The devastating numbers across-the-board on the economic front are staggering. I’ll go through some of them here, many we have already become all too familiar with. We hear some of these numbers all the time, so much so that it appears as if we have already begun “to normalize the unthinkable.” You may be sick of hearing them, but behind each number is an enormous amount of individual suffering, American lives and families who are
struggling worse than they ever have.
America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented number of Americans living in dire straits and
over 50 million citizens already living in poverty.
The government has come up with clever ways to downplay all of these numbers, but we have over 50 million people who need to use
food stamps to eat, and a stunning
50% of US children will use a food stamp to eat at some point in their childhood. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total
every day. In 2009, one out of five US households didn’t have enough money to buy food. In households with children,
this number rose to 24%, as the hunger rate among US citizens has now reached
an all time high.
We also currently have over 50 million US citizens without healthcare.
1.4 million Americansfiled for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32% increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for
over 60% of them, and over
75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who
have healthcare insurance. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, we are forced to pay
twice as much as other countries and the overall care we get in return
ranks 37th in the world.
In total, Americans have lost
$5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the economic crisis began and
$13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first full year of the crisis, workers between the age of 55 – 60, who have worked for 20 – 29 years, have lost an average of
25% off their 401k. “Personal debt has risen from 65% of income in 1980 to
125% today.” Over
five million US families have already lost their homes, in total
13 million US families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25% of current mortgages underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even grimmer prediction: “The percentage of ‘underwater’ loans may rise to 48 percent, or
25 million homes.” Every day
10,000 US homesenter foreclosure. Statistics show that an increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now
over 3 million homeless Americans, the fastest growing segment of the homeless population is single parents with children.
One place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With a prison population of
2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world – the per capita statistics are
700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled “
Incarceration Nation” revealed that “a new prison opens every week somewhere in America.”
Mass Unemployment
The government unemployment rate is
deceptive on several levels. It doesn’t count people who are “involuntary part-time workers,” meaning workers who are working part-time but want to find full-time work. It also doesn’t count “discouraged workers,” meaning long-term unemployed people who lost hope and don’t consistently look for work. As time goes by, more and more people stop consistently looking for work and are
discounted from the unemployment figure. For instance, in January,
1.1 million workers were eliminated from the unemployment total because they were “officially” labeled “discouraged workers.” So instead of the number rising, we will hear deceptive reports about unemployment leveling off.
On top of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently discovered that 824,000 job losses were never accounted for due to a “
modeling error” in their data. Even in their initial January data there appears to be a huge understating, with the newest report saying the economy lost 20,000 jobs. TrimTabs employment analysis, which has consistently provided more accurate data, “estimated that the U.S. economy shed
104,000 jobs in January.”
When you factor in all these uncounted workers — “involuntary part-time” and “discouraged workers” — the unemployment rate rises
from 9.7% to over 20%. In total, we now have
over 30 million US citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. The rarely cited “employment-participation” rate, which reveals the percentage of the population that is currently in the workforce, has now
fallen to 64%.
Even based on the “official” unemployment rate, just to get back to the unemployment level of 4.6% that we had in 2007, we need to create
over 10 million new jobs, and most every serious economist will tell you that these jobs are not coming back. In fact, we are still consistently shedding jobs, on just one day, January 27th, several companies announced new cuts of
more than 60,000 jobs.
Due to the length of this crisis already, millions of Americans are reaching a point where the unemployment benefits that they have been surviving off of are coming to an end. More workers have already been out of work longer than at any point since statistics have been recorded, with
over six million now unemployed for over six months. A record
20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing
27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total,
40 state programs are expected to go broke.
Most economists believe that the unemployment rate will remain high for the foreseeable future. What will happen when we have millions of laid-off workers without any unemployment benefits to save them?
Working More for Less
The millions struggling to find work are just part of the story. Due to the fact that we now have a record high
six people for every one job opening, companies have been able to further increase the workload on their remaining employees. They have been able to increase the
amount of hours Americans are working, reduce wages and drastically cut back on benefits. Even though Americans were already the
most productive workers in the worldbefore the economic crisis, in the third quarter of 2009, average worker productivity increased by an
annualized rate of 9.5%, at the same time unit labor cost
decreased by 5.2%. This has led to record profits for many companies. Of the 220 companies in the S&P 500 who have reported fourth-quarter results thus far, 78% of them had “better-than-expected profits” with earnings 17% above expectations, “the
highest for any quarter since Thomson Reuters began tracking data.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median wage was only
$32,390 per year in 2008, and median household income
fell by 3.6% while the unemployment rate was 5.8%. With the unemployment rate now at 10%, median income has been
falling at a 5% rate and is expected to continue its decline. Not surprisingly, Americans’ job satisfaction level is now at
an all time low.
There are also a growing number of employed people who, despite having a job, are still living in poverty. There are
at least 15 million workers who now fall into this rapidly growing category. $32,390 a year is not going to get you far in today’s economy, and
half of the country is making less than that. This is why many Americans are now
forced to work two jobs to provide for their family to
hopefully make ends meet.
A Crime Against Humanity
The mainstream news media will numb us to this horrifying reality by endlessly talking about the latest numbers, but they never piece them together to show you the whole devastating picture, and they rarely show you all the
immense individual suffering behind them. This is how they “normalize the unthinkable” and make us become passive in the face of such a high casualty count.
Behind each of these numbers, is a tremendous amount of misery, the physical toll is only outdone by the
severe psychological toll. Anyone who has had to
put off medical care, or who couldn’t get medical care for one of their family members due to financial circumstances, can tell you about the psychological toll that is on top of the physical suffering. Anyone who has felt the stress of wondering how they were going to get their child’s next meal or their own, or the stress of not knowing how you are going to
pay the mortgage, rent, electricity or heat bill, let alone the car payment, gas, phone, cable or internet bill.
