Inspector General's Agenda

5 Social Security Myths That Have To Go

2012-01-27T12:47:00.000-08:00

5 Social Security Myths That Have To Go

By Eric Schurenberg

Myth #1: Social Security didn't create the deficit and shouldn't be cut to fix it

This is a much loved progressive slogan. "Blaming Social Security for the deficit is like blaming Iraq for 9/11," writes Dave Johnson of OurFuture.org in one of the cleverer examples of the genre.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=16202373n

Technically, the first part of the myth is true -- or rather, used to be true. From 1983 until last year, Social Security revenues actually lowered the Treasury's need to borrow in the public markets, as excess payroll taxes collected under Social Security's flag helped fund other government programs.

The surplus years are over, however. The Social Security trustees' report estimates that last year payroll taxes fell short of the sums paid out to beneficiaries. Small surpluses will return for a few years; then the red ink will return for good in 2015. To make up the annual shortfall, Social Security will have to draw on revenues from the general budget. In other words, from here on out, year after year, Social Security only makes the deficit larger.

Myth #2: Social Security benefits are earned; reducing them amounts to confiscation

It's not hard to see why this illusion exists, since Social Security's own website refers to "earned credits" and sometimes refers to payroll taxes as contributions. But despite Social Security's fetish for language that echoes private pensions, no one ever vests in Social Security. You don't own your benefits until you cash the check.
It's more accurate to say your benefits are an entitlement granted by act of Congress and subject to change at any time by another act of Congress. As long as voters consider benefits inviolate, they will be. When voters decide fiscal responsibility is more important, then Social Security benefits -- "earned" or not -- will be up for review.

Myth #3: Social Security is funded until 2037

The Social Security trust fund -- the ledger on which Uncle Sam records the surplus taxes that the program has accumulated over the years -- is large enough that the program need not ask for extra money to pay benefits until 2037, the year that the trust fund "runs dry" if nothing changes. But that's not the same as being funded-at least not in a way that has any economic meaning.

As you may know, the trust fund is, for accounting purposes, assumed to be invested in IOUs from the U.S. Treasury. When Social Security needs money beyond what it expects to collect in payroll taxes, it can redeem some of these IOUs. But it's not as if the trust fund is a giant 401(k). It's more like access to a rich but cash-strapped daddy's credit card.
What that means is that Social Security can get what it needs from Treasury without having to ask permission from Congress. But when it redeems one of these IOUs, the Treasury (just like Daddy) has to come up with the money the old-fashioned way, by raising taxes or, more likely, borrowing more.
Dolly Madison at Daily Kos seems to think that Social Security's need for cash can be met from the interest credited to the trust fund-that is, with more IOUs. Allan Sloan disagrees:

You know, of course, why this wouldn't work -- at least, I hope you know. It's because the U.S. government ultimately has to pay its bills with cash, not with its own IOUs. In the long run, you need cash -- real money -- not funny money.

"Fully funded" suggests that the money to maintain today's benefits until 2035 is already locked up. It isn't. Redeeming IOUs from the trust fund (and the income imputed to those IOUs) will only put another burden on taxpayers who are simultaneously paying for Medicare, interest on the debt, and all the other purposes of government. At some point, the total burden will be too much.

Myth #4: The trust fund is invested in Treasury bonds, the most secure investments in the world. To suggest that the trust fund wouldn't pay is blatant fear mongering.

The trust fund's IOUs are entered on the Treasuries books as non-trading "special issue" bonds, paying interest at a rate equal to an average of outstanding Treasuries. And yes, the Treasury will undoubtedly pay if Social Security asks.

But that's not the issue. The issue is whether taxpayers think it's so important to maintain Social Security benefits that they will gladly absorb the burden of paying off those bonds on the current schedule. Remember, Congress (that is, you know, taxpayers) can cut benefits -- and thus postpone the need for Social Security to redeem any bonds -- just by passing a law.
In other words, the myth misses the point. Whether Social Security continues to pay benefits at today's rates isn't a question of credit quality. It's a question of politics and priorities.

Myth #5: Social Security is an easy fix

Any policy wonk worth his or her spreadsheet can quickly come up with ways to bring Social Security into long-term actuarial balance. You can conjure up solutions yourself using the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's calculator. You'll find it's not that hard to wipe out the system's long-term deficit.
The only problem is, most such solutions regard Social Security as a closed system. They assume that the trust fund is an ATM that gushes cash whenever the trustees demand, and that workers will never balk at stepping up to higher payroll taxes.

Which brings us to what may be the most destructive myth of all: The idea that Social Security is, fiscally speaking, an end in itself. In the real world that Social Security actually operates in, the government and its citizens all have other obligations. As Steuerle puts it:

Social Security as a budget issue revolves not simply around its internal accounting balances and trust funds, but rather how much of the economy it occupies and how much of future growth it absorbs.

The discussion we need to have, then, isn't simply whether we can pull the levers to bring Social Security into balance. That is easy. Instead, we need to ask a larger, tougher question: In light of all we owe-to our creditors, our children and our future-how much do we want to spend supporting everyone who happens to live past 62? We want to spend something, to be sure, and maybe a lot. But myths and slogans shouldn't persuade us that we can avoid the question. We can't.

A version of this post previously appeared on The Fiscal Times.

How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off one of the Greatest Frauds Ever Perpetrated against the American People

2012-01-26T18:59:00.000-08:00

How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off one of the Greatest Frauds Ever Perpetrated against the American People
Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan pulled off one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against the American people in the history of this great nation, and the underlying scam is still alive and well, more than a quarter century later. It represents the very foundation upon which the economic malpractice that led the nation to the great economic collapse of 2008 was built. Ronald Reagan was a cunning politician, but he didn’t know much about economics. Alan Greenspan was an economist, who had no reluctance to work with a politician on a plan that would further the cause of the right-wing goals that both he and President Reagan shared….
Exactly what Reagan did, with the help of Alan Greenspan. Consider the following sequence of events:

1) President Reagan appointed Greenspan as chairman of the 1982 National Commission on Social Security Reform (aka The Greenspan Commission)
2) The Greenspan Commission recommended a major payroll tax hike to generate Social Security surpluses for the next 30 years, in order to build up a large reserve in the trust fund that could be drawn down during the years after Social Security began running deficits.
3) The 1983 Social Security amendments enacted hefty increases in the payroll tax in order to generate large future surpluses.
4) As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the general revenue fund and spent on other government programs. None of the surplus was saved or invested in anything. The surplus Social Security revenue, that was paid by working Americans, was used to replace the lost revenue from Reagan’s big income tax cuts that went primarily to the rich.
5) In 1987, President Reagan nominated Greenspan as the successor to Paul Volker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Greenspan continued as Fed Chairman until January 31, 2006. (One can only speculate on whether the coveted Fed Chairmanship represented, at least in part, a payback for Greenspan’s role in initiating the Social Security surplus revenue.)
6) In 1990, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a member of the Greenspan Commission, and one of the strongest advocates the the 1983 legislation, became outraged when he learned that first Reagan, and then President George H.W. Bush used the surplus Social Security revenue to pay for other government programs instead of saving and investing it for the baby boomers. Moynihan locked horns with President Bush and proposed repealing the 1983 payroll tax hike. Moynihan’s view was that if the government could not keep its hands out of the Social Security cookie jar, the cookie jar should be emptied, so there would be no surplus Social Security revenue for the government to loot. President Bush would have no part of repealing the payroll tax hike. The “read-my-lips-no-new-taxes” president was not about to give up his huge slush fund.

Republican Presidential Debate in Jacksonville, Florida

2012-01-26T18:41:00.000-08:00

While watching the Republican debate live Ron Paul just stated a fact of which I knew about concern who took money from Social Security. It was former President Ronald Reagan and the Republicans!

How Your Social Security Money Was Stolen – Where Did the $2.5 Trillion Surplus Go?

July 19th, 2011 | Filed under Economy, Feature, Hot List, News, Politics & Government . Follow comments through RSS 2.0 feed. Click here to comment, or trackback.
How Republicans, Democrats and the Mega-Wealthy Stole Your Social Security Money
As I’ve been reporting for quite some time now, trillions of our tax dollars have been looted by Wall Street, wars, global corporations and the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population. The economic crisis has made this blatant fact much more evident to the average person. Now that these elaborate schemes are coming undone and major cuts to vital social programs are beginning to be implemented, the American public is going to get a harsh wake up call.
With cuts to Social Security on the way, and Obama’s recent comments saying that he cannot guarantee that Social Security checks will go out if the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised, it’s time to take a closer look at why politicians are pushing to cut this vital program.
The Social Security Trust Fund should currently have $2.5 trillion in surplus. So how is it that these checks could stop being issued if the debt ceiling isn’t raised? Economics professor Dr. Allen Smith, author of The Looting of Social Security: How The Government is Draining America’s Retirement Account, has been reporting on the theft of Social Security funds for years. As he sums it up:

“The government’s $2.5 trillion debt to Social Security is the real reason that so many politicians want to cut benefits. They are trying to find a way to avoid having to repay the looted money…. Given the fact that much of the surplus revenue from the 1983 payroll tax hike ended up in the pockets of the super rich in the form of income tax cuts, I propose a special tax on this group of taxpayers to recoup the missing Social Security money. The government used revenue from the Social Security payroll tax hike to fund tax cuts for the rich because that was where the money was. I think the government should recover the ‘embezzled’ money by taxing the rich.”

