The persistence of American carnage

Wages have been stagnant since Dark Side of the Moon was released, but the rich have never gotten richer faster. We may be only a few years away from seeing the world’s first trillionaire. Meanwhile, many of us have no job in the traditional sense but are slaves to the gig economy, driving strangers in our own vehicles for less than minimum wage. Much-vaunted new manufacturing jobs are concentrated in Southern states, where pay is low, benefits non-existent, collective bargaining virtually prohibited by law, and safety conditions appalling. Meanwhile Ford is on the cusp of laying off thousands of workers in Michigan.

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This is to say nothing of a thousand other non-economic measures, some of them more tangible than others, that suggest that America is not booming like never before. Millions are poisoning themselves with drugs; more of us die of overdoses each year than were lost in the whole of the Vietnam War. Anxiety and depression are ubiquitous. Children are cutting their bodies to pieces, taking their own lives and those of their classmates and teachers. A sizable percentage of the population now believes that schools are so dangerous that teachers must arm themselves at all times and be prepared to shoot their students. The elderly are abandoned to squalor while profiteers rob their families and the public purse. We are becoming appallingly fat. Real cooking is now a luxury, even and indeed especially in those parts of the country where most of our food is grown. The cost of health care is bankrupting what is left of the middle class. Single Americans stay in bad jobs because making more money will mean that they lose subsidized access to their medications. Former students hold a trillion and a half dollars of debt. The average family cannot spare $1,000 for an emergency. In many parts of this country more black babies are being aborted than born.

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