– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. —
In the first two months of this year, around 2.5 million Americans bought guns, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2008. It was great news for gun makers and a sign of a dark mood in the country.
Gun sales shot up almost immediately after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential elections on November 4 and firearm enthusiasts rushed to stores, fearing he would tighten gun controls despite campaign pledges to the contrary.
After the November spike, gun dealers say, a second motive has helped drive sales: fear of social unrest as the ailing economy pushes the newly destitute deeper into misery. Many of the newly poor come from the relentlessly rising ranks of the unemployed. In February alone, an average of 23,000 people a day lost their jobs.
Tent cities for the homeless have expanded outside a string of American cities, from Sacramento and Phoenix to Atlanta and Seattle, for people who are living the American dream in reverse. First they lose their jobs, then their health insurance, then their homes, then their hopes. The encampments are reminiscent of Third World refugee camps.
Often former members of the middle class, tent dwellers’ accounts of their plight to television cameras have a common theme: “I never thought this could happen to me.” Unlike the victims of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans, many of the newly-poor are white.
The FBI says it carried out 1,213,885 criminal background checks on prospective firearms buyers in January and 1,259,078 in February, jumps of 28% and 23.3% respectively. Keen demand turned the stocks of publicly-trade firearms companies like Smith & Wesson (up 80% since November) and Sturm Ruger (up more than 100%) into shining stars on the New York Stock Exchange.
There are no statistics on how many guns are bought by people who think they need them to defend themselves against desperate fellow citizens.
But, as columnist David Ignatius put it in the Washington Post, “there’s an ugly mood developing as people start looking for villains to blame for the economic mess.” In November, an analysis published by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute listed “unforeseen economic collapse” as one of the possible causes of future “widespread civil violence.”
The American economy is down but not out, and in mid-March some experts reported signs that the pace of the decline was slowing. But it hasn’t slowed enough to sweep away the sense of anxiety and fear that comes through in many conversations and commentaries about the future of this normally optimistic country.
While Obama’s approval rating remains high, at 59%, almost two thirds of the population thinks the country is on the wrong track, according to a poll commissioned by National Public Radio in mid-March.
“What is really remarkable about all this is that there hasn’t been social unrest,” remarked an executive with business interests in Latin American countries where riots and street demonstrations in response to economic squeezes are routine. “The conditions for it are all there.”
ANGER ABOUT BAILOUTS
Anger is building. Just under half of those surveyed in a poll by the Pew Research Center this month expressed anger about “bailing out banks and financial institutions that made poor decisions.” The poll was taken before details became known of the full extent of the bonus-paying spree to members of the very team that brought the insurance giant AIG close to collapse.
The government propped up AIG with close to $200 billion and now owns 80% of the company. The argument that $165 million in bonuses had to be paid under contractual obligations went down particularly badly with workers of the three U.S. car companies whose leaders appealed for support from the Bush administration last year when the economic crisis gathered steam.
One of the conditions for the billions that were dispensed to the car industry was that contracts between auto workers and their union, the United Auto Workers, had to be renegotiated to cut costs. The union agreed, and the question arises: are contracts with blue-collar workers less binding than those with highly-paid derivatives traders?
Some see this as another sign of the inequalities that Obama promised to address. Remember his famous exchange with Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, during a campaign stop? “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Obama told him.
There’s less wealth to spread around now as trillions of dollars has evaporated with increasing speed in the deepening crisis. In housing alone, more than $5 trillion has vanished. The gap between rich and poor, a gap of Third World proportions, has not changed. A full-time worker, on average, made $37,606 last year, considerably less than in 1973, adjusted for inflation.
While CEOs made 45 times as much as workers in 1973 they make more than 300 times as much today, according to Holly Sklar, author of “Raise the Floor, Wages and Policies that Work for All of US.”
To what extent those gaps will shrink under Obama remains to be seen and the outlook for swift action is not promising. There are, in fact, not many things for which the outlook is promising. Exceptions include Smith&Wesson. They expect revenue to double within the next three years.
