Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (102 page)

7
. Tony Judt, “Europe vs. America,”
New York Review of Books,
Feb. 10, 2005, 37–41. The rate of such mortality in the United States had been 12.6 per 1,000 live births in 1980. In 1999 it was 7.1. At that time the rate for blacks was 14.6, compared to 5.8 for whites.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 78.

8
. The number of manufacturing jobs declined from 21.9 million in 1980 to 19.9 million in 2000.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 385.

9
. The value of the minimum wage in constant 2000 dollars was $6.72 in 1975, $5.36 in 1985, $4.80 in 1995, and, of course, $5.15 in 2000. Ibid., 405.

10
.
New York Times
, June 8, Nov. 25, 2002.

11
. Ibid., Jan. 16, Feb. 18, 2002. By mid-2004, it was estimated that 60 percent of American oil consumption was from imports. Ibid., June 20, 2004.

12
. Steven Fraser,
Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American
Life (New York, 2004), 600;
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 735.

13
. Robert Samuelson, “The Age of Inflation,”
New Republic
, May 13, 2002, 32–41. Most of these holdings were in mutual funds, retirement accounts, and other managed assets, all of which expanded greatly in the 1990s. By 2000, 34 million Americans had 401(k) pension plans, with assets totaling $1.7 trillion (compared to 7.5 million people who had had these in 1985). Fraser,
Every Man a Speculator
, 582–83. Ownership of stocks, as of other sources of wealth in America, was hardly democratic in nature. It was estimated that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans in the mid-1990s owned almost 50 percent of all stocks. Godfrey Hodgson,
More Equal than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century
(Princeton, 2004), 92.

14
. Fraser,
Every Man a Speculator
, 590.

15
. Ibid., 579.

16
. Gregg Easterbrook,
The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
(New York, 2003), 127. It was later reported that the number of “millionaire households” in the United States in 2003 was 3.8 million (3.4 percent of 111 million households in all at that time). These were households with $1 million or more in investible assets (not including primary residences, 401 (k) plan assets, stock options, investments in real estate, and annuities).
New York Times
, May 24, 2004.

17
. Timothy Smeeding, “Changing Income Inequality in OECD Countries,” in Richard Hauser and Irene Becker, eds.,
The Personal Distribution of Income in an International Perspective
(New York, 2000), 205–24; Paul Krugman, “For Richer,”
New York Times Magazine
, Oct. 20, 2002, 62ff. American inequality since the 1970s is the central theme of Hodgson,
More Equal than Others
.

18
. Hodgson,
More Equal Than Others
, 87–111, stresses the greed of rich people and of corporate leaders.

19
. For an account emphasizing the greed and sense of entitlement of corporate leaders, see John Cassidy, “The Greed Cycle,”
New Yorker
, Sept. 23, 2002, 64–77.

20
. For statistics on unions, see
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 412, and note 15,
chapter 10
.

21
. Otis Graham, “The Unfinished Reform: Regulating Immigration in the National Interest,” in Roger Daniels and Graham,
Debating American Immigration, 1882–Present
(Lanham, Md., 2001), 89–185. Thanks mainly to immigration, America’s population continued to climb after 2000, to 294 million in 2003.

22
. Easterbrook,
The Progress Paradox
, 86.

23
. Barbara Freese,
Coal: A Human History
(Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 167–72, where she estimated that the number of Americans so threatened was 81 million.

24
. This is the central message of Gregg Easterbrook,
A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism
(New York, 1995), and of Easterbrook,
The Progress Paradox
, 41–45.

25
. Marc Reisner,
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
(New York, 1993), 512–14; Robert Gottlieb,
Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement
(Washington, 1993), 222–26.

26
. David Whitman,
The Optimism Gap: The I’m OK—They’re Not Syndrome and the Myth of American Decline
(New York, 1998), 110.

27
.
New York Times
, March 1, 2003. The cost of a barrel of imported oil (in constant 2002 dollars) hit a low of $12 per barrel in 1999, compared to a high in 1979–80 of $88 per barrel.

28
. Theodore Caplow et al., eds.,
The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900–2000
(Washington, 2001), 256–57;
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 563.

29
. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American adults, though only an inch or so taller on the average in 2002 than they had been in 1960, had become nearly twenty-five pounds heavier on the average. Children, too, had become notably heavier than in the past. The percentage of Americans who were over-weight or obese (by the CDC definitions) had increased from 56 in the early 1990s to 65 in 2002.
New York Times
, Oct. 28, 2004.

30
. The number of Americans without health insurance continued to increase after 2000—to 45 million in 2003.

