One of the elements of cultural ideology in the United States is that the United States is in some way exceptional in comparison with other countries, that is, different in a positive way, which sets it apart from other countries.
In a distorted sense, there is some truth here. The US is exceptional in being the only advanced economy in the world that has failed to provide universal health care to its citizens. They have a large, parasitic commercial health care system, geared to the multibillion-dollar profits generated by private health insurance companies that siphon $ 1 trillion from American consumers every year by flipping papers; an extensive network of "commercial" hospitals, which draws another $ 900 billion annually; pharmaceutical companies that bill $ 94,000 for hepatitis C medicines (that's $ 1,125 per pill) and bill patients between $ 14,000 and $ 64,000 for cancer drugs, and have the highest paid healthcare staff in the world. The US spends more than $ 3 trillion on healthcare every year, and this amount is growing. That's about 18% of the $ 17.4 trillion in annual GDP, in other words, almost one in every five dollars spent goes to health care. These are the highest healthcare costs in the industrialized world. With such huge costs, the country ranks 39th in the world in terms of infant mortality, 42nd in adult mortality and 36th in life expectancy. Yeah, the US is exceptional in healthcare.42nd in adult mortality and 36th in life expectancy. Yeah, the US is exceptional in healthcare.42nd in adult mortality and 36th in life expectancy. Yeah, the US is exceptional in healthcare.
And the USA is also exceptional in education. College students have become, in effect - under an apprenticeship agreement - servants of the education establishment, super-paid administrators and bankers, owing more than $ 1.1 trillion in college education alone - the highest per capita debt for higher education than any other country in the world. … A four-year college attendance today costs an average of $ 30,000 to $ 60,000 for each of the four years of undergraduate education. For those who are beyond their means of college, there are no longer any serious work training programs. At the same time, 70% of college professors and instructors in the United States are temporary or part-time workers, many receive beggarly salaries and do not have any benefits. I suppose this is also "exceptional".
American workers have the longest working hours in the industrialized economies of the world, the shortest annual paid leave (an average of 7 vacation days per year), and the prospect of poverty when they retire or no longer work. Social guaranteed pensions average just $ 1,100 a month, private pensions (called a 401K plan) averaged less than $ 50,000 in total savings for those in their 60s and approaching retirement, and more than half of American workers live paycheck to paycheck with no -or savings in general. As 70 million baby boomers born after 1945 begin to retire, tens of millions of them face the prospect of penniless retirement with no prospects. Not surprising,that the fastest growing segment of the American workforce is those 65-74 years old, as many return to work simply to make ends meet.
Income inequality in the United States is also the most striking among advanced economies, and gets worse every year. American corporate executives receive nearly 400 times the average wage of the average worker at their company - the largest gap in the industrial world. (In 1980, the gap was only 35 times). The richest 1% of households (almost the entire class of investors) receive at least 95% of all net income growth in the United States since 2010, if you compare - in the years of George W. Bush 2001-2007 it was 65%, and in the 90s, during the Clinton years, was 45%. At the same time, the average family income has declined in the United States by 1% -2% annually over the past decade. (Well, okay, maybe this is not exclusive, because workers' wages have been constantly declining in both Europe and Japan).
American workers can receive unemployment benefits for only 6 months and the amount of a third of their previous wages when they lose their jobs - compare, for example, with German workers who receive unemployment benefits for two years and are given retraining opportunities in addition. But, what the hell, we have more aircraft carriers than the Germans!
Yes, the US is exceptional. American workers are the most sick, the most heavily indebted, the most overtime, the least protected, the least compensated, and the most frightened of the future than workers in any country in the advanced industrial world.
And the United States is exceptional because it spends more on troops than all the other advanced economies in the world combined. The true "military budget" of the United States is about $ 1 trillion a year, not the $ 650 billion or so reported by the Pentagon and which is shoved into dozens of nooks and crannies in its annual economic budget. The Pentaon has over 1,000 military bases around the world. He is constantly engaged in many more wars around the world than any other country. And he spies more on his citizens and the citizens of the rest of the world every day than all the "secret agents" of the rest of the world put together. Exceptional? Still would!
