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The Shameful State of the Union
Here's one thing everyone should be able to agree upon from George Bush's State of the Union address: "We have unfinished business before us."
Apart from that, it's a little difficult to credit much of what he said.
"So long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure, and the state of our Union will remain strong," he concluded.
But the state of our Union is anything but strong. Consider these snapshots:
1. The United States is spending more than $700 billion a year on the military.
The 2008 appropriations bills include $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, plus an additional $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. [1]
Other military funding is located in the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.
Congress has approved nearly $700 billion to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the appropriated amount. It doesn't include costs to society -- loss of life, injuries, etc. The amount spent on war-fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq now exceeds the inflation-adjusted amount spent on the Vietnam War. [2]
The United States accounts for roughly half of the world's military expenditures. [3]
Depending on how you count, more than half of all discretionary federal spending is now directed to the military. [4]
2. Wealth is concentrating in the United States at a startling rate.
So startling, in fact, it is very hard to get your head around the statistics. Notes Sam Pizzigati of the invaluable online newsletter Too Much: In 2004, the richest 1 percent in the United States held over $2.5 trillion more in net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
The concentration of wealth and income reflects a major shift over the last three decades in how the United States shares its earnings. In 1976, the top 1 percent of the population received 8.83 percent of national income. In 2005, they grabbed 21.93 percent. [5]
3. Compensation for CEOs and Wall Street financiers is out of control
The average CEO from a Fortune 500 company now makes 364 times an average worker's pay, reports the Institute of Policy Studies. This is up from a 40-to-1 ratio in 1980. [6]
But the managers of businesses that make things and deliver non-financial services aren't making the truly big money these days. In the hyper-financialized economy, it's the finance guys who are getting truly rich.
And they're getting rich despite the huge losses being wracked up on Wall Street. Bonuses for those toiling on Wall Street totaled $33.2 billion in 2007, down just 2 percent, according to New York state comptroller's office. Overall compensation and benefits at seven of the Street's biggest firms totaled $122 billion, up 10 percent since 2006 -- even though net overall revenue for these firms fell 6 percent. [7]
But even the traditional investment banks can't match the outrageous compensation captured by private equity and hedge fund managers, a few of whom manage to pull in more than $1 billion in a single year. Thanks to a tax loophole, these characters pay income tax at a rate less than half of what a dentist making $200,000 a year pays.
4. Corporations are capturing more of the nation's wealth.
Corporate profits amounted to 8 percent of GDP over the last decade, Business Week reports, up from 6.5 percent in the early 1990s. [8]
5. The housing bubble and the subprime mortgage meltdown are driving millions of families from their homes.
The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that 2.2 million subprime home loans made in recent years have already failed or will end in foreclosure. Homeowners will lose $164 billion from these foreclosures, the Center projects. [9] Overall losses from deflated housing values may top $2 trillion. One in five subprime mortgages originated during the past two years is likely to end in foreclosure.
6. The racial wealth divide remains a chasm with little prospect of being bridged -- and is likely growing worse.
At the rate the wealth divide closed between 1982 and 2004, it would take 594 more years for African Americans to achieve parity with whites, according to United for a Fair Economy. But the subprime debacle is hitting minority communities disproportionately hard, causing what United for a Fair Economy believes may be the worst deprivation of people of color's wealth in modern U.S. history. [10]
7. Women continue to be paid far less than men.
The ratio of the annual averages of women's and men's median weekly earnings was 80.8 for full-time workers in 2006, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Progress in closing the gender wage gap has slowed considerably since 1990. The gender wage ratio for annual earnings increased by 11.4 percentage points from 1980 to 1990, but added only 5.4 percentage points over the next 15 years. [11]
8. More than one in six children live in poverty.
Is there a worse indictment of the richest society in history? The official U.S. poverty rate was 12.3 percent for 2006. The rate for children was 17.4 percent. The official poverty line is absurdly low. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget the average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2006 was $20,614. For an individual, it was $10,294. [12]
9. More than 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance.
According to the Census Bureau, 47 million were uninsured in 2006, 15.8 percent of the population. [13]
10. The U.S. trade deficit is more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product.
The 2006 U.S. trade deficit totaled $763.6 billion. [14] The trade deficit will eventually have to be balanced -- sooner than later, it now seems. As the dollar continues to swoon, expect to see inflation and higher interest rates over the medium term. The real standard of living, in economic terms, will decline as a result.
