Today, we have a different sort of a problem.  “Vanlords” are parking vans, RVs and trailers along the streets of the worst parts of our major cities, and they are renting them out to people that cannot afford regular homes.  Sadly, we live at a time when lots and lots of people cannot afford regular homes because homelessness is absolutely exploding all over the nation.  In some areas there have been efforts to crack down on the “vanlords”, but when things get too hot in one area they just move somewhere else.  As long as there are vast hordes of homeless Americans that are deeply suffering, there will be “vanlords” that are eager to take advantage of them.

Matt Feely just authored a very interesting piece about this phenomenon.  He says that things are particularly bad in the poorest sections of Oakland…

The most familiar and ominous form of homelessness in Oakland, however, has become the vehicle encampment. A few small clusters of vehicles have gathered in my North Oakland neighbourhood, lines of dirty campers and battered cars seeking shade under an elevated freeway, but poor East Oakland has it the worst. There, such encampments have taken over long stretches of busy street, visiting already-distressed neighbourhoods with huge living sculptures of ugliness and disorder — cars filled with clothes and junk; hulking RVs parked for months at a time, drug and sex deals conducted streetside; trash gathering around and between the vehicles, and lots of new crime. Recently, the city had to replace traffic lights at an East Oakland intersection with stop signs, because people, presumably from the vehicle encampment close by, were constantly stealing the cables to sell the copper wire inside.

All over the country, this is how vast numbers of people are living now.

Unfortunately, most of the people that are living in RVs don’t even own them.  Instead, most of them are owned by the “vanlords”…

But the people in those RVs don’t own them. They rent them, from people who’ve come to be called “vanlords”. These energetic businesspeople buy up old trailers and RVs and either drive or tow them to unfortunate neighbourhoods in cities like Oakland. There they enter into informal rental agreements with homeless people.

This is also happening on a very large scale in southern California.

In fact, it is being estimated that the number of people living in RVs in Los Angeles County actually increased by 31 percent from 2020 to 2023…

The number of people living in RVs across L.A. County has jumped 31% from 2020 to 2023, according to the annual homeless counts.

About 11,500 people are estimated to live in roughly 6,800 RVs.

With each passing day, more impoverished people are being forced out into the streets. And with each passing day, more formerly middle class Americans are joining the ranks of the poor.

Our standard of living has declined so much that we have reached a point where even most middle class Americans are struggling financially…

A majority of middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship that they expect will continue for the rest of their lives, according to a new poll.

Findings published by the National True Cost of Living Coalition show that 65% of Americans whose incomes are 200% above the national poverty line – which is about $62,300 for a family of four, often considered middle class – said they are struggling financially.

In many cases, a single accident or a single bad break is enough to push someone over the edge.

The vast majority of us are just barely scraping by from month to month, and that is because the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have…

The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.

If you are still doing well, please don’t look down on those that are hurting.

Many of them were once just like you.

Sadly, many more Americans will be dumped out into the streets soon as economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

This week, we learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits have hit the highest level in 10 months…

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week unexpectedly jumped to the highest level in 10 months, the latest sign that the labor market is starting to cool in the face of high interest rates.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show initial claims for the week ending June 8 increased by 13,000 to 242,000, above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims. It marks the highest level for jobless claims since August 2023.

Continuing claims, filed by Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment benefits, also rose to 1.82 million for the week ended June 1, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week.

Virtually all of the economic numbers that we have been getting lately tell us that the economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction.

So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until you see what is coming.

Personally, I fully expect conditions to get steadily worse throughout the rest of 2024.

All of the “vanlords” out there will soon have even more potential customers to prey on, and that is not good news for any of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

During the Great Depression (1929 to 1933), 48 percent of the nation was homeless, living with relatives or in “shantytowns,” “Hoovervilles.”  Today, between 47 and 52 percent of young adults are homeless, living with parents or shelters, a direct result of Biden’s radical overspending, energy and immigration policies, inflation, and high interest, turning America into a giant “Bidenville.”

One “Bidenville” that has been getting a lot of attention recently is located in Oakland, California.

