This article was originally published at The Economic Collapse Blog
If our Founding Fathers were alive today, what would they think of America? Surely they would be very proud that the United States stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and has built some of the most amazing cities that the world has ever seen. They would probably be surprised that the country they founded went on to become the greatest economic machine in the history of the world, and they would be absolutely astounded by things like our interstate highway system and the Internet. However, there are quite a number of things that they would be horrified about as well. The fact that over 40 million Americans are dependent on the federal government for their daily food would be deeply disturbing to our founders. Also, the fact that the U.S. government has accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in human history would be incredibly distressing to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the founders. But perhaps most of all, our founders would be absolutely disgusted that the land where Americans could once be free to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has become so tightly regulated and controlled that Americans dare not even squeak without the permission of the federal government.
Needless to say, our founders would certainly not understand many of our institutions or many of the advanced technologies that we have today. But without a doubt they would be able to grasp how far we have fallen as a nation and how far we have strayed from the fundamental principles that they enshrined in our founding documents. The United States is a much different place today than it was in 1776, and unfortunately many of the changes have been for the worse.
The following are 50 mind blowing facts about modern America that our Founding Fathers never would have believed….
#1 In 2010, not only does the United States have a central bank, but it also runs our economy and issues all of our currency. The Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since 1913 and it has been used to create the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world.
#2 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that U.S. government agents can legally sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, place a secret GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of you everywhere that you go.
#3 The 50 wealthiest members of Congress saw their collective fortunes increase by 85.1 million dollars to $1.4 billion in 2009.
#4 The U.S. government has accumulated a national debt that is rapidly approaching the 14 trillion dollar mark.
#5 All over the United States, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel because it is cheaper to maintain. The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt road into gravel over the past year, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have now turned some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.
#6 Americans now owe more than $849 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.
#7 In 2010, Americans waste an astounding amount of food. According to a study by the California Integrated Waste Management board, 63 percent of the average supermarket’s waste stream is food. When you break that down, it means that each supermarket wastes approximately 3,000 pounds of food each year.
#8 The city of Cleveland plans to sort through curbside trash to ensure that people are actually recycling properly. If it is discovered that some citizens are not recycling they will be hit with very large fines.
#9 Once upon a time, U.S. industry was the envy of the world. But since 1979, manufacturing employment in the United States has fallen by 40 percent.
#10 Even though the U.S. population has exploded in size, the number of Americans with manufacturing jobs today is smaller than the number of Americans who were employed in manufacturing in 1950.
#11 Having one out of every eight Americans enrolled in the food stamp program is now considered “the new normal” and Americans continue to drop into poverty in astounding numbers.
#12 One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
#13 A family of four actually has difficulty surviving on an income of $50,000 a year in America in 2010.
#14 Barack Obama is backing a proposal to create a national database that will store the DNA of all individuals who have been arrested, even if they end up not being convicted of a crime.
#15 In 2010, it takes the average unemployed American worker over 8 months to find a job.
#16 The U.S. government has made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers. The federal government has actually posted signs more than 100 miles north of the Mexican border warning travelers that certain areas are unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers.
#17 One recent survey of last year’s college graduates discovered that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation.
#18 In one of the very first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a U.S. military judge ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.
#19 The average American worker now pays literally dozens of different kinds of taxes each year.
#20 In recent years the U.S. government has spent $2.6 million tax dollars to study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes and $400,000 tax dollars to pay researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires, Argentina to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior when drunk.
#21 Christians are being arrested and thrown in jail in some areas of the United States for quietly passing out Christian literature on public sidewalks.
#22 The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using cutting edge analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place “potential offenders” in prevention and education programs.
#23 Organic milk is now considered such a national crisis that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in the state of Pennsylvania.
#24 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that they are considering a crackdown on farm dust.
#25 According to a new CDC report, nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis.
#26 Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts says that due to severe budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will simply not be able to respond to any longer. The crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.
#27 Today, Americans are losing their homes in staggering numbers. One out of every seven mortgages was delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
#28 Many of our leading scientists are now calling themselves “transhumanists” and are openly proclaiming that a future where men have fully merged with machines is inevitable.
#29 Americans who spend large amounts of cash are viewed as “potential criminals” by the U.S. government in 2010.
#30 New full body security scanners going into airports all across the United States can actually see through our clothing and produce very clear and very detailed images of our exposed bodies as we walk through them.
