Today is the great occasion of the State of the Union
address. Anyone who has seen this
spectacle knows it is akin to the speech of a dictator, interrupted by raucous
rounds of applause at seemingly meaningful intervals every several minutes
throughout. 2018’s comes at the time of
impending crisis, not only for the United States, but the world.
Unfortunately, nothing said tonight will be of any
importance, unless you consider yourself among the lucky few people controlling
and contributing to the two heads of our single-bodied Wall Street party. We will hear from both of these talking heads
tonight, first from the 1% in the voice and words of President Trump, and on
the other side we will hear from the 1% as told by another Kennedy, though we
are meant to believe that political dynasties don't exist in the US as they do
in monarchies. There will be no voice
for the working people who are responsible for the majority of the wealth, nor
for the planet. It is this shortfall that I will try to address to give the
reader the Real State of the Union.
Things are very good in the United States in 2018 if you are
a rich, white, heterosexual, cisgender man, or perhaps married to one – if you
can tolerate it. The 1% is doing
exceedingly well. So well, in fact, that
income inequality is at a level not seen since 1929. Today, 80% of all wealth on Wall Street is
owned by the richest 10%, with 38% owned by the richest 1% of our
population. The 1% will receive a huge
windfall of cash that will equate to millions of dollars with the changes
recently made to the tax code. Of
course, many working people will receive a bump in their paycheck too—however,
the 20 bucks per pay that a worker receives as a result of the tax changes, when
compared to the millions made by the 1% in this scheme, show the vast gulf of
income inequality that currently exists.
A prime example of the “haves” doing well is the case of Jeff Bezos of
Amazon who is now considered to be the richest person ever—all while 10% of his
workforce are eligible to receive public assistance by poverty guidelines.
So what about the rest of the population? How are they doing? Not well at all in too many instances. At the same time the top 10% of earners are
hording stacks of cash, 43 million people in the United States are currently in
poverty (13% of the population), with another 100 million dangerously near
poverty. With 43% of the United States
at or near poverty, can we say really say the state of our union is good?
Although “only” 3% of all workers make the minimum wage of
$7.25 per hour, a huge number of workers make just a few dollars more. In fact, 42% of workers or more make less
than $15 an hour, which many economists see as the lowest hourly wage to
provide any sort of a life. The buying
or purchasing power of these wages is about 50% less than it was in 1975
because of inflation. This goes a long
way to understanding the dire financial straits that millions of citizens find
themselves in along with the income inequality—because of course as we all know
the bosses are paid well even if the workers aren’t. If increases in worker productivity and
inflation are taken into account, minimum wage should be over $21 an hour, yet
somehow these same people with more money than can be spent in a lifetime scream
“NO!” when presented with the idea of even raising the minimum to $15 within a
few years.
Nearly 30 million people in the United States have no health
insurance. Many millions more who have
health insurance pay amounts that would
cover a car payment each month, a very NICE car, and a lot of the time, even
more than that, just to qualify as covered; never mind the cost of deductibles, co-insurance, co-pays and
services not covered by the for profit Wall Street health insurance
industry. The number one reason people
in the United States file for Bankruptcy is medical debt. According to a 2017 poll, 45% of Americans
would have trouble paying an unexpected $500 medical bill. Also, 10% of Americans report delaying
medical care because of cost. So despite
the fact that the United States spends more than $9,000 per person on health
care(number one in the world), the US ranks 12th in life expectancy among the
12 wealthiest industrialized countries.
Of course, the statistics also show the 1% do not have issues with
access to healthcare or financial difficulty because of it. All the while, profits are soaring for all
Wall Street health related companies, their executives and even sales
associates comfortably among the top 10% of earners while the people who are
supposed to benefit from their services, the people who are paying their
salaries, are suffering and dying.
Related to the above is the opioid crisis. Millions have been swindled into relying upon
this most addictive class of drugs by doctors and pharmaceutical companies who
push pain medications on patients. When
patients are cut off by their doctors, they turn to the streets to buy heroin
or other opioids to assuage the pain of their medical condition or its treatment,
or perhaps even just to avert the pain of detoxing. It is estimated that several million
Americans are addicted to opioids.
Opioid addiction has also lead to a large increase in overdose death. The number of overdose deaths from opioid use
is 5 times higher than in the late 1990s with an estimated 115 deaths per day
in the United States from overdose. Lack
of treatment options and access to medical care is increasing the problems of
addiction and death.
The history of strained racial relations in the United States
is back to a fevered pitch not seen since the days of the Jim Crow south. Reports are up for instances of racial
discrimination and harassment.
Every year police in the United States kill 1000 plus
citizens. 99% of police in these
killings face no consequences for their use of state violence. African-Americans are 2.5 times as likely as
white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. Many of the victims of police violence are
unarmed. Just in the last few weeks in
Ohio, police shot and killed a 16 year old boy in a court room in which the
only ones who had weapons were the police.
