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This section will provide constantly updated
statistics you can use as "ammunition" when explaining the state of the world
under capitalism! Please send any interesting stats you have to
info@newyouth.com.
Some basic stats for
the last 20 years in the United States:
- Children living in poverty increased 38%
- Wages down for those under 25 33%
- Wages down for high school dropouts 23%
- Wages down for high school graduates 17%
- Wages down for some college 8%
- Wages up for college graduates 5%
- Average wage down 14% since 1988.
- Unemployment rates in inner city America is between 30% and 50%.
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Trade Unions
- Ninety-one percent of employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80% require immediate supervisors to attend training sessions on how to attack unions; and 79% have supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
- Eighty percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
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Instances of the U.S. dropping bombs since World War II - Compiled by William Blum:
- China 1945-46
- Korea 1950-53
- China 1950-53
- Guatemala 1954
- Indonesia 1958
- Cuba 1959-60
- Guatemala 1960
- Congo 1964
- Peru 1965
- Laos 1964-73
- Vietnam 1961-73
- Cambodia 1969-70
- Guatemala 1967-69
- Grenada 1983
- Lebanon 1984
- Libya 1986
- El Salvador 1980s
- Nicaragua 1980s
- Panama 1989
- Iraq 1991-99
- Sudan 1998
- Afghanistan 1998
- Yugoslavia 1999
NONE of these bombings have led
to a "democratic" government even though this was more often than not the reason
given for the aggression.
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Poverty:
- Per capita, more Americans live in poverty than anytime since 1959.
- The World Health Organization claims the biggest killer in the world today is not cancer
or any other disease but “deep poverty”.
- In the United States the richest society in the whole of human history, 32 million
people were living below the poverty line in 1988 (this was at the height of a 1980’s
boom) and nearly one in five children were born into poverty.
- Catholic Charities said that the number of meals they provided nationwide in 1996 had
increased by 16%, and nights people spent in shelters increased 35%.
- In Britain one in three children grow up in poverty (defined as being half the average
wage), and one in five households have no breadwinner.
- In 1992 the total economic output of the whole world was five times what it was in 1950,
yet poverty is worse than what it was 45 years ago.
- 97 percent of the rural population of Bolivia (the poorest Latin American country) are
below the UN poverty line.
- In Britain, working class people are two times more likely to die of cancer and three
times more likely to die of heart disease than the rich or middle classes.
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Stress:
- Work [within the capitalist paradigm] is a major cause of stress and of 5000 office
workers surveyed in 16 countries by the Financial Times said that there stress
levels had risen in the last two years.
- Americans now work an average of 164 more hours annually than 20 years ago that amounts
to about a month more at the work place.
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Misled and Exploited:
- People in the Eastern bloc in 1989 were promised a better deal under capitalism but five
years later the living standards have been cut by 40 or 50 percent.
- The Wall Street Journal just put out the 1997 Index of Economic Freedom.
The two winners who they give their highest accolades to? Singapore and Bahrain.
Right-wing Fascist police states where unions are outlawed.
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Growing Inequality:
- America now has the highest inequality of income in the industrialized world. In 1940 we
had the least disparity of wealth with CEOs making about 12 times that of their average
worker. Now it is 180 times as much. So this as seen CEO salaries increase 500% since 1980
while wage earners salaries have dropped 5%.
- The United States is tied with Guatemala in having the richest and poorest 20% of the
population.
- The 3 richest people in the US have a combined wealth equal to more than 115 million
ordinary working class Americans.
- The world's 358 billionaires have more assets than the combined incomes of countries
representing nearly half - 45 per cent - of the planet's population.
- Since Bill Clinton took office, the wealthiest 1% of Americans incomes have gone up 31%.
- Over the last 15 years the amount of American billionaires have increased 1300%, the
limit needed to be listed in the Forbes 400 has increased 500% and those in the $120,000
income bracket has increased by 25%.
- 2/3 of working Americans make less in purchasing power than they did in 1979.
