If your household is struggling to pay the bills right now, you are far from alone.  The cost of just about everything that Americans regularly spend money on has been soaring, and as a result our standard of living has been steadily declining.  Over the past couple of decades, our politicians borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we did not have, the Federal Reserve shoveled giant mountains of money that were created out of thin air into the financial system, and our leaders treated the reserve currency of the world like toilet paper.  So now the value of the U.S. dollar has gone way down, our paychecks don’t stretch as far as they once did, and most of the country is barely scraping by from month to month.

This week, an excellent article that was authored by Michael Green is getting a ton of attention.  In that article, he calculates that a “basic needs budget” for a typical family of four in the United States would come to a grand total of $136,500 a year…

I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored the official stats and simply calculated the cost of existing. I built a Basic Needs budget for a family of four (two earners, two kids). No vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the “Participation Tickets” required to hold a job and raise kids in 2024.

Using conservative, national-average data:

Childcare: $32,773

Housing: $23,267

Food: $14,717

Transportation: $14,828

Healthcare: $10,567

Other essentials: $21,857

Required net income: $118,009

Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500.

Do you agree with these figures?

I very much appreciate the effort that he put into his analysis, but I certainly do not agree with some of these numbers.

The national average for child care for a single child is about $975 per month.  So for two children for an entire year the total should be less than $24,000.

So we can eliminate more than $8,000 from his budget right there.

And if your kids are old enough, you may not need to spend anything on child care at all.

On the other hand, I think that his figure for housing is too low.

The average home price in the U.S. now exceeds $500,000.

Taking out a $500,000 mortgage at 6.2 percent would result in a mortgage payment of $3,047.41 a month.

So Green’s budget completely rules out owning a typical home in many areas of the country.

Instead, it would allow for renting a two bedroom apartment which averages about $1,800 a month right now.

And I think that Green’s figure for health care is also too low.

The average monthly health insurance premium for a family of four in the U.S. now exceeds $2,000.

Yes, a hypothetical family of four could save money by going without health insurance or by living in a van, but that is not the point.

It is time for everyone to admit that a middle class lifestyle has become out of reach for a majority of American households.

Green’s analysis may not be entirely accurate, but others have come up with similar results.

For example, the Economic Policy Institute has determined that it takes approximately $123,000 a year for a family of four to live a middle class lifestyle in Essex County, New Jersey…

The Economic Policy Institute offers a Family Budget Calculator. It says a family of four would need about $123,000 a year to attain “a modest yet adequate standard of living” in Essex County, New Jersey.

And Investopedia has determined that it now takes approximately 5 million dollars to live the American Dream over the course of a lifetime…

Investopedia, the financial journalism site, uses similar calculations to estimate how much emergency savings a family should hold (about $35,000, on average) and the lifetime costs of fulfilling the American dream (roughly $5 million).

Needless to say, most Americans don’t have a prayer of making 5 million dollars during their lifetimes.

And the cost of just about everything is only going to go even higher.

Right now, our rapidly rising power bills are making a lot of headlines…

The numbers are as stark as a slate-grey November sky. Household spending on electricity for heating is expected to rise 10% this winter to more than $1,200. Utilities requested a $29 billion rate increase in the first half of 2025, double last year’s rate rise. Residential electricity rates rose 6.6% year-on-year as of June 2025, according to Utility Dive, after already rising nearly 30% between 2021 and 2024.

Meanwhile, the job market just continues to get even tighter.

On Wednesday, ADP reported that the U.S. economy lost 32,000 jobs last month…

• The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.
• Larger businesses, entailing companies with 50 or more employees, actually reported a net gain of 90,000 workers. However, establishments with fewer than 50 saw a decline of 120,000.
• The ADP report is the last monthly jobs picture the Federal Reserve gets before it meets Dec. 9-10.

Most experts were expecting that the ADP report would show that the U.S. economy actually added jobs last month.

So this is really bad news.

The three month average has now plunged into negative territory.

This is the very first time that has happened since August 2020.

Back then, we had a pandemic to blame for our problems.

What is our excuse this time around?

It is easy to say that unemployed people should just go out and “get a job”, but the truth is that even the mainstream media is admitting that “job hunting feels impossible right now”…

You’re not imagining it. Job hunting feels impossible right now because it actually is. You’ve polished your resume, customized cover letters and applied for hundreds of roles only to hear nothing back.

I know that many of you can identify with that.

Month after month, a lot of unemployed workers have been unable to find anything no matter how hard they have tried.

It can be absolutely soul crushing what you are in that position.

