DUCKPOND

Alexander Cockburn reflects on the state of mind among some citizens of the greatest bar none country in the world:

Time made Vladimir Putin its Man of the Year. Chalk it up as nostalgia for the cold war, when America was great, and a working man in a state like Michigan had two cars, a nice house, a country cabin, a health plan, a pension and a wife who stayed at home, canning fruit and batting her eyes at the postman. These days he has two lousy jobs, she has three and they have negative equity in their home, no health plan and no pension.

A couple of indices of how down many Americans are feeling about the future: The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has reached its highest point in at least 25 years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported.

The rate rose by about 20 percent between 1999 and 2004 for U.S. residents ages 45 through 54 ­ far more than among younger adults, whose own suicide stats are also on the rise.

In 2004, there were 16.6 completed suicides per 100,000 people in the 45-54 cohort, the highest it’s been since the CDC started tracking such rates, around 1980. The previous high was 16.5, in 1982, a year when there was a terrible farm crisis in the Mid-West.

These days it’s the health care crisis. People can’t even afford to get finished off respectably by a doctor or a hospital, so they have to do it themselves.

The second index of desperation is a sudden spike in teen pregnancies, particularly among young black women. As R.F. Blader wrote a few days ago here on this site, “When we believe in our opportunities, we safeguard our futures. Conversely, we behave self-destructively when we have no hope. For many teenagers in America, the options aren’t heartening. In a society where opportunities are scarce and life is getting harder, getting pregnant puts a positive spin on a vote of no-confidence.” Indeed some argue that having babies early is a very rational choice for a young black teen, since her support network of kin are still alive, and her own body not wasted by the toxins associated with low income neighborhoods.

It is passing strange, if true, why such information is not published in the main stream media. However, we are told in a mixture of awe and the absurd by The Sydney Morning Herald, that a Murdock scion is renting a Palm Beach house for $38,000 per week. If only the inequality in wealth reflected the contribution to society, since it seems affordable, it might then be justifiable. Sadly, and it cannot be reported, it is merely reflecting a corrupt power structure, enthusiastically endorsed by the market proponents of inequality and violence. And to think that the big problems facing the world is the thought and behavior of extremists of all hues, including Christians, Muslims, Hindus, even Buddhists?

ELSEWHERE:

Andrew Leigh has some thoughts on inequality – it is as well I do not leave you just with my dispassionate views on these matters.

Then there is Kevin Drum at Political Animal, via Nicholas Gruen at Club Troppo, who observes:

. . . by far the biggest beneficiaries of skyrocketing income inequality [in the United States] have been the top 1%, the top 0.1%, and the top 0.01%. Not even Republicans will try to make the case that the top 1% have become better educated over the past 40 years compared to the top 10%, so if that’s where income inequality is concentrated then education just can’t be a huge factor. If you’re interested in the truth, you have to look elsewhere.