mother works on down here to this friend's house where a friend tells. different cities just to try to find work the american dream slowly shattering into the american nightmare the new jobs numbers are on the up and up so everything's ok right well not if you ask the failing middle class. and things may not get better any time soon as it's dead if you do get if you don't hear how the u.s. government is caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to raising the debt ceiling. again the truth of the day after the game the steam and even more that hasn't helped us and handsome know

anybody in the middle east from grass roots ground work to a piece of cake the first g.o.p. debate kicks off but is the race for the white house again a few contenders are missing or why campaign contribution rules might be to blame. good evening it's friday may sixth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm laurin this during your watching our t.v. well new jobless numbers came out today showing the economy last month added close to two hundred fifty thousand jobs it beat expectations by a long shot but here are some other figures one in seven americans is on food stamps only six out of one hundred applicants can get a job at mcdonald's and last week the number of americans applying for unemployment benefits surged to the highest level in eight months. de morgan stanley announced

home prices could fall another six to eleven percent this year set in the middle class thirty one percent already report they're underwater on further down in value so after the worst economic downturn since the great depression it's pretty close our bosses have taken a toll they forced formally middle class families into poverty artie's among glenda looks at where the american dream has gone for them sunny southern california along a favorite destination for those pursuing stardom and well throughout the years families have lived the american dream of comfort and increasing prosperity but these days many of those very families are caught up in a nightmare of escalating poverty the economic crisis has touched the before untouchable middle class what we have seen in the last two years really we're going to fashion is an increase in the number of families where. some of the important part of haitian mayberry is trying to raise her daughters while she struggles to

keep a place to live the mayberry's are typical of the growing trend of families that slide from middle class to poverty and homelessness i thought i had the best of everything. that's why myself either he was participating he with work and i was working so we didn't have to make our. medicare you know here are where prescriptions we had the best we were working that was then and this is now may very receives food stamps and relies on the nonprofit program beyond shelter so that she and her children have a bed to sleep in she said to overcome many challenges in her life but before maybe lost her job she never imagined she would be fighting to stay off the streets every day i had to figure out where without honestly. how are we going to sleep job security is gone the unemployment rate is stuck in the double digits around the los angeles. area with few opportunities for well paying jobs more americans are seeing

their wealth disappear it is estimated that banks will take back more than a million homes this year due to foreclosure another sign that housing affordability across the u.s. continues to decrease this is the middle class neighborhood where taisha me barry enter two daughters used to live before she lost her job it's only a few blocks away from the ocean and in the shadows of the scenic downtown long beach skyline it took only a few months to go from a life of relative comfort to a life of insecurity where she had no idea where her family would sleep at night los angeles is the heart region in america for homelessness where more than forty thousand people have no place to sleep on a nightly basis nationwide family homelessness has risen nine percent in the last year according to a recent report by the u.s.

conference of mayors the real numbers may actually be much higher i'm out of work sundance and i'm here to this friend's house to their friends house not i'm in different cities just to try to find work doing nichols live comfortably for years working as a floor installer now he's an employee and cannot pay rent nickels relies on the kindness of loved ones and food stamps. social programs to help stressed families hang on are about to be lost to political games as lawmakers in washington wrestle with future budget cuts while battling to save tax cuts for the richest this nichols fears could push many already desperate families over the edge because. honestly i think. the jails would cry for love because people are very good in this they don't want to see one as we don't want to steal. i don't know i want to go out there and steal for food and push came to shove my clean well what else am i

supposed to do where am i going to do is a question mayberry ask yourself daily ever since she joined the army of the newly poor and struggling to raise her children hoping for a hollywood ending to her story i'm like every day in this house. in los angeles family no r.t. now earlier i spoke with michael t. snyder he's founder of the economic collapse blog here is part of our conversation . the job number is slightly encouraging however it should be because we need to remember the u.s. government and the federal reserve have a sensible go on all in an all out it's going to stimulate the u.s. economy in the short term the u.s. government has been doing all the stimulus packages so trillion in half the dollars in debt this year alone the federal reserve has dropped interest rates to rock bottom of the been doing all this quantitative easing so the truth is that the unemployment should be much lower than it is right now it's actually discouraging