6 comments:
Debusmann's commentary on the possible existence of social unrest in America due to the financial crisis is disconcerting at best. The statistics on the increase of gun purchases is alarming and certainly indicates that many people are living in fear. There have been an upsetting amount of stories from the U.S of men going on shooting rampages and then killing themselves. Many of these incidences have been contributed to the individuals falling into financial woes. People are desperate. Just yesterday a man walked into a nursing home and killed eight people. I'll be interested to see if the ailing economy played a role. I've seen stories and photo displays of the tent cities, particularly the one in Sacramento. It has been equated to similar tent cities that existed during the great depression. The photos of the conditions of those living in here truly are "reminiscent of third world nations." I think it would be a stretch to say the current financial crisis is of the same magnitude as the great depression but this article certainly indicates that Americans are hurting and there is no clear sign that we'll make a 180 degree turn any time soon.
At the same time it is hard to fully grasp the significance of this all. Not only because I'm in Spain but because it has not directly affected me. Perhaps it has and I'm just unaware. There is a lot of talk about how students in the U.S will have a hard time finding jobs in the years to come. As the jobs in the financial sector continue to suffer I'm interested to see if jobs in other sectors will be created.
I think the author has an interesting point to try to look into what possible correlation exists between the jump in gun sales and the economic crisis although, at this point, it seems difficult to decisively say that the crisis is the cause of the increased sales. It does make sense to me, though, that the feelings of instability and insecurity that the crisis has brought about would result in people feeling like they might need increased security. What the article immediately reminded me of was Obama's comment about small towns that drew so much criticism in the campaign--that in communities experiencing history of unemployment people "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them ... as a way to explain their frustrations." The article points to some evidence of that--a gun isn't exactly a solution to a financial crisis but for some, it might provide the semblance of personal control that they might, justifiably, feel that has been usurped by the abuse of large corporations and by the crisis in general. As a side note, it was interesting as to what point that author was making with his comment, "Unlike the victims of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans, many of the newly-poor are white." Maybe he was only commenting on the unique nature of this economic crisis but it also might reveal some unintentional subtext of this crisis. The majority of the victims of Katrina were already living, prior to the hurricane, in a shocking state of poverty that rarely received news attention. Much of the news about the economic crisis is the concern for the future of the middle class and yet there are only sparse mentions of the class below the middle class , who are currently and have been before the crisis living below the poverty line. I do hope Obama's administration will be able to make strides in securing the middle class and closing the gaps that the author mentioned. I also hope that this focused attention on the socio-economic situation in the US will also shed some light and attention on some of the largest gaps that exist, current crisis or not.
American Gun Crisis
First and foremost, I do not find it at all surprising that as the economic crisis in America has worsened, there has been a direct parallel between stark increases in the amount of people beginning to fear for not only their financial wellbeing but also their social wellbeing too. As more people find themselves unable to obtain the basic necessities for life, the boundaries they are willing to cross become much more hazy and severe. It would be interesting to find statistics as to whether crime rates such as theft, burglary, suicide and murder have recently increased with the high levels of financial and social stress.
Anger about Bailouts
To play on the article “Economic Crisis” that we recently commented on, I think the government should have thought long and hard whether or not providing such a huge financial assistance to companies such as AIG would have been economically smart and feasible to the United States economy. In retrospect, it may have been better for the government to help its citizens directly by supplying them with a greater tax break or higher stimulus checks. It also seems that the government was somewhat biased as to which companies they decided deserved economic support. Personally, I think the American car companies would have benefited to a larger degree since it is more likely that the employees at the car companies will suffer to a greater extent if they lose money/their job than people in greater paying, white collar jobs who already have a stable economic foundation.
First of all, that picture is ridiculous and shouldn't exist. I either blame Photoshop, or a long history of regretful decisions.
How have we and Where have we come when we turn to guns for security, give trillions to car companies because that's where everyone has a job, and save the financial institutions that insatiably try to fuck us?
2.3 million guns! I think at this too late of a point in time we should take the advice of a brilliant social analyst - Chris Rock:
You don't need no gun control. You know what you need? We need some bullet control. Man, we need to control the bullets, that's right. I think all bullets should cost $5000. $5000 for a bullet. You know why? 'Cause if a bullet costs $5000, there'd be no more innocent bystanders. … Every time someone gets shot, people will be like, "Damn, he must have did something."