11. U.S. fuel efficiency is worse now than it was two decades ago.
The average fuel economy of today's U.S. car and truck fleet is 25.3 miles per gallon, reports the Union of Concerned Scientists, lower than the 25.9 mpg fleet average in 1987. Regulatory standards have not changed (though a modest increase is mandated by the energy bill passed in 2007), and more SUVs and light truck are on the road. [15]
12. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition. [16]
13. More than two million people in the United States are locked in prison.
What a colossal waste of human talent. 2,258,983 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails, at the end of 2006, an increase of 2.9 percent from 2005. The prison population has grown 3.4 percent annually since 1995. African-American males are imprisoned at a rate 6.5 times higher than white males, Latino males almost 3 times higher than whites. [17]
Most of these conditions are worse now than at the start of the Bush administration, many dramatically worse. But they have their roots in a bipartisan policy approach over the last three decades, favoring deregulation, handover of government assets to corporations (privatization), corporate globalization, hyper-financialization, lunatic military expenditures, tax cuts for the rich and a slashed social safety net.
If the United States is to see "real change" -- and actually strengthen the state of the Union -- there will have to be a reversal of these policies.
[1] Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
[2] Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
[3] SIPRI Yearbook 2007, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [4] War Resisters League
[5] Too Much
[6] Executive Excess 2007, Institute for Policy Studies
[7] Tomoeh Murakami Tse and Renae Merle, The Bonuses Keep Coming, TheWashington Post, January 29, 2008
[8] Michael Mandel, How Real Was the Prosperity, Business Week, January 23 2008
[10] Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008, United for a Fair Economy
[11] Institute for Women's Policy Research, The Gender Wage Ratio: Women's And Men's Earnings
[12] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty06/tables06.html
[13] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthin06/hlth06asc.html
[14] http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/annual.html
[15] Union of Concerned Scientists, Fuel Economy Basics
[16] American Society of Civil Engineers, Report Card for America's Infrastructure
[17] US DOJ, Office of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Statistics
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and director of Essential Action.
(c) Robert Weissman
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61 Comments so far
Show AllThese disastrous events, leading to and including this Iraq misadvdnture, have been underway since Americans allowed this president to illegally take the office. They then permitted him to benefit from 9/11, despite his neglect to obvious signs leading to this tragedy. His unprecedented environmental sellouts that will affect us for decades fueled by his war on science only add to the outrage.
By tolerating such unprecedented abuses to our system,Americans have only themselves to blame for the damage to our planet from the antics of this zealot and his supporting special interests.
Let's talk about shameful and who can really reform our government in a principled manner.
We've got Clinton scandal fatigue redux already?!
Here are Clinton scandals that just hit the paper today. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4218509&page=1 We are getting Clinton scandal fatigue and the Primaries aren't even over!
We've got a serious electability issue. After seven years of incompetent, corrupt government, America is extra sensitive to this type of stuff. Look what just happened to Rudy. This kind of baggage would weigh the Clintons way down in a run against McCain, who has always stood for cleaning up government.
Kernel, you illustrate the problem in this country perfectly....this has not taken 7 years, it has been going on for decades...at least 3 of them.
It's all nice and feel good to decry GWB et al. but the truth is that democrats and republicans alike have worked hard to give us exactly what we have. Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney...rich as midas every one of em. Do you honestly think that they will work against their own fiscal self interest.
It's not the parties that are the problem, it is the system. This is massive system failure. Who we vote for is not going to change a single thing. Why do you think that the media has conspired to give us these 4, so to be 2 candidates to choose from? Perhaps because they are interchangable?
The entire system must be replaced. The rich don't want it replaced. Under the current system they all enjoy a standard of living the likes of which most americans can only dream of. The masses don't realize that there IS NO HERO. No white knight coming to save the day.
Don't buy into the arguement that voting for this rich bastard or that rich bitch will change anything. They like it this way.
This is a class war, plain and simple. Warren Buffet, second riches person in the world, said as much and added that his side was winning. He was right. But where was the outrage from the people? Where was the outcry from those running for office? Have you heard a single denial.
They have erected a wall of poverty and ignorance around you...try reading the writing on it. They have made no secret of their intentions, but because we want to believe otherwise we blindfold ourselves and then curse the darkness.
Until the people get tired of eating shit sandwiches while the rich feast on the bodies of our children the system will remain the same.
The democracy is alive and well. Americans knew they were getting more of the same every year since 1981. They had a chance every two years since to vote the corporations out of Washington. They could have voted in progressives. They didn't do it. So this is what they got.