A video of that “Bidenville” that was posted on social media on May 31st shows “massive temporary houses built along service roads”…

Shocking footage has emerged showing a gigantic ‘shantytown’ that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city’s slide into crime-ravaged squalor continues.

Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary houses built along service roads that open up into main roads in Hooverville, Oakland.

The footage showed trash strewn around scores of houses that were built of wood, tarp and other discarded materials.

I write about this stuff all the time, but it is still hard to believe that so many people are living in third world conditions in the United States of America in 2024.

Parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country.

They just allow people to live in absolute squalor, wherever they choose.

This looks like Hooverville during the great depression.

Welcome to Oakland’s very own Gavinville. pic.twitter.com/L58uK2E6Sh

— Michael Oxford – AKA The Santa Cruz Mountain Goat (@SCMountainGoat) June 1, 2024

The man that shot the video, Michael Oxford, used the term “absolute squalor” to describe the conditions that he witnessed…

Particularly shocking was just how large the ‘shantytown’ is, with a lengthy stretch of road in the Bay Area city covered with the makeshift dwellings.

Oxford could be heard calling the area a ‘shantytown’ that is ‘absolutely mindboggling,’ as he remarked how ‘insane it is that [city officials] allow this.’

He captioned the video, ‘Parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country. They just allow people to live in absolute squalor, wherever they choose.

If you live in “wealthy America”, you may never even drive into areas where people are living like this.

Your reality may be filled with tree-lined streets and rich people sipping coffee.

But in the worst areas of Oakland, the lawlessness never ends.

In fact, authorities in Oakland recently removed traffic lights at one major intersection and replaced them with stop signs because thieves were constantly stealing copper wire from the electrical boxes…

The city of Oakland recently removed traffic lights from one busy intersection and replaced them with stop signs after the electrical boxes that controlled the traffic lights were repeatedly tampered with and copper from them was stolen.

Local residents and those who own businesses in the area say the issue with the traffic lights stems from the nearby homeless encampment, which has grown over the years.

The owner of a vehicle repair shop on the corner of the intersection, Tam Le, said the city is signaling that it is ‘giving up on us,’ by installing the stop signs.

If you want someone to blame for this mess, you can blame the politicians in Washington.

Thanks to the horrific inflation that they have created, approximately a quarter of the population in California is either living in poverty or is very close to living in poverty…

Biden needn’t worry about losing California to Trump, but it has one of the nation’s highest rates of inflation, according to Moody’s Analytics, worsening its already outlandishly high costs of housing and other living expenses. It’s the biggest factor in California having the highest level of functional poverty of any state, 13.2% according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 50% higher than the national rate.

The Public Policy Institute of California, using similar statistical methodology, has found that a quarter of Californians are either living in poverty or financially close. More recently, the PPIC has explored the impact of inflation, especially on California families which struggle to pay for housing, food and other necessities.

Sadly, this is just the beginning, because our economy is going downhill really fast. In May, pending home sales plunged to a depressingly low level…

Well, the analysts had the direction right but magnitude was way off as pending home sales plunged 7.7% MoM – the biggest drop since Feb 2021 (and below the lowest estimate), leaving sales down 0.7% YoY…

This is the 29th straight month of YoY declines for non-seasonally-adjusted pending home sales.

This MoM decline pushed the Pending Home Sales Index back to record lows…

Meanwhile, Zero Hedge reported that the Chicago PMI index fell so low in May that it suggested that “the economy is in a depression”…

After unexpectedly slumping last month to 37.9, the Chicago PMI index cratered even more unexpectedly in May, when it defied hopes of a rebound to 41.5, and instead tumbled even more, sliding to a cycle low of 35.4 which was not only below the lowest estimate, but was staggeringly low. To get a sense of just how low, the last two times it printed here was during the peak of the covid and global financial crises…

… which seems to suggest that at least according to Chicago-based purchasing managers, the economy is in a depression.

I would agree with that assessment.

Things are getting really bad out there.

To top everything off, in May the Dallas Fed Services Sector survey was in contraction territory for the 24th month in a row…

Despite Bernstein and Biden demanding the great unwashed realize just how great they have it in America, this morning’s Dallas Fed Services Sector survey offers some insights from actual real people in the actual real world trying to do actual real business… and it’s not pretty.

