The CIA World Factbook has updated America's statistics to 2010. We can now officially say that America is the richest it's ever been. Humorously, it's in a dead tie with our wealth in 2008:
$14.72 trillion (2010 est.)
$14.33 trillion (2009 est.)
$14.72 trillion (2008 est.)
This was achieved via a 2.8% GDP growth in 2010. I predicted this number ahead of time but now it's as official as it can get. We aren't in a recession, we are in a period of brisk economic growth. Our per capita GDP is slightly lower than it was in 2008, so I suppose one could argue we haven't fully recovered from the previous recession:
$47,400 (2010 est.)
$46,700 (2009 est.)
$48,300 (2008 est.)
But who could seriously complain if they were earning $47,400 a year? That's more money than practically anyone makes in the world. Far more money than a responsible person could spend on any genuine material need. Once you buy a house, a car, a phone, health insurance, food, entertainment, utilities, and college for your kids, I don't see any pressing need for a country to make sure you're yet wealthier. The problem isn't in how much money Americans make, it's how poorly distributed this wealth is. As the CIA world factbook points out:
"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households."
This has created the most dramatic imbalance of wealth between the rich and the poor since the 1920's. Even ignoring all the poor blacks and hispanics, not all whites can fit into the top 20% when our country is still 65% white. A lot of whites are having trouble meeting their basic needs, not because America is bankrupt or our productivity is too low, but because they are superfluous to our new economic model. The bottom 80% of Americans are superfluous, as shown by their inability to improve their wages for the past 35 years. This is also shown by our unemployment rate, now at 9.7% officially, but more like 20% when you take into account people who have been unemployed for over six months and people who are only working part-time, not enough to pay the bills.
The superfluity of the bottom 80% only worsens every year as more automation, more competition with low-paid workers abroad, and more immigration competes for American jobs. What's a joe schmoe to do against Chinese who are smarter than him offering 1/10 the wages he is asking for? Obviously, retreat to jobs that can't be done abroad -- but then what about a hispanic who's dumber than him offering 1/2 the wages he is asking for hopping across the border and taking it first? There's no solution. There's no way out and there hasn't been any way out for the past 35 years. Today's high and rising unemployment is just a reflection of this endless trend towards superfluity.
Unless we want wage normalization to the point where all Americans earn as much as their competitors at home and abroad, which would mean a massive cut in our quality of life for the massive majority of Americans, politics must intervene and set things right.
There are four options politicians could try: smash all the machines and become luddites, cut off all free trade, stop immigration, or enact a citizen's dividend. I am against options one and two because they decrease the total wealth of America even if they help redistribute wealth more evenly. So long as we have machines and low-wage hive workers toiling away to give us cheap stuff, it would be insane to stop them and insist on everything becoming expensive and unreachable again. Everyone benefits from free trade, because free trade means everything you buy is as cheap as humanly possible. The same with automation. Anything that cuts the cost of goods is an enormous help to the poor as well as the rich. Also, we can never progress as a civilization by crawling back into our shells, adopting obsolete customs or behaviors, and trying to hide from modernity. That is a formula for stagnation and death, just like the communists, the muslims, and Indian hunter-gatherers who couldn't get with the program and start farming once the European settlers arrived.
Immigration would normally be a good thing, because it would also lower the price of goods, but that is leaving out negative externals. For one, cheap labor is an economic drain, not a benefit, due to the amount of government spending they consume. We lose more in providing them schools, jails, health care, infrastructure, welfare, etc than we gain from their marginal utility as opposed to the native workers they are displacing. For another, they speak a different language, creating needless conflict and chaos in what should be a United States of America. For another, they are racially distinct, which leads to endless conflict at a primal level. For another, part of this racial distinction is that they are dumber, uglier, and more violent than the native white American. It is insane to import such a dysgenic gene pool into our borders. For another, they do not share any historical or patriotic or cultural love for Americans or America as a whole. They are simply here to make money, by hook or by crook, and they don't give a damn about the rest of us. This is not a successful model for national unity, assimilation, or success in the future. It will lead to oppression, intolerance, balkanization, even civil war. For another, America is a treasure trove of natural resources. This treasure trove is the natural birthright of current US citizens -- the wider we spread our citizenship, the smaller this share of treasure for each of our descendants. Comparing birthrates between whites and hispanics, it becomes even more clear how little a share of natural resources our own descendants will have compared to our potential immigrant's descendants. We would be like Esau, selling our birthright for a mess of porridge, to give away all of the latent wealth of America's vast territory and all of its rivers, mineral reserves, beautiful landscapes, already completed infrastructure, etc, just for a present day minor improvement in our own economy (not that there's any evidence immigrants do improve our economy.) For another, hispanics do not vote in a manner conducive to building a good country. We have worked examples of hispanic governments across all of South, Central, and North America. None of them provide nearly as good human rights, property rights, rule of law, or any other service we have come to expect for ourselves. Hispanics would jeopardize the unprecedented quality of life Americans were able to build for ourselves under our Constitution and our libertarian-leaning voting habits. South of the United States of America there is only violence, tyranny, corruption, and chaos. Why would we want to import the citizenry that created that to become the future voters and creators of the USA?
