Michael Lissack the government declared a health-care crisis because the percentage of GNP spent on medical costs was 7.5 percent. Today we spend 14 percent and the number of uninsured has ballooned to more than 35 million. The United States was a creditor nation in the 1970’s. In the 1980’s, for the first time in the century- it became the world’s largest debtor nation. In 1974 we worked shorter hours for more money. Real wages peaked in 1973 and have been declining every since, yet we work on average one month more per year now than we did two decades ago. The picture is even more dismal for those out of work. In 1974 a 6 percent unemployment rate was considered both economically and politically unacceptable. Today it is the target figure for the current administration. Moreover, income distribution was more equitable in 1974, when the top tax bracket stood at 70 percent. It subsequently declined to 28 percent during the Reagan era, allowing wealth to concentrate further without a broadening in the middle. For the poor, the past two decades have been especially cruel. The poverty rate among children, for instance, has risen dramatically, striking one in five today compared with only one in seven in 1974. The signs of political, economic, and social decay are everywhere. Wages of production workers in America have declined 20 percent since 1973, as corporations have shifted millions of jobs. Among the twenty most devel- oped nations, the United States is first in divorce and teenage pregnancy. The cost of health care has exploded, and a record number of Americans are now without the type of health insurance which matters most -- coverage for acute critical care. The ranks of the poor have officially swelled to record numbers, including more than 10 million children. Crime in America is at an all-time high, even though our prison population is proportionally larger than that of any other country in the world. Nineteen countries have infant mortality rates lower than that of the United States. For more than a decade during this decline the officials in power argued that nothing was wrong and that nothing could be done about it anyway. This was their oft stated “law of unintended consequences.” Try to assist the poor, and you will only make them more dependent and demoralized. Try to regulate the economy, and you will only squelch the productive energies of
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