Welcome to the new America: Work more, earn less

The SF Chronicle has an excellent article on the new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Among many of the disturbing numbers we find more people in our nation going without health care insurance, individuals making less money and more seniors living in poverty.

Tuesday's good news -- that median household income increased from $45,817 in 2004 to $46,326 in 2005 -- raised more questions than it answered about the nation's working population. For California, the figure was $53,629.

How could household income go up and individual income drop? Men's income fell to $41,386 and women's to $31,858.

David Johnson, chief of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division of the U.S. Census Bureau, suggested there were more people working per household to make ends meet, but working at individual jobs that pay less.

"It's clear that the income increase that happened in 2005 is attributable to elderly households," Sherman said, because their investments paid off well. But "working-age households saw a decline."

While Bush and his administration point to the fact that the number of Americans living below the poverty line has stabilized, the reality is:

that even though the poverty rates stabilized between 2004 and 2005 -- the headline that the Census Bureau used on its news release Tuesday -- the rate in 2005 was well above 2001's 11.7 percent.

The bottom line with the poverty figures is that the number of Americans living in poverty has increased during the GOP takeover of our government, and at the same time CEO's of defense companies are now making double what they did in 2001:

WASHINGTON - The chief executives of corporations making big profits from the war on terror are enjoying far bigger pay increases than CEOs of nondefense companies, according to a study by two liberal groups.

The study, conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, found that, on average, CEOs of corporations with extensive defense contracts are getting paid about double what they made before Sept. 11, 2001.

Remember, it is OUR tax dollars that are going into the pockets of these defense companies, and while individuals are becoming rich off the war on terror our nation is suffering from lack of infrastructure repair, shortfalls in education funding, a lack of affordable health care for Americans and, well, the list of programs that don't have the money to provide services to working Americans is just too long to post.

More below the fold

Decades ago our nation was warned by President Eisenhower, a Republican and a former General, to be wary of the military industrial complex:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

President Eisenhower also stated:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

The report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau underscores both of the above statements. We have allowed unwarranted influence by the military -industrial complex, the CEO's of those companies are not only making huge profits, but are at the same time being allowed to control our government to the determent of our nation.

And while the defense industry continues to gain in power, influence and money, the average American is making less money, has to struggle to afford health care and is losing ground. There is a set amount of ground to deal with, and when one group takes more then a reasonable share that windfall comes from the rest of us. They gain and we lose, as the Census Bureau's figures show.

Right now the defense contractors have control of far more ground then is reasonable or good for our nation. Perhaps even more insulting is the fact that those in our society who are least able to afford to lose what little they have are the ones who end up giving the most. For example more seniors in our nation are finding out that they no longer are able to make ends meet:

-- More seniors over 65 were poor in 2005 -- 3.6 million -- than in 2004, when 3.5 million seniors were poor, according to the federal standard.

12.9 million American children are living in poverty. 12.9 MILLION children, in America, suffer because of the policies of this administration:

"We're seeing a general theme of divergences (between the economic classes), and we can't say the country as a whole is doing better," said Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank.

The children and seniors of our nation deserve better, the working people of our nation deserve better. We are not safer as a nation by allowing the military-industrial complex to become wealthy on our tax dollars, rather we do harm that goes far beyond what any bomb could ever hope to accomplish.