And even if you get shot by a stray bullet, you don't gotta go to no doctor to get it taken out, whoever shot you will take their bullet back! "I believe you have my property!"
Look, sadly, I can't have a real opinion on the financial state of this country, because I have yet to become enough informed to have the ego to have an opinion. Though, I think it takes no ego to declare all business suit, top-hat dogs of the state corrupt and deserved of retribution. And the moral aspect of this payback should be, those that took or stole in such unnecessary quantities should be forced to place all earnings, all possession back where it came from and help finance the duct tape to re-tape this thing back together. And if they don't tell us which Swedish bank is there's, let's get the pliers and make them bark it out. If it's starting to look like the Dark Ages, let's do it the right way.
Although this article doesn’t take me by huge surprise, I find myself relating to what Johan said in the first comment, that being in Spain has definitely affected how I view the economic crisis. Since being outside the U.S, not being bombarded at every turn with how desperate the situation is on the news, in the papers, radio etc, I don’t really consider the repercussions the crisis will have on me. I’m sure it will impact me and I will be able to understand what the crisis means for me and my family personally once I return home, but for now, especially since I don’t have a job and don’t have to worry about surviving paycheck to paycheck, it’s almost comforting that I can ignore it and naively pretend everything is fine. It’s easy here in Spain to forget how bad things have the ability to get in the U.S. This particular quote struck a cord with me:
“What is really remarkable about all this is that there hasn’t been social unrest,” remarked an executive with business interests in Latin American countries where riots and street demonstrations in response to economic squeezes are routine. “The conditions for it are all there.”
And with the sales of guns skyrocketing, it worries me that all it might take is for one more bankruptcy to cause these gun toting citizens to lose their ability of rational thought and take out their angers and frustrations on others. I have heard on the news (before I left for Europe) of a few instances where people, driven by despair, go on shooting rampages and it scares me to think this has the ability to occur on a grander scale.
It seems unbelievably fair that the government and the tax payers of the United States own close to 80% of AIG and have bailed out the company with 200 billion dollars. I may not know enough about economics to comment on this, but it something with this just seems a little off. Did AIG know that they were going into debt and just figured it would go away, disappear? How did it come to the point where they needed 200 billion dollars? What happened to asking for help earlier rather than later? I’ve listened in to conversations where some people believe that companies such as AIG should be left to go bankrupt and then have to restructure. I guess I just need to research and educate myself on the subject since unfortunately I just don’t seem to know/understand a lot of it.
The statistics of the increase in gun sales definitely came as a shock to me. I knew that the economic crisis has lead to an increase in gun sales, but was alarmed by the statistics that:
"Keen demand turned the stocks of publicly-trade firearms companies like Smith & Wesson (up 80% since November) and Sturm Ruger (up more than 100%) into shining stars on the New York Stock Exchange."
In an economic crisis, where the rest of the stock market has seriously plummeted, firearms stocks are up 80% and more than 100%? Reading this, made me think, what is this world really coming to? Firearms stocks up more than 100%, financial institutions being bailed out of $200 bil. of debt, criminal background checks for people buying firearms decreasing to 23.3% while the sales of firearms has skyrocketed, CEOs making 300!! times as much as the average worker. These statistics are unbelievable. And yet, “What is really remarkable about all this is that there hasn’t been social unrest.” This article and all of these statistics just made me realize how ridiculous this entire situation is.
“ Gun sales shot up almost immediately after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential elections on November 4 and firearm enthusiasts rushed to stores, fearing he would tighten gun controls despite campaign pledges to the contrary.” But Obama’s approval rating is 59%. If people approve and trust their president, why do they find it necessary to have a gun anyways? If anything, this article shed some light as to how serious the economic crisis is back at home, and also made me very confused, because is seems like there are so many things contradicting each other. I agree with Johan and Jess, because I too have not experienced the extent of the crisis living in Spain during the time when it has been most serious. And part of it also might have to do with the fact of how cheap everything is in Alicante and living with homestays. The only time I have really had to pay for things myself is while traveling. Even then, I traveled to cities that are expensive regardless of the economic status and was expecting to spend a lot of money. All I can say is that this article and doing my presentation on the economic crisis, has allowed me to better understand the crisis, but because I have not really experienced it first-hand, I cannot accurately comprehend the extent of it.
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