For two straight years (24 straight months), the Texas Services sector has been in contraction (below zero) with May’s -12.1 print worse than expected. For context, the Great Recession of 2008/2009 also saw 24 straight months of negative prints…

But if you live in “wealthy America”, you may not care about these numbers because you still live in a nice home and you still have plenty of nice things.

Unfortunately, the number of people that can afford to live in “wealthy America” is shrinking with each passing day.

And the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us just continues to get larger and larger.

Ultimately, the stage is being set for a societal meltdown of absolutely epic proportions.

The bottom 50 percent of the population only owns just 2.6 percent of all the wealth, and they are becoming very restless.

When people have nothing left to lose, they become very desperate, and very desperate people do very desperate things.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing a historic economic shift right now, and economic conditions are only going to get even more harsh during the months ahead.  Needless to say, that is really bad news for all of us.

According to a report from Harvard University, approximately 650,000 Americans were homeless at some point last year.  That represented an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2015…

A January 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimated that over 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness in 2023—up almost 50% from 2015. Costs of renting and home ownership have skyrocketed while wages largely stagnate. The Harvard report found that half of U.S. households are “cost-burdened” (meaning that 30-50% of monthly income goes to housing), and 12 million people are “severely cost-burdened.” These Americans stand one accident, health setback, or employment disruption away from eviction.

During the past several years, scores of tent cities have sprouted like mushrooms in and around U.S. cities from coast to coast.

One 32-year-old woman named Brandy that is living in a tent city near Winterhaven, Florida says that she has been living there for five years and literally has nowhere else to go…

Deep in the woods outside of Winterhaven, Florida, are a cluster of tents and tarps. There are 46 people that live in this homeless encampment, including Brandy C., who has been there for five years.

“I just made a mistake and I’ve been stuck here since. I’m trying to fix it and I can’t,” Brandy told Scripps News Tampa.

The 32-year-old said the homeless camp is not the safest environment, but it is somewhere she can lay her head at night. However, it could soon be taken away.

“They tell us, ‘y’all know y’all fixing to have to leave,’” Brandy said. “We’re like, ‘so where do we go?’”

These are the forgotten people that our politicians don’t like to talk about.

And their ranks are growing with each passing day.

In Denver, officials have spent 274 million dollars to fight their homelessness crisis, but the area has still “added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018″…

Metro Denver’s homeless crisis has worsened and become among the most acute in the nation despite the city of Denver contracting for at least $274 million from 2021 through 2024 to keep people off the streets.

The Denver metro region has added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018, according to key metrics collected by the federal government.

Like we are seeing in so many other cities, mass migration has been playing a major role in Denver’s homelessness crisis.

We can’t even come close to taking care of the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are already homeless, and more deeply impoverished people are constantly being allowed to pour over our borders.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans that are living in poverty and the number of Americans that are considered to be among “the working poor” both continue to increase.

As I discussed last week, more than 11 percent of Americans are officially impoverished, and another 29 percent are “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed”…

Over time, higher costs and sluggish wage growth have left more Americans financially vulnerable, with many known as “ALICEs.”

Nearly 40 million families, or 29% of the population, fall in the category of ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — according to United Way’s United for ALICE program, which first coined the term to refer to households earning above the poverty line but less than what’s needed to get by.

That figure doesn’t include the 37.9 million Americans who live in poverty, comprising 11.5% of the total population, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Do you understand what this means?

More than 40 percent of the U.S. population is either homeless, living in poverty or among the ranks of the “working poor”.

That is staggering. The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and a lot more pain is on the way.

Former Merrill Lynch chief economist David Rosenberg accurately predicted the recession that hit us in 2008, and he is now warning that things are about to get really bad in this country.

In fact, even though the Biden administration is telling us that the economy added “175,000 jobs” last month, he is convinced that the economy is actually bleeding jobs…

The US economy added 175,000 jobs last month, shy of economists’ forecasts for 238,000. In notes to clients Friday, the former Merrill Lynch chief economist explained why he views the numbers as a cause for concern.

