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Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

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Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#91

Post by anigbrowl »

jlarocco wrote: post #51
ryandrake wrote: post #4

> The fates of the less-educated and those who graduate from universities diverge in dire ways. Middle-aged white Americans without four-year degrees are at increasing risk of dying, a well-documented trend driven not only by drug use but also by alcoholism, suicide, and slowing progress against heart disease and cancer. While that's pretty damn horrible, the fate of people with newly-minted bachelor's degrees isn't…

> a workplace full of only entry-level opportunities I agree with the rest of your post, except this part. Entry level jobs are what people should be getting straight out of college. Senior positions and management jobs go to the people with the experience to do them, and that's almost certainly not a person with a year of experience and a new bachelor's degree. I kind of wonder if these weird expectations aren't par…

Why would you need to go to college to do an entry-level job? Conversely, who wants to spend 4 years (and probably $$$) getting a college degree in order to then work a job that bores them to tears? Perhaps you meant 'entry-level' within some more specific context but nowadays employers seem to think people need a bachelor's degree to answer the phone.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#92

Post by cmahler7 »

gramstrong wrote: post #75
cmahler7 wrote: post #35

We're at the point where the United State can either become utopia or dystopia. Automation can either allow everyone to do whatever they want with almost unlimited leisure, or continue as it has destroying the middle class and consolidating wealth for the elite. I used to be hardcore capitalism but if something isn't done to spread the wealth we are going to have our own French revolution with the plebes rising up ag…

>Automation can either allow everyone to do whatever they want with almost unlimited leisure This will literally never happen. The labor force will look a lot different, the average person will be much more educated. But we are never going to be in a perpetual state of leisure, or anything resembling it, lest we want to halt human progress in place. All automation does is allow us to focus on larger problems, or crea…

majority of people simply won't be able to help with the complex problems that push human progress forward.

What do you suggest we do with them?

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#93

Post by _pmf_ »

cmahler7 wrote: post #35

We're at the point where the United State can either become utopia or dystopia. Automation can either allow everyone to do whatever they want with almost unlimited leisure, or continue as it has destroying the middle class and consolidating wealth for the elite. I used to be hardcore capitalism but if something isn't done to spread the wealth we are going to have our own French revolution with the plebes rising up ag…

> The anger that got trump elected is just the beginning if things don't change

Try to get a single Democrat to acknowledge this. They are still belitteling and stigmatizing those who share these concerns (and riduculing them for their audacity of hoping that Trump will be able to change anything).

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#94

Post by nonaime »

fav_collector wrote: post #66
ChrisLTD wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a load of crap on so many levels? To take one example, the media and politicians have put a huge spotlight on the plight of coal and manufacturing job losses, while only recently did we learn that in fact we're losing even more retail jobs. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/the-sil... Want to guess at the racial and gender makeup of those manufacturing jobs vs. retail?

You're sort of proving his point. Manufacturing and coal towns are isolated. Manufacturing and coal are sometimes literally the only fields with jobs available in those towns. Retail is generally located in places with many opportunities

But you've missed his point about the racial gender make up of those who are employed in those types of jobs. Especially in places with "many opportunities".

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#95

Post by marcosdumay »

heavyheavy wrote: post #47
temp246810 wrote: post #12

The sad thing that I've observed is that any mention that this gets in the media or any earnest attempt to address this gets met with: "Oh now that it's white people dealing with drugs, it's a crisis. America is so racist". That's a load of crap on so many levels. I hope we figure out our next chapter here as a society.

In my perspective, it IS racist that American cares so much about rehabilitation and empathy for the white drug problem while the black drug issue was dealt with with violence and tearing apart famalies. Is it wrong to want white drug users to go to jail just like black ones were?

You tell me. It is wrong to make things worse for everybody just because when it was less worse for a powerful group it was ignored?

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#96

Post by [deleted] »

dkhenry wrote: post #28

The tolerance for abject racism in the media these days is appalling. This article's contents have nothing to do with race, and more to do with economic status. This is the flip side of a media that has espoused the ideals of identity politics, they can't even see past someone's racial grouping to identify a problem facing all Americans ( and most likely other nations too in our globalized economy ). Bloomberg should…

[deleted]

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#97

Post by throwanem »

gdulli wrote: post #62
wonderwonder wrote: post #21

A four year degree is no longer an advantage but rather a base which allows you to have even a hope of competing. Not having a degree is of course a disadvantage. As automation and outsourcing continues, the issue will only worsen. On top of that we are constantly bombarded with images of the life we should be living via advertising and television. Not meeting these media driven standards leads to further depression…

It's a shame that the party that's in favor of subsidizing education didn't do better in the election. Education decreases fear and prejudice, so there's a catch-22 where we can't get people more educated and fix that without convincing them first that the problem isn't immigrants seizing a large amount of resources in a zero-sum game.

The party that's in favor of subsidizing education would've done better in the election if it had put forward the candidate who people thought would actually do so. There's going to be books written about the DNC's 2016 self-destruction for years to come.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#98

Post by wcummings »

MichaelGG wrote: post #72
posguy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For plumbers, electricians and a few other trades you can become a journeyman apprentice in the US, and after a few years you can earn high 5 digits to low 6 digits with healthcare usually. That being said, its a mature industry and not highly regarded in the US as it is a "blue collar" job. Stigmatizing & devaluing an honest days work is ridiculous to me, but that is what our society has done to these jobs.

So is it just the stigma that prevents people from getting 100K a year? I mean if it's as easy as it sounds in your comment, there should be loads of people signing up. And I'm guessing you don't end up with 80K+ in student loans?

No one said it was easy. All the trades mentioned are hard work.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#99

Post by cmdrfred »

hourislate wrote: post #81
irrational wrote: post #6

I worry about this for my oldest son. He has dyspraxia and apraxia. In practice that means he has difficulty with memory (at 15 he still doesn't know his multiplication tables) and putting things in order (such as speaking - you have to put phonemes, words, sentences together in order to speak). But, he doesn't look like he has a disability and he doesn't speak much so people don't readily realize he doesn't talk lik…

If he can physically hack it then a career in Landscaping. It's just that it is physically demanding. Cutting Grass, planting trees, interlock, etc.

A low overhead / low start up capitol business to start as well. I have a few friends that own their own businesses in that field.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#100

Post by gramstrong »

cmahler7 wrote: post #92
gramstrong wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Automation can either allow everyone to do whatever they want with almost unlimited leisure This will literally never happen. The labor force will look a lot different, the average person will be much more educated. But we are never going to be in a perpetual state of leisure, or anything resembling it, lest we want to halt human progress in place. All automation does is allow us to focus on larger problems, or crea…

majority of people simply won't be able to help with the complex problems that push human progress forward. What do you suggest we do with them?

Educate them with all of the free time created from automation, then put them back in to the work force.
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