There is speculation that the latest ADP report may make it more likely that the Fed will give us another interest rate cut…

But Kenwell said the latest report should help push America’s central bank to cut interest rates for the third time in 2025.

The Fed, currently led by chair Jerome Powell, has a dual mandate to lower inflation and increase job growth through the government’s borrowing rates.

Rates are used as a blunt tool, swinging higher when prices climb, and plunging when unemployment accelerates.

Hopefully the Fed will do the right thing.

But a quarter point rate cut is not going to significantly alter our current economic trajectory.

We aren’t just heading into another recession.

We are heading into a full-blown meltdown.

When you total up all forms of debt in this country, we are more than 104 trillion dollars in the red.

It is the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and now a time of reckoning is here.

So please try to enjoy these “bad times” while we still have them, because it won’t be too long before things get a whole lot worse.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Do You Agree That It Takes A Minimum Of $136,500 A Year For A Family Of Four To Afford The Basics In America Today? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Why is the number of business bankruptcies in the United States rising so rapidly?  It isn’t because the economy is doing well.  Every day there are more news stories about businesses that have failed, and this is clearly reflected in the numbers that I am about to share with you.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and if our economic troubles continue to accelerate during the months ahead 2026 is going to be a very messy year.

Earlier today I came across an article which explained that the number of small businesses that are filing for Subchapter V bankruptcy has set a brand new record high in 2025…

A six-year-old federal program designed to help the smallest American businesses cut debt and get a fresh start has set a record for the number of cases filed, court data show.

More than 2,200 people and small firms filed bankruptcy this year under the so-called Subchapter V rules, which make it cheaper and faster to win relief from creditors, according to data provider Epiq Bankruptcy Analytics.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” said Carol Fox, a court-approved trustee who oversees more than two dozen cases filed in Southern Florida.

This is really bad news.

Small businesses are traditionally the primary engine for job growth in this country.

So the fact that so many of them are going belly up is not a good sign at all.

Meanwhile, large businesses are going bankrupt at a very alarming pace as well.

In fact, through the first seven months of this year the number of corporate bankruptcies in the United States was at the highest level that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic…

The U.S. saw a sharp increase in corporate bankruptcy filings in July, according to a recent report, reaching a post-COVID peak and placing 2025 on track to surpass last year’s total.

S&P Global Market Intelligence, the research and data arm of the credit-rating agency, found that filings by large public and private companies rose to 71 last month from 66 in June, marking the highest monthly tally since July 2020. So far in 2025, meanwhile, the total of 446 bankruptcy filings is the highest for this seven-month stretch since 2010.

When large numbers of businesses fail, hiring slows down and we typically see large scale layoffs all over the nation.

And that is precisely what is happening.

During a recent interview with Fox News, Nikki Haley’s son admitted that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to get a job…

“My friend group all graduated with great degrees in great schools, and not one of them has a job – not one. So it’s frustrating because they did everything that they were supposed to do. They put in the time, the effort, the money to get educated, and they don’t have a job to show for it. They have to compete with foreign workers who are willing to work for half their salary and AI, which is a supercomputer, so how can we compete with that?“

I was stunned when I read that.

I knew that things were bad for our recent college graduates, but I didn’t realize that they were this bad.

The job market is freezing up, and this is especially true for entry-level workers.

At this stage, AI is already doing much of the work that vast numbers of entry-level workers once did.

And a recent MIT study concluded that current AI technology could potentially replace 20 million more American workers…

In the midst of a soggy job market, there’s been a lengthy debate over whether contemporary AI is actually replacing workers — or just providing bosses with an excuse to lay off certain employees and offload their responsibilities onto the ones who remain.

The answer isn’t clear, but a new study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is sure to add fuel to the fire. Analyzing 151 million American workers, the researchers calculated that today’s AI systems are already mature enough to automate the tasks of more than 20 million American workers, or 11.7 percent of the entire labor force, if they were fully deployed across the country.

So what is going to happen when AI and robots can do almost everything more efficiently than human workers can?

What will we be needed for then?

Our society is changing at a pace that is difficult to comprehend.

One tech worker that got laid off by Meta earlier this year still has not been able to find work nine months later…

When I got hired at Meta in 2020, it was life-changing for me as a single mom. It represented safety and stability — a place to work hard at and retire from.

So, when I was let go in February in a round of layoffs aimed at “low-performers,” it felt like a punch in the gut.

Nine months later, my severance and savings have run dry, I’m struggling to find a tech job, and I feel that the low-performer “label” is part of the reason. I’m no longer the same happy-go-lucky person I used to be, applying for jobs with excitement.

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to find a good paying job.

But now things have completely flipped around.

