But the state of our Union is anything but strong. Consider these snapshots

January 30, 2008 | America By the Numbers | The Shameful State of the Union | By ROBERT WEISSMAN
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But the state of our Union is anything but strong. Consider these snapshots:

1. The United States is spending more than $700 billion a year on the military. ... The United States accounts for roughly half of the world's military expenditures. [3] ... Depending on how you count, more than half of all discretionary federal spending is now directed to the military. [4]

2. Wealth is concentrating in the United States at a startling rate. ... The concentration of wealth and income reflects a major shift over the last three decades in how the United States shares its earnings. In 1976, the top 1 percent of the population received 8.83 percent of national income. In 2005, they grabbed 21.93 percent. [5] ....

3. Compensation for CEOs and Wall Street financiers is out of control ... The average CEO from a Fortune 500 company now makes 364 times an average worker's pay, reports the Institute of Policy Studies. This is up from a 40-to-1 ratio in 1980. ... But the managers of businesses that make things and deliver non-financial services aren't making the truly big money these days. In the hyper-financialized economy, it's the finance guys who are getting truly rich....

4. Corporations are capturing more of the nation's wealth. Corporate profits amounted to 8 percent of GDP over the last decade, Business Week reports, up from 6.5 percent in the early 1990s. [8]

5. The housing bubble and the subprime mortgage meltdown are driving millions of families from their homes. ... Overall losses from deflated housing values may top $2 trillion. ...

6. The racial wealth divide remains a chasm with little prospect of being bridged -- and is likely growing worse. ... At the rate the wealth divide closed between 1982 and 2004, it would take 594 more years for African Americans to achieve parity with whites, ...

7. Women continue to be paid far less than men. ...

8. More than one in six children live in poverty. ...

9. More than 45 million people in the United States do not have health insurance. ...

10. The U.S. trade deficit is more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product. The average fuel economy of today's U.S. car and truck fleet is 25.3 miles per gallon, reports the Union of Concerned Scientists, lower than the 25.9 mpg fleet average in 1987. ...

12. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling. ...

13. More than two million people in the United States are locked in prison. What a colossal waste of human talent. 2,258,983 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails, at the end of 2006, an increase of 2.9 percent from 2005.