouses of householders.

In 2017, this was down to 52% of women and 43% of men age 20-34. pic.twitter.com/5RPt43SVl7
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) September 7, 2019​

What's more, when broken down by categories "living with parents, household head or spouse of household head, living in group quarters (mostly prisons for these ages), and other arrangements like cohabiting and living with roommates," it's startling to watch how young adults have been living at home vs. starting their own families over time.

Another suggestion, from @DParrish: maps of the state-level rates of living with parents for 20-34 year olds, by gender. pic.twitter.com/nN5HuFx0A9
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) September 11, 2019​

Job switching
When it comes to "job hopping" - young adults are largely staying put - and "aren't even switching jobs at anything close to the levels of those in their age groups before 2001" according to Kimbrough.

Let's be clear: millennials are not "job hopping." Young adults aren't even switching jobs at anything close to the levels of those in their age groups before 2001. pic.twitter.com/YyteHquu6K
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) January 27, 2019​

Everyone has a degree
"In 1992, middle-aged men were significantly more likely to have a bachelor's degree than women or younger men. Now members of every group age 25-34 are more likely to have degrees than those men were," writes Kimbrough, adding "Women's college degree rates have shot up significantly more than men's."

In 1992, middle-aged men were significantly more likely to have a bachelor's degree than women or younger men. Now members of every group age 25-34 are more likely to have degrees than those men were. Women's college degree rates have shot up significantly more than men's. pic.twitter.com/WpcDaAxcPi
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) February 9, 2019​

Men at (part time) work
Since the Great Recession, Kimbrough noticed that "the propensity to work part time is about the same for women as pre-recession, but is up quite a bit for men under 35. Men 25-29 are still more likely to work PT than any time pre-2009."

While examining economic realities for young adults since the Great Recession, I noticed: the propensity to work part time is about the same for women as pre-recession, but is up quite a bit for men under 35. Men 25-29 are still more likely to work PT than any time pre-2009. pic.twitter.com/VDD56DkF21
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) February 9, 2019​

Working women are up, marriages are down
As more women have chosen careers over homemaking, Kimbrough provides an illustration of prime-age employment as a percentage of population, by gender. What's more, young adult marriages have declined markedly over the last decade, continuing a trend which began mid-century.

With decennial Census and ACS data, I can examine marriage rates by age and gender over an even longer period. Young adult marriage rates have declined over the last decade, but they've been declining since mid-century. https://t.co/OZF2u3smnn
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) February 16, 2019
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Owned by rent
Using Census/ACS data, Kimbrough shows how young adults are "significantly more likely to live in rental housing than in prior decades."

Using the CPS ASEC, I can examine four decades of yearly data on living in an owned/mortgaged home by age group. pic.twitter.com/BxhxnySHSZ
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) February 16, 2019​

What about the children?
Also unsurprising, with lower marriage rates and higher female employment, women in their 20s are "significantly less likely to have a child than a decade ago," while those over the age of 32 are slightly more likely to have a kid.

Given the economic realities young adults have faced and the delays in marriage and homeownership we've seen, it should come as little surprise that women in their 20s are significantly less likely to have children in recent years than a decade or so ago. https://t.co/EQyKsBlxjx
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) February 16, 2019​

In short:

Looking at five decades of prime age adults in the CPS ASEC:

1) Rates of women working increased until about 20 years ago, then stagnated
2) Men's working rates declined until about a decade ago, then stagnated
3) Parents (of children under 18) became older and less common pic.twitter.com/vRbTYPKOUg
— Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) February 23, 2019
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More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/economics...izing-economic-realities-young-adults-america

 

[Swordsmyth]

4:18

 

[Swordsmyth]

For the first time in history, 19 million public employee salaries at every level of government across America have been mapped and posted online.

The work of our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com tells a compelling story: Public service is supposed to be about serving the people. However, the good intentions of America’s 19 million public employees come at a very high price for the people – nearly $1 trillion. In many cases, taxpayers generously fund these employee salaries.

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Our online database is free to use and includes most employees within the federal, state, and local governments. You can search in your backyard or across the nation. Find out just how much public employees made last year. The salary records include name, salary, position title, and employer for 2017.
The data is full of stunning examples.

• Tree trimmers in Chicago lopped off $106,000.
  
• New York City school janitors cleaned off $165,000 while out earning the principals at $135,000.
  
• Lifeguards in Los Angeles County, California, made up to $365,000.
  
• In the small school district in Southlake, Texas (8,000 students), the school superintendent earned $420,000.

Help the reform-minded mayors, school superintendents, legislators and members of Congress by finding the waste, overspending, and bloated government in your very own neighborhood.
Search our interactive map of the top 2 million most highly compensated public employees across America. Just click a pin (your ZIP code) and scroll down to see the results that render in the chart beneath the map. Click here to access the map below.

