This guy had eyelid surgery, shaved his head, and got a pair of Converse "Chucks" to look younger because he was worried about jobs (previous HN submission):
I may be projecting, but I feel like this is a symptom of our deteriorating middle class. White, now middle aged, men have been hit over and over by free trade, out sourcing and cheap immigrant labor suppressing labor value. Now they're beaten and broken.
I've worked with these people and seen it first hand. In my anecdotal experience, depression and drug use isn't just a common case with working class whites, it's nearly the majority. These people know they've been abandoned by society, and a lot of them are just giving up. They're people who have put in 60 hour weeks of hard labor, with little to no health care, for decades and have next to nothing to show for it, and no hope of things improving.
Genuine question: have you ever heard of an uneducated, fifty-year-old unemployed factory worker becoming a successful web developer? Maybe there are a tiny number, but I've never heard of such a thing. Re-educating fifty-year-olds into complete new fields on any mass scale is just not realistic. We're talking about millions of people that have minimal math skills, mediocre writing skills, and no computer skills. Eve…
Your point is totally solid. Btw Web Developers today will on day be the auto worker of yesterday. It's cycle that capitalists systems follow. Reduce head count to boost profitability and stock performance. You do this by automation, productivity enhancements in supply chain and outsourcing. Replacing people with shell scripts is going to be a big part of what AI with do for low and high tech worker. A lot of program…
They already are the new auto workers, just without unions. Look at the downward pressure on wages, pop up hacker schools everywhere and a move for everyone to learn how to code (i.e. write CRUD apps). Basic web developers are in the crosshairs.
I'm in my 30s, male and ostensibly white by American standards and I've been watching these sorts of trends for a while. Distrust in our certain brand of capitalism has led me to regard America with a wary eye. It has influenced a lot of my life decisions, i.e. stack cash, stay mobile/agile, no spouse, no children, etc. so that I can continually pursue the best jobs no matter when/where they appear. I luckily was able to obtain an EU passport recently via my mother, giving me a few extra countries as potential markets for work but mostly as a hedge against a (probably) meaningless 401k or just the general depressive idea of eventually being an older person in the US. Basically I'll spend my good years putting money away, and as soon as I'm sick (read, need healthcare) or ready to retire, I'll bounce back to the mother country where retirement actually looks like living rather than dying.
As soon as I saw this comment, my first thought was "Holy crap. That sounds like Russia."
It's indeed very similar to the description of the contemporary rural Russia (excluding the suburbs of Moscow, and few other large cities). There's one important difference: there's no free public health care in the US. Not that it's great in Russia, but the US has none. :(
That's not entirely true. Hospitals here are not allowed to turn away those in need, even if they have no insurance. The stays usually turn into uncollectible debts for the hospitals.
With obamacare (Affordable Healthcare Act), the free options have been expanded quite a bit. In CA, the medi-cal is basically universally available to low income ($16,105 or under for 1 person, $21k or under for 2 person housefolds).
For Russia, if really depends how lucky you get with the doctors or how much you can pay. For much of the system there, people would be better off if it didn't exist. Speaking from personal experience.
"Visit some formerly middle class suburbs of cities in the Midwest and you can see exactly why this is happening. No decent jobs, no social clubs, no children playing outside, sports tickets out of the budget of anyone but the 1%, no decent restaurants and obesity everywhere. Add decayed infrastructure and empty malls. You should see it. Horrific. " "These sad statistics should come as no surprise given the pummeling…
Right. The US sold out its middle class to make peace with China, and isolate the USSR. And AI is coming. What will all the truckers do?
"Census regions are Northeast (blue), Midwest (red), South (black), and West (green)."
I think they were picked manually. On the one hand, I think picking that makes them more memorable, on the other hand, it surprises me that people in the politically hypercorrect USA would pick those colors this way.
It's indeed very similar to the description of the contemporary rural Russia (excluding the suburbs of Moscow, and few other large cities). There's one important difference: there's no free public health care in the US. Not that it's great in Russia, but the US has none. :(
That's not entirely true. Hospitals here are not allowed to turn away those in need, even if they have no insurance. The stays usually turn into uncollectible debts for the hospitals. With obamacare (Affordable Healthcare Act), the free options have been expanded quite a bit. In CA, the medi-cal is basically universally available to low income ($16,105 or under for 1 person, $21k or under for 2 person housefolds). Fo…
"The stays usually turn into uncollectible debts for the hospitals." --> "The stays turn into bankruptcy for the patients"
Incidentally the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is unpayable hospital bills. For those outside the US, here is how it works: a simple visit to the doctor for antibiotics (the ER, since that becomes your only option) turns into a $1200 bill.
You'll never see a black activist or feminist show solidarity with these poor middle-aged white people. The greatest success of capitalism has been dividing people along gender and race lines - not letting them show any class solidarity. If people did, they'd realize that the difference between a poor white and a poor black is a rounding error compared to the difference between a poor guy and a rich guy.
I recommend you read "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". The relevant portion of which I'm thinking relates to the historical affinity between disenfranchised blacks and whites in the early 1800's, and how a race-based conflict was stoked by those fearing a coalition of these two groups. There is an interesting historical context for the point you're making.
That's not entirely true. Hospitals here are not allowed to turn away those in need, even if they have no insurance. The stays usually turn into uncollectible debts for the hospitals. With obamacare (Affordable Healthcare Act), the free options have been expanded quite a bit. In CA, the medi-cal is basically universally available to low income ($16,105 or under for 1 person, $21k or under for 2 person housefolds). Fo…
"The stays usually turn into uncollectible debts for the hospitals." --> "The stays turn into bankruptcy for the patients" Incidentally the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is unpayable hospital bills. For those outside the US, here is how it works: a simple visit to the doctor for antibiotics (the ER, since that becomes your only option) turns into a $1200 bill.
People in that situation rarely have assets that can be seized, so a bankruptcy is meaningless.
You also missed that Obamacare really does take care of a large chunk of the problem, as flawed as it is. The paid options with large assistance (Silver plans) are also fairly affordable. I'm not familiar with non-CA options, but can't imagine them to be that much different from CA ones.