There’s anger in the air, considerable anger. No great surprise: At the end of October, there were nearly 16 million unemployed persons in the United States; a third had been unemployed for more than six months; there are six times as many job-seekers as there are job openings. Another 11.7 million people are either working part-time while hoping for full-time employment — the involuntarily underemployed, we may call them — or have simply given up looking for work. Factor in the number of immediate family members, and we’re looking at tens of millions more directly affected by unemployment.
This time around, it doesn’t feel like a manageable bump in the road; it looks more like a brick wall. So: There goes the retirement you’d so carefully planned; there goes college for your kids; there goes an earned life of relative ease; there, maybe, goes your house; there, maybe, goes your pension. More than enough to generate anger.
And more still: There go the American dreams — the personal dream that your kids would do better than you, that opportunity would be your life-long companion and theirs, along with your share of the national dream that America’s specialness was part of the natural order of things. Instead, two wars; a deficit high enough to enter orbit and getting higher every week, every day; America’s slippage and China’s ascendancy.
Anger, and resentment. Who are those striped-suiters over at Goldman Sachs who have set aside $16.7 billion for this year’s bonus pool, an average of more than $700,000 per employee? How cozy are they and their colleagues with the White House, with members of Congress? They eat cake and caviar whenever they choose; the lines at the soup kitchens and food pantries grow longer all the while.
Anger, resentment and fear, too, inchoate fear: Is our world collapsing? What sort of world will our children and theirs inhabit?
All this is in the air, not yet significantly on the street, much less the still non-existent barricades. We have no way of estimating how many of the tens of millions of our neighbors who are at immediate risk, nor how many of the rest of us who are merely queasy, have found public ways to express our private distress. There are the tea parties and the manipulated town meetings, but for the time being not much more save, perhaps, for a general decline into crude populism. But the point here is not the uncertain future that awaits, a politics of hope replaced by an anti-politics of resentment. The point is that the anger is fully reasonable. We dare not dismiss the anger because it sometimes — not all that often — devolves into genuinely stupid arguments about “death panels” and such.
What to do about the anger, the resentment, the fear? From the do-good left, we hear pleas for a rebirth of civility. In this view, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are the villains, and we need to wean ourselves off of them and their kind. We need courses on civility in our schools and a total rejection of demagoguery and defamation in our public discourse.
As they used to say about enemas, it wouldn’t hurt. But these sunshine steps are hardly an adequate response to a condition that is rooted in objective circumstance. It is not that we have lately picked up some unpleasant rhetorical habits; it is that we have been double-crossed. Limbaugh and Beck are villains, to be sure — but the joblessness, the foreclosures, the withering of the dream does not derive from them. It is not civility we lack; it is confidence, security, hope. It is institutions we can trust to turn the tide, leaders we can trust to manage those institutions fairly and wisely. For the sun is not shining, and talking it up won’t make it so. There is a steady drizzle and the sense that not far off a Category 5 storm is brewing. Where are the levees? Have they, too, been privatized?
The generally accepted measure of inequality of income (not wealth, just income) is called the Gini coefficient. America’s current score is 45, where 0 represents perfect equality (all households have the same income) and 100 represents perfect inequality (one household has all the income, all the rest have nothing). Is 45 “good”? Consider: Sweden, with a score of 23, has the flattest — i.e., the most equal — income distribution in the world. Germany, France, Belgium, Hungary and Denmark are among others that score in the 20 to 30 range. Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea and Italy, among others, score between 30 and 33. The United States, at 45, is in 95th place, in close proximity to Kenya, the Philippines, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uruguay, Jamaica and Uganda. (Israel, at 38.6, is in 67th place.)
Yes, lessons in anger management might be helpful. But they offer at best symptomatic relief. The underlying sources of the anger — bluntly, the excesses and corruptions and conceits of capitalism — remain. Trust Goldman Sachs to see to it that they not be disturbed.
Neither bread and circuses nor soothing talk of civic virtue will be sufficient to contain the anger or to relieve the distress. Repair must begin with the acknowledgment of and respect for our neighbors’ pain. Some of them will doubtless remain beyond reasonable reach; with the others, organize, ensure that that the elections of 2010 are not a demagogic shouting match but a sober and coherent campaign, together take back the day.
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Keep in mind that economic depression equals a rise in anti-Semitism. People want to blame someone for their woes. IT is interesting to note that there are not any poor starving politicians who are loosing their homes.
Who are those striped-suiters over at Goldman Sachs who have set aside $16.7 billion for this year’s bonus pool, an average of more than $700,000 per employee...didnt the Anointed Ones Secy of the Treasury Timothy Geithner come from Goldman Sachs?
