Best of Times, Worst of Times

Having Everything—Having Nothing

In his novel “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens writes of life in Paris and London just before and during the French Revolution of 1789. His first paragraph may be instructive about the differences between the rich and poor in the United States in 2015: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

There isn’t much doubt that our society is beginning to live in the best of times for a few and the worst of times for millions of others. The evidence shows that the richest 400 Americans own over $2.2 trillion in wealth, more than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. The world is no better off. The richest 224 people in the world have more cash and assets than the bottom two billion.

In their winter of despair nearly half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings and have no idea how they will be able to retire with some dignity. That savings total means they could live in poverty for short of six months—and the United States is the only major country on earth that refuses to guarantee health care for all citizens. The 400 richest average $2.5 billion each to retire on and live long after, having superlative health care.

One of the best examples of how it’s the best of times for a few and the worst of times for millions is the small city of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a poor town that’s in a state which leads the nation in child hunger, poverty, and high school dropout rates.

Billionaire Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways, convinced New Mexico politicians that if they provided money to build Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences the enterprise would bring in millions of dollars from rich tourists to ride space ships so they could live through just a few minutes of weightlessness.

The two poor counties where the 27 square-mile facility now exists provided $76 million while the poor state invested about $175 million, all to provide rich people a 2.5-hour flight to 68 miles above the earth. Branson, a pretty good promoter of space adventures, sold $250,000 tickets to over 700 richies who wanted to experience something “different.”

And then SpaceShipTwo, the craft which would take all of these passengers almost directly to Heaven--who had everything anyway--to the edge of space, crashed in the Mojave Desert in a 2014 test flight. Back to the drawing boards. Since the crash killed the pilot, evidently because of an error in design, Spaceport America has been very silent and largely vacant, losing over $500,000 a year.

Watching over $200 million worth of stuff decaying in the New Mexico desert, Truth and Consequences residents are still desperately waiting for the millions to flow their way. The average annual income is $15,000, with one third below the poverty line. Only 20% of residents over 25 have BA degrees.

Virgin Galactic refuses to even predict when it will fly to near Heaven again. No one in Truth or Consequences can afford the ticket to weightlessness. Some residents think that the Pueblo Indians when they were kicked off the local land by whites, put a curse on it, saying that no white man would ever be successful in the area. So far the residents are “all going direct the other way”—opposite from Heaven.

We Are Now Entering the Winter of Despair

I was not at all surprised to see that the three local colleges and universities have declining enrollments in a growing metro area. Take a look at increasing tuition and exploding student debt and at diplomas at public universities selling for $100,000 to $200,000. The rich can buy one at Harvard or Yale for as little as $400,000.

Not too long ago the United States led the world in terms of the percentage of young people earning college degrees. Parents with a median income of about $50,000 could contribute to at least some of the college costs because states still accepted the responsibility of actually funding a major share.

But while student tuition and college costs have been steadily rising, wages have basically stayed the same for almost forty years—and the median family income of the middle class has even declined.

In a highly competitive global environment we have fallen to 12th place in the percentage of young people gaining degrees. Student debt now totals more than credit card debt at over $1.2 trillion. Bankers are getting richer from student interest payments as high as 8% while Wall Street banks can borrow money at a little over 1%.

Many young people are waving goodbye to the passing American Dream because they can’t afford higher ed and crushing oppressive debt. Some politicians admit that many working graduates cannot afford to buy homes and cars and must live with parents to cover college debt.

United States 67, China 1

We currently spend more money on our military forces than the next nine biggest countries combined—and our dysfunctional government has signed treaties with 67 countries guaranteeing them that if they are threatened by another foreign power we will come to the rescue.

Are we really the world’s policeman? China has just passed us in Gross National Product but they have signed only one treaty of that nature. Our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of wounded both physically and mentally, and several trillion dollars.

Our last aircraft carrier, the Jerry R. Ford, cost us over $13 billion without airplanes.The new carrier planes may run about $120 million each. Navy planes cost more than Air Force planes ($110 million) because of modifications for carrier landings.

The Army has 21,000 armored trucks weighing 16 tons called MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) that cost us about $1 million each. They want to sell 13,000 of them to our “friends” around the world, mothball 4,000, and keep 4,000 of them in service—although they are very costly to maintain and often tip over because they are—well—top heavy. We built 27,000 of them because it was also used by the Marines. It costs $12,000 to cut each into scrap. The Army wants to buy 20,000 more trucks of a lighter model costing only $250,000 each.