to see that all these. federal reserve have not produced more results now in the long run with all these all this borrowing it's going to be disastrous for us well look there are elements a look at york is that is look at the number of americans that are employed for example last year only forty five point four percent of all americans have a child that was the lowest number since one thousand nine hundred three but if you look at the number of americans only sixty six point eight percent of american men had a job last year that was the lowest number ever recorded and now michel now michel that there are some of the statistics you pointed out in a recent column on what's happened to the american dream and another that you point out is that forty one percent of all jobs in the u.s. are low income so this job growth that we're seeing and some of the biggest gains last night were in retail manufacturing healthcare restaurants we know mcdonald's

announced i'll be hiring sixty two thousand workers are these more of these low income jobs and are those the jobs that they merican dream with bells on. that's exactly right in fact over the past decade the number of middle income jobs is declining by ten percent in america this is a long term trend a long term problem so you're exactly right the job growth is in places like mcdonalds of welcoming people to wal-mart and that's a huge problem i remember back when i was sure i walked in with me donald's and asked for a job application i was hired because they were just fine people who work but today we heard about that national hiring you didn't almost just kill over a million people across showed up and only sixty two thousand were hired so that's about six point two percent you know if you compare that to her harvard except seven percent of people could apply for harvard so it's a daily lead so yes it is actually easier to get into her then it is to get a job it doesn't seem to stack up quite right another question on ask the american

dream another thing you think of as starting your own business kind of being entrepreneurial going your own way where is that going i want to know you know china india we know people are going back over there to have more opportunity we know there's also drawbacks and there's risks of corruption not so much the ability but are those better if she's taken ten wit then america's bureaucracy and stagnant economy if they are an entrepreneur trying desperately to make their first million dollars. i will sit in the united states is such strong greenly difficult to open up a new business not only to strangle regulations you know got the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world it's a big it's becoming a very toxic environment for american business because our leaders many of our soldiers are essentially controls sunday loaded us down with so many rules and regulations that it's really difficult to get a business going meanwhile tons of businesses are going up the places like india and china like you said in fact since two thousand and one an average of fifty

thousand manufacturing jobs per month have left the united states since china joined the world trade organization back in two thousand and one so we're seeing a lot of long term trends that are are really hurting the u.s. economy right now and people can't start businesses that they don't have jobs to go on the overall sense two thousand and seven the number of americans are increased by eight million in our own all time record forty four million americans are on food stamps and really quickly i don't have time for a long answer but i'm just curious how quickly you can say how still the richest are benefiting because you might have difficulty to to start a small business but yet big business as a fortune five hundred companies have seen an eighty one percent increase and their profit and math year how they're happening. all of the entire going to stack them with the big corporations and right there with see yellow now makes three hundred forty three times more money than the average person in the lower class and so the government really think it was the big banks and the big corporations and so small

businesses are really being worked out in the polls. and i was michael t. snyder founder of the economic collapse blog and as we discussed meanwhile the income gap in the u.s. is only getting wider as we were talking about the concentration of wealth he said c.e.o.'s are getting richer now the wealthiest americans are expected to see their wealth double over the next decade that's according to avoid study well average americans some of the stories you saw earlier in the show have struggled they've seen their wages stagnate as just one example of what they faced laurie harf a nest of the resident net went to the heart of the big apple to find out how people feel about that. the economy continues to cause a lot of people a lot of difficulties and yet the rich keep getting richer are you ok with that this week let's talk about that well i mean we have to talk about what is actually defined rich i mean for people to say that families making two hundred fifty k.