He said the data is inconsistent with numbers coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and Business Employment Dynamics datasets, both of which stated the economy actually lost jobs in the third quarter.

Given the disparity, Rosenberg said the data is likely ‘overstated – by historical proportions.’

I agree with Rosenberg.

Large companies all over America have been conducting mass layoffs, and the numbers that we are getting from sources that are not controlled by the Biden administration clearly indicate that the economy is losing jobs.

But I am also convinced that our economic problems will accelerate significantly as we head toward the end of this year.

A “perfect storm” of factors is hurting economic performance all over the world, and I anticipate that global turmoil is only going to become more intense as the months roll along.

So what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is that more Americans will soon be homeless, more Americans will soon be living in poverty, and more Americans will soon be among the ranks of the “working poor”.

Our standard of living is steadily declining, and if you want someone to blame you can blame those that are currently running the show in Washington.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

When conditions deteriorate, it is often those at the bottom of the economic food chain that feel it first.

And right now food banks all over the nation are dealing with a tsunami of hunger…

Food bank leaders from all corners of the country tell USA TODAY their neighborhood pantries are serving more people while using less resources, as economic pressures continue to ravage the budgets of low-income Americans and service providers alike.

Since pandemic-era boosts to government food aid ended earlier this year in many states, families are turning to food banks to close a gap in need that feels like it has no end in sight.

Susannah Morgan, the president of Oregon Food Bank, says that she is literally witnessing “the worst rate of hunger in my career”…

“This is the worst rate of hunger in my career,” said Morgan, who has worked at food banks in Boston, San Francisco and Anchorage, Alaska. “It’s so large, it’s hard to wrap your head around.”

I don’t know what I have to do to convince some people that things really are this bad.

I keep sharing fact after fact in my articles, but some people out there are just not convinced.

One out of every five children in the U.S. does not have enough food to eat, but the reality of the suffering that is now taking place just isn’t sinking in for many of those that are still living the high life.

Meanwhile, homelessness in the U.S. is increasing at the fastest rate ever recorded…

The United States experienced a dramatic 12 percent increase in homelessness as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.

About 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness during the January snapshot. That’s the highest number since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007 to count the homeless population.

There are many out there that feel that such people need to “get a job” or “work harder”, but the truth is that most Americans are living on the verge of economic disaster because most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

At the same time, Americans continue to get even lonelier.

According to USA Today, “Americans are lonely and it’s killing them”, and at this point things are so bad that this crisis is being called “a new epidemic”…

America has a new epidemic. It can’t be treated using traditional therapies even though it has debilitating and even deadly consequences.

The problem seeping in at the corners of our communities is loneliness and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is hoping to generate awareness and offer remedies before it claims more lives.

“Most of us probably think of loneliness as just a bad feeling,” he told USA TODAY. “It turns out that loneliness has far greater implications for our health when we struggle with a sense of social disconnection, being lonely or isolated.”

It is especially bad during this time of the year.

There are so many people out there that are deeply, deeply hurting because they are so lonely.

They are trying their best to face a world that has gone completely mad, but that can be really difficult to do when you don’t have anyone to lean on for support.

Speaking of a world gone mad, retail theft has absolutely skyrocketed in many of our largest cities since 2019…

Crime-ridden New York City has seen the biggest impact with a 64 percent increase in retail theft, followed by Los Angeles with a 61 percent jump and Virginia Beach, Virginia, which has seen a 44 percent rise.

Each month, more Americans are descending into poverty and more Americans are turning to crime.

And it certainly doesn’t help that vast hordes of illegal immigrants are constantly being added to the mix.

Chaos in the streets has become an almost constant state of affairs in this country, and this year in Oakland there was even rioting on Christmas Eve.

Of course our leaders continue to exist in a bubble where none of these problems constitutes a serious crisis.

To them, everything must be just fine because they are doing such a wonderful job.

When he was recently confronted about the reality of the economic crisis that we are now facing, Joe Biden bluntly told the press to “start reporting it the right way”…

President Biden criticized news coverage of the U.S. economy as he faces growing backlash from voters over his handling of inflation.