Promotional video:
The myth of US economic exclusivity
Another favorite of the many voiced "US exceptionalities" is the American economy.
Japan may be in its fourth recession since 2009. The eurozone can slide into recession and get out of it every couple of years. But the American economy has fully recovered. So we are told. She grows well, and the rest of the world lags behind. Or such is the ideological twist.
The Exceptions like to refer to the US economic growth figures last summer 2014 - 4% to 5% GDP growth, 200,000 jobs created monthly in 2014, and the ever-green stock and bond markets as evidence such economic exclusivity. But upon closer inspection, the much-touted 5% GDP growth in the third quarter of 2014 and the first months of 2015 shows that the American economy is nothing special.
In the long term, it continues to grow annually at a rate of about half of the norm in previous decades.
Over the past six years, an occasional quarterly GDP growth of 4-5% has usually been followed by a sharp decline in GDP growth, or even a decline in a few months. This has happened four times since 2009, leading to an economic recovery alternating with active and passive cycles: in the first quarter of 2011, in the fourth quarter of 2012, in the first quarter of last year 2014 - and, apparently, may again happen for the fifth time in the last quarter of January-March 2015.
The jumps in the economic trajectory of the American economy, or "swings," are by no means special or exceptional. Japan and Europe are experiencing the same. Their "bounces" from the bottom to a level closer to the bottom (or even lower) than the American economy over the past five years. Whereas the American economy has grown to 4% or so from time to time, only to collapse back to zero or less growth, the long-term economic growth in the United States averaged about 1.7% annually over these five years. This is about half compared to the recovery of the American economy after the recessions in the past. Japan and Europe could only peak up to 2% from time to time and then slide to negative growth - i.e. into a genuine recession.
So, this recovery, interspersed with active and passive cycles, is characteristic of all three economies, it just happens at different levels. In other words, nothing is exceptional or economically different in the long run.
Comparing temporary US economic growth of 5% in July-September 2014 with what will almost certainly be about 1% or less in January-March 2015, when the final figures will become clear in May, shows that there were temporary " one-off "factors that ensured a short growth of US GDP at the level of 4-5%. These temporary factors have since changed or disappeared in the first three months of 2015. Remove these factors from the calculations nine months ago, and you get less than 1% growth, close to what was observed in January-March 2015. Here's a quick explanation:
Industrial production boom in shale gas / oil
In early 2014, the US shale oil and gas boom was at its peak. Which fueled what is called industrial production and much of last year's employment growth. But when saturation began last June (spurred by an attempt by Saudi Arabia and its friends in the Emirates to bring shale gas / oil producers in the United States to bankruptcy), world oil prices fell and the shale boom in the United States suddenly came to naught. Industrial production has slowed down rapidly since the summer, and this continues to this day, slipping into negative values since December. Jobs began to disappear. It is predicted that jobs in Texas, the largest oil shale producer, will decrease by 150,000 in early 2015.
Production and export
In early 2015, U. S. production and exports continued to rise as the dollar remained weak, giving U. S. exports an edge. But the collapse of world oil prices and simultaneously the talk of the US central bank about raising the interest rate led to a 20% strengthening of the dollar. Quantitative easing by Japan and the Eurozone pushed it up even more. The result was a decline in late 2014 in the contribution of US manufacturing and exports to US economic growth. The same continues in 2015. Production orders have been reduced every month since December 2014.
Consumer spending on health care in health care reform.
Another one-off surge in US GDP in mid-2014 was the signing of 9 million US consumers to a new government health insurance program that could not get health insurance. They started making monthly payments and using health services. This provided an increase in consumer spending, which did not exist before. But by 2015, the payments leveled off. Accordingly, there will no longer be any additional surge.