Here are reports by Dr. Allen Smith that we have featured over the past two years:

I: It’s Time to Tap the Empty Social Security Trust Fund
II: The Social Security Fraud Has Finally Been Exposed
III: How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off one of the Greatest Frauds Ever Perpetrated against the American People
IV: Obama and the Social Security Time Bomb
V: Censored Social Security Book Back in Print

I: It’s Time to Tap the Empty Social Security Trust Fund
AP writer, Stephen Ohlemacher, sent shock waves throughout the nation this week with his story, “Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs.” Social Security has been running large surpluses ever since the enactment of the 1983 payroll tax hike, and was projected to continue running surpluses until at least 2016. Instead, Ohlemacher reports that the cost of Social Security benefits will exceed payroll tax revenue by approximately $29 billion this year, because of the severe recession which has reduced payroll tax revenue at the very time that many unemployed Americans have been forced to retire early.
What it all boils down to is that, in order to pay full benefits this year, Social Security will have to come up with an extra $29 billion to supplement the inadequate payroll tax revenue. Where will that money come from? It will have to come from increased taxes or from borrowed money. “Wait a minute!” some readers will say. Hasn’t Social Security been receiving surplus revenue ever since the 1983 payroll tax hike? Isn’t there supposed to be approximately $2.5 trillion in the Social Security trust fund? The answer to both questions is yes. But there is a problem. Every dollar of that surplus Social Security revenue has already been spent by the government. Much of it went to fund wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rest has been spent on other government programs.
The American people were not supposed to find out about the great Social Security scam for another six years, and the government was hoping to continue to receive surplus money from the Social Security contributions of working Americans for at least that long. But the inevitable day of reckoning has come, six years sooner than anybody expected, because of the severe recession. And the government of the United States has been caught with its hand still in the empty Social Security cookie jar.
For more than a decade, I have been trying to expose the Social Security scam just like Harry Markopolos was trying to expose the Bernie Madoff scam. But nobody would listen. If anyone deserves credit for helping the government to keep its dirty secret for so long, that honor should go to the AARP and the NCPSSM. I have been members of both organizations for years and I have tried very hard to get their cooperation in exposing the fraud. But they have refused to have anything to do with me. Instead, they have continued to bombard their members and the public with misinformation. They have argued that the trust fund is full of “good-as-gold” U.S. Treasury Bonds that could be used to pay full Social Security benefits until at least 2037 without any changes. In reaction to Olemacher’s AP story, Barbara Kennelly, president of the NCPSSM, responded with the following words, “Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt. Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. They’re as solid as what we owe China and Japan.”
I believe Barbara Kennelly to be among the strongest and most honorable defenders of Social Security. I think she truly wants to save Social Security, as we now know it, which is the same goal that has motivated me to make so much effort for more than a decade. I have tried to convince Ms. Kennelly that I was trying to save Social Security by exposing the truth about the trust fund, but she wouldn’t even consider the possibility that the government has been looting the trust fund all these years. I requested the opportunity to discuss this issue with her, either in a face-to-face meeting, or through telephone conversations, in the hope that we could work together toward a common goal. She ignored my requests and refused to communicate with me in any way.
It has been clear for quite some time that the trust fund contained no real assets. David Walker, Comptroller General of the GAO, stated on January 21, 2005, “There are no stocks or bonds or real estate in the trust fund. It has nothing of real value to draw down.” On April 5, 2005, President George W. Bush finally acknowledged the empty trust fund by saying, “There is no trust fund, just IOUs that I saw firsthand that future generations will pay—will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs.”
If there was any doubt remaining, with regard to whether or not the trust fund contains any real assets, that doubt should have been removed by the following words in the 2009 Social Security Trustees Report:

Neither the redemption of trust fund bonds, nor interest paid on those bonds, provides any new net income to the Treasury, which must finance redemptions and interest payments through some combination of increased taxation, reductions in other government spending, or additional borrowing from the public.

There is nothing ambiguous about the above words. They make it clear that the government does not receive any cash income from the alleged interest payments on the trust fund IOUs. The interest payments are made in the form of additional worthless IOUs. The government cannot sell the IOUs because they are not marketable and have no cash value. The IOUs simply represent a debt of one branch of the government (the Treasury Department) to another branch of government (Social Security). They cancel each other out.
The Social Security surplus revenue should have been saved and invested in public-issue, marketable Treasury bonds. These bonds are “good as gold” and default-proof. They are the kind of U.S. Treasury bonds that are owned by China and Japan, Bill Gates, pension funds, and every other serious investor that owns Treasuries. If the Social Security surplus had been invested in public-issue marketable Treasury bonds, as it could have been, and should have been, Barbara Kennelly would be correct in saying that the Social Security holdings are “as solid as what we owe China and Japan.” Unfortunately not a single dollar of the surplus Social Security revenue was saved or invested in anything. It was all spent, and, once money is spent, there is nothing left to invest.
The government cannot, and will not, ever default on any of its public issue, marketable Treasury bonds because of the panic it would create in world markets and the damage it would do to the nation’s worldwide credibility. But Congress has the legal authority to default on its debt to Social Security, and, if it should do so, the outside world would probably view it primarily as an internal matter between the United States Government and its citizens. One of the least known facts about Social Security is that, although the government does have a moral obligation to pay Social Security benefits to those who have earned them, the government does not have a legal obligation to do so.
In a 1960 ruling by the United States Supreme Court, the court ruled that nobody has a “contractual earned right“ to Social Security benefits. Section 1104 of the 1935 Social Security Act specifically states, “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this Act is hereby reserved to the Congress.” According to the above strong language, Congress could do whatever it wanted to do with regard to changing or even eliminating Social Security.
Early on, some did not take the language seriously because they thought it was probably unconstitutional. However, in 1960, in the case of Fleming v. Nestor, the Supreme Court upheld the denial of benefits to Nestor, even though he had contributed to the program for 19 years and was already receiving benefits In its ruling, the Supreme Court established the principle that entitlement to Social Security benefits “is not a contractual right.” As a result of the 1960 Supreme Court ruling, the future of Social Security is totally in the hands of Congress and the President. They have the legal authority to amend any and all parts of the Social Security Act, as well as the authority to either increase or decrease Social Security benefits.
II: The Social Security Fraud Has Finally Been Exposed
On December 13, 2010, the highly respected Kansas City Star, winner of eight Pulitzer Prizes, published an editorial entitled, “The myth of the Social Security trust fund,” which included the following statement:

A lot of people speak of those IOUs as if they can be pulled out and exchanged for money to pay benefit checks. They can’t. As the Clinton administration budget of 2000 explained, the securities in the Trust Fund ‘do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Those special-issue bonds can only be redeemed by raising taxes, cutting spending elsewhere, or borrowing — exactly what the government would have to do if the Trust Fund didn’t exist. The Trust Fund, said the Clinton budget message, ‘does not, by itself, have any impact on the Government’s ability to pay benefits.

On December 20, distinguished business columnist, Allan Sloan, seven-time winner of the prestigious Loeb award, business journalism’s highest honor, called the trust fund “a mirage” in his Washington Post column. In the column, titled, “New tax law reveals the mirage of the Social Security trust fund,” Sloan wrote:

My problem with the trust fund is that it’s a snare and a delusion for people who think that it makes Social Security financially sound. It doesn’t do that, because having government IOUs in a government trust fund doesn’t make it any easier for the government to cover Social Security’s cash shortfalls than it would be if there were no trust fund.