And even many of those that are employed are not making enough to be able to afford a decent lifestyle…

An American retail worker earns 51.6 percent less than the amount required to afford a typical rental apartment, real estate brokerage Redfin said in a statement released on Nov. 26.

“The typical retail worker in America earns $34,436 per year,” the company said.

“A renter would need to earn $71,172 to afford the typical apartment, which costs $1,779 per month.”

If you don’t make enough money to be able to pay rent on an apartment, what are your options?

I suppose that you could move in with your parents or live in a van down by the river.

By the way, there are millions of young Americans that are living in cars, vans and RVs today.  This is something that I have discussed extensively in previous articles.

Our standard of living is being eviscerated.

Meanwhile, those at the very top of the economic pyramid have more money than they know what to do with…

The top 1% have seen their wealth increase by $4 trillion over the past year, an increase of 7%. Their wealth hit a record $52 trillion in the second quarter.

The top 0.1% saw their wealth grow by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the top 0.1%, or those with a net worth of at least $46 million, have seen their total wealth nearly double to over $23 trillion.

I keep trying to warn everyone that this is not going to end well.

There are millions upon millions of Americans that cannot make a decent living no matter how hard they try.

And the same thing is happening in countless other nations all over the globe.

I have never seen so much economic frustration among young adults as I am seeing right now.

Their anger is percolating just under the surface, and it won’t be too long before it explodes.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

It’s a bloodbath out there right now.  On Monday alone, crypto investors lost about $200,000,000,000 in just 24 hours.  Overall, crypto investors have lost about $800,000,000,000 over the last month.  In this article, I want to try to explain why this is happening and what is coming next.  You see, the truth is that the era of easy money is ending.  For a long time, investors could borrow yen at ultra-low interest rates and use that money to purchase cryptocurrency and make amazing returns.  But now Japanese bond yields are going nuts and all variations of the “yen carry trade” are starting to unwind…

For years, a lucrative trade for global investors has been to borrow yen to buy high-yielding assets like US stocks, or in this case, cryptocurrencies. Interest rates in Japan had been low or at zero, making borrowing yen relatively cheap and creating a sweet opportunity for traders. It’s known as the “yen carry trade.”

However, the Bank of Japan has signaled it could raise interest rates, in part to address stubborn inflation, continuing a recent shift away from years of ultra-low rates. Yields on benchmark Japanese bonds just hit their highest level since 2008, signaling expectations for higher rates. As rates in Japan rise, it can boost the value of the yen. That makes borrowing yen less affordable, eating into the profitability of the carry trade.

That could pressure traders to sell their bitcoin and stocks now to repay their loans and prevent the risk of further losses. In addition to a sell-off, it could lead to less cash flowing into crypto and stocks.

On Sunday night, Japanese bond yields spiked again, and this caused another round of panic for crypto investors.

And we all saw what happened once the selling started.

For years, crypto investors laughed at the rest of us as they enjoyed the ride up as the bubble inflated.

But now the bubble is bursting, and the ride down is going to be far more messy that the ride up due to the extreme leverage in the cryptocurrency market…

Ben Emons, founder and CIO of Fedwatch Advisors, said that people remain “nervous” following the recent bitcoin sell-off, adding that Monday’s reversal has broadly been attributed to a $400 million exchange liquidation.

Speaking with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday, he highlighted the sizable leverage across bitcoin exchanges, which is up to 200x in some instances. With an estimated $787 billion outstanding leverage in perpetual crypto futures, against some $135 billion outstanding in ETFs, “you can do the math,” Emons said.

“There is still a lot of leverage in bitcoin out there. We can expect to some more of these liquidations if bitcoin prices don’t get off the lows from here,” he added.

As long as crypto prices just kept going up, everything was going to be fine.

But now that crypto prices are going down, we are seeing wave after wave of forced liquidations.

Yet another wave of forced liquidations is what pushed crypto prices down so rapidly on Monday.

At this point, things are so bad that even the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin may soon be forced to start selling…

The biggest corporate holder of bitcoin has announced a U.S. dollar dividend reserve of more than $1 billion, days after its top executive laid out what might force the company to sell some of its $56 billion in bitcoin holdings.

Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, announced Monday that it will establish a $1.44 billion reserve “to support the payment of dividends on its preferred stock and interest on its outstanding indebtedness.” The reserve was funded by sales of its Class A common stock, and Strategy plans to keep sufficient reserves to fund its dividends for at least 12 months.

What we are witnessing is not just a temporary correction.

