The best of the recovery is over. Friday’s job numbers confirm it. Meanwhile, as the country’s economic ship of state takes on water, passengers are heading for the lifeboats with everything they can carry—including the pump. With water filling the hold, can uss America stay afloat?

America lost 131,000 more jobs in July—marking three years of net job losses, according to government statistics. 2010 was supposed to be the turnaround year, but after a few months of tepid gains, America is taking on water again. June’s numbers were revised down as well. There was actually a loss of 221,000 jobs, compared to the originally reported loss of 125,000.

Since the economy needs to create 150,000 to 200,000 jobs per month (to account for natural growth) just to keep the employment rate flat, over the past two months America has added a whopping 650,000 more people to the ranks of the unemployed.

Yet it is almost as if a cohort of swashbuckling pirates is running amok at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. According to these guys, the unemployment rate is a stable 9.5 percent. How is this possible? Over the past two months, 1.2 million workers are no longer officially considered unemployed. Did they find work? Go back to school? Retire? Nope, these discouraged workers just haven’t looked for work in the previous three weeks, so the government no longer counts them as unemployed.

Now that the job losses have returned, consumer spending is sure to contract, businesses will cut back—and there will be more pressure on workers in the months ahead. Thus the debt deflation cycle perpetuates itself. In an economy built on debt, job losses quickly lead to more job losses.

There are those, however, who are doing quite well during the recession. Some might call them opportunists; others, scavengers. Pirates is a better term—economic vandals intent on getting while the getting is good. It is nothing particularly novel, but the scale is increasing.

The top 5 percent of income earners account for 37 percent of all consumer spending in America, the Wall Street Journal reported on August 1. Ten years ago, the top 5 percent accounted for only 25 percent of spending in America. The top 1 percent of households own about 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. The top 20 percent own approximately 85 percent, according to sociology professor G. William Domhoff at the University of California–Santa Cruz. And the percentages have increased since 2007.

Nothing indicates the growing gap between the rich and the poor as much as corporate salaries. Today’s top ceos get paid tens—even hundreds—of millions of dollars per year. They retire as billionaires after working for only a decade.

Larry Ellison, founder of software company Oracle Corp, will have received $1.8 billion in compensation over the past decade. Travel website Expedia.com ceo Barry Diller will have received $1.14 billion. Even a failed executive, investment bank Lehman Brothers ceo Richard Fuld, received pay of $457 million over the past decade until his firm’s dramatic collapse in 2008. Country Wide Financial ceo Angelo Mozilo, poster boy for the housing bubble and subprime lending, made in the hundreds of millions too.

Yet the unions have extorted and pillaged America on a level that ceo-pirates could only dream of. All across the country, private and public pension plans are going bust—not because individual union members have failed to contribute money, but because of unsustainable promises made by corrupt politicians bought and paid for by corrupt union leaders and lobbyists.

Union official: We want our members to retire on a six-figure salary.

Politician: But we don’t have that kind of money.

Union official: Then you don’t really want to be reelected.

Politician: Maybe if we assume an 8 or 10 percent or higher return in the stock market over the next 30 to 50 years, the numbers will work out on paper. Okay, deal done, just bring out the voters.

Union official: Glad we agree. And to show you our thanks, here is your campaign contribution.

Reality: Stock markets don’t go up forever and politicians are rarely around long enough to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Taxpayers get put on the hook to pay crippling Cadillac-esque salaries and retirement benefits.

The New York Times recently reported that state governments alone face a $1 trillion gap between what they have promised and what they have on hand to pay looming retirement benefits. Some actuaries, however, say this estimate is far too generous and the gap is actually two to three times as large.

In either case, governments won’t be able to pay.

Look what happened to Detroit, a city where unions dominated the political landscape. Within 50 years, one of the richest cities in America has reduced itself to a virtual ghost town to satisfy the unions.

In California, there are 15,000 state pensioners who make over $100,000, and membership is currently growing at 40 percent per year according to sources quoted by CalWatchdog’s editor in chief Steven Greenhut. Police and firefighters are found throughout that list, as are ex-mayors and other administrators.

The city of Bell in California was rocked by scandal last month when it was revealed council members were being paid $100,000 per year when officials in other similarly sized cities only earn on average approximately $5,000 per annum. More outrageous, City Manager Robert Rizzo’s yearly salary was nearly $800,000—making him nearly the highest paid city manager in California and possibly the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times. Bell Police Chief Randy Adams was paid $457,000—50 percent more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck. Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia earned $376,288—more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.