In brief remarks Saturday before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden expressed confidence in the economy and ripped the reporters for the way it has been portrayed.

“All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way,” Biden said when asked about his economic outlook for 2024, according to a transcript released Sunday by the White House.

He wants the press to continue to spin things in a way that will make him look good as they always have done in the past.

But we have reached a stage where all of the charades are finally crumbling.

Conditions are bad now, and they are going to get even worse in 2024.

So brace yourself for what is ahead, because we are going to experience so much chaos during the year that is in front of us.

Sound off about this article on our Economic Collapse Substack.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

The majority of Americans have burned through their excess savings piled up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the coming months, JPMorgan says it is likely that almost everyone will be worse off financially than they were in 2019.

In a Thursday note, the bank’s top stock strategist Marko Kolanovic said 80% of consumers, a group that accounts for nearly two-thirds of consumption, has already depleted any savings cushion they may have built during lockdowns.

“It is likely that only the top 1% of consumers by income will be better off than before the pandemic,” Kolanovic wrote, pointing to the growing signs of credit card and auto loan delinquencies, as well as Chapter 11 filings.

If almost all of us are getting poorer, how is that good news?

Of course the money that we still have in our bank accounts continues to lose even more value with each passing day.

An absolutely outstanding article that was just posted on Schiff Gold analyzes how much a basket of groceries that Kevin bought in the 1990 movie “Home Alone” would cost today…

Kevin bought a basket full of groceries including a half-gallon of milk, orange juice, Wonder Bread, a Stouffer’s frozen turkey dinner, toilet paper, Snuggle dryer sheets, Tide liquid laundry detergent, plastic wrap, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and a bag of army men. He paid a grand total of $19.83 with a $1 off coupon for the orange juice.

In 2022, that same basket of groceries would have cost around $44.40 based on a shopping trip by a West Virginia mother. That’s a 123.9% increase. (Keep in mind prices vary somewhat depending on the store and location.)

This year, Kevin would have to fork out a whopping $72.28 for his provisions at a Chicago store. That’s another 62.8% increase in just one year. Since 1990, the price of Kevin’s groceries has gone up over 264%.

So how in the world can they possibly claim that inflation is “low”?

It is almost as if we are living in Bizarro World.

At this point, it would cost the typical U.S. household 3.4 million dollars to live the American Dream over the course of a lifetime…

The “American Dream” costs about $3.4 million to achieve over the course of a lifetime, from getting married to saving for retirement, according to a recent analysis from financial site Investopedia.

Meanwhile, median lifetime earnings for the typical U.S. worker stand at $1.7 million, earlier research from the Georgetown University has found.

Such figures underline the financial pressures that many families face trying to afford a middle-class life as expenses like child care, college tuition and buying a home continue to climb. The Investopedia analysis tallies the average cost of achieving other aspects traditionally associated with the American Dream, such as owning a house and raising two children to age 18.

If you are like most Americans, you are never even going to come close to earning enough money to live a middle class lifestyle.

That is why so many people out there have given up.

In this economic environment, just hanging on to a decent job is an accomplishment.

This week, we learned that General Motors will be laying off approximately 900 employees…

General Motors’ Cruise on Thursday announced internally that it will lay off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce, the company confirmed to CNBC.

The layoffs, which primarily affected commercial operations and related corporate functions, are the latest turmoil for the robotaxi startup and come one day after Cruise dismissed nine “key leaders” for the company’s response to an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving car after being struck by another vehicle.

Meanwhile, Ford is cutting production of the F-150 Lightning pickup in half…

Ford Motor will cut planned production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup roughly in half next year, marking a major reversal after the automaker significantly increased plant capacity for the electric vehicle in 2023.

The new production plans call for average volume of around 1,600 F-150 Lightnings a week at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, starting in January, according to a source familiar with the decision. The automaker most recently planned to produce roughly 3,200 of the vehicles on average per week.

They want us to purchase electric vehicles, but what they don’t tell us is that maintenance and repairs are insanely expensive…

Lucas Turner was driving his 2014 Infiniti hybrid when its check engine light made its annoying appearance on the scene, according to KPHO-TV.