These are not new revelations. I have spent the past decade relentlessly trying to expose the Social Security fraud, and prominent government officials were screaming out the warnings two decades ago.
On October 13, 1989, Senator Ernest Hollings of SC stood on the Senate floor and warned, “…the most reprehensible fraud in this great jambalaya of frauds is the systematic and total ransacking of the Social Security trust fund…in the next century…the American people will wake up to the reality that those IOUs in the trust fund vault are a 21^st century version of Confederate bank notes.”
The Kansas City Star editorial and Allan Sloan’s Washington Post column seem to have stunned the AARP and the NCPSSM into silence. These organization have repeatedly claimed that the Social Security surplus is invested in U.S. Treasury bonds just like those held by the Chinese government. They have battled my efforts to get this same message out for a decade, but they seem to have had the wind knocked out of them by the Star and Allan Sloan. So far, they have made no attempt to rebut either of the two articles. The AARP and the NCPSSM have been claiming for years that the trust fund holds enough assets to pay full Social Security benefits until at least 2037, when, in fact, in the words of the Kansas City Star, it has no “real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.”
The Kansas City Star and Allan Sloan have exposed the trust fund myth so clearly that I think the national debate will now turn to how and why the United States government violated both the public trust and federal law for a quarter-century in a way that caused a major transfer of income from the lower and middle class to the richest of all Americans. By imposing a hefty increase in the regressive payroll tax in 1983, and then using a large portion of the new revenue to offset the lost revenue resulting from the unaffordable income tax cuts that went primarily to the richest Americans, the United States government engineered a major transfer of income from the lower and middle classes to the richest of all Americans.
So where does that leave Social Security? The approximately $2.5 trillion in surplus revenue, generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike, rightly belongs to the Social Security trust fund and to American workers who paid the extra taxes. But the money is all gone — “borrowed” or “stolen” by the federal government and spent for general government operations. None of the money was saved or invested in anything, so the trust fund contains no real economic assets with which to supplement the payroll tax which will become inadequate to pay full benefits after 2015.
I believe it is time for the public to demand, in a very strong way, that the government make arrangements to repay its debt to Social Security. It is futile for the AARP and the NCPSSM to continue to insist that Social Security is in fine shape and has enough assets to pay full benefits until 2037. This just isn’t true. What the organizations need to do now is put political pressure on the government to move quickly to enact legislation that would require the repayment of the looted money, as it is needed, over the next 27 years. There is no way that the government could possibly come up with the $2.5 trillion in the near future, given the budget crisis. But it can make a legal commitment to repay the money in installments. Will that happen? Not without major political pressure from the majority of Americans. The AARP and the NCPSSM have frittered away the past ten years when the problem could have been resolved. If the looting could have been stopped when I first began actively urging such action in 2000, the trust fund would today hold approximately $1.5 trillion (the amount looted during the past 10 years) in “good-as-gold” real assets. Instead, it holds no real economic assets.
The reason I don’t believe the government will honor its debt to Social Security without major political pressure is that it does not legally have to repay the money. The government certainly has a moral obligation to do so, but, because of a 1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, it has an out. In the case of Fleming v. Nestor, the Court ruled that nobody has a “contractual earned right” to Social Security benefits. This ruling was based on Section 1104 of the 1935 Social Security Act which specifically states, “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this ACT is hereby reserved to the Congress.” Based on this strong language, Congress could do whatever it wanted to do with regard to changing or even eliminating Social Security.
Many people argue that the government could not default on its debt to Social Security because of the effect such action would have on financial markets and the nation’s public image. If the government held the same kind of real bonds that are traded on world markets, this would be true. Public-issue, marketable U.S. Treasury bonds are default-proof, and that is the kind of bonds that the Social Security surplus revenue was supposed to be invested in. If this had been done, Social Security would be in fine shape today. But, instead of using the surplus Social Security revenue to buy such bonds in the open market, the government chose to spend the money and issue IOUs to replace the spent money. These IOUs are non-marketable and could not be sold to anyone, even for a penny on the dollar. The government has the legal authority to declare these IOUs null and void. Since these IOUs are not traded, such action would have little effect on financial markets, and foreign governments would probably consider such action as an internal matter between the American government and its citizens.
The Social Security trust fund does not hold any real economic assets that can be drawn down to pay future benefits. That is an indisputable fact today, and it has been true ever since the 1983 payroll tax hike was enacted. Every dollar of the $2.5 trillion in surplus revenue, generated by the payroll tax hike, has been spent on programs unrelated to Social Security, leaving nothing to save or invest.
A few United States Senators tried to sound the alarm two decades ago, and I have dedicated the past ten years of my life to trying to alert the public to the awful truth about the Social Security trust fund. For more than a quarter of a century, the United States government, under five presidents, has hoodwinked the American public into believing their Social Security contributions would be used for future Social Security benefits when, in fact, all of the surplus Social Security revenue was used to fund such things as tax cuts for the rich, two wars, and other government programs.
Today, thanks to the efforts of the editorial board of the Kansas City Star, and thanks to the courage and competence of Allan Sloan and a few other journalists, the big bad secret is finally out, and I think it is too late to get this cat back in the bag.
III: How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off one of the Greatest Frauds Ever Perpetrated against the American People
Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan pulled off one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against the American people in the history of this great nation, and the underlying scam is still alive and well, more than a quarter century later. It represents the very foundation upon which the economic malpractice that led the nation to the great economic collapse of 2008 was built. Ronald Reagan was a cunning politician, but he didn’t know much about economics. Alan Greenspan was an economist, who had no reluctance to work with a politician on a plan that would further the cause of the right-wing goals that both he and President Reagan shared….
Exactly what Reagan did, with the help of Alan Greenspan. Consider the following sequence of events:

1) President Reagan appointed Greenspan as chairman of the 1982 National Commission on Social Security Reform (aka The Greenspan Commission)
2) The Greenspan Commission recommended a major payroll tax hike to generate Social Security surpluses for the next 30 years, in order to build up a large reserve in the trust fund that could be drawn down during the years after Social Security began running deficits.
3) The 1983 Social Security amendments enacted hefty increases in the payroll tax in order to generate large future surpluses.
4) As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the general revenue fund and spent on other government programs. None of the surplus was saved or invested in anything. The surplus Social Security revenue, that was paid by working Americans, was used to replace the lost revenue from Reagan’s big income tax cuts that went primarily to the rich.
5) In 1987, President Reagan nominated Greenspan as the successor to Paul Volker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Greenspan continued as Fed Chairman until January 31, 2006. (One can only speculate on whether the coveted Fed Chairmanship represented, at least in part, a payback for Greenspan’s role in initiating the Social Security surplus revenue.)
6) In 1990, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a member of the Greenspan Commission, and one of the strongest advocates the the 1983 legislation, became outraged when he learned that first Reagan, and then President George H.W. Bush used the surplus Social Security revenue to pay for other government programs instead of saving and investing it for the baby boomers. Moynihan locked horns with President Bush and proposed repealing the 1983 payroll tax hike. Moynihan’s view was that if the government could not keep its hands out of the Social Security cookie jar, the cookie jar should be emptied, so there would be no surplus Social Security revenue for the government to loot. President Bush would have no part of repealing the payroll tax hike. The “read-my-lips-no-new-taxes” president was not about to give up his huge slush fund.