year combined being rich as some people define rich is completely absurd lower middle class hold on only a very small percentage of the people actually make that yes but you see the thing is is that i understand as a small percentage of people do however let's not make them wretch if there's only a couple of them. but i think that although we don't see it there's a lot of work they have to do you don't get rich overnight you think people on wall street are working harder than you are no i don't but i think they might be working smarter. but do they deserve money for that you know millions of dollars of your taxpayer dollars i don't know that it's my taxpayer dollars well they got. bailed out they got millions and millions of dollars right just agree i disagree with the bailout completely so why does good government keep bailing out the banks. because a lot of people and their government go to work for the banks so it's all intertwined

after they're like goldman sachs or whatever after they leave when you consider that a conflict of interest because the government first to represent the little guy yes i would but they both so intertwined that they can keep doing it they knew that they were betting against warm homes being foreclosed on and mortgages were kind of bomb and people started losing their homes is that still ok people who couldn't afford to buy homes but you think it's their responsibility i do they should have read the fine print when you borrow three or five hundred thousand dollars you need to understand what you're doing now not ok with the rich are getting richer but guess what this is america more power to even at the expense of other people i was because of other people well people losing their homes because of the mortgages or lost their homes because they bought mortgages that they couldn't afford the mortgage companies didn't do anything about it you have no doubt i do my house is going into foreclosure too but guess what i don't blame the rich were being rich

that's why they're here but you blame yourself for that yes my my fault would you be ok with profiting off of someone else's loss. i would. think some of these people don't think it is true what they are profiting. i'm not saying. turn choice i think it's. generational perhaps. it heritage or accumulated wealth. you're born into these families. you go to ivy league schools and what have you it keeps going and going and going whether or not you think the rich deserve to keep getting richer the bottom line is it's going to continue to happen unless something drastically changes. and while we're on money and government policy the u.s.

national debt is fourteen trillion dollars and mounting it's quickly approaching the debt ceiling that's expected to happen this month but timothy geithner says the government has a little time till august to work it out also mounting in this whole situation is the debate over raising the debt ceiling i mean at a time lawmakers are claiming to get serious about reducing the deficit and just to give you a sense the congressional budget office said today the u.s. budget deficit totaled eight hundred seventy one billion dollars for the first seven months of this fiscal year that's up seventy billion dollars for the same time last year the looking back at the debt ceiling congress has raised the debt limit ten times over as many years so is there really any point to this whole debate earlier i spoke with edward harrison founder of credit right counts dot com here's part of our conversation. but you could sort of enter in this whole been there republican we have these ridiculous debates about potentially defaulting on debt that we will have to default upon you know for ideological reasons it's really

it's a it's a farce it's a sideshow and it really should at what price i'm so curious you know timothy geithner is going to meet with chinese officials on monday needs to ask them to let their currency raise an increase allowing the dollar to it would essentially lower the value of the dollar and make us tax sports and u.s. trade more competitive how insulting is it to ask chinese officials to do to something ok can still continue to do it's been a hot topic for a while when chinese officials who are the largest creditor to the united states they don't even have complete confidence that the united states is going to raise the debt ceiling well the chinese they really have to worry about their own problems the reality is is that you know if the chinese have paid their currency at a specific rate to the u.s. dollar in order to export to the u.s. the u.s. community then they're going to have to receive dollars in return for that their current account surplus is a definite you know result of their having

a very low currency you know until recently the u.s. dollar was falling so if the chinese don't want dollars then they should really raise their currency for the united states to make these arguments to the chinese what leverage do they really have then the leverage of the the chinese have paid their currency to the u.s. dollar they have to actually you know take on these dollars there's nothing else they can do because of the you know if. that's the will of the math works so the leverage of the united states be hurt if the united states if china was no longer paying its currency to the u.s. dollar because then when china not be so be hauled into taking on u.s. debt could no longer. well what would happen is that the chinese within suddenly hear this huge sucking out of all the jobs going to vietnam war going to thailand or wherever it would go and you know there are you have this massive bubble in

china right now so they don't want to lose those jobs they want to be able to have the the transition away from a load. to happen gradual you know a five percent per annum ten percent print sort of a rate but you know if we're talking about a larger appreciation in the chinese currency then not only would they lose twenty percent say if they were good by twenty percent on their foreign exchange holdings there would be a massive disruption in their export sector so that it's you know it's sort of like you know the soviets and the americans with their nuclear weapons you have mutually assured destruction if if this breaks down today let's get back to the united states that one issue i think that feeling there's a lot. of someone earlier and i spoke you called it financial terrorism that financial leaders say that the united states the global economy rather would be derailed if the u.s. didn't raise the debt ceiling is that true it would definitely be it could be an armageddon scenario because you know the treasury market is the most liquid bond