Not good, but with fewer than 70,000 miles on the vehicle, he was not expecting the bill would be a whopper.

Wrong.

“They called me and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got bad news, Mr. Turner. You need a new hybrid battery and it’s going to cost $18,000 for the battery and another $2,000 to have it installed.’

No thank you.

I could never see myself buying an electric vehicle, and there are tens of millions of other Americans that feel the exact same way.

Switching to another industry, Hasbro just announced that it will be laying off more than a thousand workers…

Toy giant Hasbro is laying off more than a thousand workers and closing its office in Providence, Rhode Island.

Why would a toy company be laying off so many workers just before Christmas? Shouldn’t this be a boom time for them? Some people suspect it is directly due to their partnership with Disney, a brand which has become toxic for many Americans in recent years.

People aren’t exactly lining up to buy toys linked to the last Indiana Jones movie or the latest offering of the Marvels, both of which were total duds at the box office.

When a major toy company is laying off workers even before the holiday season is over, that is a really bad sign for the economy.

Of course things in Europe are even worse.

At this point, it appears that Europeans are facing “a continent-wide recession”…

The latest GDP figures show that the eurozone contracted in the third quarter and looks like it will do the same in the last three months of the year falling into a continent-wide recession, Oxford Economics said in a note on December 8.

“Final figures confirmed eurozone GDP contracted 0.1% in the third quarter. What’s more, the detailed breakdown showed the European economy has no engines of growth at the moment. Although private consumption posted a small gain over the previous quarter, the near-term outlook still looks dire, and with both investment and exports unlikely to provide much momentum, the economy looks set to slide into recession in the fourth quarter,” Oxford Economics said.

And on the other side of the globe, we are being told that “China’s banking system is collapsing”…

China’s banking system is collapsing, and the real estate crisis in the country could end up wiping out $4 trillion from its financial system, according to veteran investor Kyle Bass.

In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC on Monday , the Hayman Capital Management CIO pointed to China’s property sector, which has been reeling in recent years as debts from major property owners sour and some firms default on their bonds. The real estate crisis has left enough empty homes in China to house 3 billion people, a former top Chinese official said, and the flood of unused supply will generation huge financial losses in the real estate sector.

So don’t believe the hype.

The mainstream media would like us to believe that 2024 will be a wonderful year for the economy.

But the truth is that economic conditions have already been deteriorating all around us, and I am extremely concerned about what is coming during the year ahead.  I would encourage you to check out my brand new book entitled “Chaos” for a detailed analysis of what is coming in 2024.

We have been propping up our standard of living for years by engaging in the greatest debt binge in the history of the world, but now that bubble has started to burst.

A tremendous amount of discomfort is ahead of us, but the mainstream media will continue to insist that every jolt of pain is simply a bump on the road to endless prosperity.

Leave your thoughts about this article on our Economic Collapse Substack.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

The official tally is in and it is brutal: Americans suffered the biggest drop in household income in 2022 in a dozen years.

Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a drop of 2.3 percent from the prior year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.

This is the biggest drop in household income since 2010, when it household income fell 2.6 percent. That means it is worse than the pandemic decline of 2.2 percent. It is the fourth worst year in records going back to 1985.

In 2010, the U.S. economy was just coming out of the horrible recession that we had just experienced in 2008 and 2009.

Those were not fun times.

And the times that we are moving into will not be fun either.

We are being told that “high inflation” is the primary reason why real median household income is falling…

The declines were driven by high inflation. The measure of inflation that is used to calculate real income rose 7.8 percent, the worst inflation since 1981.

1981 was a long time ago.

But at that time, the U.S. economy quickly recovered under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan. We will not be so fortunate this time around.

Our leaders flooded the system with giant mountains of money, and almost everyone cheered as they were doing it. But now we are paying the price.

Recently, a “Gen X mom” named Jessica McCabe made headlines all over the world when she posted a video on TikTok in which she expressed how frustrating it is to watch her adult children deeply struggle in this economy…

“I am so tired of feeling helpless as a parent,” McCabe started off the video. She acknowledged that her son was 25 and her daughter was 28 and explained: “I thought by teaching them what I learned, which is you work hard, you get a good job, you’re gonna get the things in life that you need, right? Worked for me, why wouldn’t it work for them?”