IV: Obama and the Social Security Time Bomb
The 1983 Social Security “fix” required the baby boomers to pay much higher payroll taxes so that they would prepay most of the cost of their own benefits. The higher taxes would generate Social Security surpluses for approximately 30 years, which were supposed to be saved and invested to build up a large reserve in the trust fund. Then, when the baby boomers began to retire in about 2010, the accumulated surpluses from the previous three decades would gradually be drawn down and used to supplement the payroll tax revenue, which was expected to become inadequate to pay full benefits by about 2015. The 1983 Social Security legislation laid the foundation for the greatest fraud ever perpetrated against the American people by their government. The $2.54 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue, generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike, has all been “borrowed” or “stolen” by the government and used to fund tax cuts for the rich, wars, and other government programs.
President Obama is the fifth president to participate in the great Social Security scam, but he has the dubious distinction of being the president, on whose watch, the Social Security time bomb, activated 25 years ago by President Reagan, will run out of time. All of the previous administrations knew that spending Social Security revenue, as if it were general revenue, was wrong and was a violation of both federal law and the public trust. But, they all had the luxury of knowing that the raided Social Security money would not be needed to pay benefits while they were still in office. However, President Obama learned early in his presidency that, unless the government ended the raiding and began repaying the money that had already been raided, Social Security would face a major financial crisis during his presidency.
Beginning in 2015, and every year after that, payroll tax revenue will be insufficient to pay full benefits. This was known in 1983 when the Social Security “fix” was enacted. The plan was to draw down the large reserve that is supposed to be in the trust fund and use that money to supplement payroll tax revenue so that full benefits could be paid until 2037. But that money has already been spent, so the government will have to come up with the money again to repay the $2.54 trillion that it embezzled. This might be manageable in the early years, when the difference between benefit costs and payroll tax revenue is minimal. But, each year, the amount of money needed to replace the looted money gets bigger and bigger. For example, Social Security will run a deficit of approximately $41.4 billion in 2010. But in 2020, the Social Security deficit will have grown to $101.4 billion. Five years later, in 2025, the Social Security shortfall will be $274.6 billion. In 2035, the government would have to come up with an astronomical $621.9 billion in order to pay full Social Security benefits.
When President Obama first saw these numbers, he must have almost gone into a state of shock. His predecessors left him with a lot of problems that can plainly be seen by the public—two wars, a collapsed economy, and a gigantic deficit and debt. But the embezzlement of the Social Security trust fund money was done without public knowledge, and it is doubtful that Obama knew anything about it prior to becoming a United States Senator, and he may have not known about it until he entered the White House. President Obama cannot just kick the can farther down the road as his four predecessors have done. He must find a way to raise the money to repay the government’s debt to Social Security, or cut Social Security benefits so the money will not have to be repaid.
Embezzlement is a crime, and every participant (all the presidents and members of Congress who supported the practice) knew they were committing a crime against the American people as they used the people’s Social Security money as general revenue over the past 25 years. Some individuals, such as the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, attempted to end the raiding 20 years ago. On September 27, 2000, I launched my decade-long campaign to expose the Social Security scam with an appearance on CNN News to discuss my then newly-published book, The Alleged Budget Surplus, Social Security, and Voodoo Economics. For the past 10 years, I have been warning, as forcefully as I could, that a day of reckoning would come, at which time the government might consider defaulting on its huge Social Security debt. But nobody wanted to listen. That day of reckoning is now upon us.
V: Censored Social Security Book Back in Print
When my book, The Looting of Social Security: How The Government is Draining America’s Retirement Account, was published by a New York publisher in 2004, I thought my long battle to expose the truth about the Social Security trust fund was almost won. But that book met with foul play, and was removed from the market before many people had the opportunity to read it.
Early reviews revealed just how provocative the book was going to be. The Boston Globe reported, “… With dismal clarity, Smith lays out the step-by-step history of how a national pension plan was transformed into an outright shakedown of working people” and ALA Booklist said, “Smith has written a scathing account of massive fraud on the part of our nation’s leaders, who have plundered every cent of the Social Security Trust Fund surplus that was specifically earmarked for the retirement of the baby boomers.”
On February 26, 2004, I appeared on CNBC, to respond to Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, who had called for Social Security benefit cuts the previous day. I held my book in front of the camera and said, as forcefully as I could, “Alan Greenspan should be ashamed of himself for what he is not telling the American people.” I now believe that this public criticism of the Fed chairman may have been the final nail in the coffin of The Looting of Social Security, which was very critical of Greenspan’s role in making the looting of the trust fund possible.
A few weeks after my controversial appearance on CNBC, the book mysteriously disappeared from bookstores, nationwide, and was listed as “unavailable” by Amazon.com. I tried to get the rights to the book reverted back to me so I could publish my message elsewhere, but my publisher refused to surrender the rights. Thus the book was effectively killed off, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was unable to pinpoint exactly who was responsible for rendering the book “unavailable,” but a lot of people did not want the contents of the book to become public. Certainly, people in government, such as Alan Greenspan and Karl Rove, as well as many others in the Bush administration, would have wanted to prevent the book from becoming public knowledge, if they could find a way to do so.
Although the public knew nothing about it at the time, Greenspan’s February 25, 2004 call for Social Security benefit cuts was the opening salvo in an organized campaign to dismantle Social Security, as we now know it, once George W. Bush was safely elected to a second term. On August 27, 2004, Greenspan again spoke of cutting Social Security benefits during remarks at a symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
“As a nation, we owe it to our retirees to promise only the benefits that can be delivered,” Greenspan said. “If we have promised more than our economy has the power to deliver to retirees without unduly diminishing real income gains of workers, as I fear we may have, we must recalibrate our public programs so that pending retirees have time to adjust through other channels.”
Almost immediately upon his re-election, President George W. Bush made public his plan to partially privatize Social Security. On November 4, 2004, Bush said, “Let me put it this way: I earned capital, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style…I’ve earned capital in this election— and I’m going to spend it for what I told the people I’d spend it on, which is — you’ve heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.”
Like other Americans, there is no way I could have known about the standby plan to privatize Social Security, which was already formulated at the time I appeared on CNBC and publicly challenged Alan Greenspan on Social Security. Therefore, I didn’t realize just how big the potential impact of widespread readership of my book could be on the future plans of the Bush administration. From the administration’s point of view, I’m sure that they were not going to allow my book, or a book by any other author, to sabotage their plan to privatize Social Security. The book was a threat, and the threat had to be dealt with.
What is far more puzzling to me, than the opposition to my book in 2004, is the current effort to discredit me, and the book. I was almost flabbergasted when I learned, just a few weeks ago, that a website that goes by the name of “Medicare and Medicare Programs” launched a smear campaign on September 22, 2010 against me and the book that has been off the market since 2004. You don’t believe me? Click on the following link and it will take you to that website. I tried to find out who owns this website and who is behind this effort, but I was unable to do so. Who is sponsoring this website, and what is their agenda? These things don’t just happen by chance. The five negative reviews, alleged by the website to have been submitted on September 22, 2010, are exact duplicates of “customer reviews” from Amazon.com that were posted in 2004 and 2005.
If the intent of this internet campaign was to stomp out the message of my book, now and forever, their actions have backfired on them. It was in reaction to this campaign that I decided not to allow them to kick a dead book without bringing the book back to life. When I finally regained the rights to “The Looting of Social Security” in 2008, I vowed to re-publish the book, when the time was right, under an arrangement that would guarantee that the book remained in print for as long as anyone wanted to read it.
The smear campaign on the Internet has convinced me that the time is now right for the book to be resurrected. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that the book has just been published by Ironwood Publications, under the title, The Looting of Social Security, New release of the book they didn’t want you to read. The new book includes all of the content of the original book, along with a new forward written by Dr. Victor Stoltzfus, President Emeritus, Goshen College, and an after word written by me that brings the book up to date. The book was officially released yesterday, November 1, 2010.
For an extensive archive of Dr. Allen Smith’s work, visit Dissident Voice.

The United States of America

2012-01-26T14:51:00.000-08:00

The United States of America (also called the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.^[6] The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity).^[3]^[7]
Indigenous peoples descended from forebears who migrated from Asia have inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact. The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their right to self-determination and their establishment of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated the British Empire in the American Revolution, the first successful colonial war of independence.^[8] The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.
Through the 19th century, the United States displaced native tribes, acquired the Louisiana territory from France, Florida from Spain, part of the Oregon Country from the United Kingdom, Alta California and New Mexico from Mexico, and Alaska from Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over the expansion of the institution of slavery and states' rights provoked the Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, its national economy was the world's largest.^[9] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for 41% of global military spending,^[10] and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.
In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.^[12] The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".^[13] On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." The Franco-American treaties of 1778 used "United States of North America", but from July 11, 1778, "United States of America" was used on the country's bills of exchange, and it has been the official name ever since.^[14]
The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms include the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names include the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a once popular name for the United States, derives from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia".
The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an "American". Although "United States" is the official appositional term, "American" and "U.S." are more commonly used to refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). "American" is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.^[15]
The phrase "United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".

Geography and environment

Main articles: Geography of the United States, Climate of the United States, and Environment of the United States

The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1,900 million acres (7,700,000 km²). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (1,480,000 km²). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (16,000 km²).^[17] The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and just above or below China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured: calculations range from 3,676,486 square miles (9,522,055 km²)^[18] to 3,717,813 square miles (9,629,091 km²)^[19] to 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,676 km²).^[1] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.

Satellite image showing topography of the contiguous United States

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in the country and in North America. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.^[21]

The bald eagle, national bird of the United States since 1782

The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the country, mainly in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.^[22]
The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse": about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.^[23] The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species.^[24] About 91,000 insect species have been described.^[25] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.^[26] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.^[27] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.^[27]

Political divisions

Main article: U.S. state

Further information: Territorial evolution of the United States and United States territorial acquisitions

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. One set of exceptions comprises Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was an independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The states do not have the right to secede from the union.
The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the two other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also possesses five major overseas territories: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific.^[28] Those born in the major territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.^[29] American citizens residing in the territories have many of the same rights and responsibilities as citizens residing in the states; however, they are generally exempt from federal income tax, may not vote for president, and have only nonvoting representation in the U.S. Congress.^[30]

History

Main article: History of the United States

Native American and European settlement

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia, beginning between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago.^[31] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.^[32]

The Mayflower transported Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as depicted in William Halsall's The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, 1882.

