It doesn’t take genius to know why the USA has been in such sharp decline over the past three decades.
#1. The misdistribution of wealth which has kept middle class incomes flat for over three decades while the wealth of the nation has been concentrated in the hands of the top 0.01% of the nation.
INCOME GROUPS IN THE U.S. – Cerca 2006
Median — $25,076
Top 10% — $87,334
Top 5% — $120,212
Top 1% — $277,983
Top 0.5% — $397,949
Top 0.1% — $1,134,849
Top 0.01% — $5,349,795
#2: Unnecessary and prolonged wars, a worldwide military presence, and expenditures that exceed all of the other nations put together.
“For the 2010 fiscal year, the president’s base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $533.8 billion. Adding spending on ‘overseas contingency operations’ brings the sum to $663.8 billion.
“When the budget was signed into law on October 28, 2009, the final size of the Department of Defense’s budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more than President Obama had requested. An additional $37 billion supplemental bill to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was expected to pass in the spring of 2010, but has been delayed by the House of Representatives after passing the Senate. Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $319 billion and $654 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $1.01 and $1.35 trillion in fiscal year 2010.
#3. Financial service industry that consumes 40% of all corporate earnings. As of 2004, the financial services industry represented 20% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 in the United States.
#4. Exhorbitant health care costs.
According to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation: “In the United States, which has had both a high level of health spending per capita and a relatively high rate of real growth in that spending, the share of GDP devoted to health grew from 8.8% of GDP in 1980 to 15.2% of GDP in 2003 (Exhibit 5). This almost 7 percentage-point increase in the health share of GDP is larger than increases seen in other high-income countries.”
Current estimates put U.S. health care spending at approximately 16% of GDP, second highest to East Timor (Timor-Leste) among all United Nations member nations. The Health and Human Services Department expects that the health share of GDP will continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5% of GDP by 2017.”
#5) Soaring cost of petroleum imports.
Joseph Stigliltz in “FREEFALL” states: “The United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars importing oil – money that otherwise would have gone to support the U. S. economy. Oil prices rose from $32 a barrel in March 2003 when the Iraq war began to $137 per barrel in July 2008.”