Once you take into account all of these negative externals, it becomes obvious that only the most heroic immigrants could possibly be productive enough to be worth our while. Illiterate peasants just don't hack it. What's important to realize is that machines and foreigners doing business with us through free trade do not carry ANY of these negative externals. They don't demand a share of our natural resources, they don't vote, they don't do crime, they don't get any welfare benefits, they don't refuse to integrate, they don't pollute our gene pool, and so on. Stopping immigration isn't refusing to look forward or hiding in our shells, it's safeguarding our present and our future against all domestic threats, which, alongside the military's charge to resist invasion, is the primary role of government.
Stopping immigration on its own, however, will only stop a part of the reason why 80% of Americans can't find work or can't earn a decent wage. It may be one trend in our favor, but weighed against the increased competition from abroad and the innovation of automation, the job market is only going to get worse and worse, forever. The only remaining solution to all of these forces is a citizen's dividend. With a citizen's dividend, we can safely redistribute the vast wealth of America's wealthy to the remaining 80%, who have not seen any gains in their wages since 1975. We can alleviate the greatest wealth disparity in America since the 1920's. We can stop our record unemployment rates, by rendering them irrelevant. Henceforth, all American are 'employed' just by being American citizens, earning 12,000 a year, or 10,000 a year, or 5,000 a year or whatever we can afford to provide. Henceforth, we don't have to fear worker displacement in the name of efficiency, because everyone will share in the gains of said efficiency. If America becomes richer by, say, lowering prices on necessary goods, everyone will have that assured money in their pocket to take advantage of the new lower prices. This is the only way to protect the freedom and robustness of our economy, ensure its future growth, and protect the American people from the consequences of capitalism. It's the only way. It is the silver bullet, the magic spell, that solves everything at once. When combined with a sane immigration policy it could ensure the future quality of life in America for the foreseeable future.
America today is a good place, that does right by most people. However, we're letting some people slip through the cracks, and live truly horrible lives, full of unnecessary suffering. This is unconscionable once you realize that our own choices concerning workforce displacement have led to their life results, and how easy it would be to help them given that we are the richest country on Earth. The current number of victims in America will only escalate every year for the rest of eternity, since there is no structural solution to workforce displacement. Ignoring the issue now only guarantees a more disastrous depression in the future that hurts even more people. Since this depression was already the worst since the Great Depression, there is no reason why we can't learn our lesson from this one, and why we would have to wait until the next to start taking care of our poor. The time for a citizen's dividend is now, it has never been more pressing or more obvious. The economists say our unemployment rate isn't going down for years, and our unemployment benefits are running out. Where will people turn then? What will help them other than the citizen's dividend? The government predicts medicare and social security will drive this country bankrupt, what can replace these unaffordable liabilities except the citizen's dividend open to young people and seniors alike?
Can we really worry about the morality of giving people unearned wealth when we are staring into the face of the moral abyss of tens of millions of starving, homeless, uninsured, suffering Americans? Between these two moral issues which is more important? If capitalism is allowed to take its full course, I guarantee that will be the result. Not everyone can earn a decent living through the sweat of their brow. The current modern marketplace simply doesn't find that worth paying for. Many people simply have no marketable skills, they are up a creek, they have been rendered superfluous. This does not mean they have no value as human beings though, and it does not make their suffering any less than ours. Something must be done for them other than 'tough love' kicks and slanders about how lazy they are. It must be done before their unemployment benefits run out. The best and most comprehensive solution is the citizen's dividend, as realized by Charles Murray and Milton Friedman before him. Every day we wait is another day of unnecessary suffering for our fellow American citizens and ever-increasing debt we can never repay.
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