In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.^[33] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.
In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.^[34] By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans (popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.^[35] Though subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

Independence and expansion

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1817–18

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak confederal government that operated until 1789.
After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the French and Spanish, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi River. Those wishing to establish a strong federal government with powers of taxation organized a constitutional convention in 1787. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.
Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the transatlantic slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements, including abolitionism.

Territorial acquisitions by date

Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.^[36] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.^[37] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.

Civil War and industrialization

Battle of Gettysburg, lithograph by Currier & Ives, ca. 1863

Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America. With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,^[38] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.^[39] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.^[40]

Immigrants at Ellis Island, New York Harbor, 1902

After the war, the assassination of Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture. National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.^[41] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

An abandoned farm in South Dakota during the Dust Bowl, 1936

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.^[42] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.^[43] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.^[44] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

Soldiers of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division landing in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944

The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers as well as the internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.^[45] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war.^[46] Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.^[47] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.^[48]

Cold War and protest politics

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech, 1963

The United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. Resisting leftist land and income redistribution projects around the world, the United States often supported authoritarian governments. American troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.
The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He also signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.
As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. His second term in office brought both the Iran-Contra scandal and significant diplomatic progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.

Contemporary era

The World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001

Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.^[49] A civil lawsuit and sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, but he remained in office. The 2000 presidential election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision—George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched the global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan and removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds.^[50]^[51] Forces of a so-called Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq in 2003, ousting Saddam Hussein. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. In 2008, amid a global economic recession, the first African American president, Barack Obama, was elected. Major health care and financial system reforms were enacted two years later. In 2011, a raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Iraq War ended with the pullout of the remaining U.S. troops from the country.

Government, elections, and politics

Main articles: Federal government of the United States, state governments of the United States, and elections in the United States

The west front of the United States Capitol, which houses the United States Congress

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law".^[52] The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document. In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels.

The south façade of the White House, home and workplace of the U.S. president

The federal government is composed of three branches:

Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.
Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the members of the Cabinet (subject to Senate approval) and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and overturn those they find unconstitutional.

The west front of the United States Supreme Court Building

The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. The Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every other year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.
The state governments are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska uniquely has a unicameral legislature. The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.
The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was declared by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Parties and ideology

Main articles: Politics of the United States and Political ideologies in the United States

Barack Obama taking the presidential oath of office from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, January 20, 2009

The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history. For elective offices at most levels, state-administered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.
Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered center-right or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered center-left or liberal. The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states", are relatively liberal. The "red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are relatively conservative.
The winner of the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th U.S. president. The 2010 midterm elections saw the Republican Party take control of the House and make gains in the Senate, where the Democrats retain the majority. In the 112th United States Congress, the Senate comprises 51 Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 47 Republicans; the House comprises 242 Republicans and 192 Democrats—one seat is vacant. There are 29 Republican and 20 Democratic state governors, as well as one independent.

Foreign relations and military

Main articles: Foreign policy of the United States and United States Armed Forces

British Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, May 2010

The United States exercises global economic, political, and military influence. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and New York City hosts the United Nations Headquarters. It is a member of the G8, G20, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.
The United States has a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom^[53] and strong ties with Canada,^[54] Australia,^[55] New Zealand,^[56] the Philippines,^[57] Japan,^[58] South Korea,^[59] Israel,^[60] and several European countries. It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2008, the United States spent a net $25.4 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world. As a share of America's large gross national income (GNI), however, the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among twenty-two donor states. By contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is relatively generous.^[61]

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier

The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in time of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.^[62]
Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad,^[63] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.^[64] The extent of this global military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases".^[65]
Total U.S. military spending in 2008, more than $600 billion, was over 41% of global military spending and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. The per capita spending of $1,967 was about nine times the world average; at 4% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top fifteen military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.^[66] The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2012, $553 billion, is a 4.2% increase over 2011; an additional $118 billion is proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.^[67] Approximately 100,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan as of November 2011;^[68] the withdrawal of the 24,000 American troops remaining in Iraq is scheduled to be complete by the end of the year.^[69] As of November 19, 2011, the United States had suffered 4,484 military fatalities during the Iraq War,^[70] and 1,841 during the War in Afghanistan.^[71]

Economy

Main article: Economy of the United States

Economic indicators
Unemployment	8.5% (December 2011)	^[72]
GDP growth	2.5% (3Q 2011), 2.9% (2010)	^[73]
CPI inflation	3.5% (October 2010 – October 2011)	^[74]
Poverty	15.1% (2010)	^[75]
Public debt	$15.11 trillion (Dec. 2, 2011)	^[76]
Household net worth	$58.5 trillion (2Q 2011)	^[77]

The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity.^[78] According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $15.1 trillion constitutes 22% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).^[3] Though larger than any other nation's, its national GDP is about 5% smaller than the GDP of the European Union at PPP in 2008. The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP.^[3] The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.^[79]
The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $634.9 billion.^[80] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.^[81] In 2010, oil was the largest import commodity, while transportation equipment was the country's largest export.^[80] China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. public debt.^[82]

Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest bourse by dollar volume^[83]

In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 4.3% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 9.3%.^[84] While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development and its service sector constitutes 67.8% of GDP, the United States remains an industrial power.^[85] The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is manufacturing.^[86] Chemical products are the leading manufacturing field.^[87] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world, as well as its largest importer.^[88] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP,^[85] the United States is the world's top producer of corn^[89] and soybeans.^[90] Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.^[91]
In August 2010, the American labor force comprised 154.1 million people. With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. About 12% of workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.^[92] The World Bank ranks the United States first in the ease of hiring and firing workers.^[93] In 2009, the United States had the third highest labor productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway. It was fourth in productivity per hour, behind those two countries and the Netherlands.^[94] Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income tax rates are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption tax rates are lower.^[95]

Income and human development

A middle-class suburban development in San Jose, California

Main article: Income in the United States

According to the United States Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2010 was $49,445. The median ranged from $64,308 among Asian American households to $32,068 among African American households.^[75] Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, the overall median is similar to the most affluent cluster of developed nations. After declining sharply during the middle of the 20th century, poverty rates have plateaued since the early 1970s, with 11–15% of Americans below the poverty line every year, and 58.5% spending at least one year in poverty between the ages of 25 and 75.^[96]^[97] In 2010, 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty, a figure that rose for the fourth year in a row.^[75]
The U.S. welfare state is one of the least extensive in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for rich nations,^[98]^[99] though combined private and public social expenditures per capita are relatively high.^[100] While the American welfare state effectively reduces poverty among the elderly,^[101] it provides relatively little assistance to the young.^[102] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations ranked the United States next to last.^[103]
Between 1947 and 1979, real median income rose by over 80% for all classes, with the incomes of poor Americans rising faster than those of the rich.^[104] However, income gains since then have been slower, less widely shared, and accompanied by increased economic insecurity.^[104]^[105] Median household income has increased for all classes since 1980,^[106] largely owing to more dual-earner households, the closing of the gender gap, and longer work hours, but the growth has been strongly tilted toward the very top.^[98]^[104]^[107] Consequently, the share of income of the top 1%—21.8% of total reported income in 2005—has more than doubled since 1980,^[108] leaving the United States with the greatest income inequality among developed nations.^[98]^[109] The top 1% pays 27.6% of all federal taxes, while the top 10% pays 54.7%.^[110] Wealth, like income, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share among developed nations.^[111] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.^[112] In 2010 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 12th among 139 countries on its inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI), eight places lower than in the standard HDI.^[113]

Infrastructure

Science and technology

A photograph from Apollo 11 of Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon

Main article: Science and technology in the United States

The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. Nikola Tesla pioneered alternating current, the AC motor, and radio. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.^[114]
The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. IBM, Apple Computer, and Microsoft refined and popularized the personal computer. The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, 64% of research and development funding comes from the private sector.^[115] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.^[116] Americans possess high levels of technological consumer goods,^[117] and almost half of U.S. households have broadband Internet access.^[118] The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food, representing half of the world's biotech crops.^[119]

Transportation

The Interstate Highway System, which extends 46,876 miles (75,440 km)^[120]

Main article: Transportation in the United States

Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 13 million roads,^[121] including the world's longest highway system.^[122] The world's second largest automobile market,^[123] the United States has the highest rate of per-capita vehicle ownership in the world, with 765 vehicles per 1,000 Americans.^[124] About 40% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.^[125] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling 29 miles (47 km).^[126]
Mass transit accounts for 9% of total U.S. work trips,^[127] ranking last in a survey of 17 countries.^[128] While transport of goods by rail is extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel.^[129] Light rail development has increased in recent years but, like high speed rail, is below European levels.^[130] Bicycle usage for work commutes is minimal.^[131]
The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The four largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are American; Southwest Airlines is number one.^[132] Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.^[133]