As Shanaka Anslem Perera laid out very clearly in an excellent social media post, the entire system is being forced to reset because Japanese bond yields are soaring.  I have reproduced his entire social media post below…

JAPAN JUST KILLED THE GLOBAL MONEY PRINTER AND NOBODY NOTICED

The most dangerous number in finance right now is 1.71%.

That’s Japan’s 10-year bond yield. Highest since 2008. Here’s why your retirement just got obliterated:

For 30 years, Japan printed infinity money at 0% rates and exported it worldwide. $3.4 trillion flowed into US Treasuries, European debt, emerging markets. This invisible bid kept YOUR mortgage cheap, YOUR stocks inflated, YOUR government solvent.

November 10th, 2025: The bid disappeared.

Japan’s yield hit 1.71%. They’re pumping $110 billion stimulus into their economy while debt sits at 263% of GDP. The math just became impossible. At 1.7% rates, Japan pays $27 billion MORE in interest. Every. Single. Year.

Here’s the extinction event nobody sees coming:

Japanese pension funds are pulling $1.1 trillion OUT of US Treasuries right now because keeping money in America LOSES them money after hedging costs. The largest foreign buyer of American debt is becoming a seller.

When Japan stops buying, interest rates don’t stay flat. They explode. US 10-year yields will jump 40 basis points minimum from flow dynamics alone. Your 7% mortgage becomes 8%. Corporate debt refinancing costs spike 60%. Zombie companies holding $3 trillion in junk bonds start defaulting in waves.

The yen carry trade just reversed. $1.2 trillion in borrowed yen funding crypto, stocks, emerging markets must unwind. Every hedge fund, every momentum trade, every leveraged bet built on free Japanese money is getting margin called simultaneously.

This breaks in three places:

Stock valuations were built for 2% bond yields forever. At 3.5% yields, the S&P 500 fair value drops 35%. Emerging market currencies collapse without Japanese capital inflows. Europe’s debt crisis returns because Italy and Spain lose their silent buyer.

December 18th the Bank of Japan meets. 50% chance they hike again. If they do, sell everything not nailed down.

Your 401k doesn’t price this in yet. The Fed can’t stop this. No central bank can.

The world’s biggest piggy bank just cracked open and the money is flowing backwards.

Position accordingly or get destroyed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

When he originally posted that, the yield on 10 year Japanese bonds was 1.71 percent.

Now it has risen to 1.85 percent, which is the highest level since 2008…

Japan just sent a shock through global markets.

The country’s 10-year government bond yield jumped to 1.85%, its highest level since 2008, marking a major break from the ultra-low rate environment Japan has lived in for decades. The move is already being called one of the most important signals for global liquidity heading into 2026.

To say that we are potentially facing a major liquidity crisis would be a massive understatement.

For the moment, it is crypto prices that are plunging, but lots of yen was borrowed to buy stocks too.

So let’s keep a very close eye on U.S. stock prices in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, the price of silver continues to go parabolic.

As I write this article, the price of silver is sitting at $58.40 an ounce.

Will it hit 60 dollars this week?

There are some analysts that are now openly speculating about when silver will hit 80 dollars an ounce.

Earlier today, I heard from a reader that is having a truly exceptional year because he held on to his silver all this time.

As I mentioned yesterday, if you purchased silver in December 2008 it has more than quintupled in value.

But many of those that got in at the peak of the cryptocurrency bubble are being completely and utterly wiped out.

History has shown us that gold and silver will retain their value over time.

History has also shown us that every irrational financial bubble eventually comes to an end.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Extreme Carnage! Crypto Investors Lose $800,000,000,000 In Just 1 Month As Forced Liquidations Reset The Market appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

For a long time we were warned that when the financial system finally started melting down, the price of silver would explode.  It appears that those that predicted this were quite prescient.  The yen carry trade is unwinding, more than a trillion dollars in cryptocurrency wealth has been wiped out, stocks and bonds have been extremely volatile, and the U.S. dollar has plummeted in value since the beginning of the year.  Meanwhile, the price of silver has nearly doubled since January 1st…

In just 11 months, the price of silver has almost doubled. While gold stole the spotlight in 2025, it is silver that has gained more than the yellow metal. Compared to gold, silver has moved sharply higher over the last 12 months.

Over the last year, gold has increased by 59%, while silver has jumped nearly 87%. Even in 2025, so far gold has gained 60%, while silver is already up 94%.

As I write this article, silver is trading at $57.16 an ounce.

I never imagined that the price of silver would go so high in 2025, but here we are.

When there is a lot of uncertainty in the air, demand for silver tends to go up.

And right now there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the air.

Just about everyone expected that the price of silver would rise, but we have never seen anything quite like this.