Immigrants are feeling less and less safe in their
communities and less welcome in the United States. The federal government actively tries to
limit legal immigration for the first time in many generations, and
aggressively seeks out immigrants without legal status for deportation. The psychological implications and
repercussions of families being torn apart by these policies will reverberate
for many years.
Member of the LBGTQ+ community lack legal protections in most
states against housing and employment discrimination. So that means that for seven plus percent of
the population of the US firing or eviction is a real threat just for being who
they are.
The cost of higher education continues to rise. Since 1971, the average cost of a public four
year college has increased by 276%, and private colleges even more so. At the same time, median income in the United
States when adjusted for inflation has not risen, or has gone up very
little. This would seem to make higher
education out of reach for a lot of Americans.
However, student loans, which can never be discharged in bankruptcy
(thanks to a 1980s change in the bankruptcy laws), help students pay for the
education they receive. The problem is,
once the students graduate and enter the work force full time they are finding
they can’t pay these loans off or if they do, it is extraordinarily hard. Many
decide that taking 2nd or 3rd jobs is necessary just to
make ends meet. In an ironic twist of
fate, 22 states currently bar people in student loan default from getting a
driver’s license. A number of other
states will deny a professional certification to those in default. What this means for millions of college
educated Americans is they are forced to work a low paying job (or jobs) that
they attained higher education to avoid in order to pay back a student loan
that has given them little or no benefit.
This type of debt slavery is something one would have thought would be
from hundreds of years ago, not 2018, yet here it is, contributing to
ever-growing income inequality in the United States.
The lack of healthcare, and affordable higher education in
the United States is directly tied to US foreign policy and the profits of Wall
Street’s military industrial complex.
Currently the United States spends approximately 57% of its budget on
the military. Such outlays on military
spending mean, in essence, that the money can’t be used for healthcare and
education for the people who are in dire need of these services.
The military spending is so high because the United States
has over 900 bases of various sizes and components outside of the territories
of the nation. This, coupled with 6-8
wars of varying sizes at any time the last decade, means no money for anything
else. So besides the millions of deaths
caused by the US military since the end of World War II, large percentages of
the citizenry are no better off. Along
with this, Wall Street arms manufacturers in the US sell the most weaponry of
any nation. Thus, war is profitable and
peace is not an option if for no other reason that arms manufacturers would
lose profits. It should also be noted
that weapons sales by the US often go to dictatorships or other undemocratic
nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, just to name two.
The United States often touts itself as the beacon of
democracy for the world. As noted above in
regards to foreign policy, that assertion is false. However, it is also a suspect declaration
within the borders of the US as well. In
the United States, the right to vote for our elected “representatives” is
supposed be sacrosanct, but the facts prove otherwise. Upwards of two million citizens who are or
were incarcerated have no right to vote.
Millions more are purged from voter rolls because they didn’t vote in a
few elections. Many others are denied
the ability to vote for lack of proper identification, or ability to get to the
polls at an appointed time and place.
These facts, when coupled with Wall Street money in control of the
election process, limited ballot access, closed debates, and gerrymandering,
make the argument that the US is not a representative democracy - a strong one.
Despite all the above negatives for the people of the United
States (well at least 90% of us), there is something worse. Like the proverbial elephant in the room that
no one wishes to acknowledge or speak of, the environmental catastrophe that
humanity is heading for will engulf America, along with the rest of the world,
if not addressed.
This past year 15,000 scientists updated their predictions
about global warming that were first issued in 1992. We now know that if climate change is not
addressed in the next 20 years, the result would most likely be the extinction
of the human race in a century or so. We
are heading to a point of no return. If
global average temperatures increase by one degree centigrade (it is believed
that this could happen in 20-25 years’ time at current rates of carbon
emissions), it will start a process of ever increasing temperatures. This up escalator of warmth will spell the
end of human life, if not all life, on Earth.
Scientists already consider us living in the 6th great mass
extinction in Earth’s history, so it should come as no shock that humanity
could be added to the list. The greatest
contributor to climate change is fossil fuel, and the biggest burner of fossil
fuels is the United States. Wall Street
profits from fossil fuel exploitation are at an all-time high despite the
threat to the future caused by their use.
In conclusion, the State of the Union is perilous. The people and planet are being pushed to the
brink. We must push back. In order to survive, we have no choice. The fact of the matter is that we must work
together to make necessary changes, or we cannot last. Capitalism, of which the United States is the
great progenitor, has no solutions to the current state of crisis. Continued inequality among people and
destruction of the environment will only make the hole deeper that we should be
trying to get out of. Now is the time we
must consider how and where to push back against the forces that have created
this current state of affairs, and that time is running out.