Energy

The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, the 10th highest rate in the world. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and renewable energy sources.^[134] The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.^[135] For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part due to public perception in the wake of a 1979 accident. In 2007, several applications for new nuclear plants were filed.^[136] The United States has 27% of global coal reserves.^[137]

Education

Some 80% of U.S. college students attend public universities such as the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson.^[138]

Main article: Education in the United States

American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. Children are required in most states to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen.^[139] About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.^[140]
The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education. According to prominent international rankings, 13 or 15 American colleges and universities are ranked among the top 20 in the world.^[141]^[142] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. Of Americans twenty-five and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.^[143] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.^[1]^[144] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.^[145]

Health

The Texas Medical Center in Houston, the world's largest medical center^[146]

The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth ranks it 50th among 221 nations.^[147] Increasing obesity in the United States and health improvements elsewhere have contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 1987, when it was 11th in the world.^[148] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;^[149] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.^[150] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.^[151] The infant mortality rate of 6.06 per thousand places the United States 176th out of 222 countries, higher than all of Western Europe.^[152]
The U.S. health care system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.^[153] The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system in 2000 as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance.
Health care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts, and is not universal as in all other developed countries. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.^[154] In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The main cause of this rise is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.^[155] The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue.^[156] A 2009 study estimated that lack of insurance is associated with nearly 45,000 deaths a year.^[157] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance.^[158] Federal legislation passed in early 2010 will create a near-universal health insurance system around the country by 2014.

Crime and law enforcement

Main articles: Law enforcement in the United States and Crime in the United States

Law enforcement in the U.S. is maintained primarily by local police departments. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is the largest in the country.^[159]

Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state systems. Federal law prohibits a variety of drugs, although states sometimes pass laws in conflict with federal regulations. The smoking age is generally 18, and the drinking age is generally 21.
Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide.^[160] There were 5.0 murders per 100,000 persons in 2009, 10.4% fewer than in 2000.^[161] Gun ownership rights are the subject of contentious political debate.
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate^[162] and total prison population^[163] in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults.^[164] The current rate is about seven times the 1980 figure,^[165] and over three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.^[166] African American males are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.^[162] The country's high rate of incarceration is largely due to sentencing and drug policies.^[162]^[167]
Though it has been abolished in most Western nations, capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in thirty-four states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year moratorium, there have been more than 1,000 executions.^[168] In 2010, the country had the fifth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen.^[169] In 2007, New Jersey became the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision, followed by New Mexico in 2009 and Illinois in 2011.^[170]

Demographics

Main articles: Demographics of the United States and Americans

Largest ancestry groups by county, 2000

Race/Ethnicity (2010)^[171]
White	72.4%
Black/African American	12.6%
Asian	4.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native	0.9%
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander	0.2%
Other	6.2%
Two or more races	2.9%
Hispanic/Latino (of any race)	16.3%

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the country's population now to be 312,910,000,^[2] including an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants.^[172] The U.S. population almost quadrupled during the 20th century, from about 76 million in 1900.^[173] The third most populous nation in the world, after China and India, the United States is the only industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.^[174] Even with a birth rate of 13.82 per 1,000, 30% below the world average, its population growth rate is positive at 1%, significantly higher than those of many developed nations.^[175] In fiscal year 2010, over 1 million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence.^[176] Mexico has been the leading source of new residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.^[177]
The United States has a very diverse population—thirty-one ancestry groups have more than one million members.^[178] White Americans are the largest racial group; German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constitute three of the country's four largest ancestry groups.^[178] African Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group.^[178] Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.^[178] In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 5.2 million people with some American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.2 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively).^[179] The census counted more than 19 million people of "Some Other Race" who were "unable to identify with any" of its five official race categories in 2010.^[179]
The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans (the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major demographic trend. The 50.5 million Americans of Hispanic descent^[179] are identified as sharing a distinct "ethnicity" by the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent.^[180] Between 2000 and 2010, the country's Hispanic population increased 43% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 4.9%.^[171] Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54% of that figure born in Latin America.^[181] Fertility is also a factor; the average Hispanic woman gives birth to 3.0 children in her lifetime, compared to 2.2 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1).^[174] Minorities (as defined by the Census Bureau as all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites) constitute 36.3% of the population in 2010,^[182] and nearly 50% of children under age 1,^[183] and are projected to constitute the majority by 2042.^[184]
About 82% of Americans live in urban areas (including suburbs);^[1] about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000.^[185] In 2008, 273 incorporated places had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four global cities had over 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston).^[186] There are fifty-two metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million.^[187] Of the fifty fastest-growing metro areas, forty-seven are in the West or South.^[188] The metro areas of Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix all grew by more than a million people between 2000 and 2008.^[187]

Leading population centers					view talk edit
Rank	Core city	Metro area pop.^[189]	Metropolitan Statistical Area	Region^[190]	New York City Los Angeles
1	New York City	18,897,109	New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA MSA	Northeast
2	Los Angeles	12,828,837	Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA MSA	West
3	Chicago	9,461,105	Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI MSA	Midwest
4	Dallas	6,371,773	Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX MSA	South
5	Philadelphia	5,965,343	Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA	Northeast
6	Houston	5,946,800	Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX MSA	South
7	Washington, D.C.	5,582,170	Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA	South
8	Miami	5,564,635	Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL MSA	South
9	Atlanta	5,268,860	Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA	South
10	Boston	4,552,403	Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH MSA	Northeast
based on the 2010 U.S. Census

Language

Main article: Languages of the United States

Languages (2007)^[191]
English (only)	225.5 million
Spanish, incl. Creole	34.5 million
Chinese	2.5 million
French, incl. Creole	2.0 million
Tagalog	1.5 million
Vietnamese	1.2 million
German	1.1 million
Korean	1.1 million

English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2007, about 226 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language.^[191]^[192] Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states.^[5] Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.^[193]
While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.^[194] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.^[195] Many jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English speakers produce government materials, especially voting information, in the most commonly spoken languages in those jurisdictions. Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.

Religion

A Presbyterian church; most Americans identify as Christian.

Main article: Religion in the United States

The United States is officially a secular nation; the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids the establishment of any religious governance. In a 2002 study, 59% of Americans said that religion played a "very important role in their lives", a far higher figure than that of any other wealthy nation.^[196] According to a 2007 survey, 78.4% of adults identified themselves as Christian,^[197] down from 86.4% in 1990.^[198] Protestant denominations accounted for 51.3%, while Roman Catholicism, at 23.9%, was the largest individual denomination. The study categorizes white evangelicals, 26.3% of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort;^[197] another study estimates evangelicals of all races at 30–35%.^[199] The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2007 was 4.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990.^[198] The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.7%), Buddhism (0.7%), Islam (0.6%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%).^[197] The survey also reported that 16.1% of Americans described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion, up from 8.2% in 1990.^[197]^[198]

Family structure

In 2007, 58% of Americans age 18 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 25% had never been married.^[200] Women now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.^[201]
Same-sex marriage is a contentious issue. Some states permit civil unions or domestic partnerships in lieu of marriage. Since 2003, several states have legalized gay marriage as the result of judicial or legislative action. Meanwhile, the federal government and a majority of states define marriage as between a man and a woman and/or explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage. Public opinion on the issue has shifted from general opposition in the 1990s to a statistical deadlock as of 2011.^[202]
The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is the highest among OECD nations.^[203] Abortion policy was left to the states until the Supreme Court legalized the practice in 1973. The issue remains highly controversial, with public opinion closely divided for many years. Many states ban public funding of the procedure and restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate a waiting period. While the abortion rate is falling, the abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.^[204]

Culture

Main article: Culture of the United States

The Statue of Liberty is a globally recognized symbol of both the United States and ideals such as freedom, democracy, and opportunity.^[205]

The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.^[6]^[206] Aside from the now small Native American and Native Hawaiian populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.^[207] Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa.^[6]^[208] More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.^[6]
American culture is considered the most individualistic in the world.^[209] Though the American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants, other developed nations offer greater social mobility.^[210] While the mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society,^[211] scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.^[212] The American middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary social trends such as modern feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism.^[213] Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree.^[214] While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.^[215]

The Hollywood Sign

The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited as the greatest film of all time.^[216] American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. The major film studios of Hollywood have produced the most commercially successful movies in history, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997), and the products of Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.^[217]
Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world,^[218] and the average viewing time continues to rise, reaching five hours a day in 2006.^[219] The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.^[220] Aside from web portals and search engines, the most popular websites are Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogger, eBay, and Craigslist.^[221]
The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, and rhythm and blues in the 1940s. Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the mid-1950s pioneers of rock and roll. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's most celebrated songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.^[222]

Literature, philosophy, and the arts

Main articles: American literature, American philosophy, American art, and American classical music

Jack Kerouac, one of the best-known figures of the Beat Generation, a group of writers that came to prominence in the 1950s

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is now recognized as an essential American poet.^[223] A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel".^[224]
Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century.^[225] Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches, as have postmodernist authors such as John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo.
The transcendentalists, led by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Sanders Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the 20th century, the work of W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty, built upon by Noam Chomsky, brought analytic philosophy to the fore of U.S. academics. John Rawls and Robert Nozick led a revival of political philosophy.
In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The realist paintings of Thomas Eakins are now widely celebrated. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.^[226] Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new styles, displaying a highly individualistic sensibility. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry.

