How Bad Are Things? (2015)

I - strongly - disagree.

First of all, like the author says, these statistics are most likely inflated, "since I took them from groups working on these problems and those groups have every incentive to make them sound as bad as possible".

Secondly, even if you take the numbers given as fact, this is incredibly bad statistics (like most statistics not done by actual statisticians.)

Specifically: Most of these problems go hand in hand. If you were physically abused as a child, there's a higher chance you were also sexually abused as a child. If you were abused at all, there's a higher chance you'll go to prison. If you have chronic pain, there's a higher chance you'll become a heroin addict. If you're a heroin addict, there's a higher chance you'll go to prison. If you went to prison, there's a higher chance you'll be unemployed after.

I have made it one of my main life goals to meet all kinds of people. Really _all_ kinds: homeless people, extremely rich people, devout Muslims, devotees of all religions (Bahá'í, Hare Krishna, you name it), "normal people" around the world, farmers, writers, surrealists, artists, drug dealers, geniuses, idiots, assholes, extremely kind people...

One thing I've found is that the good (and the bad) seems to clump. If you get lucky and end up with some of (good friends|good family|good partner|good financial situation|good career|good health|happy) you will often end up acquiring some of the others. The reverse also works. If you had a terrible childhood, that often leads to crime/drug use, which can lead to prison, which most always leads to further problems in life. So, in a room of 100 people, maybe:

- 9% were abused as a child - 1% were in prison - 7% were depressed - 2% were addicted to heroin/meth/prescription pills - 10% were very unhappy with their life - 7% had chronic pain

...but 90/100 had none of the above, because most of those overlapped.

I'm not saying that the world is perfect, but rather that many negative things clump.

TL;DR: If one person in 10 is sad, one is poor, one is sick, one is a heroin addict and one is in prison, that doesn't mean 6/10 people have one of these issues... perhaps 9/10 are fine, and it's just one person who's got all of those issues. Which of those 10 do you think is going to a psychiatrist?

Further note: In America, the cycle of poverty/jail/addiction can trap entire families for generations. In other countries, government assistance can take the worry of housing or medical care off your back either permanently or long enough to work on other problems.

- You can't be privileged in getting a promotion in a dead end job where no one gets promoted.

- You can't be privileged in social acceptability if you have a mental health issue that keeps you from going outside.

- You can't be privileged in educational opportunities when you had to quit high school to pay for a parent's medical bills.

It goes on and on. Privalage is real, but it's mostly real for those who are successful, and have a whole pile of luck and privalage backing them up. It's a lot less applicable for everyone else, the suffering masses.

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

"White males are privileged" is a reasonable statement to make with plenty of evidence to support it. "You have it better than me because you're a white male" doesn't, because there's a significant amount of overlap in the bell curves of "better off" (regardless of how you define it) between white males, and black women (to give an example).

It's more-or-less the same argument as assuming that any given man is physically stronger than any given woman because on average men are stronger.

Imagine that 70 year old lady he describes lacking access to proper health care or shelter. Not that I am unsympathetic, but first world problems are first world problems, get enraged at your own peril.