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For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

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Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#191
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re/ medicare for all ... Canada has universal health care yet a very similar suicide rate to the USA.[1] Canada doesn't have a livable minimum wage either. Each province sets its own. There is talk of UBI experiments. [1] https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-can...

I really hope we do not get a UBI in any current forms. I know the second the stores realize that every person now has 'x' amount of dollars to spend, they will raise the prices to match the most they can extract. What I wish Canada would do instead is establish some sort of Universal Basic Rights like every man woman and child is entitled to 5lbs of potatoes a week, 1 gallon of milk, 1 pound of carrots, ect. I as a…

Exactly my complaint about UBI.

You can't push money around; it's tougher than you, and will push back. But you can push a sack or potatoes. If a domestic potato farmer tries to raise prices, a foreign farmer will be all too happy to undercut them to get back to the commodity price.

Instead of taking money from some and giving to others, it has to be invested in actual production, and the output granted to the recipients directly. If there are any middlemen involved at all, they will certainly reduce the efficiency of the entitlement program.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#192

Really doubt this. Instead I would look into the connection between anti depressants/anti psychotics and suicide. There's research of strong connections, but immunity is claimed by the drug companies, "because they were already depressed/mentally unhealthy when put on the drugs". Mental health professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs. The ne…

> Stemming the flow of cheap fentanyl dumped into the United States by China OK, and how's the "war on drugs" going thus far? > Mental health professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs. Really? You want to put people into jail for trying to treat depression? > throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for people.…

> OK, and how's the "war on drugs" going thus far?

The case with fentanyl is not like heroin, well established factories make it in China. It is within the Chinese governments power to stop the flow, this is a foreign policy issue. The fact that its not at all in the news is disturbing.

> Really? You want to put people into jail for trying to treat depression?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Secondly, this isnt "trying to treat depression", its a profit driven industry. SSRIs commonly do not outperform their placebo. Most of the recent adolescent mass shooters were on SSRIs!

> throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for people.

If Boeing engineers design an unsafe plane to squeeze out more profits and then line their pockets, which results in airplane crashes, they should go to jail. The same is true for healthcare.

Claiming that prescription opiods are not fueling the heroin and fentanyl crisis is a radical opinion. There was a massive lawsuit against the big pharma companies making money off these drugs. I'm not going to google research, its plain and simple.

Criminal doctors have been prescribing these drugs and making money off them. This has caused mass deaths and suicides.

Look at the chart of opion consumption on this page:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/nov/...

The number of opiod prescriptions year by year looks like the price of bitcoin. I dont need some study to try and convince me otherwise.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#193

wow, how about.. 1) NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family 2) Free healthcare 3) Not so crazy tution fees all these are doable.. just like raising minimum wage..

>NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family You're talking about quite literally like 80% of the entire tax revenue generated by the government. Income taxes we're devised because an industrial nation cannot collect property taxes on non land owning tax payers. As the cities grew, governments realized that they could only tax the wealthy and prominent land owners so much before they had to generate it in another way.

You're talking about quite literally like 80% of the entire tax revenue generated by the government.

This is wrong.

$50k/yr is below median household income so we're talking about eliminating income taxes for the bottom half of taxpayers (less than that actually, but whatever). The bottom half pays roughly 3% of income taxes.

Now, that number gets somewhat bigger when you take into account payroll taxes but it's nowhere close to 80%.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I know that there are a few barriers keeping people near the "minimum worth" level: 1. education 2. language 3. physical/mental inability What are some other ones?

Ready availability of competing labor. Minimum wage jobs are frequently difficult and labor-intensive, but the individual workers are replaceable. The idea that pay rate and effort required are perfectly linked is what I'm contesting.

You are right. I was wrong to link "hard work" and "pay". I should have linked "skilled work" and "pay".

Don't people work hard to become more skilled though?

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#195
post #185
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disingenuous. It doesn't classify by Socialist, but by country. Russia is #3 on global suicides, and when I think of socialist healthcare, my first thought isn't Russia. Many of the countries I think of as socialist healthcare (UK, Denmark, Canada, to name a few), they all come up below the US in suicides.

The minimum wage in Denmark is 0.

Non-sequitur.

Denmark has incredibly high tax rates and a welfare state that runs laps around any North American country.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#196
post #93

I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight. There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecu…

There is nearly a 2x difference in rate between white and native americans vs blacks, asians and hispanics. I'm wondering if there is a good understanding of that difference. I don't think it is just economic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/...

I mean the data by race suggests it’s not economic, right? Black, Hispanic, and Asian people have half the suicide rate of non-Hispanic white people.

Another anomaly: Hispanic people have the second highest life expectancies in the United States (after Asians), significantly higher than non-Hispanic whites, despite on average having lower incomes and health insurance coeverage.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#197
New Zealand has a high minimum wage https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW

New Zealand also has a terrible youth suicide rate. http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/health/suicide.html "New Zealand’s youth (15–24 years) suicide rate was the highest among the 34 OECD countries, ahead of Finland for males and Korea for females."

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you prefer the second-leading cause of death be for young people? I am being serious. Some things have to be the top causes of death for young people and the list definitionally can’t include the aspirational “old age.”

This seems like an odd question. Obviously we should prefer accidental death among young people vs. that which is self-inflicted, while hoping that the overall number of deaths diminishes, regardless of circumstance. But I don’t think a spike in youth suicide is something we should hand waive away in any case.

We can have get accidental death up to second place by banning railings, air bags, helmets, and tire tread patterns.

In other words, was there really a spike in youth suicide or did it just climb in rank because we reduced other causes of death? Something must be first, something must be second, and so on.

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#199

I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S. hired. UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months and depression hits hard when money is tight. There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecu…

Have been reading Rutger Bregman’s book and UBI seems to be an incredible money saver and immense benefit. It would take however a big jump in consciousness to do something like this because who would take the shorty jobs paying 1/3 living wage if no one is afraid Of homelessness?

Re: For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

#200

What would increased minimum wage due to small business (<$50m/yr in revenue)? Wouldn't it force them to cut shifts/hours/consolidate positions?

When everybody raises prices at the same time, business survive.
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