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Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

economist.com

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Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#101

Post by myaso »

majormajor wrote: post #97
myaso wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that I don't get about this opioid crisis is I keep hearing about it but I have never really seen the corresponding human misery being captured in photography or film -- I see and hear words but I can't gauge the magnitude of the problem. Is this mainly prescription opiates? That's an issue with with the ethics of medical professionals more than anything else -- if you have a low threshold to prescribe this…

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/faces-of-an-ep... will give you some human form Prescription opiates that lead to street drugs like heroin or illicitly-sourced ones after the prescription runs out, is my understanding. I don't know how the numbers break down in terms of initial exposure - how many bored desparate people were seeking a release, how many people got injured and then got hooked, etc...? But…

Thanks for the link. Found some data: https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o... -- and also found this gem http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/drug-use/b... This looks more like a symptom unique to specific countries, when you consider accuracy of data and the penalty for trafficking by jurisdictions.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#102

Post by skosch »

rayiner wrote: post #96
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US. Is that even possible? It's not as if we're swimming in demand for unskilled labor at a living wage. The underlying problem seems to be that college (along with housing and healthcare) are too expensive and people can't afford them.

The underlying problem is that college is the wrong thing. College focuses on capital-E “Education.” Book learning, “big ideas,” and “learning to think.” What we need is training—teaching people the concrete skills they need for a job. That’s true even in majors that are ostensibly directed to producing professionals. Engineering school often focuses too much on producing PhD candidates rather than practicing enginee…

I really want to disagree and write a scathing rebuke, but I'm afraid you're right on the money.

Still it seems that we haven't beaten it into nearly enough peoples' heads that we all live on the same planet, that resources are finite, and that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. What, if not education – of the liberal arts kind – to fix that, and quick?

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#103

Post by candiodari »

coldtea wrote: post #35

It's probably because life expectancy, like maternal deaths (of which the US has U.S. the worst rate in the developed world), can't be faked and spin-doctored by government sources as easily as can unemployment rates. And by "it's", I refer to the fact that this is known, not to the reason why this happens. Unemployment rates, declining middle class, bleeding working class, and people working shitty subsistence jobs…

Actually it's easy. Just take maternal deaths. The US is pretty straightforward in maternal deaths and baby deaths.

If an infant is born alive, and dies, it is an infant death in the US. Even if it is completely nonviable (e.g. no heart). In the Netherlands any baby that dies in So the numbers aren't as comparable as people claim. There is obviously a difference, but it's not as dramatic as advertised.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#104

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rayiner wrote: post #96
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US. Is that even possible? It's not as if we're swimming in demand for unskilled labor at a living wage. The underlying problem seems to be that college (along with housing and healthcare) are too expensive and people can't afford them.

The underlying problem is that college is the wrong thing. College focuses on capital-E “Education.” Book learning, “big ideas,” and “learning to think.” What we need is training—teaching people the concrete skills they need for a job. That’s true even in majors that are ostensibly directed to producing professionals. Engineering school often focuses too much on producing PhD candidates rather than practicing enginee…

> The underlying problem is that college is the wrong thing.

That's fair, but it doesn't really lead to "less education is a good thing" as a conclusion.

We may need to replace college with something more practical, but that doesn't mean it's fine to have less of it without having more of something in its place.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#106

Post by candiodari »

biohax2015 wrote: post #69
thatcat wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chinese have a viable solution to the problem of a largely uneducated and passive populace. How so?

Professional politicians who know what the people need better than the people themselves.

And don't forget, faking the numbers to hide hundreds of millions people forced to live in misery, prevented from leaving (almost to the point of slavery). Then have government publish numbers that give these people comparable outcomes to American medical outcomes and expect people to believe them.

But let's be sane here : the situation in China is far, far worse than in the US. Just talk to a few recent immigrants, it's not like they're hard to find. A few of their stories should cure you of the notion that US health care, even for the poorest of the poor, is bad. But the numbers tell a different story.

But no worries, if a country has a oppressed population, it can rapidly end the use of plastic grocery bags, and therefore progressive get enamored with it.

And faking it ... well we accidentally got shown what US politicians meant by recycling, didn't we ?

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#107

Post by abootstrapper »

sumedh wrote: post #64
biohax2015 wrote: post #33

It’s very frustrating to watch America decline and not being able to do anything about it. Has democracy failed? Is it time for a rekindling of the study of comparative politics? It seems the Chinese have a viable solution to the problem of a largely uneducated and passive populace.

> Has democracy failed? An outsider was elected even though he was running against establishment candidates with huge money backing them. I say democracy won.

First, I'm not sure that's a good metric to measure the success of democracy. Second, Trump lost the popular vote.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#108

Post by hueving »

decebalus1 wrote: post #73
matte_black wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why this is a big deal. We already serve up content based on people similar to you or making similar choices as you, why not health forecasts? If I eat healthy, exercise, get the proper amount of sleep and am not addicted to drugs, why not show me how other people with similar habits as me are doing, instead of averaging in people who treat their body like a dumpster? Showing me the life expectancy averag…

> Showing me the life expectancy averaged across an entire country of 300 million doesn't motivate me to do anything. This is not the point of life expectancy statistics. It's not to motivate people. And It's not about you. Just because you're thinking it's about you and that it's not relevant to you to be put in the same bucket with others proves my point. This is an intentionally nation-scale barometer which is use…

None of those reasons the life expectancy decreased had anything to do with income inequality. Nobody died from an accident or Alzheimers because rich people got more money. Please don't use this as an excuse for whatever pet issue you want.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#109

Post by dang »

kingmanaz wrote: post #11
refurb wrote: post #3

Life expectancy is a very blunt tool when measuring citizen's well being. A few ways life expectancy can go down: - babies that other would have died and not counted live long enough with modern medicine that they drag the average down - refugees or immigrants in poor health increase, dragging the average down - a change in methodology in how life expectancy is calculated

America's average height has also been declining along with its IQ, and why should this be surprising given that the nation has been prioritizing the importation of peoples anywhere-but-from-the-Occident for over ~50 years? Here's hoping the Jewish-ethnostate-supporting Emanuel Celler was called out for the hypocrisy of his gentile-disinheriting "Hart-Celler Act" before those yonder pearly gates. https://www.jta.org/…

I'm not sure what the right name for this racial slop is, but you can't dump it here.

We've banned this account for repeatedly abusing HN for ideological battle. Please don't create accounts to do that with.

Re: Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row

#110

Post by thriftwy »

rayiner wrote: post #96
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first number is a good thing. We’re overeducated in the US. Is that even possible? It's not as if we're swimming in demand for unskilled labor at a living wage. The underlying problem seems to be that college (along with housing and healthcare) are too expensive and people can't afford them.

The underlying problem is that college is the wrong thing. College focuses on capital-E “Education.” Book learning, “big ideas,” and “learning to think.” What we need is training—teaching people the concrete skills they need for a job. That’s true even in majors that are ostensibly directed to producing professionals. Engineering school often focuses too much on producing PhD candidates rather than practicing enginee…

> teaching people the concrete skills they need for a job

That will be obsolete in ten years? The whole job, I mean.

This wasn't a bad line, but today it did lose its luster.

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