market in the entire world it's considered the you know the benchmark in terms of government bonds and the concept the so-called leader of the free world would default voluntarily because of some sort of political debate not because they didn't have the money to be able to do so it's just you know it's beyond the pale really it isn't us really. the reserve currency exactly they do and so you know that's a great benefit to the. question is whether or not if we don't raise the debt so then what's going to happen. ultimately what's going to happen in my view is that there's going to be some sort of deal that's reached at the end of the deal everyone will look and say you know look we got exactly what we were looking for and as a result you should go. for us in two thousand and twelve because we're the better party we're doing to school sponsibility or whatever it may be the really quickly is it irresponsible of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to use this

issue that could have such big major global financial ramifications for political purposes it's completely irresponsible it's you know it shows the level to which politics in the united states has dropped politics driving policy a classic example given by edward harrison founder of credit write downs dot com now the file last night g.o.p. presidential primary debate officially launched washington back into the frenzy of campaign season or did it what made the biggest statement wasn't who was on stage in south carolina or rather who wasn't there actually scale and ford has more on how money they got something to do with that. from the piece in the greenville south carolina republican presidential debate the two thousand and twelve republican race has officially kicked off with big promise to get the troops out of afghanistan in a in that war that hasn't helped us and hasn't helped anybody in the middle east.

big criticisms pristine united states side would have sided with the mullahs instead of the demonstrators but surprisingly few big names like mine questions for all these guys and none for me so well your tax affairs are just sitting here last election cycle the stage was a crowded place as ten republican candidates do throughout for their party's nomination in two thousand. but this time around just five candidates participated in the first g.o.p. primary debate with fox's focus group showing american thought this man won godfather's pizza magnate herman cain a big business man with no political experience one of the biggest problems we have with this country right now today is too much government intervention in trying to tell businesses how to do what they do best which is create jobs government doesn't create jobs businesses create jobs we need to get government out of the way well there were few contenders there was no lack of harsh words to describe obama's

three years as commander in chief from health care to foreign policy now he has his hands tied by the united nations and is subordinated our decision making in options to that pathetic organization in many respects i would never put the united states in that untenable position if the president says khadafi must go he must go and despite blockbuster ads. with. the biggest names mitt romney sarah palin newt gingrich mike huckabee and battle trump stayed home hesitant to throw themselves into a race against an incumbent like president obama so early on please join me in welcoming mr donald h. . like everything in american politics we're going to declare also comes down to money analysts say that because of campaign finance laws that donations to presidential campaigns twenty five hundred dollars politicians prefer to rake in money for political action committees before officially declaring you see today this charade of obvious candidates for the republican nomination pretending their

candidates delaying their declarations of canada see although he's dismissed by the mainstream media congressman ron paul is no underdog fund raising money. thanks in one day alone his liberty pac did in one million dollars compared with another two million raised by the campaign for liberty much of it coming from young voters god is smiling upon us it'll be running around in two thousand and twelve republicans say president obama isn't unbeatable president obama is not unbeatable because one right decision not the great president made although with so many party favorites still hedging their bets it may be hard to town healin ford artsy washington d.c. . i'll raise a lot of money for more earlier i was joined by two guests to weigh in on the whole debate in new york it was right hans along author of national review online on the agenda and cooperative the book grand new party how conservatives can win the

working class and save the american dream also from los angeles ten kavanagh a columnist with reason magazine and reason dot com here's part of our conversation and there was a sense that if mitt romney is not going to be there then the for example mike huckabee might not be inclined to be there there are a lot of people are still weighing whether or not they intend to run for president at all including indiana governor mitch daniels so there are still a lot of uncertainty in the air so that they can good this debate matter. yeah the idea that this debate didn't matter and that somehow this. somebody is in position to unilaterally declare this that the team is to use temple and he's favorite word pro posterous this was obviously an interesting debate and it mattered for the first time and you know there are some of us who will not forget this that the first time we ever heard drug legalization openly discussed by two different candidates the first time we heard ending the warfare state discussed by two

