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FREEDOMWAYS SECOND QUARTER 1972 capitalism and its developmental laws. There are certain new features of the unemployment picture which are worthy of mention. These include the growing unemployment and insecurity among white-collar professionals (such as teachers, aero-space engineers, physicists, etc.) who up to this time were relatively secure in having steady jobs. A corollary to this is the acute unemployment problem among the youth, including the youth who are out of the labor market for most of the year attending colleges and universities and yet for the third consecutive summer are unable to find summer jobs. This latter number is estimated at about 800,000. Another new feature of the unemployment picture is the number of workers more or less permanently out of jobs as American corporations move their plants to other satellite areas of the U.S. empire such as South Korea, South Vietnam and Taiwan in search of cheap labor and maximum profits. General Electric, Ford, and Motorola are among the biggest offenders in the auto and electronic industry, implementing this plant-relocation program. Since the end of the Second World War (1945) total public and private indebtedness has increased some 400% to the astronomical figure of one trillion, eight hundred and fifty billion dollars ($1,850000,000,000). State, federal and local government debts alone (bonds, etc.) today are larger than the total public and private indebtedness in 1945 and the same is true of the consumer debt level (mortgages, goods bought on installment credit, etc.) which stands at about four hundred and fifty billion dollars ($450,000,000,000). The exorbitant size of the Military Budget which has increased from 35 billion dollars annually during the years of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to 83 billion dollars today is another measure of the crisis. Inflation and cost overrun problems in military procurement are running at a rate of $7 billion dollars annually or as large as the total military budget was ten years ago. This cost overrun factor is increasing at the rate of seven billion dollars a year. The chief beneficiaries of this plunderous military budget are the 62 corporations each of whom received government contracts amounting to one hundred million dollars or more a year during each of the five years, 1965 to 1970. The parasitism of the military budget is a major factor contributing to the growing monetary and currency crisis now evident. The assumption by the U.S. of the role of international gendarme over world capitalism's dying system of colonial domination has precipitated a drastic decline in the gold reserves which serve as support for the dollar, Consequently, the "privileged" position of this currency in 104 THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM. O'DELL international finance, which began with the end of the Second World War is now ended. The military budget and war economy also serve to prevent the unemployment crisis from becoming deeper as some three million American workers are employed in what might be called fictitious jobs since they are neither producing socially useful goods nor a service. The jobs producing bombs, rockets, missiles, napalm, ammunition, helicopters, etc., have been counted in the much boasted affluence of the "American way of life." "Dr. Strangelove" in the White House The Constitutional crisis which surfaced momentarily in connection with school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 and again in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1962 now takes on a more protracted characteristic in the struggle between the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government in the conduct of foreign policy. The usurpation of powers constitutionally delegated solely to the legislative branch of the government in matters of foreign treaties and getting the country involved in wars abroad has been most pronounced since the beginning of the American military intervention in Vietnam. This deadlocked Constitutional crisis suggests that the military establishment is a prevailing influence in both branches of the government. At any rate, this yet unresolved crisis has resulted in the kind of psychotic behavior the nation is witnessing on the part of Nixon and the executive branch of the government in the stepped-up, intensive bombing of the entire country of Vietnam and the mining of the port of Haiphong at the time that the people of our country in great majority are demanding an end to our involvement in that civil war. The foregoing evidences of the civilizational crisis in the U.S. have also contributed to the crisis in the moral and spiritual life in the society. In the sphere of public education, for example, the quality of tax-supported public school systems is today in a state of accelerated general ruin. Even such an authoritative establishment source as the Carnegie Foundation for Higher Education in a recent report has characterized the public school system in the United States as "dull and joyless." Due largely to the tracking system, thousands of students graduate from secondary schools each year who are barely literate. This is particularly true in working-class and ethnic ghetto communities. Petty crime in both urban and rural areas is on the increase. New 105
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-16 11:29:42