Unfortunately for all of us, the rules have changed. What worked in the 1980s and 1990s simply does not work today.

In her video, she acknowledged that struggle is a part of life, but she also said that it is just so disheartening to see her kids “get further and further down” no matter how hard they try…

She continued: “I see them struggling, and before my generation comes at me, yes, I understand struggling as a part of life. We all struggle, but there’s a difference between struggling and drowning. So we struggled, and it was tough. But you know what, we made it. We knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel with our struggle. It seems like kids today, no matter how much they struggle, they just get further and further down.”

Sadly, this is the reality of life for most Americans today.

More than 60 percent of the nation is currently living paycheck to paycheck, and former Ford CEO Mark Fields just admitted to CNBC that someone needs to make more than $100,000 a year just to be able to afford a new vehicle these days…

The former Ford CEO said that a consumer has to “make over $100,000 to afford a new car.” As a result, the price of vehicles is starting to come down, which is leading to an inventory correction.

“Vehicles are getting older, they need to be replaced.”

Americans are keeping their vehicles longer than ever, and that is because most of us simply cannot afford to replace them.

As I have discussed previously, Americans are increasingly turning to debt to help make ends meet from month to month.

Credit card debt surged dramatically during the second quarter, and this is starting to become an enormous problem…

American households now have an average of $10,170 credit card debt, as record numbers say they are worried about being cut off from access to loans.

Data from the New York Federal Reserve shows nationwide credit card debt swelled by $43 billion in the second quarter of the year – the second largest increase on record.

Of course there is a limit to how much debt that U.S. consumers can take on, and financial institutions are starting to say “no” a lot more often…

Meanwhile a separate survey by the Fed revealed 60 percent of respondents found it more difficult to access credit – the highest level since the data series began in June 2013.

I warned my readers that the flow of credit would start to get tighter and tighter.

And now it is happening.

Right now, so many formerly middle class Americans have been pushed into what I call “the impoverished class”, and many that were formerly poor now find themselves pushed out into the streets.

In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal we have witnessed the largest increase in homelessness ever recorded this year…

The United States has seen the biggest ever spike in homeless people living on the streets – as preliminary figures showed a record 11 percent increase in one year.

There are nearly 600,000 rough sleepers across cities and towns in America, and the jump from 2022 to 2023 so far is the highest since the government started tracking the data in 2007, according to the WSJ.

Places like Oakland and San Francisco in California have become hotbeds for homelessness, as people living on the streets are like ‘drug tourists’ who arrive to have easy access to narcotics.

So please don’t believe anyone that tries to convince you that the economy is doing just fine.

It most certainly is not.

Homeless encampments are popping up like mushrooms all over the nation, and many communities are not pleased about this at all.

For example, just check out what has been happening in Austin, Texas…

Shocking footage has exposed the scene in an Austin park filled with liquor bottles, needles, Narcan and junk ‘as far as the eye can see,’ as a homeless encampment continues to grow.

The videos were of the West Bouldin Creek Greenbelt were posted on Monday by activist Jamie Hammonds, who reports from the Texas capital on the X page @DocumentingATX.

‘Another Greenbelt destroyed here in Austin… nothing but trash and junk as far as you can see… this is absolutely horrible,’ Hammonds said, adding that the encampment was at least the size of a football field, and you could smell it ‘even before you enter the greenbelt.’

As the economy continues to crumble, things are going to get even worse. And as things get worse, the middle class will continue to shrink.

It is almost as if we are all playing a really bizarre game of musical chairs.

With each passing day, even more spots in the middle class are being removed from the game, and the ranks of “the impoverished class” continue to grow larger and larger.

Sound off about this story on the Economic Collapse Substack.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

Thanks to our rapidly rising cost of living, we are seeing a dramatic explosion in the number of “working homeless” that are living out of their vehicles on a daily basis even though they are currently employed.

