1. Completely upgrade our ailing infrastructure ($3.6 trillion);
2. Invest the upfront costs to implement the Stanford University plan for 100% renewable energy in the US by 2050, creating almost 6 million jobs over 40 years in the process ($350 billion * );
3. Expand Medicare to cover all Americans ($394 billion);
4 Double the salary of all high school teachers ($80 billion)
Instead, we have the budgetary sinkhole that has become the security state; simultaneously, our politicians have implemented major tax cuts for the wealthy. The result over the past 15 years is that we have witnessed the largest transfer of money upward to the wealthiest segment of our society. Four hundred Americans now have more wealth, totaling $2 trillion, than 50% of all Americans combined. We have also officially become an oligarchy, where only corporations and the super wealthy are able to influence policy.
What are the implications of this chasm in socioeconomic equality in terms of America's security?
Inequality and Domestic Security
In their seminal 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett explain their findings from years of research on social inequality and its relationship to the security of societies. Based on studies of the wealthiest nations (market democracies), societies that have greater disparities of wealth -- and, hence, social status -- tend to experience lower levels of well-being and stability as indicated by the following criteria: 1) lower levels of trust among members of society, 2) higher rates of mental illness and addiction, 3) lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates, 4) more obesity, 5) lower children's educational performance, 6) higher teenage births, 7) more homicides, 8) high incarceration rates, and 9) less social mobility.
These trends held regardless of the overall wealth of the societies involved. More equality made between 3 and 10 times a difference in well-being and social security when comparing the market democracies of the world.
Let's look at how the US rates on these criteria:
1) Only 1/3 of Americans trust others, according to a 2013 AP-GfK poll
2) The US has the highest rate of mental illness, including addiction, in the world (WHO)
3) Life expectancy for the US is 26th out of the 36 OECD nations, while the US also has the worst infant mortality rate in the West (CDC)
4) According to a study published by The Lancet in 2014, the US is the most obese nation on the planet
5) The US ranks 36th in the world for educational performance
6) The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world (CDC)
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