Times Square in New York City, part of the Broadway theater district

One of the first major promoters of American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the 20th century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.
Though little known at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition, while experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created a distinctive American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a new synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham helped create modern dance, while George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in 20th century ballet. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.^[227]

Food

Main article: American cuisine

Mainstream American cuisine is similar to that in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses indigenous ingredients, such as turkey, venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, which were consumed by Native Americans and early European settlers. Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue, crab cakes, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American foods. Soul food, developed by African slaves, is popular around the South and among many African Americans elsewhere. Syncretic cuisines such as Louisiana creole, Cajun, and Tex-Mex are regionally important.
Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.^[228] Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.^[229]
The American fast food industry, the world's largest, pioneered the drive-through format in the 1930s. Fast food consumption has sparked health concerns. During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%;^[228] frequent dining at fast food outlets is associated with what public health officials call the American "obesity epidemic".^[230] Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular, and sugared beverages account for 9% of American caloric intake.^[231]

Sports

Main article: Sports in the United States

A college football quarterback looking to pass the ball

Baseball has been regarded as the national sport since the late 19th century, while American football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport.^[232] Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two leading professional team sports. College football and basketball attract large audiences. Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. Soccer is played widely at the youth and amateur levels. Tennis and many outdoor sports are popular as well.
While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, snowboarding, and cheerleading are American inventions. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The United States has won 2,301 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country,^[233] and 253 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most.^[234]

Measurement systems

Main article: United States customary units

The nation retains United States customary units, comprising mainly former British imperial units such as miles, yards, and degrees Fahrenheit. Distinct units include the U.S. gallon and U.S. pint volume measurements. The United States is one of only three countries that do not rely primarily on the International System of Units. However, metric units are increasingly used in science, medicine, and many industrial fields.

Top 10 Most Popular Conspiracy Theories

2012-01-25T17:26:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Most Popular Conspiracy Theories

Bizarre, Featured — By admin on December 1, 2010 6:18 pm

After inundating you with pictures of cute animals, I promised you some serious journalism. When have I ever lied to you? Colorado writer Jeff Danelek wrote this piece, which is a super good read.

While it’s hard to imagine, there are people out there who don’t believe their own government is telling the truth, or that history is giving us the straight story, or that Santa Claus is real. In fact, they assume there are “forces” out there—dark, mysterious, dangerous forces—lurking at the periphery of our awareness that have been responsible for everything from World War One to 9/11. Of course, there really are conspiracies afoot and have been since man first walked out of the jungles to try his—and her—hand at civilization. For example, Lincoln’s assassination really was part of a conspiracy, as was the plan to convince the Nazis the allies intended to land at Calais rather than Normandy in June of 1944, but that’s not the kind we’re talking about here. Those are known conspiracies; what we’re talking about are the ones that have been carefully suppressed by various nefarious government agencies, the military, major corporations—or whomever—all in an effort to maintain control and reshape the planet according to some dark and secret agenda. While some might call this paranoia run amuck, others might consider it simply being diligent. So, in the spirit of disclosure, here is my top ten list of the most popular or widely believed conspiracy theories in history. (Of course, if I’ve left off your favorite, I doubt if it was an accident.)

10. Free Energy

Similar to the suppressed technologies conspiracy is the free energy conspiracy, which believes that either the government or private industry has long ago developed “zero energy” technologies that would give us inexhaustible supplies of cheap or even free energy but is suppressing the technologies out of fear of hurting the oil industry. In some cases, it is the oil industry that is suppressing the technology; in others, it’s the government—under pressure from big oil lobbyists and other corporate concerns—doing the suppressing. In either case, the results are the same: no free energy for us poor consumers. Of course, the fact that such technologies remain largely hypothetical and beyond our current ability to build them even if they weren’t doesn’t dissuade the true conspiracist, who has tremendous faith in our technological acumen and in our ability to keep such knowledge suppressed for decades at a time.

9. Suppressed Technologies

Clearly the big oil companies, or the government, or some other nefarious private interest, would not want to see their profits drop as a result of new technologies being introduced to the public; hence the need to suppress these new technologies as soon as they appear—either legally (by purchasing the rights to the technology and then shelving it) or illegally (by destroying the technology or even killing its inventor before he can patent it). The story of some backyard mechanic coming up with a carburetor that can get 100 MPG and being bought out before he can mass produce it or some lab working on a battery capable of propelling a car 400 miles off a single charge before having its funding cut are legion and, to date, unproven. The problem lies especially with the logic; if someone did invent a carburetor capable of 100 MPG, it would generate hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue, making anyone who had the rights to it—especially an oil company—foolish not to mass produce it. The demand for oil might drop, but that would be easily offset by having the monopoly on the “wonder carburetor”, allowing big oil to play off both sides of the pump, so to speak. Fortunately, it’s easier to label any big corporation a villain and simply assume they do wicked things like that than it is to do some research…or think about it for a minute.

8. Fluoridation

While this particular conspiracy has lost considerable thrust since its inception in the 1950s, during its heyday it was all the rage as far as conspiracy buffs were concerned. It seems the government’s plan to introduce fluoride into the water supply in an effort to reduce tooth decay was thought by some to be an attempt by the Communists (or the New World Order, or the Illuminati, or somebody else) to take over the world through mind control. Some believed fluoridation made people submissive or even schizophrenic, making conquest a piece of cake. The fact that the plan was not only endorsed by every major health and dental organization in the country and proved in the long run to substantially reduce the amount of tooth decay had little impact on these doomsayers, who were sure George Orwell’s vision of the future illustrated in his ground breaking novel 1984 (released just a few years before all the fuss began) would be the inevitable end result. This same mindset, by the way, is seen in some circles today among those who suspect that irradiating poultry—a simple and inexpensive way to kill bacteria—is also an attempt to give Americans cancer as a means of reducing the surplus population.

7. Faked Moon Landings

The idea that mankind had the know-how and technology to send astronauts to the surface of the moon and return them safely home forty years ago is too much for some people to accept, resulting in a plethora of theories about how the entire Apollo 11 moon landing (and the subsequent five additional landings made over the next five years) had all been cleverly faked. Pointing out such apparent discrepancies such as what appeared to be an American flag blowing in the “wind” and some questions about what direction shadows cast by the sun should appear caused many pseudo-scientifically-minded observers, (and possibly buoyed by the goofy but well-done 1977 movie Capricorn One, a movie that demonstrated how a mission to Mars was faked in a Hollywood stage) quickly decided it was all an elaborate hoax. (Unfortunately, they don’t explain how the government pulled this off no fewer than six times and how it has been so successfully suppressed all these years, but such are mere details.) Of course, all the “evidences” for the landings having been hoaxed have since been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked (the T.V. show Mythbusters doing one of the best jobs), but that doesn’t dissuade the more hard-core adherents of the idea, many of whom continue to hold to their beliefs long after the lights have been turned out. What’s always struck me as curious about the theory is how the government can be smart enough to get thousands of people to partake in such a ruse without a single slip-up but aren’t smart enough to actually fly to the moon.

6. Jewish World Domination

Ever since some civil servant in Russia released a document called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (see my 10 greatest hoaxes list) in 1905, much of the world has been convinced that wealthy Jewish bankers have been involved in a plot to take over the world, largely through manipulating the currencies of the world’s great powers. Of course, anti-Semitism has been around since Moses first parted the Red Sea, but this bogus paper gave fresh ammunition to the strong anti-Semitic currents already running through Europe and served as a rallying cry for some guy named Adolf Hitler, who, like most dull-witted Nazis, believed the document without question (largely because it simply reinforced what they had already been conditioned to believe). It was even required reading for German students in the thirties and forties and was the fuel that fed the ovens at Auschwitz. Though the paper was thoroughly debunked by a British reporter in 1921, it remains popular in many Middle East countries today, where it is still believed by a majority of the population (possibly because it reinforces what they have already been conditioned to believe from childhood—just like the Nazis).

