People Are Dying Younger Because America Keeps Failing the Bad-Break Test

[n2doc]

About a year ago, the husband-and-wife team of Anne Case and Angus Deaton published some alarming numbers: Unlike citizens of just about every other wealthy, advanced country, and most other American subgroups, middle-aged white Americans have not seen reductions in their mortality between 1999 and 2013, and had by many metrics been getting sicker and sicker.

It was a shocking finding that garnered numerous headlines, the sort of thing that just isn’t supposed to happen in a rich, developed country, let alone the richest developed country. And it lent credence to what some public-health researchers and other societal observers had been saying for a while: The United States likes to view itself as a singular force of prosperity and opportunity, but by many public-health metrics — including infant mortality and preventable deaths and a variety of others — it doesn’t look like a top-tier world power.

Yesterday, the National Center for Health Statistics released a report that should further puncture the myth of American superiority when it comes to health outcomes — and which should set alarm bells loudly clanging for anyone worried about how the country treats its most vulnerable residents. The report found that life expectancy in the United States dropped from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015, the first drop in life expectancy since 1993. (For men, the decline was from 76.5 to 76.3; for women, from 81.3 to 81.2.)

“I think we should be very concerned,” Case told Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post. “This is singular. This doesn’t happen.” When Case and Deaton released their finding, they argued that it was largely attributable to disturbing upticks in various forms of addiction — opioids, most importantly — as well as suicide. The new statistics get more granular, and they suggest the misery is well-dispersed: There were increases in just about every major cause of death between 2014 and 2015, and the death-rate increases centered on whites and black men — they remained flat for Latinos and for black women. People are dying for a lot of reasons, but drugs stand out as a particularly devastating part of the problem: In fact, one key to the racial divide may also come from numbers released yesterday, these from the CDC: For the first time ever, more people died from heroin overdoses than from gun homicides in 2015.

more
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/america-is-failing-the-bad-break-test-and-people-are-dying.html

[FarCenter]

1. Or conversely, we've lost our tradition of European peasant thrift

Farmers, ranchers, trappers, fishermen and others who live in close contact with the natural environment know that their income is highly variable. Crops may fail, herds may sicken and die, game goes through cycles of increase and decrease, and fish runs change from year to year.

Consequently, people in such professions tend to both save up money and other assets, such as hay and grain, in order to carry themselves over lean years. They also try to maximize self-sufficiency by crafts and barter to minimize their need to spend cash. Borrowing is seen as dangerous, since it is a commitment to pay cash in the future that you don't actually have yet.

Hourly workers had incomes that were also variable, but in many cases the hourly wages were fairly pro-forma, unlike hourly wages paid to construction workers, longshoremen, etc. who may or may not have a job from day to day or week to week.

Salaried worker are now over 40% of workers, and these workers tend to have expectations of steady future incomes, and this tends to discourage saving and encourage discretionary borrowing for mortgages, auto loans and rentals, vacations, etc.

As a result, the population has generally lost its former focus on thrift and self-sufficiency which leads to an inability to cope with bad breaks.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. Couldn't agree more. This should be a thread all it's own. Thanks. nt

[greymattermom]

5. It looks like we are trying to be more like Russia

Here is some death rate information.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html

[FarCenter]

12. Not close: the US is between Norway and Kazakstan

Russia's death rate rose markedly during the '90s due to economic collapse caused by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Gorbachev unwisely thought that the political and economic systems could be reformed at the same time. China, on the other hand, demonstrated that the economic system can be changed while preserving the political system.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. Thanks for this post, n2doc. nt

[geretogo]

4. This is to be expected for a country descending into Banana Republic status .

[ThoughtCriminal]

6. Americans dying from hate

A constant flow of anger and outrage to feed bigotry and hate. Not healthy.

It not only has a direct affect on our health, it prevents us from looking at rational ideas that are real solutions.

[BemusedLibertarian]

7. Obama saves Social Security!

Women, minorities disproportionately impacted, experts say.

[BemusedLibertarian]

8. Bad Luck

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.”


― Robert A. Heinlein

[RedWedge]

9. Yes, but what if someone gets HELP when they DON'T DESERVE IT?

Then EVERYONE will just sit around waiting for a handout!

[n2doc]

11. I know. The thought of those damn lazy Trump voters getting a handout steams me up

They should drop the oxy and get a job! Takers!

[gulliver]

10. Too much automation and e-commerce.

The walls are closing in while the population grows. We need to think sustainability on all levels from the ecological to the sociological. We need to think. The default is to feel, and that's a bad way to learn. That's how we get a Trump.

[TheFrenchRazor]

13. health care in america SUCKS. yes, it's better w/ obamacare, but it still sucks. nt

[lostnfound]

14. The GOP has found a method to "save" Social Security!

No healthcare, no income security, stressful economic situations - voila!

[n2doc]

15. That way it can go to those who truly deserve it-the long-lived wealthy!

You do make a good point, I would not be surprised if they had been thinking along those lines, getting rid of the 'useless eaters'