Search 2 million public employee salaries by ZIP code at OpenTheBooks.com.
Last year, we found 1.7 million public employees earned $100,000 or more. The vast majority – 1.3 million six-figure earners – worked at the state and local levels. There were 105,000 local and state government employees out-earning every governor of the 50 states at a salary of $190,000 or more.
In Texas, 356 municipal employees made more than all governors ($190,000). Some of these towns are small, like Stanton (pop. 2,900), where the manager earned $314,696. In Whitesboro (pop. 4,000) and Manvel (pop. 10,000), the administrators were paid $312,000 and $292,529, respectively.
In Florida, the city attorney of the seaside community Dania Beach, Florida (pop. 32,000) gleaned $436,917 – that’s more than any U.S. president. At the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, eight police officers and detectives made between $300,000 and $783,000 last year.
Nearly 10,000 employees of the University of California system pulled down more than $200,000. This includes 65 highly compensated public employees who made between $1 million and $3.6 million.
The top 5 locations for highly compensated public employees.

OPENTHEBOOKS.COM
Across the country, some of the largest salaries were paid out to athletic coaches at public universities. The retired football coach at University of Oregon received a $558,689 annual pension, and the fired Arizona State football coach got a $15 million payout. Nick Saban, at the University of Alabama, made $11 million.
What will you find while searching the public payrolls in your community?
Our recent investigation with Fox 32 Chicago found an Illinois superintendent earning $407,000 in a Calumet City district with only 1,100 students and no high school. Another superintendent made $206,000 in a New Lenox district with only 11 teachers and less than 100 students. Still another superintendent retired on a $300,000 pension at a Park Forest district, but, was then rehired on a $1,200 a day consulting contract – same position, same district.
Before complaining about Washington, D.C., people must insist on good government where they live. The people have the power to hold local politicians accountable for tax and spend decisions. Our mission is to make this information available to citizens and policymakers.
Government payrolls are the No. 1 issue affecting every service: public safety, healthcare, and welfare. Pay, perks, and pension benefits for public employees must be a priority in budgeting and deserve a rigorous, fact-based public debate.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/political...loyees-across-america-cost-taxpayers-nearly-1

 

[Swordsmyth]

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[h=2]Average US Family Can't Afford A Home In 71% Of The Country [/h]

 

[Swordsmyth]

A new study has found the link between automobile manufacturing plant closures and a community's struggle with opioid overdose deaths.
The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, titled "Association Between Automotive Assembly Plant Closures and Opioid Overdose Mortality in the United States," shows how US adults are more likely to die from opioid overdoses if they live near a manufacturing plant that closed in the last five years.
"Our findings illustrate the importance of declining economic opportunity as an underlying factor associated with the opioid overdose crisis," researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania wrote in the study.
Researchers examined opioid death rates in 112 manufacturing counties across the US that had at least one manufacturing plant close since 1999. A majority of the counties were in the South and Midwest regions of the country.

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From 1999 to 2016, plant closures affected 29 counties. Those counties saw 85% higher opioid overdose deaths than counties without closures.
Researchers noted that white working-age men were mostly affected.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/opioid-deaths-rise-towns-when-auto-plants-close-study-says

 

[Swordsmyth]

Low-income workers can’t afford rent in 91% of Canadian cities

 

[Swordsmyth]

[h=2]Summary[/h] Nations with 56% of world GDP have declining annual births and childbearing populations, nations with 35% of GDP have declining births but still rising/flat childbearing populations, nations with less than 9% of world GDP have rising births and childbearing populations.
Detailed below are 1950 through 2040 annual births, female childbearing, and female post-childbearing populations of worlds largest economies. Utilizing UN World Population Prospects 2019 data.

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In the wake of the great financial crisis of 2009, ZIRP/NIRP were utilized, federal deficit spending soared, asset prices skyrocketed, employment rose to record levels...but strangely fertility rates and total births have continued falling. Actually, collapsing. Record wealth has been accompanied by record low birth rates and unwillingness to have children, suggesting that those reaping the gains of the asset-price-pallooza are not of childbearing age. The policies since 2009 have rewarded asset holders for being asset holders and penalized young, poor, and those without assets...for being without assets.
Simply put, costs of living and assets have risen far faster than incomes. Rent, daycare, insurance, education, healthcare, etc. etc. have taken a progressively greater share of income leading to fewer and later marriages, fewer and later children, and a general unwillingness to reproduce. All this has led to collapsing populations of young (and now young adults) among the nations that consume over 90% of the worlds exports and ultimately means collapsing demand while excess capacity is set to soar.
So, today I show that of the top 50+ global economies, 6 have rising annual births and childbearing populations, 9 have falling annual births but still have a rising or flat childbearing population (the precursor to depopulation), 35+ have falling births, a falling childbearing population, are in secular decline, and depopulating from the bottom up (negative birth rates coupled with declining childbearing populations). Essentially, global consumer bases are collapsing from the young up, and this situation is only accelerating...and more debt, more QE, more interest rate cuts are only pushing birth rates and total births lower.
The 20 to 40 and 40+ year-old populations of females are not so much projections as simple math, these females already exist and are just shifted forward through the next twenty years assuming existing immigration patterns. Births from 2020 on are projections. Nations are in order of the percentage change of their 20 to 40 year-old female childbearing populations from 2020 through 2040. GDP and % of total global GDP are also included for relativity.


