Scary statistics on unemployment, inequality, climate change and more
by Tim Dickinson
Barack Obama doing his thing. (Photo: Charles Dharapak-Pool/Getty Images)
In tonight’s State of the Union speech, we’re likely to hear a lot about the nation’s continuing recovery from the Great Recession, and about Barack Obama’s determination to run an executive end-run around obstructionist Republicans in order to kick the economy into a higher gear.
But as the nation pauses for this annual moment of reflection on our fiscal and social health, too many leading indicators get short shrift. Here are 27 statistics – on unemployment, inequality, the drug war, defense spending, climate change and more – that underscore the troubled reality of America in 2014:
1. New income generated since 2009 that has gone to the top 1 percent: 95 percent
2. Financial wealth controlled by the bottom 60 percent of all Americans: 2.3 percent
3. Record combined wealth of the top 400 richest Americans: $2,000,000,000,000
4. Real decline in median middle-class incomes since 1999: $5,000
5. Percentage of Hispanic and African-American children living in poverty, respectively: 33.8 percent; 36.7 percent
6. Amount that food stamps will be cut in 2014: $5 billion
7. Federal minimum wage: $7.25
8. What the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968: $21.72
9. Number of U.S. workers laboring at or below minimum wage: 3.6 million – the near equivalent of the population of Los Angeles.
10.Stealth taxpayer subsidy to the fast-food industry, paid out as safety-net benefits to McWorkers earning poverty wages: $7 billion
11. Global carbon dioxide levels measured in parts per million: 397
12. Maximum concentration of the greenhouse gas that scientists deem sustainable: 350
13. Years since the turn of this century that have ranked among the warmest 15 on record: All 13
14. Rank of 2013 on that list of the warmest years on record: Number Four
15. U.S. defense spending as of 2012: $682 billion
16. Dollar amount by which that surpassed our nearest plausible military rival, China: $516 billion
17. Federal deficit last year: $680 billion
18. Number of Americans disenfranchised from voting for felony convictions: 5.9 million
19. Share of those disenfranchised voters who are African-American: 37 percent
20. Number of Americans arrested annually for marijuana possession: 658,000
21. Total incarcerated U.S. population: 2.3 million
22. Total population on probation/parole: 4.8 million
23. States that could be entirely filled by all of the Americans under correctional supervision: Nevada and Kentucky
24. Official unemployment rate: 6.7 percent
25. Alternate rate including Americans who’ve given up looking for work, or have only been able to secure part-time employment: 13.1 percent
26. Number of jobs the United States is still down from 2008 employment peak: 1.69 million
27. Number of Americans who were cut off from long-term unemployment benefits at the turn of the year: 1.3 million
Tim Dickinson is a journalist and contributing writer for Rolling Stone magazine.
