Did you know that the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by more than 97 percent since 1913? Sadly, as you will see below, the decline in the purchasing power of our currency appears to have greatly accelerated in recent years. Thanks to the rising cost of living, most Americans have lost faith in the American Dream. In fact, a new survey that was just released discovered that 51 percent of us believe that the American Dream is now out of reach for most people…
Just over half of Americans say the American Dream is out of reach for most people right now, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey American Dream Pulse Survey.
Roughly 45% of respondents said the American Dream is only achievable for some people, and 6% said it’s not in reach for anyone, according to a study of 4,130 U.S. adults, conducted May 6 to 11.
I was stunned when I read that.
For decades, people have been moving to this country because they want to live the American Dream.
But now the majority of the U.S. population no longer believes that most of us will be able to achieve it.
Today, we have more money than ever.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that the cost of living has been rising very rapidly. The same survey that I referenced above found that approximately 80 percent of us think that the cost of living is one of the primary obstacles to achieving the American Dream…
Roughly four in five survey respondents identified cost of living as one of their biggest financial hurdles to achieving the American Dream. Three in five cited housing prices, almost half pointed to healthcare costs and nearly as many blamed low wages.
For years, I warned that the decisions that our leaders were making would result in very painful inflation.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what occurred.
According to Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey A. Tucker, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by close to 50 percent since the beginning of the COVID lockdowns…
Think about the implications. Isolating from the beginning of the Covid period to the present, Elliott’s data estimates as much as a 40% loss in purchasing power over six years. Or perhaps closer to 50%. Here is a zoom in of the above chart covering 2019 to the present.
This seems correct to me. Government data, meanwhile, logs only a 26% loss. That’s a massive gap between the official data and what prices actually reveal. With an AI re-rendering that tracks purchasing power – the flipside of the increase of prices – we get numbers closer to 50%. That means that Covid cut the value of the dollar in terms of goods and services to half its former value.
I believe that his analysis is quite accurate.
There are some things that I regularly purchase at the grocery store that have more than doubled in price since the start of this decade.
Of course the slow death of the U.S. dollar has been going on for a very long time.
Using very conservative numbers, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has dropped by more than 97 percent since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913…
$100 in 1913 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $3,363.84 today, an increase of $3,263.84 over 113 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.16% per year between 1913 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,263.84%.
This means that today’s prices are 33.64 times as high as average prices since 1913, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 2.973% of what it could buy back then.
This is one of the reasons why I rant so much about the Federal Reserve.
The way that our system has been designed is fundamentally flawed and the Federal Reserve needs to be abolished.
But that isn’t going to happen, is it?
We are just going to continue going down the same old road, and consumers will continue to suffer.
The CEO of Kraft Heinz recently admitted that U.S. consumers are “literally running out of money at the end of the month”…
Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:HKC) CEO Steve Cahillane recently offered one of the bluntest assessments yet.
“They’re literally running out of money at the end of the month,” Cahillane said in a recent interview (1). “We’re seeing negative cash flows in the lower-income brackets where they’re dipping into savings.”
The company behind brands like Heinz, Kraft and Philadelphia is now cutting prices (2) on some products that had grown too expensive, increasing promotions and rolling out smaller package sizes at lower price points.
Cahillane said that the industry has endured years of “volume degradation” because consumers had to absorb “too much price.” Another inflation shock, he warned, is the last thing households need.
Many U.S. households are now permanently in a state of financial crisis.
When your bank account is constantly near zero, it can be absolutely soul crushing.
But that is where most of the U.S. population exists today.
As a result, Americans are using buy now, pay later platforms to purchase gas and groceries more than ever before…
Americans have run their credit cards to the limit. Now they’ve turned to buy-now-pay-later plans to buy gas and groceries.
This is yet more evidence that American consumers are broke, stressed, and buried in debt as inflation steals their purchasing power.
Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platforms allow users to purchase items by paying several smaller installments (typically around 4) over time.
Block operates the Afterpay BNPL platform. The system was originally set up to provide short-term financing for bigger purchases. But according to company data, usage is expanding into everyday spending categories. The average customer used Afterpay to purchase gas 3.6 times and groceries 2.2 times between Feb. 4 and May 15.
Most U.S. households are just one accident or emergency away from financial disaster.
Living on the edge can be very stressful.
Sadly, the number of Americans that are falling over the edge and into bankruptcy just continues to rise…
Total U.S. bankruptcy filings, which include filings made by both businesses and individuals, rose by 7 percent in May on a year-to-year basis.
Individual bankruptcy filings rose by 8 percent during the one-year period. While overall commercial filings were down marginally by 0.1 percent, bankruptcy filings made by small businesses jumped 36 percent, according to a June 5 statement from the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI).
“The May data reflects a continued but measured uptick in bankruptcy activity, particularly among small businesses,” said Michael Hunter, vice president of Epiq AACER, the company that provided the bankruptcy data.
The top one percent controls about a third of all wealth in this country now.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the rest of us are really struggling, and Americans are not particularly optimistic about the future…
Roughly 48% of Americans said their financial situation was worse in May than a year ago, the highest share since January 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.
Consumers are also less optimistic about the future. The share of households expecting their finances to improve over the next year, relative to those expecting them to worsen, fell to its lowest level since October 2022, the New York Fed said.
If you are really struggling because of the rapidly rising cost of living, I want you to know that you are not alone.
There are millions upon millions of others that are in the exact same boat.
Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and there is no easy fix.
So hold on tight, because all of us are just going to have to do the best that we can to survive in this very difficult economic environment.
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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