Third World America by Arianna Huffington

Author:Arianna Huffington
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307719973
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-06T15:00:00+00:00

“WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN?”

Three weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, BP finally released underwater video showing a massive column of oil gushing out of a broken pipe a mile below the surface.127

Watching the unrelenting geyser-like spew, it struck me as an inverse visual metaphor for the plight of America’s middle class: While the thick black oil was being pushed inexorably upward, hour after hour and week after week, the quality of life for tens of millions of hardworking Americans is being pushed inexorably downward—month after month after month. And our leaders watch them both, either wringing their hands or waving them in anger and frustration.

When the oil spill first happened, it seemed troubling but nothing to be too concerned about. Within a week, Obama administration officials were describing it as “a very grave scenario” and “potentially … very catastrophic.”128 In other words, it was much worse than we thought it would be. Has there been a crisis in the last decade that turned out to be better than we thought it was going to be?

We are still fighting two wars that were going to be cake-walks but have now lasted nine years and seven years—much worse than we thought it would be.

Katrina looked like it could be bad but—even though there were plenty of people warning about a Category 5 storm breaching the levees—the devastation ultimately was much worse than we thought it would be.129

Warnings were issued about the housing bubble that was fueled by the Wall Street casino. Even though we now know that people in the Fed were forecasting big trouble ahead as early as 2004, the warnings were ignored—and when the bubble burst in 2008, it was much worse than we thought it would be.130

The foreclosure crisis hit hard in 2009. But the government promised to protect homeowners … so when the first quarter of 2010 brought the highest number of foreclosures since they began keeping records, it was clear the scope of the calamity was much worse than we thought it would be.131

In October 2009, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent, a twenty-six-year high.132 But the $787 billion stimulus package was going to bring that down. It has, but not by much. Turns out, the unemployment crisis is also much worse than we thought it would be.

When BP first applied to operate the Deepwater Horizon rig, it submitted plans to the Minerals Management Service stating that “no significant adverse [environmental] impacts are expected” and predicting that a spill was an “unlikely event.”133 Of course, as we’ve seen, the historic disaster is much worse than they thought it would be.

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