different candidates the first time we heard ending the federal reserve and the drawing down the troops from afghanistan and iraq was at a republican debate and that is obviously important if the republicans don't realize that's important they're even more out to lunch than i think i want to ask you right on if you think there would be the possibility of a libertarian candidate that would win a g.o.p. nomination or if not if it's time for a third party worth being a ride then kind of libertarian sentiment in a tea party as i mentioned to a libertarian leaning candidate on next panel is it time to to recognize that in any time that the system. i think that's relatively unlikely i think that you have an upsurge in interest in for example the ron paul campaign who has a large number of very devoted relatively affluent followers and i think that you know he certainly is going to play a significant role but you also see happen is a lot of other more conventional republican candidates trying to draw on some of that rhetoric and in a way that's what you hope would happen by having a couple of libertarian candidates in the race you'd hope that they'd help tug the

debate in a different direction but i don't think it's very likely that gary johnson or ron paul will ultimately win the nomination and i think that actually one of the disappointments for me was seeing gary johnson not perform quite as adroitly as one would have hoped of course this is only his first debate and it's possible that he'll get stronger in the future i mean i just ron paul raised more than a million dollars according to his web site in a debate day money but he's raised three million dollars and the first three months and two thousand and eleven is this significant is this is is it's more than you guys versus what expect him. yeah absolutely and you know i mean ron paul i'm not going to comment too much on how he came off last night he certainly made all of his points quite well there were a few moments where maybe his you know diction wasn't all it could have been but people giving this money they are giving it to ron paul many of them in a legitimate hope that he can win the presidency but clearly this is also idea money people want to get that into the debate and what's interesting is that even

herman cain who i think i'm not going to be able to come down on herman cain side on a lot of stuff but the reason that he took off the way he did in the you know just in the focus group and certainly the media attention is that he was himself presenting a kind of you know almost. i don't know whether it's better or not but it's a jacksonian view of the presidency rather than a wilsonian view of the presidency which a lot of folks including some folks you know the maybe the national review side over the years have projected have said you know we want to be big government republicans and on the you know accusing anybody but that it seems like one good step in the right direction is that everybody is trying to run away from that even mitt romney who wasn't even there what would it take for a candidate like ron paul to be taken seriously by you guys i mean he won this he packed up all this year he went to a year before the end and identified as the g.o.p. is beth match up against president obama compared to mike huckabee and romney why

what would it take different first i want to be a fairy contender. i do take it serious i don't want to get the idea that i don't take immigrants all seriously and i would say i don't know that ron or gary johnson really the you know most sterling performance performance or any diet industry in the room but there are farmers decide big picture what is this new you know where could this go and what would it take for someone with different views that's not the traditional republican democrat mainstream candidate to have a real chance in a presidential race. actually you can have a mild mannered mannered person as president calvin coolidge was a great president that was extremely mild mannered and quiet. i think these are viable candidates i don't think i mean there's something wrong with the media because hockey and trump and bachmann weren't there that some held views this is not a serious debate re hyundai you agree are these viable mandate and should we should

you know that even take on the pakistani forward fundamentally there is a large number of americans who like medicare they think it's a great idea and they want to hold on to it they want to keep it and even when you have a fairly conventional conservative republicans who are saying look we need to reform the medicare system quite dramatically we need to parrot back then they receive a tremendous amount of blowback because simply put the number of elderly voters is an incredibly large and also americans being relatively affluent are very risk averse and so when you have any candidate who is advancing what is taken to be a risky proposition including dramatically paring back the size and scope of the federal government from that i think both tim and i would endure this it's going to frighten people and that attempt cavanagh columnist the reason magazine and ray hunt salon blogger for the national review online the agenda that's not going to do it for the news tonight for more on the stories we covered go to archie dot com slash usa check out our you tube page at youtube dot com slash r t america there's more analysis on that subject to coverage today.