#31 The U.S. financial system has become a massive gambling parlor in 2010.  As a result, a horrific derivatives bubble has developed that threatens to destroy our entire economy at any moment. Nobody knows exactly how big the derivatives bubble is, but low estimates place it at around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars. Once that bubble pops there simply will not be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
#32 The U.S. government is spending an amount of money equivalent to approximately 25.4 percent of GDP this year.
#33 Today, 10,000 people make 30% of the total income in the United States.
#34 A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation discovered that 250 employees of the Defense Department used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. However, the investigation also found that the Pentagon investigated only a handful of those cases.
#35 According to a recent poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.
#36 Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama’s 3.8 trillion dollar budget for 2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or is money that is spent on their behalf.
#37 A recent Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups lists “constitutionalists” and “survivalists” alongside organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.
#38 The U.S. trade deficit has exploded to nightmarish proportions over the past two decades. Every single month tens of billions more dollars goes out of the United States than comes into it. Essentially, the United States is becoming far poorer as a nation each and every month.
#39 Factories are closing in droves across the United States because the American people would rather buy things made in China.
#40 Millions upon millions of good paying middle class jobs are being shipped off to China and they are never coming back. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians stand by idly and do nothing.
#41 Some analysts now believe that China could become the largest economy in the world by the year 2020.
#42 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five trillion dollars.
#43 According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is currently searching for a full-time job.
#44 The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 will cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 will cost you $440.33 today.
#45 Major international organizations are actually proposing that the United States start considering the adoption of a truly global currency.
#46 Students at a high school in Missouri have built a car that they claim can get up to 450 miles per gallon.  On another note, some of the top energy experts in the world believe that thorium could solve our energy problems and supply very cheap energy for society for hundreds of thousands of years. But in today’s world technologies such as these are endlessly suppressed by the rich and powerful.
#47 One Colorado high school student is seeking an explanation from officials at his school after he was ordered by security guards to remove American flags from his truck because they might make other students at the high school “uncomfortable”.
#48 Three California high school students were recently forced to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
#49 Memorial crosses erected along Utah public roads to honor fallen state troopers have been found unconstitutional by a federal appeals court and now must be removed permanently.
#50 One group of high school students made national headlines recently when they revealed that a security guard ordered them to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.
This article was originally published at The Economic Collapse Blog
I have to laugh at #37, I don’t know why #41 is an issue. I have to agree with #49 (as it really IS unconstitutional), while the rest is just SAD.
#46: But in today’s world technologies such as these are endlessly suppressed by the rich and powerful.
Well, dang…..what good is being rich if you can’t use it to stay that way and keep the peons in their place ?
Guy acts like 5,000 years of history of some folks being robber barons is some kind of new surprise or something…..
Mac, I’m confused. In the video, it says that at the track the ELECTRIC car could get “over 300 miles per gallon,” the video is entitles 450 MPG, and the car is ELECTRIC, none of that makes any sense…
Think energy measured in joules instead of pony power or watts. 1 kilo joules (1000 joules = 1 btu). Miles/gal is a curve ball.
I couldn’t get past #3…
I would have to say the founding fathers are crying, I mean really sobbing big tears on hands and knees not just a little tear like the Indian from the old, old, old, (ya that’s the one) TV commercial about trash.
The major flaw in the design of electric car is all the oil used to produce the steel and aluminium, the batteries, the glass, the wiring, the motor; seats; tyres; silicon chips; seat belts; etc; etc.
If they could just figure a way to make all these components out of switch grass and corn husks we’d be in business. Of course their is also the oil for the asphalt and manufacture of concrete in the roads, but that’s another story.
Let it all collapse!
Let the gangs run the streets.
I’ll stay home. I’m armed, stocked up.
Congress will shit their pants when they see millions of americans descend upon washington to voice their unhappy views. I don’t think they will be carrying signs. Me…I’m learning new software. I’ll be a data guy for the NWO. Hey…if you can’t beat them….work for them and get paid well. If they take my guns…I’ll just make other weapons.