These pay packages are even more outrageous considering that the city of Bell has a population of only 37,000.

Making matters worse, if these officials resign, they will most likely be eligible for six-figure pensions. But if they are fired without cause, contractual clauses mean that the city will probably have to pay them extravagant bonuses to get rid of them.

This is beyond plundering. It is outright raping and pillaging.

However, all the pirating is not just limited to the rich; the average citizen may soon get a piece of the action too. Wealth redistribution seems to be the modus operandi of the current federal administration. The big rumor currently going around political circles is that the government is going to forgive the mortgage debt of underwater homeowners who have their mortgages owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. That may sound nice, but just remember—that is your taxes the government is giving away. National health care is another form of taking from Peter to give to Paul. Carbon tax proposals are disguised forms of Robin Hood cronyism too.

And while Americans are busy robbing and cheating each other, what are our leaders in the captain’s cabin doing? Cheating on their taxes, employing illegal immigrants, and spending federal money to help personal businesses—if the House Ethics Panel is to be believed.

At the depths of America’s economic crisis in 2009, when the economy was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month and the government was borrowing hundreds of billions from foreigners to prop up the economy, even the president seemed oblivious to wasteful expenditure. Writing for the Scripps Howard News Service, Washington Post writer Dale McFeatters reported that President Obama arrived at the G-20 summit in England with an entourage of 500 staff, including 200 Secret Service agents, six doctors, the White House chef and kitchen staff, and his own food supply. The Evening Standard said he also brought 35 vehicles and four speech writers as well as a presidential helicopter and limousine. More recently, the president’s wife has been criticized for spending $375,000 of taxpayers’ money on a holiday to Spain.

Nobody thinks being president is easy, and obviously the president needs to take the security measures deemed necessary for his and his family’s safety, but such an expensive overseas vacation raises plenty of eyebrows when the president has been so vocal about the need for people and businesses to make tough sacrifices to come out of the recession.

As for the military, according to the Comptroller General’s office, don’t even bother trying to reconcile Department of Defense budgets. The bbc reported in July that of $9 billion allocated to the U.S. military to be used in Iraq reconstruction projects, fully $8.7 billion is unaccounted for—that’s on top of the $8.8 billion that went missing during a 2005 scandal.

Last but not least, there is the dubious relationship between the Federal Reserve, the federal government and America’s big banks. Of the three, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine which is the biggest robber baron.

The government recently reported that the big banks are profitable again and that taxpayers will get their bailout money back. It was a happy announcement. But what the government did not tell you was that much of the bank profits are due to the Federal Reserve lending the big banks money for 0.25 percent and those same big banks turning around and lending that same money to the federal government for 3 percent. This relationship may be good for the banks and the Federal Reserve, but it is not good for taxpayers, or for the long-term health of the economy.

The interesting thing about the Federal Reserve is that it really isn’t federal. It is actually a private bank to whom politicians have given the authority to issue money. All that money the Federal Reserve gave to the banks to lend to the federal government was actually created by fiat. Thus the federal government is paying interest on money that was created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve.

How is that for legalized thievery?

In fact, since the financial meltdown in 2008, the Federal Reserve has conjured up over $2 trillion worth of U.S. dollars out of thin air to purchase underwater, toxic mortgages from the big banks. Sure it helped the banks, but don’t think the Federal Reserve did it out of the goodness of its heart. For the trouble of hitting the “print” button on the dollar printing machines, the Federal Reserve now owns $2 trillion worth of U.S. property.

But the legalized thievery gets even worse.

Whenever governments turn to wholesale money printing to fix economic problems, it eventually results in inflation. That has been the case everywhere and at all times. Inflation is just a form of legalized theft. Printing money devalues the purchasing power of all other money in circulation. It steals purchasing power from savers and transfers it to the money printers.

America’s corruption-riddled economy is on its way to Davy Jones’s locker. It has sailed past the point of no return and couldn’t make it back to safety even if it wanted to—even if its sailors weren’t grabbing what they could as they head toward the lifeboats.

The uss America is beyond repair. The corruption, the unsustainable debt, the political infighting need to be completely purged and wiped out before a seaworthy economic vessel can be built. This is what America needs: a new ship, with a new set of rules governing its operation.

If you don’t think that a new corruption-free economy is possible, read the booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like to see how this new world will come about.