[Marxism] Some stats about the US.

[Steve Palmer <spalmer999@xxxxxxxxx>]

I decided to get some numbers together about the US for an article I'm writing 
and here is an overview. Note that it barely begins to look at class/'race' 
differences within the US:

The social infrastructure is in a terrible state: 30% of school students fail 
to graduate from high-school; School spending has fallen by two-fifths since 
2001 and in 43% of schools, the poor state of facilities interferes with 
delivering instruction. Internationally, in tests in 2006, the US was beaten in 
reading by 10 other countries, in scientific literacy by 22, and in 
mathematical literacy by 31. Statesâ expenditure on higher education has 
grown by 21% over the last 20 years â but on prisons by 127%. The US has 5% 
of the worldâs population and 25% of its prisoners: 1 in every 100 of its 
citizens are currently in jail.

When it comes to health, life expectancy is lower than in 41 other countries; 
infant mortality is higher than in 29 - and has actually increased and maternal 
mortality rates higher than in 35 other countries. Some 45 million people have 
no health insurance coverage. Annually, more than 3.5m people suffer 
homelessness, 1.35m of them children. Some 35m people, about 10% of the 
population suffer from hunger.

Employment has been falling absolutely for the last year and at an accelerating 
rate. In 2008 2.6m people lost their jobs, 1.9m in just the last 4 months of 
the year. The official unemployment rate is now 7.2%, but in some localities is 
more than twice that. Unofficial calculations show the rate to be considerably 
higher. Unlike in other imperialist countries, those who lose their jobs lose 
health benefits - if they had any. The share of employees with a work-related 
pension fell from 50.6% in 1979 to 42.8% in 2006. 60% of male workers have a 
real hourly wage that is absolutely lower than it was in 1979.

Physically, the United States itself is literally on the verge of collapsing 
and crumbling: of almost 600,000 bridges, more than 25% are structurally 
deficient or functionally obsolete; half the locks on 12,000 miles of inland 
waterways are functionally obsolete; more than 3,300 dams are unsafe or 
deficient, many of them susceptible to large flooding events or earthquakes; 
the highways need more than $150bn annually spent to maintain and improve them, 
but receive less than half that; Americans spend the equivalent of 2.5m working 
days every year stuck in traffic; commercial airline delays and cancellations 
have been increasing every year. Altogether there is about $1.6 trillion of 
infrastructure work needed.


      

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