America’s current score is 45, where 0 represents perfect equality (all households have the same income) and 100 represents perfect inequality (one household has all the income, all the rest have nothing). Is 45 “good”? ... is total equality good? If so, Sweden must be experiencing massive immigration from the US. Careful however, Swedish customs inspectors are looking out for contraband Palestinian organs when we enter Stockholm at Bildt crossing
I have my own favorite statistic. Look at Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2004-2005, Table No. 672. Share of Aggregate Income Received by EachFifth and Top 5 Percent of Families: 1980 to 2002.
In round numbers, the top 20% of the population got about half of all income, the next 20% got half of the remaining income, and so forth, until the bottom 20% got 4.2% of total income.
That means that to a close approximation, almost the entire production of the U.S. is created for the benefit of the top 20% or 40%, and certainly for the top 60%. As far as the free market is concerned, the bottom 40% is a niche market or almost a rounding error.
I once compared that distribution with the corresponding Swedish statistics. They had figures that corresponded to our top 20%, 40%, and 60% -- but they didn't have a bottom 40% like ours. The Scandinavian countries have basically eliminated poverty.
John F. Kennedy pledged to eliminate poverty. He failed. (We did go to the moon, though.)
It doesn't look like the Democratic Party represented by Obama is going to deliver. All you have to do is look at their $100 million corporate campaign contributions to see whose interests they're serving. We should have supported candidates who support our interests.
America is run by fascists. Wall Street and all big business interests and foreign interests and their billions and tens of thousands of lobbyists undermine and corrupt democracy. Most policies in the past forty years have been designed to benefit the wealthy who have gotten progressively and insanely richer and more powerful that it almost doesn't matter if you vote or not. A revolution though will not happen for a while, we still have in place programs FDR put in place, the bottom are too uneducated and too used to being down and the middle and upper middle, older, settled still have it relatively good and have been bought off for a while with trillions printed and borrowed to prop up the financial system.
GOODBYE, AMERICA!
Goodbye, America, my country! Goodbye, my dearest, goodbye. Above our heads is rising sultry, Socialistic crimson sky. From Western lands to the Eastern border From Northern lakes to Florida estates We will create a better social order Just like the one they had in the Soviet states. Denounce profits, where they abound! With neither doubt nor redundant care We'll redistribute wealth around So everyone enjoys an equal share! For all the people of this sunny nation We'll moderate an equal monthly pay. By way of total wealth elimination. We'll all get poor. Poor, but the same! We strive towards this noble goal untiring. We are so close, we're sure almost there. Already numerous Acorn battalions Are waiting for the final signal flare. And then we heard HIS voice elated: "The hope!", "The change", and "Yes, we can!" HE, neatly dressed, for stardom slated, To build this land anew began. Aside cast doubts, qualms, and fears HIS hand steers firmly towards the sun. For us... We shall extend a hand to peers: Iran, Al-Qaida, Cuba, Taliban. Venezuela, China, North Korea Hamas and Burma, and everyone else. We'll blush, apologize. For this idea They will forgive us our offense. We'll feed them all, of course no strings attaching. (They're our foes no more just so you know). And then at last, our behavior so touching, The world will love us dearly once more. There won't be turning back allowed We'll press ahead together, no dissent. We'll treat the sick for free of charge, no doubt To keep the workforce healthy and content. We'll love ourselves and one another. For godly deeds, we'll simply worship HIM. Instead of burning oil and coal we rather Should keep this country and the planet green. While stubbornly ahead we're storming The evil of capitalism killing, We'll stop the spread of global warming And heat producing shameless profiteering. Let children of this people's nation Recite aloud cheerful hoorays. And thank their leader with exhilaration For childhood full of happy, sunny days. No more of unapproved persuasions. No more of undesirable qualms. We'll come to love with utter adulation HIS own, true religion - Islam. We won't have need for Christ or Moses What purpose do they now have for us? And the CIA that trouble causes We'll simply throw under the bus. And then, atop white horses riding, We'll crush the villains at their crux. Who secretly in Pentagon are hiding, And on TV, on the channel Fox. The parties' quarrels irritating Will melt like a snow on a grassy knoll With all Republicans rotating To "socialistas" once and for all. We'll all be happy and ecstatic Ourselves and neighbors loving while. And if you're not... Well, there's the Arctic Where one may end up in exile. The sky gets dark, the night is scary. A frost chained any glimpse of thought. It's cold and we're feeling wary... Can't we stop madness's onslaught? We ran from it, yet again it's shown In Socialism's ugly scowl. It's so familiar, so known. Shall we run again? But where now?