31
. The decline in smoking probably helped to cause the rise in obesity, but in most instances the physical consequences of being a little overweight were not so serious as those caused by smoking.

32
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 71. The gap (of roughly six years) between the life expectancy at birth of blacks and whites had hardly changed during these thirty years. In 2000, black life expectancy at birth was 71.7 years, compared to 77.4 for whites.

33
. Edward Tenner,
Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
(New York, 1996), 261–68;
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 661, 678. Better-constructed cars (excepting many SUVs) also helped reduce the number of fatalities on American roads and highways.

34
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 600. This statistic, like many that follow, conceals significant differences stemming from racial inequalities. In 2001, whites owned 73 percent of housing units in which they lived, whereas blacks owned 48 percent. Ibid., 599.

35
.
New York Times
, April 17, 2004.

36
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 604, 605. In 1995, Americans for the first time bought more trucks than cars. In 2001, 33 million of the nation’s 107 million households had two or more cars or trucks.

37
. Ibid., 677.

38
. Niall Ferguson, “2011,”
New York Times Magazine
, Dec. 2, 2001, 76–79.

39
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 422.

40
.
Providence Journal
, June 21. 2004. In 2001–2, as the economy faltered, this percentage slipped a little, before inching up again in 2003 to 2.2.

41
. Ibid., 367. Critics of official statistics concerning unemployment emphasize that these do not include a great many “discouraged workers.” Michael Katz,
The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State
(New York, 2001), 349–51.

42
. Daniel McMurrer and Isabel Sawhill, “The Declining Importance of Class,” Urban Institute Report no. 4 (April 1997);
New York Times
, June 5, 2005.

43
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 422. In 1996 dollars, it had been $12,823 in 1970, $14,393 in 1975, and $18,229 in 1985.

44
. Ibid., 433. In 1980, median money household income in 2000 dollars had been $35,238.

45
.
New York Times
, Nov. 1, 2004.

46
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 441. In 2000, the poverty rate for whites was 9.4 percent, down from 11.7 in 1994; for blacks it was 22 percent, down from 30.6 in 1994. The official poverty line in 2000 was $8,794 for an individual, $13,738 for three persons, and $17,603 for four persons. Ibid., 442.

47
. Based on census data. The incomes of Native American groups that were not engaged in the gaming industry seemed to improve at the same rate as those that were.
Providence Journal
, Jan., 6, 2005.

48
. Robert Samuelson, “The Grand Illusion,”
Newsweek
, special issue, Dec. 1999–Feb. 2000, 48–49. Samuelson estimated that per capita income in the United States was then 33 percent higher than in Germany and 26 percent higher than in Japan. Hodgson,
More Equal Than Others
, 94–99, agrees that per capita purchasing power of consumer goods continued in the 1990s to be higher in the United States than in other nations, but that the “monetary value of [public] services”—notably medical care—was higher in the socially democratic countries of Scandinavia and in Luxembourg and Switzerland, thereby enabling people in these nations to have a higher standard of living as measured by this different standard.

49
. Josef Joffe, “America the Inescapable,”
New York Times Magazine
, June 8, 1997, 38–43; Jonathan Freedland,
Bring Home the Revolution: The Case for a British Republic
(London, 1998), 161.

50
. A useful summary of the reasons for late-1990s prosperity in the United States is William Nordhaus, “The Story of a Bubble,”
New York Review of Books
, Jan. 15, 2004, 28–31. See also Joseph Stiglitz,
The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World’s Most Prosperous Decade
(New York, 2003).

51
. See, for example, Thomas Friedman,
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
(New York, 1999).

52
. David Kennedy,
The American People in World War II
(New York, 1999), 430.

53
. McCraw,
American Business
, 160–61;
Time
, issue of Dec. 29, 1997–Jan. 5, 1998, 91;
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 417, 793.

54
. Alfred Eckes Jr. and Thomas Zeiler,
Globalization and the American Century
(New York, 2003), 238. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, agreed, proclaiming in 2001 that globalization was “the triumph of human liberty stretching across borders . . . it holds the promise of delivering billions of the world’s citizens from disease and hunger and want” (ibid.). Later, however, Bush raised American tariffs on foreign steel, so as to protect domestic economic interests (and his electoral prospects) in politically competitive states such as Ohio and West Virginia.

55
. Joseph Nye,
Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power
(New York, 1990), 223–26.

56
. Haynes Johnson,
The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years
(New York, 2001), 17–21.

57
.
Time
, issue of Dec. 29, 1997–Jan, 5, 1998, 49–51.