How's the situation in USA?

I recently read an article about how things are in USA. Here's some statistics:

The amount of Americans that needed food stamps to survive was 25 million in 2007. At the end of 2010 that number was 42,9 million (That's 14 percent of all citizens.)

2007 1,3 percent of all house purchases risked a foreclosure, in 2010 that was 2,2 percent. That's 2,9 millon housings.

The unemployment rate 4,7 percent in 2007, compared to 10 percent i 2010.

While at the same time, the median salary of a S&P 500-index CEO was 8,4 million dollars per year, compared to 9 million dollars per year 2010.

I don't doubt the validity of this statistics, but is it noticable to the average citizen?

I can give you the source, but it's in Swedish.

 

Well, we follow the much more popular standard of using a "." as decimal instead of a comma. However, we use the much less popular standards when it comes to weight and distance.

Yes -- housing bubble burst in 2008. I'm surprised it didn't rise even higher.

Last time I went home to Texas (August of last year) all I heard was people bitching about the economy (or of course, Obama) so I'd say yes.

 

I would say that right now this country has a crisis of confidence and lack of faith. Easily, I'd say the worst since the end of Vietnam and Watergate.

People have little or no faith in their government institutions or representatives to get things done. Government institutions are bloated and inefficient. Congress can't stop sniping at each other to actually work together and tackle real problems.

People have little or no faith the companies they work for won't sell them out for a profit the first chance possible. They see their jobs shipped off overseas and told to retrain only to see those jobs then vanish. People feel like they are being fucked over by Big Corporations, Oil Companies, and Wall Street and it pisses them off.

Other people might feel different but I don't think I am that far off the mark.

 

Hey look, a political thread.