Some Numbers

From a peak of nearly 19.5 million US factory workers in 1979, the number of manufacturing employees has steadily declined to a recent low in 2010 of 11.6 million workers before rebounding to slightly more than 12 million employees [in 2014].

The amount of manufacturing output produced per US worker … more than doubled in the 42 years between 1955 and 1997 from $40,000 to $85,000, and then more than doubled again in only 13 years between 1997 and 2010 to about $171,000 (all figures are expressed in constant 2014 dollars).

 

Manufacturing output per employee last year [2014] of $171,538 established a new all-time record for the productivity of the American factory worker, measured in manufacturing output per factory worker.

In inflation-adjusted constant 2014 dollars, US manufacturing output has increased more than five-fold over the last 67 years, from $410 billion in 1947 to a record-setting level of output last year of $2.09 trillion

In the U.S., the price of goods relative to services fell by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010.

 

Drug arrests account for nearly 50% of federal prisoners, and more than 16% of people in state prison. Today, about 500,000 Americans are behind bars for drug law violations, 10 times the number in 1980. 

Largely because of drug prohibition, the US is the World’s No. 1 Jailer, and has an incarceration rate (700 per 100,000 population) higher than Cuba (510 per 100,000), China (118 per 100,000), Russia (450 per 100,000), Rwanda (434 per 100,000) and Iran (287,000).

 

The US accounts for 4.4% of the world’s population, but houses 22% of the world’s prisoners.

In 2012 alone, the US Justice Department confiscated $4.2 billion in forfeitures. In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did as asset forfeitures surpassed burglaries.

From 2006 to 2010, heroin overdose deaths in the U.S. increased by 45%, and the numbers continue to climb. As the nation has cracked down on prescription opioid abuse, people suffering from addiction have turned to heroin, a cheaper, easily accessible option.

At least 60,000 Mexicans have died since 2006 in drug cartel-related murders, deaths and violence, and some estimates of the drug-related body count in Mexico are as high as 125,000.

Since the War on Drugs began more than 40 years ago, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 trillion on interdiction policies and spending on the costly, failed war continues to cost U.S. taxpayers more than $51 billion annually.

​