Life expectancy in America has declined for two years in a row • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by forapurpose » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:20 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #59

majormajor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. Is college too expensive or is it over-required, or both? Even if it was free, that's a pretty substantial 4 year opportunity cost. The other part, a drop in international students is something different, though. To conclude how damaging that is, we'd need to know how much of the cohort that dropped off would've otherwise stay…

> We do have a lot of relatively unskilled jobs that claim to require 4 year degrees, though. This comes from misalignment of specialization. We have too many English majors and not enough physicians and engineers, and the English majors can't all find skilled employment. That allows the unskilled employers to require a college degree, because the unemployed English majors will take an unskilled job over nothing, so…

> We have too many English majors and not enough physicians and engineers, and the English majors can't all find skilled employment.

Can you back that up? As far as I know, it's a myth about employment; generally, the world is run by liberal arts majors and not by engineers (at least outside SV).

Also, as I point out in another post, college is not vocational school; it's far more important:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16089866

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

#122

Post by forapurpose » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:22 AM UTC

losteric wrote: post #89

coldtea wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other countries went through the Great Recession, didn't recover as well as the U.S., and are not suffering from the problem. Other countries (in the developed world at least) don't do as a shitty job dealing with welfare and healthcare, or have people feel like shit for not being "winners". > and has since ended, with unemployment low for the last two years) Unemployment is the easiest thing for government to swee…

I'm not really familiar with the policies enacted towards recovery... How "hands on" was the government in kicking the economy back into gear? Did we do much beyond lowering interest rates? Many smaller manufacturing businesses both depended on selling to and buying from small impacted businesses... self-contained systems that keep money and management local. Restarting those economic ecosystems requires more than ju…

> How "hands on" was the government in kicking the economy back into gear? Did we do much beyond lowering interest rates?

If by "we" you mean the U.S. government, it spent about $700 billion to stimulate economic activity and employment.

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

#123

Post by forapurpose » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:29 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #43

forapurpose wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's large reductions in government programs, from health to education to food and welfare programs for the poor. I don't have data, but it's hard to believe that such programs have no effect. Also, the U.S. moved on from being an industrial economy decades ago, long before most people realize. In Detroit, for example, auto industry jobs began declining in the 1950s.

Has there been a net decrease in these programs since 2008? I think the opposite is true.

The GOP has refused to increase spending and has tried to cut it on principle, and in some places has cut it dramatically (e.g., Kansas).

Most importantly, the Budget Control Act of 2011 (the "Sequester") was designed to set spending so low that both parties would be forced to compromise on regular-order spending bills in order to fund what was important to them (generally seen as defense for the GOP, domestic welfare programs for the Democrats). Instead, GOP spending hawks refused to compromise and spending has been locked at an insanely low level since then. That includes a lack of funding that is crippling even the supposed GOP priority, the military.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:35 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #56

ddxxdd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be more inclined to listen to diatribes about the inevitability of America's economic decline when we no longer have the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Until then, I firmly place the blame of America's economic woes on one political party. Hint: it's the party of higher taxes.

Huh? America can be economically ascendant - we have a LOT of businesses doing quite well with massive profits and cash holdings, tax rates completely aside - without being dominant in every single industry. Regional drug addiction trends are NOT national economic issues (the national economy has been going up at the same time as the opiod abuse!), but plainly regional ones. What specific parts of the opiod issue do…

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by twooclock » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:35 AM UTC

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…

Read also https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-tha... for some context. In my opinion it shows how 'marketing' in pharma is a recepie for a disaster.

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

#126

Post by grecy » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

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?

The US is only 5% of the World's population. There are plenty of Developed countries doing much, much better than the US.

You're doing it wrong, but the rest of the world is ticking along.

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

#127

Post by forapurpose » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

ddxxdd wrote: post #53

majormajor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say less the recession and more just a particularly-hard-hitting-in-America trend away from the country's historical industrial base. The 20th century US benefited massively from being on the front lines of modern industrialization and mass production, creating a ton of jobs especially in certain regions. And in areas that haven't been able to replace those jobs as the US economy becomes based in different areas…

I'll be more inclined to listen to diatribes about the inevitability of America's economic decline when we no longer have the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Until then, I firmly place the blame of America's economic woes on one political party. Hint: it's the party of higher taxes.

> highest corporate tax rates in the world

You might have missed the tax law that just passed, greatly lowering those rates.

Regardless, the statutory rate isn't important; the question is, how much do corporations actually pay after deductions, etc. The rate was 35%, but U.S. corporations actually paid around 20%. Also, overall taxes paid by Americans is among the lowest in the OECD.

http://time.com/money/4862673/us-tax-burden-vs-oecd-countrie...

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

#128

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 9:03 AM UTC

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.

> It’s very frustrating to watch America decline and not being able to do anything about it. Has democracy failed?

No, Empire failed (or, rather, is failing), as empires do.

America has also pretty much failed to democracy, and part of that was trying to democracy and empire together, or maybe just neglecting issues with democracy because empire was more important. Democracy works a lot better where people are actually practicing something that produces democratic outcomes, and the US is very close to the worst of established “democracies” at doing that, and has steadfastly refused to even consider trying to do better.

> Is it time for a rekindling of the study of comparative politics?

“Rekindling” implies that it died out; it didn't, and remains an active field.

> It seems the Chinese have a viable solution to the problem of a largely uneducated and passive populace.

In what way?

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

#129

Post by sumedh » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 11:22 AM UTC

abootstrapper wrote: post #107

sumedh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The EC did its job

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

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

#130

Post by sprafa » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 12:00 PM UTC

birken wrote: post #13

A recent episode of "The Weeds" podcast was all about this [1]. I highly recommend listening to it and the podcast in general. The general thoughts are (especially for those poo-pooing the findings): - The cause is likely a massive increase in drug overdose deaths, whose average age of death is lower than other common causes (>20% year over year increase, mainly opioid-related) [2] - The drop in life expectancy is no…

Also of note - how closely related opioids are to poverty and desperation. From reading recent studies, economy in the US is halving - on one side are people desperately fighting for their lives agaisnt an unstoppable force of wild capitalism, the other half is enjoying the wild benefits of digital globalized capitalism, and the benefits of software expanding everywhere and finance controlling the world.

The entire power of the rest of the industries (film, media, pharmaceuticals) seems to rely on copyright, which is genius, since the US has guaranteed all other countries have to play by its rules as far as copying goes through GATT and all the other trade treaties signed since. Looking back, all of it has actually been brilliant, outside of disconsideration for what the destruction of industry would do for the middle class (See Vaclav Smil's comment - "without manufacturing there is no middle class"). But the idea of copyright, and replicating the US model of agressively pursuing violations of it everywhere, was genius in the digital age - it's a way of permanently entrenching and making sure no competitors can arise, because almost anything can be copyrighted, therefore any similar enough competition is opening itself up to a copyright violation lawsuit. Basically, the US has been rebuilt along the lines of the same people who decided all of this back in the 1990s as a way to construct a new american empire (which I'm fine it btw, I prefer it to its competitors), and the result has been the mass anihilation of livelihoods in the rural and industrial areas. The result of this "error in judgement" has been Donald Trump - anger at the establishment and a willingness to anihilate it all in exchange for a promise to return to the Valhalla of yesteryear, when making a living was easy and the government was making sure all boats were rising with the tide, instead of leaving some behind.

Anyway, back on the topic of opioids - in Portugal we had this problem. We solved it by decriminalizing drugs and treating hard drug users as people in need of help. Perhaps, in the end, we will inspire the rest of the world to follow suit. It has always been my hope.