I blame the “Children of the 60s.” Greedy slugs
You can thank Hamilton (and those of his ilk) for all of the rotten shit that has been perpetrated against us for the last 80 years or so. Not all of the founding fathers had benign intent as far as the rights afforded we the people is concerned and today this is seen with startling clarity in many ways. For a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; we the people sure have allowed ourselves to be hogtied and enslaved; brainwashed into believing that we want it to be this way. No, make no mistake if the founding fathers were here today they would shake the dust off their feet and curse a people as ignorant as this nation has become. Our Constitution has given us just what the framework allows when the rule of law is left to corrupt elitists by a negligent and apathetic populace.
All empires rot internally and then collapse. There is nothing special about the US one, no one really to blame either. But of course, when your in the empire itself, it’s hard to see any of this.
The British were very arrogant, much worse than the US population. They literally thought the sun shined out of their arses! Now their is deep deep water, all their oil and coal is gone and they have squandered so much of their farmland for housing developments.
If it wasn’t for their special relations with the US and the fact that they rode on America’s back since WWI they would be a third world country already. Parasites! I hate parasites.
you ignorant american sheep. keep voting for republicans and democrats and my friends bernanke, blankfein and dimon are gonna turn your children and grandchildren into field laborers —if they’re lucky ! ! ! !
you not only caused this problem you’re so stupid you are now accelerating it.
Well, now I think the founding father’s would be saying to each other “that Steve in Buffalo is one real PATRIOT”
LOL!
Comments….. Steve in Buffalo
September 10th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
I blame the “Children of the 60s.â€Â Greedy slugs
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Why blame them? Greed is when you get something for nothing and whine that it’s not enough. I blame those who voted for Obama and more socialism. They really thought that they were going to get something for nothing. Ignorant fools that they are. Peggy Joseph is a fine example of that “I won’t have to ever worry about paying my mortgage or putting gas in my car. If I help Obama, he’s going to help me.” LOL! I bet her house has been foreclosed on and her car repossessed. Hows that hope and change working out for you?
Our founding fathers fought and engineered our Constitution. The man in the White House is hell bent on destroying it–every last paragraph of it.  Nice going liberals!
The founding fathers would also be astonished that we’ve banned slavery and granted voting rights to people who don’t own land, who don’t have white skin and who don’t have penises.
Comments.Evan our flag is a lie,(changed to war flag 1947) look into war flag, and peace flag. That $ key on your computer(only 1 line threw it, what happened to the other line) Just 2 small examples(many more educate yourselves) It is ALL BS!  We are in a matrix, a world created by terrible education and collective amnesia of the past. Our children will( spit on our graves) wonder how we let all this happen(just like germans, and Italians in 20’s, 30’s ,40’s, and 50’s) WE ARE F*&%$CKEDÂ
Comments….. hey Dave, I am astonished, because will work 1/3 of my life(minimum) for the government(indentured service was what 7 years) so I am a slave, so slavery is alive and well. Now people with penises do not vote because there are only the less of 2 evils, and p8ssies to vote for, only tax payers and land owners should  vote, then everyone would voting would have “skin in the game” as the first half black president likes to say.
Comments…..That whirring noise you hear is Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Franklin, Et Al , spinning in their graves!
IT IS OVER!
I am a member of a local Tea Party + a member of a Baptist church and the most amazing thing to me is how many folks refuse to see the signs, all around them.
I give the U.S.A. as now formed as lasting less than 10 years. THEN I believe we will see the rise of several different nations. The “Blue States,” The RED STATES,” “The West Coast,” & I’d bet a risen “Republic of Texas.”  California & the rest of the coast do not need the rest of us. The “northeast” doesn’t need the rest of us too much. & Texas doesn’t need anybody else.
I believe when this happens, the “red states,” & Texas will form nations more like what the founders intended. The “blue states” WILL [without anybody’s help] just go to hell, BUT THIS TIME they won’t drag the rest of us down.
ReformedII
Re: #41 – No way is China going to become a global economic powerhouse for a few reasons:
1) It’s the second-most geriatric nation on earth after Japan.
2) The first generation to come of age under their one-child policy has a 19% male surplus. There just aren’t enough women around to have children.
3) By 2020, that same generation will be entering mid-life and their parents will be retiring. In short, they’ll have a tiny generation trying to support a larger one.
4) When that larger generation starts dying off, the population will shrink and take the economy with it.
5) China’s entrepreneurial class is minuscule compared to America’s.
6) Outside the glittering coastal cities, China is undeveloped and “third world.”
So, as far as China goes, don’t worry. By 2020, they’ll be too old to be a threat.
Re: #33: All I have to say is: “How do I become number 10,001?”