The answer of course is a progressive platform that limits enterprise annual income to $100 mil in five years, then to $5 mil in another five years. A fragmentation and dispersion of the production to regional/local communities. Full costs in retail prices, etc. Full costs eliminates the wasted resource allocation and production (around 90% currently), enabling 15 hour work weeks. Everyone knows there are reasonable solution arrived at with good faith. It's easy to find out who's acting in good faith and who's not. The progressive way is clear, the prosperity, stability and biosphere recovery are assured. There is no question that it works very well.
The only question is how to snuff out the elitist crime/corruption and the answer is very simple: Shifting individual exchange/association away from power centers toward local economies, enlightenment and civic responsibility for all the people, including voting our principles in the elections (third party progressives). Results: Full, stable prosperity for all, free public healthcare, education, transportation, low cost high quality food/shelter, healthy thriving biosphere, end to war, poverty, and other capitalist catastrophes.
Texas: "Braziliation of the USA is at work. A visit to Sao Paulo shows where the USA will be in a decade." Oh really? I would take the Brazilian Real over the US Dollar anyday!!The Real has kicked the Dollar's butt all over the place. Brazil has it's problems for sure, and I don't want to make light of it, but if America is being "Braziliafied", wouldn't that be a step up?
Edit: I would also like to mention that Brazil has a President that is half way progressive, which is a lot more than I can say about our fake ass unelected dictator Fred Flintstone of a president.
Who cares about the Clinton scandals? It would be hard to find any politicion in DC that would have a spotless record,and they would not want the job anyway. It is not the ones that pad their own pockets that worry me, it is the ones that will totally wreck our country for decades and hand the mess off to the kids. We need to go with the best we have to combat the ruinous philosophy of the present administration and their lackeys that want in next. The Clinton administration at least kept the country on course, and they could do it again. They do not have any more baggage than any of the others, except Bill told one lie as opposed to several hundred of the present occupants.
"What we need is for people to QUIT BUYING."
Phil Ross, your statement goes to the heart of it. It's a simple idea, perhaps almost too simple for progressives, thinking people, to grasp.
Our political vote has been stolen twice. So the dollar is our only "real" vote remaining. To lay the beast low we must starve it. I have witnessed only a few posters here who have committed to doing so. The rest have recoiled and rationalized. If progressives cannot stop buying who will?
If you can imagine it, you can create it.
You just have to remember how.
Phil Ross,
Quit buying what?
My wife and I are on Social Security. I would like to explain to you a few details about fixed income and rising outgo.
We quit buying Christmas trinkets and decorations and bling. We reduced buying Christmas gifts to four in the near family, and reduced the cost to ten dollars each. I quit buying alcohol and tobacco. We eat out once a month instead of once a week. We grow about half of our veggies. We buy beef, chicken,lamb, and eggs from local farmers. (friends at church) We started to buy our clothes at Goodwill. I walk a half mile to town, weather permitting. Excessive costs are fresh fruit and produce in winter, gasoline and medications. The first we avoid, the last two we can't.We have Medicare parts a , b, and d. Last year our out of pocket cost for my wife's medicine alone was $4,352. This year the insurance company cancelled coverage on two critical medicines, increasing our cost by $400 a month. When we quit buying something, it won't be to prove point, but so we can buy something we need more.
When the poop hits the prop, the rank and file will be on the south end of the rope. In the meantime, thieves, war profiteers, political whores and pimps control this nation, and will continue to do so as long 45 percent of the people don't vote. Voter apathy is the result looking at the choices.
I've just finished reading ALL of the posts above. In my opinion, about half are dead on and the other half don't seem to get that American democracy has been dying for over 30 years.
It's not just Bush. As evil as he is, he just caught the train that was headed to the same destination. It just so happens that this train is just closer to its destructive destination now. Some of us can actually now see where we have been heading all along. Some of us still can't see how this journey ends. But end it will.
I want to thank Doom & Gloom, Bakunin, patnval, and LeAnnG for your contributions to my education and perspective. I am always amazed at the amount of knowledge that posters here have. Thanks for sharing.
The entire house must fall down before it can be rebuilt. And I like Doom n Glooms concept of breaking it down into smaller chunks built for the 21st century. Even large corporations learned long ago that "big" was not suited to our rapidly changing environment. So they were broken up into smaller divisions so they could respond more quickly to the markets. I tend to agree that America has become too large and diverse to govern centrally, top down. And maybe breaking the country down into 6 or 7 united republics is worth looking at. The American people would have to call another Constitutional Convention to work all this out.
Does anyone know if there is anything in the Constitution that directly addresses the issue of another Constitutional Convention?
Bakunin: Bull's eye again. Breaking up the US is an excellent idea.