- In 1980 the top managers of the top 300 US companies had income 29 times larger than
that of a manufacturing worker, by 1990 the same companies had a 93 times greater income.
- In the past 25 years real wages for males (wages being money paid for labor rather than
pushing paper or talking on the phone) has dropped 15%.
- In 1992 the total economic output of the whole world was five times what it was in 1950,
yet poverty is worse than what it was 45 years ago.
- In 1950 the richest fifth of the worlds population took home 30 percent of the worlds
income, today that richest fifth take home 60 percent of the worlds income.
- Today's poorest fifth of the world share a mere 1.4 percent of the worlds income.
- In the period since 1979 in the ex USSR, trade union membership has halved, mass
unemployment and the underclass have become a permanent feature of life, casualisation of
labor has rocketed, the gap between rich and poor has mushroomed?
- In addition to concentrating wealth and power, today's fossil-fuel-based system has
engendered large imbalances in energy use and social well-being. Its benefits have
not been extended to roughly 2 billion of the world's poor--a third of global
population--who still rely on biomass for cooking and lack access to electricity.
Today, the richest fifth of humanity consumes 58 percent of the world's energy, while the
poorest fifth uses less than 4 percent. The United States, with 5 percent of the
world's population, uses nearly one quarter of global energy supplies; on a per capita
basis, it consumes twice as much energy as Japan and 12 times as much as China.
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Malnourishment
and Starvation:
- Two billion people world wide live below the bread line in third world countries.
- 500 million people most under the age of five will not survive to childbearing age
because there isn't enough food to eat.
- An expert for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations said that if food
production was organized as it is in Holland, there would be enough food to feed 67
billion people that's 15 times the worlds population. (An argument to show there is enough
food to go round).
- The British government dishes out 26 million a year to farmers to stop them producing
food.
- If 0.5 percent of the worlds' spending on weapons was diverted to agriculture in Africa,
then ¾ of that continent's poverty would be lifted.
- Americans spend 11% of their incomes on food while most of Africa spends 80%.
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Health Care:
- 13 percent of the national income for the US is devoted to the system of health care,
which is far less efficient than the health service of Britain, where only 5 percent of
the national income is devoted to the health service. This is because the US health
service is a profit making business.
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Racism:
- One out of five instances in American society where black people who have exactly the
same qualifications as their white counterparts go to the bank to get a mortgage, they are
denied.
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Women:
- 2/3 of minimum wage earners are women.
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Corporate Welfare:
- In 1995 we spent $167 billion on corporate welfare, about twice what we spend on Food
Stamps, AFDC and HUD combined.
- Citizens for Tax Justice say the Republican Tax Bill would cost the lowest 40% of
Americans about $10 a year. It would give the middle 40% of Americans about $250 a year
and give those making $300,000 and up $27,000 a year. Let's see, that's a fine for about
half of us, a new set of tires for the other half us and a new Cadillac for 1% of us. What
a deal!
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Cost of Living:
- In 1970 a new house cost twice the annual salary of a married couple even with only one
working. Today a new house costs four times as much with most couples both working.
- Between 1978 and 1988 the richest 1% of Americans had their incomes rise by 122% while
the bottom 60% saw their incomes drop.
- A minimum wage $4.35 an hour job at 40 hours a week is $9048 a year. Take out daycare
expenses at a low $50 per week per child leaves $3848 a year income leaving $310 a month
for food, clothing, utilities and rent for a mother of two.
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Government:
- In 1996 unions put $35 million into the election process against the $242 million put in
by business.
- Of the cuts in entitlements the 104th Congress has initiated, 93% of them were on the
poor.
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Corporations:
- Since 1983 the Dow Jones has gone up 450%, Corporate profits up 200%, union membership
went down 5% and medium income went stagnant.
- Mike Ovitz, who was fired as CEO of Disney Co. after 14 months as incompetent, was given
only $90 million in severance play. He is of course suing for more. John Walter, who was
fired as CEO of ATT after only 9 months of incompetency was given only $25 million.
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