The car buying boom is crumbling
Another element of consumer spending that peaked last summer is the boom in US auto sales. It, too, has come to an end, as the American car market has become saturated in four years. Car sales have declined since December, usually a very good month for auto sales, and continue to decline throughout February. The auto boom in the USA is over.
General consumer spending in the United States
Consumer spending in general has been declining since December. The US identifier, Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE), was down in December-January, was sluggish in February, and appears to be flat in March. Consumer spending was expected to rise, according to leading economists, as consumers took advantage of the decline in gasoline prices. Instead, consumers have been saving on low gas prices or using them to pay off huge debt burdens (as the author suggested last year). US retail sales, which make up the bulk of consumer spending, rose 4% -5% last summer. But again declining since December 2014, falling -0.1%, -0.9%, -0.6% from December to February and will likely fall again in March. So, both retail sales and consumer spending in general fell.
Business expenses
In the third quarter of the year, from July to September, over the past five years, American businesses have inflated spending sharply by building up inventories in anticipation of rising consumer spending during the year-end holidays. But holiday spending usually falls short of expectations, and the business sells off inventory in the first quarter, January-March next year. This happened in 2015 as well. Another business expense item, new hardware costs, hardly boasts at least some success, growth was only 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2014 and is likely to be more or less the same in the first quarter.
Government defense spending
It is well known and documented that in the United States, every year a national election is held, the federal government holds back spending at the beginning of the year so that money can be disposed of in the summer before the election. This was the case in 2012 before the national presidential elections, and in 2014 before the midterm elections to Congress. Government spending is providing an additional boost to quarterly figures in July-September as politicians try to create the impression that the economy is doing better than in the long run. So it was last summer. But those expenses will decrease in relation to last summer at the very beginning of 2015.
Job creation in the USA
Job creation always lags behind the real economy. And after an employment growth of 200,000 a month last year (mainly low-paid, temporary work, part-time work, vacancies in the service sector), the growth in the number of jobs in March was only 126,000. In the previous months, January-February, there was also a decrease growth. The employment data thus confirms the overall economic slowdown in the first quarter of 2015. Apologists for politicians, no doubt, will explain such a negligible increase in jobs in March "bad weather". But what is really happening is that job creation is slowing down, and will slow down for real reasons. The "canary in the cage" in this case is jobs in the commodity manufacturing sector, which has slowed sharply for several months and now, in March,reached negative values. This reflects the collapse in manufacturing, mining and goods manufacturing that began late last year and is now continuing.
The ideology of American exceptionalism
In short, there is nothing exceptional about the US economy if you look a little beyond ideological quirks. Over the past five years, it continues to follow a trajectory alternating with active and passive cycles. The economy weakens significantly every fourth / first quarter and weak growth is "sustained" next summer. Smoothing and averaging throughout the year provides a long-term sub-historical average growth rate of about 1.8% - half the normal. And nothing exceptional. Japan and Europe are doing the same, only at a lower level, sub-normal.
Long-term US GDP growth averages 1.8% versus 0.5% (Europe) and 0% (Japan). Does this make the US economy exceptional? Yes, not to say so. There are also 20 million unemployed in the USA, almost the same number in the Eurozone. This is by no means exclusive. Prices in the US are now frozen (do not change) and deflation looms ahead, stagnation of prices exists today in Europe and Japan. Real investment is shrinking in the US as it is in Europe and Japan - again nothing exceptional. And real incomes / wages, on average, continue to decline for the American worker - just as it does for workers in Europe and Japan.
One of the favorite ideological strategies of the ruling elite and classes is to convince their working class that they are exceptional - implying that the situation may not be perfect for them, and may even get worse, but at least not as much as for others. … "It could be worse, but just look at the poor workers in countries X and Y. It might not be great here, but damn it, we are not so bad, right?" The appeal to exclusivity is simply another ideological ploy to get the working class to accept deteriorating conditions. Just another ideological tool to ensure people's passivity. So that they accept the surrounding reality as an inevitable fate. To make them believe that while their living conditions are getting worse, they are not so bad. But they are bad …
