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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

#141

Post by thablackbull »

forapurpose wrote: post #40
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 seems the Chinese have a viable solution Viable to whom? And who gets to decide? If the Chinese solution is so popular, why don't they hold an election? There is no legitimate government without democracy, without the people deciding who should govern them and how.

So serious question, do you consider Trump as a legitimate government? As I understand it (non-American here), Trump won through the electoral college and most Americans do not support him.

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

#142

Post by avaika »

digi_owl wrote: post #138
pjc50 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This reminds me of the great collapse in Russian life expectancy for Russians after the end of communism: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/09/02/dying-russians/ The country became extremely unequal and was effectively looted by its oligarchs. > a willingness to…

Oligarchs backed by the west in many cases. Note how Russia was a cuddly uncle all the years under Yeltsin, while the oligarchs ran rampant. Then came Putin, the oligarchs were beaten into submission, and suddenly Russia was back as the big bad bear.

From this perspective it's the same under Putin, just different people. They just make it look like it's not and massively brainwash people in every possible way. GDP goes down. Money flow out of country is growing. Poverty over the country. Corruption in every political institution (even on highest level). Speech freedom is dying (there are just a few media who still are brave enough to criticize the government).

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

#144

Post by doctorless »

I’m surprised to see nobody call out alcohol consumption.

While this is a few years old, the data should be relevant; alcohol takes years to manifest into full-blown health crises: https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Surveillance95/CONS1...

Additionally, there has been an upswing in youth consumption in the past decade directly. We need to have a public conversation about what we’re doing to ourselves, especially in places with the extreme “beer culture” like SV, Seattle and Portland.

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

#145

Post by ianai »

doctorless wrote: post #144

I’m surprised to see nobody call out alcohol consumption. While this is a few years old, the data should be relevant; alcohol takes years to manifest into full-blown health crises: https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Surveillance95/CONS1... Additionally, there has been an upswing in youth consumption in the past decade directly. We need to have a public conversation about what we’re doing to ourselves, especially…

It’s not just alcohol. Diets heavy on fat and cholesterol seem to only get more popular year after year.

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

#146

Post by matte_black »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
hueving wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's even more reason to split out the stats. It would be very good to know that the average life expectancy for opioid users is much lower before I consider taking them. Life expectancy if you get the surgery and medicate with pot: 80 years. Life expectancy if you get the surgery and use the opioids: 60 years. That seems immeasurably more useful than a national average alone which only can be used for politica…

That's not a matter of splitting out stats, because the information gathered doesn't support that. That kind of research does get done, but it's expensive, time consuming, and only really possible when alternatives have been fairly widely applied for enough years to have good data to support meaningful analysis of expected lifetime (and may still, even then, be misleading I'd treatment protols for either drug have ev…

But it is something worth working toward in the future yes? Perhaps when we have massive amounts of data.

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

#147

Post by rayiner »

forapurpose wrote: post #120
rayiner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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. Can you back this up? It's a big statement. Even if it's commonplace, I don't think it's well thought through. Education is for far more than jobs: People have to be citizens, commun…

The job of educating people to be citizens is what the K-12 system is meant for. We spend almost $700 billion a year on that endeavor. If that isn’t doing the job, then we need to rethink it. Not waste even more money on education.

The point about climate change shows why more education isn’t what we need: https://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/Fig10_Compar.... Countries like Germany are willing to pay twice as much for electricity to fight climate change despite far fewer people having a college degree. The fact is, even most people in the US who have been brow beaten enough by liberal academia,[1] to accept climate change aren’t willing to make any lifestyle compromises as a result. What you want is a change in peoples’ values, not their education.

[1] I of course accept climate change is happening. But despite having a STEM degree, I don’t really understand it in any way I couldn’t have with a 12th grade education. I’ve simply been inculcated with values, as a result of my upbringing, that cause me to defer to academic experts on points that I haven’t personally researched.

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

#148

Post by maroonblazer »

ianai wrote: post #145
doctorless wrote: post #144

I’m surprised to see nobody call out alcohol consumption. While this is a few years old, the data should be relevant; alcohol takes years to manifest into full-blown health crises: https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Surveillance95/CONS1... Additionally, there has been an upswing in youth consumption in the past decade directly. We need to have a public conversation about what we’re doing to ourselves, especially…

It’s not just alcohol. Diets heavy on fat and cholesterol seem to only get more popular year after year.

Unless there's been some very recent findings that I missed, everything I've been reading for the last several years has found that fat and cholesterol are not the problems we once thought they were.

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

#149

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Look no further than "What restaurants opened in the 1950's", since folks who lived thru that are in their 60's now.

Taco Bell, KFC, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, Shakeys, Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, IHop, Carl's Jr, McDonald's and on and on.

http://www.whendidithappen.com/wdih/restaurants/1950.htm

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

#150

Post by dgudkov »

digi_owl wrote: post #138
pjc50 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This reminds me of the great collapse in Russian life expectancy for Russians after the end of communism: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/09/02/dying-russians/ The country became extremely unequal and was effectively looted by its oligarchs. > a willingness to…

Oligarchs backed by the west in many cases. Note how Russia was a cuddly uncle all the years under Yeltsin, while the oligarchs ran rampant. Then came Putin, the oligarchs were beaten into submission, and suddenly Russia was back as the big bad bear.

>the oligarchs were beaten into submission

Only those that politically opposed Putin. The rest thrived.

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