Shortly before the 2012 presidential election, I wrote an article asserting that regardless of who won, our democracy was broken. (To be clear, I was a fervent Obama supporter against Mitt Romney). We were failing to deal seriously with some of the most pressing issues of the day, including growing inequality, inaction on the unfolding catastrophe of climate change, a metastasizing national security state, and political institutions like the Electoral College that increasingly distorted the popular will.
As an undeniably consequential presidential election approaches, it’s sobering to look back and see how little progress we’ve made, if any at all, on those issues over the past decade. And looking ahead, there’s little to indicate that we’re willing or able to seriously confront those and other fundamental problems in the near future.
For instance, the deeply entrenched nature of racism in our society, embedded in all areas of life, including school, work, housing, and the justice system, has arguably received much more attention since 2012, partly as a result of the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. But increased (though still relatively limited) awareness aside, little has actually been done to systemically address those realities. America’s prison population has fallen in recent years, including among African Americans. But America remains in the top two or three of the world’s biggest jailers. And black Americans are at least four times as likely to be imprisoned as white Americans, including for drug offenses, though there is no evidence that blacks use at higher rates than whites.
That we continue to fail to seriously address how profoundly racism structures life chances remains a fundamental stain on our country.
Poverty has declined somewhat from 2012 levels. But despite the record-long expansion, the poverty rate is still higher than it was in the 1970s and in the last years of the Clinton presidency. About 12 percent of the population—close to 40 million Americans—live below the poverty line. And remember that the federal poverty line for a family of four is a meager $26,000 a year. As has long been true, our poverty and child poverty rates remain higher than that of virtually any other rich country.
One area of meaningful improvement in American life since 2012 has been in health insurance coverage, thanks to Obamacare, flawed though it is. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in six non-elderly Americans were uninsured before the Affordable Care Act came into full force in 2013. Ten percent are now. That’s still more than 25 million uninsured Americans each year, a complete outlier among wealthy countries. It is, nevertheless, a real accomplishment. That’s especially true of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which, despite GOP obstruction, insures millions of previously uncovered poor Americans.
But the improvement in health insurance coverage is mitigated by the striking trends in life expectancy. Perhaps the clearest measure of increasing social well-being is how long people live. After steady progress for decades, life expectancy in the U.S., which has long lagged other rich countries, began to flatline about two decades ago. Then, shockingly, it actually declined between 2014 and 2017 (it has ticked up very slightly since). So-called deaths of despair, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including from suicide, liver disease, and drug overdose—the latter from the opioid epidemic, which has claimed several hundred thousand lives since the late ’90s—are a major cause.
Strikingly, as the income and wealth gaps have continued to grow between rich and poor, so has the life-expectancy gap. As a result of steady increases in life expectancy for well-off Americans, coupled with stagnation for the less well-off, the gap is now estimated to be 15 years among men and 10 years among women. This has happened in spite of remarkable breakthroughs in medical technology and treatment, including for cancer and heart disease.
It’s not that nothing is better. The triumph of marriage equality is a great achievement, of course. But the promise of the American Dream—that life chances for most would improve with each passing generation—rings increasingly hollow.
Unfortunately, even if we avert disaster in November, it’s hard to be confident that this will change.
JONATHAN WEILER is a teaching professor in global studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide and Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.
Comment on this column at backtalk@indyweek.com.
Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.
Even If We Avert Disaster in November, America Is Broken
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Shortly before the 2012 presidential election, I wrote an article asserting that regardless of who won, our democracy was broken. (To be clear, I was a fervent Obama supporter against Mitt Romney). We were failing to deal seriously with some of the most pressing issues of the day, including growing inequality, inaction on the unfolding catastrophe of climate change, a metastasizing national security state, and political institutions like the Electoral College that increasingly distorted the popular will.
As an undeniably consequential presidential election approaches, it’s sobering to look back and see how little progress we’ve made, if any at all, on those issues over the past decade. And looking ahead, there’s little to indicate that we’re willing or able to seriously confront those and other fundamental problems in the near future.
For instance, the deeply entrenched nature of racism in our society, embedded in all areas of life, including school, work, housing, and the justice system, has arguably received much more attention since 2012, partly as a result of the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. But increased (though still relatively limited) awareness aside, little has actually been done to systemically address those realities. America’s prison population has fallen in recent years, including among African Americans. But America remains in the top two or three of the world’s biggest jailers. And black Americans are at least four times as likely to be imprisoned as white Americans, including for drug offenses, though there is no evidence that blacks use at higher rates than whites.
That we continue to fail to seriously address how profoundly racism structures life chances remains a fundamental stain on our country.
Poverty has declined somewhat from 2012 levels. But despite the record-long expansion, the poverty rate is still higher than it was in the 1970s and in the last years of the Clinton presidency. About 12 percent of the population—close to 40 million Americans—live below the poverty line. And remember that the federal poverty line for a family of four is a meager $26,000 a year. As has long been true, our poverty and child poverty rates remain higher than that of virtually any other rich country.
One area of meaningful improvement in American life since 2012 has been in health insurance coverage, thanks to Obamacare, flawed though it is. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in six non-elderly Americans were uninsured before the Affordable Care Act came into full force in 2013. Ten percent are now. That’s still more than 25 million uninsured Americans each year, a complete outlier among wealthy countries. It is, nevertheless, a real accomplishment. That’s especially true of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which, despite GOP obstruction, insures millions of previously uncovered poor Americans.
But the improvement in health insurance coverage is mitigated by the striking trends in life expectancy. Perhaps the clearest measure of increasing social well-being is how long people live. After steady progress for decades, life expectancy in the U.S., which has long lagged other rich countries, began to flatline about two decades ago. Then, shockingly, it actually declined between 2014 and 2017 (it has ticked up very slightly since). So-called deaths of despair, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including from suicide, liver disease, and drug overdose—the latter from the opioid epidemic, which has claimed several hundred thousand lives since the late ’90s—are a major cause.
Strikingly, as the income and wealth gaps have continued to grow between rich and poor, so has the life-expectancy gap. As a result of steady increases in life expectancy for well-off Americans, coupled with stagnation for the less well-off, the gap is now estimated to be 15 years among men and 10 years among women. This has happened in spite of remarkable breakthroughs in medical technology and treatment, including for cancer and heart disease.
It’s not that nothing is better. The triumph of marriage equality is a great achievement, of course. But the promise of the American Dream—that life chances for most would improve with each passing generation—rings increasingly hollow.
Unfortunately, even if we avert disaster in November, it’s hard to be confident that this will change.
JONATHAN WEILER is a teaching professor in global studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide and Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.
Comment on this column at backtalk@indyweek.com.
Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.