5. (Tie) Oklahoma City Bombing

Okay, so this really was a conspiracy (largely between a couple of right wing nut jobs who both got caught with days), but what conspiracists maintain is that McVeigh and Nichols were part of a larger government conspiracy designed to…well, I’m not sure what the goal was, other than to blow up a federal building and kill 168 people. No evidence, of course. Just a lot of conspiracy theorists chewing up the airwaves with their far-fetched ideas, all designed to make them look even kookier than they already were. Most likely this was a case in which the government proved to be so competent in catching these two clowns that no one could believe they weren’t in on it in some capacity. What they forget is that terrorists—homegrown and otherwise—often make mistakes, leave paper trails, talk too much, or are otherwise incompetent, and that sometimes the government just gets lucky. McVeigh found this out the hard way when he was executed in 2001 while Nichols will have the rest of his life behind bars to think it over.

5. (Tie) TWA Flight 800

In one of the worst air disasters in American aviation history, on July 17, 1996 a Paris-bound Boeing 747 was seen to explode in mid-air over the Atlantic just south of Long Island minutes after taking off from JFK Airport, killing all 230 on board. While the cause of the explosion was initially unknown, some witnesses maintained they spotted a missile contrail arch up from the sea and strike the airliner, blowing it in two, suggesting either a terrorist attack or an accidental missile launch had taken place. While such was immediately dismissed by the government and the military (naturally) as impossible, the conspiracy that the plane was brought down by a missile grew over the following months, urged on by such noted personalities as journalist Pierre Salinger and a phalanx of other independent investigators, all producing evidence that the plane had been brought down by a missile (or, in one case, two missiles), the resultant cover-up being an attempt not to panic the flying public. Adding to the problem was the fact that it took the NTSB a full four years to publish its findings that concluded the aircraft broke apart when fumes from a nearly empty central fuel tank was ignited by an electrical short in the wiring, blowing the front of the plane off and dooming everyone left in the out of control main section as it plummeted into the sea. (This was determined after painstakingly reconstructing the aircraft from the mountains of debris that had been recovered from the seafloor.) To this day, however, there are those who refuse to accept the report and continue to insist the plane was shot down by either a water-borne terrorist or by an accidental firing of a Navy missile.

4. Roswell and Reverse Engineering

The idea that a flying saucer crashed into the New Mexico desert in 1947 and was recovered—along with the bodies of its dead crew—by the U.S. military is one that is never going to go away. Why? Because it put Roswell, New Mexico on the map (as the nation’s UFO capital) and is one of the most lucrative conspiracies ever perpetrated, making entire careers for many a ufologist out there. But even more than the original contention that the government has an alien disk and the bodies of little green men (or, in this case, gray men) on ice somewhere pales in comparison that the belief that the government has subsequently “reverse engineered” much of the technology found in the crashed disk, successfully integrating it into our own technology and kicking off our modern techno-revolution. Never mind that each of the inventions that have been supposedly gleaned from our alien visitors (everything from the microchip to fiber optics to night vision) have documented histories of how and when they were developed, nor pay attention to the fact that the government admitted the crash “disk” was actually a top secret research balloon (Project Mogul), or that the chances of keeping all of this under wraps for over seventy years would be a gargantuan task. All that matters is that you believe. Unfortunately, those who maintain their beliefs are intractable and insistent that it is for others to disprove their theory rather than that they prove theirs. Of course, it is impossible to prove a negative, which is why Roswell and the entire reverse engineered conspiracy will probably never go away.

3. Pearl Harbor

This was probably the first real anti-government conspiracy theory, though it didn’t became big until many years after the war ended. In essence, the theory assumes that President Roosevelt, who was looking for a way to get the United States to enter World War Two in an effort to save England from Nazi domination, knew about Japan’s plan to attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941 but suppressed the information—even from his own senior military commanders—in an effort to so outrage the American people that he could easily persuade Congress to vote for war. The problem with the theory is two-fold; first, there is no evidence allied intelligence agencies, despite the fact that they were reading top secret Japanese diplomatic traffic for weeks prior to the attack, knew the Japanese planned to attack Hawaii. Many may have suspected an attack somewhere was imminent (most imagined the Philippines) but, like 9/11, no one managed to connect all the dots. But even more important was the fact that FDR didn’t need the attack to be successful to get his declaration of war; it merely needed to happen. Even had it failed miserably—with massive Japanese losses and little damage to American forces—it would have still been enough to declare war. Additionally, it doesn’t make sense that Roosevelt would want to enter the war with his Pacific fleet in disarray—a prospect that could have been largely avoided had the alarm been sounded an hour before the first bombs fell. And, finally, proponents of the theory fail to realize that the attack didn’t bring America into a state of war with Germany as intended, but against Japan only. It was Hitler’s ill-advised decision to declare war on the United States two days later that brought us into the war in Europe.

2. 9/11

Perhaps one of the most insidious conspiracy beliefs is the one that maintains the government was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and left over 3,000 people dead. Of course, the theory is as complex and as sophisticated as possible, with everything from pre-placed explosive charges being used to bring down the twin towers to remote controlled jetliners being flown into the buildings, all designed to give President George Bush a pretext to invade Iraq (or seize dictatorial power, or outlaw contraception or something like that.) Unfortunately, not one single element of the theory—from a controlled implosion to the invasion of Iraq (which didn’t happen until some seventeen months later)—hold water, but such is not necessary for those committed to believing even the most unlikely scenarios in the quest to make sense of their vision of reality. Even putting aside the complete lack of empirical evidence or solid science to support any single aspect of the conspiracy, the biggest question has to do with the lack of payoff as Bush didn’t assume Hitleresque powers as a result of the attack, thereby ushering in a new dark ages as some feared, thereby bringing in question the entire rationale for such a risky and evil act. The problem comes, I think, not from an evil government, but from the bewildering imagination of people who can comfortably remain living in a country they are convinced killed 3,000 of its own citizens.

1. The JFK Assassination

The belief that President John F. Kennedy assassination in Dallas in 1963 was orchestrated by everyone from the CIA to organized crime to Fidel Castro is probably the most famous and widely believed conspiracy theory of all time, with something like 70% of respondents convinced that the President’s death was part of a larger plan or even a government or mafia “hit” rather than the work of a single, crazed—if highly successful—fruitcake. Even though the assassination has been studied from every conceivable angle for nearly fifty years without a shred of evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald—a Marxist sympathizer and former Marine Corps marksman who dreamed of making a name for himself by taking pot shots at political figures (this is the same guy, after all, who took a shot at right wing conservative General Edwin Walker in April of 1963)—had any help at all in carrying out his dastardly deed. I know, dozens of people have come forward over the years claiming to know “somebody” who “heard” that some Mafioso ordered the hit (or confessed to having done so on his deathbed) or that there were high placed elements within the government responsible for the assassination, but none of these suspects have ever panned out. Despite this, however, the belief that he had help, or that he was set up, or that he was from Mars, continues unabated to this day. (Of course, the fact that Oswald himself was the victim of another fruitcake a few days later hardly helps matters.) The reason for this is not that there is a wealth of evidence to support to conspiracist’s case is available (it isn’t); it’s probably a result of the fact that most people are unable to accept that such a horrendous crime could really be carried out by a single nut job with a mail-order rifle who happened to be at the right place at the right time. It’s as simple as that.
Other Well Known Conspiracies: Chemtrails (the idea that the government is putting dangerous chemicals in the atmosphere for some nefarious reason); The Hollow Earth/Flat Earth Theory (doesn’t one contradict the other?); Elvis is Alive (not really); AIDS as an Invented Illness (there’s that nasty government again trying to come up with ways to depopulate the Earth by introducing a designer disease into the gay and poor communities); Freemasons/Illuminati/New World Order/Trilateral Commission/Boyscouts (there’s always someone trying to take over the world, it seems); and Scientology (the one organization that managed to scare the I.R.S.)
Jeff Danelek is a Denver, Colorado author who writes on many subjects having to do with history, politics, the paranormal, spirituality and religion. To see more of his stuff, visit his website at www.ourcuriousworld.com.

Read more: http://www.bizarrebytes.com/top-10-most-popular-conspiracy-theories/#ixzz1kWVXOaFi

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Top 10 Most Popular Conspiracy Theories

Top 10 Most Popular Conspiracy Theories

Bizarre, Featured — By admin on December 1, 2010 6:18 pm

10. Free Energy

9. Suppressed Technologies

8. Fluoridation

7. Faked Moon Landings

6. Jewish World Domination

5. (Tie) Oklahoma City Bombing

5. (Tie) TWA Flight 800

4. Roswell and Reverse Engineering

3. Pearl Harbor

2. 9/11

1. The JFK Assassination