It is being reported that the vaults in London are rapidly emptying…

Yet, London’s vaults have been emptying rapidly for the past few years. In June 2022, the London Bullion Market Association held 31,023 metric tons of silver. By March 2025, volumes had fallen by around a third to 22,126 metric tons — its lowest point in years.

“What isn’t necessarily so visible to people is what’s happening in the vaults,” said O’Connell. “And that had reached a point where there was basically there was no available metal left in London.”

On the other side of the planet, China’s physical stockpile of silver has hit a 10 year low.

This is a huge red flag, but most people don’t seem to realize this.

Global supplies of physical silver are becoming extremely tight, and this has been creating quite a bit of chaos…

“Some people were having to transport silver by plane rather than on cargo ships to meet delivery demand,” Paul Syms, head of EMEA ETF Fixed Income and commodity product management at Invesco, told CNBC.

Of course this is just the beginning.

Silver is used in thousands of different products, and this includes electric vehicles.

If current trends continue, demand for physical silver is only going to accelerate…

“At the moment, a standard electric vehicle has about 25 grams of silver, maybe the larger EVs have 50 grams of silver as part of their components,” said Syms.

“If we move into these solid-state silver batteries, each electric vehicle might require a kilo or more of silver,” he added.

And with silver having a high thermal conductivity and a higher electrical conductivity than other metals, as well as increasing demand for EVs, AI and renewables, the metal’s value is likely to keep shining.

There is no telling how high the price of silver could eventually go.

But that is not good news for the economy.

In fact, that is really bad news for the economy.

Investors tend to flock to silver when things are not going well.

And this year the value of the dollar has been tanking, our standard of living has been going down, and the cost of just about everything has been going up.

For example, the data center boom has been one of the primary forces that has driven power bills into unprecedented territory…

The data centers that power the artificial intelligence revolution are driving up electricity prices for households — and price relief may not be coming anytime soon, according to energy experts.

Residential retail electricity prices in September were up 7.4%, to about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration.

It is being projected that thousands more data centers will be constructed in the U.S. by the year 2030.

So what we are experiencing now is just the tip of the iceberg.

Health care costs are also soaring, and this is particularly true for those that are on Obamacare…

Americans are expected to see skyrocketing health care prices as the open enrollment period for insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace begins on Saturday.

About 24 million people buy health insurance through the marketplace, the majority of whom used to receive tax credits to lower the monthly price of insurance.

Without credits, the monthly cost could rise by 114% on average, according to health research nonprofit KFF. This could mean an extra $1,000 a year, and in some cases much more.

One family in Utah could see their monthly premiums go from 495 dollars a month to 2,168 dollars a month…

Stacy Cox and her husband, who are small business owners in Utah, were paying $495 (£376) a month for health insurance.

Ms Cox said that without the tax credits, their monthly premiums are estimated to rise to $2,168, a 338% increase.

“It’s horrific to actually see real numbers,” she said.

Who can afford to pay 2,000 dollars a month for health insurance?

I don’t know anyone that could afford to do that.

Of course vast numbers of U.S. workers will soon be without any health coverage at all because they are losing their jobs.

FedEx was once one of America’s hottest companies, but now hundreds of workers will be getting the axe...

America’s hottest corporate trend is layoffs.

FedEx, America’s second-largest shipping and logistics company, is shutting down a logistics operation in Coppell, Texas, and laying off nearly 900 workers, according to a WARN notice filed with the Texas Workforce Commission.

Hewlett-Packard is another household name that is brutally slashing workers…

A household name in tech is the latest to announce a wave of layoffs.

On Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard — the 86-year-old California tech giant better known as HP — said it plans to let go of between 4,000 and 6,000 employees worldwide.

That is roughly 10 percent of its workforce, with notices rolling out through 2028.

Meanwhile, stores continue to close down at a staggering pace all over the country.

American Signature operated over 120 stores and employed approximately 3,000 workers, but now it has gone belly up…

Another furniture chain has declared bankruptcy — as cash-strapped Americans hold off on home improvement projects.

On Sunday, American Signature, a 75-year-old furniture chain that operates Value City Furniture and American Signature Furniture stores, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The retailer operates more than 120 stores and employs about 3,000 people.

Day after day, we see more stories like this.

And that is because the U.S. economy really is coming apart at the seams.

What we are experiencing reminds me so much of 2008.

But of course so much has changed since that time.

If you purchased silver in December 2008 and held it until today, it has more than quintupled in value.

Amazingly, along the way there were many that accused those of us that spoke highly of silver of being wrong.

But in the end, time has revealed who was right after all.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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