Trends This Week – Economic hard trend lines & an invigorating trends retreat – 12.02.15

Gerald Celente forecasts: When the final numbers are tabulated, overall holiday sales will trend lower for 2015 and the overall retail sector will grow weaker in 2016. Indeed, beyond the holiday season, from luxury brands, to mid-range and low-end product sales, there is a slow and steady slump across all retail sectors throughout most of the developed and emerging markets. In the United States, for example, where consumer spending accounts for some 70 percent of the nation’s GDP, the downbeat reports from retailers throughout the year are clear trends of tepid growth followed by steady decline. With the labor force participation rate at 38-year lows, median household income below 1999 levels, medical costs are rising along with property and school taxes far faster than wages. And with some 51 percent of working Americans earning under $30,000 a year, there will be less discretionary income for non-essential retail products. Celente also breaks down the reasons why the price of gold is tanking and what the future holds for it. Elsewhere in the show he’s joined by a special guest to provide details and testimonials on the upcoming “Prepare for 2016” trends and well being retreat in Naples, Florida, January 10-16.

Stephanie McMillan & Vincent Kelley – Why NGOs and Leftish Nonprofits Suck (4 Reasons)

About 20 years ago, in a conversation with a Bangladeshi organizer, the topic of non-government organizations (NGOs), or non-profits as they’re often called, came up. He said bluntly: “I hate NGOs.” His vehemence was surprising. NGOs are far from revolutionary organizations, but their work still seemed more helpful than not. Political differences with them aside, it seemed dogmatic to denounce free …

Lawrence Davidson – On the Age-Old Tradition of Not Caring

Part I — Deep PovertyIn the assessment of poverty in the United States there is a category known as “deep poverty.” The definition of deep poverty, as given in a recent article on this subject in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 30 September 2015, goes as follows: “deep poverty is measured as income of 50% or less of the poverty rate.” …

Larry Schwartz – The 9 Most Expensive Medicines in the World—Courtesy of Big Pharma

Hedge funder Martin Shkreli reminded everyone of the sky-high—and seemingly arbitrary—costs of prescription medicines in this country when he bought and immediately increased the price of an established drug used to fight a parasitic infection. The price hike was eye-popping, from $13.50 a pill to $750 per pill, prompting Dr. Judith Aberg of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount …

Steven W Thrasher – Disaster capitalism is a permanent state of life for too many Americans

In the United States, disaster has become our most common mode of life. Proof that our daily existence was something other than a simmering, smoldering disaster has been historically held somewhat at bay by the myth that hard work equals some kind of subsistence living. For the more deluded amongst us, this ‘American dream’ even got us to believe we …

Michael Krieger – The Oligarch Recovery – Low Income Americans Can’t Afford to Live in Any Metro Area

We were told we needed to bail out Wall Street in order to save Main Street. Well the results are in… Wall Street has never done better, and Main Street has never done worse. From the Huffington Post: Low-income workers and their families do not earn enough to live in even the least expensive metropolitan American communities, according to a new analysis …

John Scales Avery – The Coming Global Food Crisis

Population growth and fossil fuel use, seen on a time-scale of several thousand years. The dots are population estimates in millions from the US Census Bureau. Fossil fuel use appears as a spike-like curve, rising from almost nothing to a high value, and then falling again to almost nothing in the space of a few centuries. When the two curves …

The Most Common Job in 29 States to Nearly Vanish in 10 Years; Know What That Job Is? Michael Shedlock

 We used data from the Census Bureau, which has two catch-all categories: “managers not elsewhere classified” and “salespersons not elsewhere classified.” Because those categories are broad and vague to the point of meaninglessness, we excluded them from our map. Self-Driving Trucks Will Hit Us Like Ton of Bricks Please consider Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck. …

Record Number of Americans Renounced Their U.S. Citizenship in 2015 By Gabrielle Cintorino

Between January and March of 2015, a record 1,336 Americans renounced their U.S. citizenship, according to a quarterly report by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that was published in The Federal Register. The list includes long-term permanent residents who are considered American citizens under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA), the IRS noted. The previous record was 1,130 in the second quarter …