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Many will applaud the fast declining and decelerating population growth of the nations that do all the consuming, but we are fast approaching a demographic and economic waterfall among the consuming nations that will leave little to no export led growth potential for poor nations. And that, coupled with increasingly widely available access to birth control, means poor nations economic growth (plus birth rates and total births) are likely to follow the consumer nations down. The outcome is a global inverted pyramid with surging elderly populations (and the policies to support them) the cause of collapsing young populations.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopoliti...ertility-rates-births-eventually-depopulation

 

[Swordsmyth]

The growing goods trade deficit between the U.S. and China has cost America 3.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2018, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Sino-American relations have entered a delicate phase, after the two sides struck a provisional deal that will lead to an extended round of negotiations about a range of thorny issues.
The EPI data underscores how high those stakes are, pointing out that “the growing trade deficit with China isn’t just a post-recession phenomenon hitting manufacturing: it has cost the U.S. millions of jobs throughout the economy since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, a finding validated by numerous studies.”
Those figures include 700,000 jobs lost during the first 2 years of the Trump administration, the EPI stated — despite the president’s increasingly tough trade policies meant to stanch an outflow of U.S. jobs.
Since 2001, the gap between what the world’s two largest economies exchange in goods and services has only ballooned — from $83 billion to a staggering $419.5 billion in 2018. The EPI noted that increase represents an average annual rate of growth of 10%.
During this time period, U.S. exports to China did grow rapidly, from $19 billion to $120 billion in 2018. But that was outstripped by Chinese imports which increased far more dramatically — rising from $102.3 billion in 2011 to $539.2 billion in 2018.
A greater percentage of the increase in the goods trade deficit occurred during the last decade, in spite of the Great Recession. From 2008 to 2018, the deficit spiked 57.5% — a total of $153.2 billion as America’s appetite for inexpensive Chinese goods remained voracious.
That growth occurred at a time when the U.S. deficit with the rest of the world declined by 17.7%, the EPI data showed.
These growing deficits have had a large impact on jobs here in the United States. “Each $1 billion in exports to another country from the United States supports some American jobs,” the report noted, but, “each $1 billion in imports from another country leads to job loss.”


While all 50 states and Washington D.C. experienced job losses, some states were hit harder than others. Job losses ranged from .85% to 3.66% of total state employment; New Hampshire, Oregon, California, North Carolina, Minnesota comprised the top 5 hardest hit states.
Thanks to the heavy losses in computer and electronic parts, California experienced the largest absolute job loss, with over 650,000 jobs lost — with 3 key Congressional districts accounting for nearly 45% of all the job losses in the area.
Wages also took a hit, accounting for a “direct net wage loss” of $37 billion a year due to trade with China. That’s because those who lost jobs in the lucrative import and export industries found jobs in non-trade related industries which pay far less — around 23% less, according to EPI data.
Lower wage workers, or those without college degrees, suffered the most. The 100 million workers without a college degree suffered average losses of $1,800 a year, EPI noted — a national loss of $180 billion.

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/grow...cost-37-m-american-jobs-report-225814088.html

 

[Swordsmyth]

Middle class Americans are opting not to marry because until they're financially ready, according to new research that shows people value having a lot of money and a career they enjoy more than a legal union.
Student loans and other debts get in the way of marriage which is nowadays regarded as a 'capstone achievement' that comes once an individual has set up for a stable future, researchers say.
While 60 percent of Americans said they had been married in 2002 that dropped to 50 percent in 2017.
In that same 15-year period the cohabiting figures rose from 54 percent to 59 percent, according to Pew Research.


'The meaning of marriage has changed, and marriage is now viewed as this capstone achievement once all of these other milestones have been achieved,' Susan L. Brown, chair of sociology at Bowling Green State told the Wall Street Journal.
'It's almost like a luxury good that's attainable only by the people who have the highest resources in society.'
But since 1976 to 2017, three-quarters of high school seniors have responded that they see marriage in their future, according to yearly research by the University of Michigan.
It indicates people are simply waiting for a number of factors to fall into place. The WSJ said the poorest Americans were least likely to marry.

More at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ing-marriage-achieve-financial-stability.html