Our new F-35 II Lightning fighter can now actually fly in the rain. It couldn’t for several years during development. Something about the electronics taking on water during flight. It was grounded last year because it leaked oil and sometimes burst into flames taking off. By the end of 2014 we had spent enough money on the “world’s greatest fighter” that we could have bought each homeless person in the United States a $664,000 home.

The compassionate conservative Ronald Reagan once said that the homeless like to sleep outside on warm sidewalk grates, so I guess the homes would not have been used. The Pentagon at one time wanted to buy 2,457 F-35s. I hope the generals and admirals have changed their minds.

In 2013 the Navy took off and landed an X-47B drone on an aircraft carrier by computer. This experimental plane can carry over two tons of bombs and armaments. Only two were built costing $700 million each. In 2015 the plane was refueled in air for the first time. Technically it could fly for days without a pilot. Interesting.

We keep hearing that we need more Navy ships. Let’s just look at the world situation for aircraft carriers for a minute. We have 19 carriers of one kind or another, with ten of them of the major type. The rest of the world has 12, smaller and less technically advanced than U.S. carriers. China has one. They bought an off-shore casino ship from the Ukraine and retrofitted it to become an aircraft carrier. The last I heard the Chinese had flown one plane off of it but hadn’t figured out how to land one on it yet. The United Kingdom and Spain have two; Brazil, France, India, Russia, and Thailand have one. If you have investment money, buy stocks in companies making military equipment. It’s a guaranteed cost-overrun deal.

This Is What Disaster Capitalism Is All About

There’s no doubt that the 99 Percent in America are the victims of disaster capitalism, an economic program designed by Wall Street Casino operators for the care and feeding of the One Percent. They are opposed to living wages for workers who put in 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year, for forty years serving our society. Steven Thrasher in the Guardian writes: “Disaster capitalism has become our most common mode of life.”

Naomi Klein defined disaster capitalism in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: “Disaster capitalism is an orchestrated raid on the middle class.” As an example, New York City has hundreds of full-time workers who are homeless because they can’t afford housing in any part of the city. Even the conservative New York Post opines: “These are people who clean our trash and make our city, the heart of American capitalism safe and livable, including those who plunder the globe from Wall Street. These are men and women, living in shelters and out of their cars who have government jobs—the kind of workers conservatives love to paint as greedy, gluttonous pigs.”

It’s the same story in Silicon Valley in California. Full-time bus drivers who ferry tech workers to their jobs all over the San Francisco area at all times of the day and night are not paid a living wage by Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. Many argue whether living in your car translates to “making your ends meet.”

This is what has happened to the cost of living for our grandchildren under disaster capitalism: (1) The average price of a wedding in this country is now $31,213, (2) If you live to be 85 you will need $1,250,000 to cover your retirement years, (3) Raising a child these days runs $245,340 to age 18, (4) The cheapest public higher ed program now runs $80,000 for a four-year degree.

These figures remind me of a New Yorker cartoon where a father is holding several dollars in his hand while addressing his very young child: “This is money---get ready to worry about it for the rest of your life.” What a proverb to pass on to the next generation.

The members of the Walton family do not have to worry about their grandchildren. But maybe their father Sam Walton, the founder of WalMart and the source of their world-leading $150 billion, uttered the same words to them. They pay such lousy wages to their help that it is estimated that each WalMart store in the U.S. costs taxpayers an average of $1 million a year to supplement full-time WalMart employees with food stamps and other government benefits.

A Modern Complex Society Demands Investment in Infrastructure and Education—Where’s the Money?

In order to compete economically with other countries, we need the best infrastructure and the best educational system. We have neither.

Millions of Americans are now working longer hours for lower wages while the rich hog all the new income—and then shelter their money in thousands of shadow subsidiaries in hundreds of tax havens around the world. The 500 largest companies hide $2.1 trillion overseas representing $620 billion in U.S. taxes. That would buy a lot of roads, bridges, and new airports while educating a lot of American students. Pfizer Drugs hides $74 billion in 151 shadow companies—and Congress sits there and argues about Benghazi and Planned Parenthood.