The Sad Tale of Borrow and Spend verses Save and Invest

1. According to the Washington Post, national, state and local debt in the United States will reach a level this year unseen since just after World War II, easily exceeding the size of the entire economy.
2. 40 cents of every dollar spent by the Federal Government is borrowed.
3. According to Gallup, the U.S. unemployment rate is currently 10.3 percent. When you add in part-time American workers that want full-time employment, that number rises to 20.2 percent.
4. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job openings in the United States declined for a second straight month during December.
5. There are currently more than 4 million Americans that have been unemployed for more than a year.
6. The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
7. Gasoline prices in the United States recently hit a 28-month high, and are headed higher.
8. During the 4th quarter of 2010, 4.63 percent of all U.S. home loans were in foreclosure. That matched the all-time high, and it was up significantly from 4.39 percent in the 3rd quarter.
9. It is estimated that there are about 5 million homeowners in the United States that are at least two months behind on their mortgages, and it is being projected that over a million American families will be booted out of their homes this year alone.
10. Almost 14 percent of all credit card accounts in the United States are currently 90 days or more delinquent.
11. The average credit card rate in the United States had increased to a whopping 13.44 percent at the end of 2010.
12. Americans now owe more than $890 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.
13. Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China, average household debt is only 17% of average household income.
14. U.S. life expectancy at birth is now three years less than Canada and four years less than Japan.
15. New home sales in the state of California were at the lowest level ever recorded in the month of January.
16. 43 percent of all mortgages in south Florida are currently underwater.
17. Prior to the most recent economic downturn, there were usually somewhere around four to five million job openings in America. Today there are about 3 million.
18. When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.
19. One out of every seven Americans is now on food stamps.
20. One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.

Many of these facts were culled from http://capoliticalnews.com, and are reflective of the transformation of the nation from the greatest generation which was born into the scarcity of the depression to the entitlement generation which was born into the plenitude of the post war boom.