In particular, the RV “communities” that are springing up from coast to coast are starting to get quite a bit of attention…

The owner of a party bus company, Rikers Island prison guards and an Amazon worker are just some of the eclectic bunch who have formed a community of ‘working homeless’ people living out of RVs in the Astoria section of Queens, New York.

Similar communities have formed across the US from New England to California where people have chosen a nomadic lifestyle amid a national cost of living crisis.

Most of these people get up and go to work in the morning.

In fact, the Daily Mail spoke to one man that actually “works for a New York City hospital”…

Resident Paul Reevers described himself as ‘working homeless.’ He said that he has a job but the rent went up too high and he could not longer to afford a an apartment.

Reevers, who works for a New York City hospital, said that he took out a loan and bought his RV.

If you work at a hospital, you should be able to afford a place to live.

But this is our country now.

We are absolutely destroying the middle class, and as a result we now have a massive homelessness crisis on our hands…

Insider Monkey, a finance website, revealed a list of the top 30 cities worldwide with the highest homeless population. Notably, a handful of the US cities on the list are governed by progressive leadership, which may not surprise readers. While it is evident that some unfortunate individuals are facing homelessness, a trend exacerbated by recent inflationary pressures and a drug addiction crisis, some liberal policies have enabled others to sustain their nomadic lifestyles with taxpayer funds.

Insider Monkey found New York City is number 5 on the list, with a homeless population of about 69,000. Next is Chicago, at number 7 with 65,611. Washington, DC, is number 8 with 57,416, Los Angeles number 13 with 41,980, and San Fransisco number 14 with 38,000.

No matter what you or I are facing right now, at least we aren’t sleeping in the streets.

So we should count our blessings.

Hunger is also rapidly growing all over America.  Right now, record numbers of people are coming for help at one food bank in the Seattle area…

Since March, the food bank has broken its record three times for the highest number of people served in a day since 2019, when the organization started allowing three visits a month. More and more, people like Jones who haven’t been to the food bank in years, are showing up, Christian said.

“That’s hard on them; they felt they had moved above the poverty line, got some stability but, ‘Here it is 2023 and here I am back in the food line asking strangers for help,’” Christian said.

And in Boston, the line for food on one recent weekend morning “stretched the length of two football fields”…

The line outside Boston’s American Red Cross Food Pantry on a recent Saturday morning stretched the length of two football fields.

The number of people filing into the red-brick industrial-zone warehouse on some days now exceeds the worst periods of the pandemic economic crisis and in April it had the second highest monthly traffic since it opened in 1982, according to David Andre, the director.

We are witnessing so much suffering all over the country right now.

And there are so many more people that are living right on the edge of disaster.

According to one recent survey, approximately 38.5 percent of U.S. adults experienced “some form of difficulty in covering expenses between April 26 and May 8”…

A large swath of American consumers are facing financial hardship as they grapple with elevated living costs, record-high credit card use, and two years of negative real wage growth. This perfect storm could decimate financially fragile households in the next downturn.

As many as 89.1 million American adults (or about 38.5%) were found to experience some form of difficulty in covering expenses between April 26 and May 8, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from the Household Pulse Survey. This is up from 34.4% in 2022 and 26.7% during the same period in 2021.

Of course this is just the beginning.

As I keep warning my readers, things will eventually get much worse.

One thing to watch for this week is whether or not the debt ceiling deal is able to get through Congress.

Kevin McCarthy is confident that he has the votes that he needs to get the deal through the House, but some conservative Republicans are pledging to do all they can to stop it…

Elsewhere within his party, Rep. Chip Roy from Texas called the agreement a ‘turd-sandwich’ and said he had spoken to a number of his colleagues who were not intending to vote on the agreement.

Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus from South Carolina, called the deal ‘insanity’ and said he was ‘not gonna vote to bankrupt our country’.

If the debt ceiling deal is defeated, I will be quite impressed.

But it would also throw our economy into a tremendous amount of short-term chaos. It will be very interesting to watch and see what happens.

In any event, whatever happens in Washington is not going to fundamentally alter our long-term trajectory, and that means that much more suffering is coming in the days ahead.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.