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America has a drinking problem

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#771

Post by sjg007 »

munificent wrote: post #412
sjg007 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like everything alcohol consumption is a power law.

Many things are power laws, but many things are not. It's really easy to overfit your intuition here and assume it's all power laws, but that's an overcorrection from everyone previously assuming everything was a normal distribution. The reality is that some stuff is power laws, some stuff is normal, some stuff is bimodal, etc. The more useful mental exercise is to try to learn what the actual distribution for someth…

The top 10% of drinkers drink more that double the drinks of the remaining 90% of drinkers.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#772

Post by CivBase »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The statistics about alcohol consumption are so stunning that I often wonder how accurate they are. If these numbers are correct, the top 10% of alcohol drinkers consume the equivalent of 10 drinks per day : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think... The unit for a single drink is a fixed measurement, so someone pouring a tall glass of wine or a very stiff drink could be consuming 2-5 “drinks” in…

> The top 10 percent of American drinkers - 24 million adults over age 18 - consume, on average, [...] 10 drinks per day.

What counts as an "American drinker"? Apparently only 24M of our 330M population. That's 7% of the population.

So the average of the top 0.7% Americans consume 10 drinks per day. Since averages are heavily affected by the outliers at the top, you're looking at probably between 2-3 per 1000. I absolutely believe that many Americans consume the equivalent of 10+ light beers per day.

What's more surprising to me is that only 24M Americans count as "drinkers". Our college population alone is 17M.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#773

Post by runarberg »

karlkloss wrote: post #678
yoz-y wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I though the standard beer in Europe was always 500ml.

Nope. In most restaurants and bars, 300ml is the standard size, sometimes even 250ml. 500ml is considered a big beer. 300ml is also the standard size at festivities, concerts and sports games. In Colone, the standard size of the local beer (Kölsch) is 200ml, but 300ml is also common. In the south of Germany, especially bavaria, 500ml is the standard size in restaurants, and 1L at festivities and in bars run by brewer…

In Iceland 500ml used to be the standard size of beers at bars maybe 10 years ago. Now 400ml is the most common size (although outside of Reykjavík 500ml is still common). 330ml is the most common size in restaurants and in the liqueur stores.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#774

Post by Aken »

quotemstr wrote: post #741
gambiting wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Is that why America's per capita GDP is higher than that of the EU? No, but it's exactly why US is far behind EU in healthcare, education, equality, social mobility and a number of other social metrics that matter to you know - normal people on the street, not traders on wall street. GDP doesn't tell the whole story. >>Why the US, not the EU, is the world's center of innovation and the strongest magnet for talent B…

In America, everyone has the same chance already, at least to a close approximation. It's just not logically valid to look at unequal outcomes and conclude that not everyone had the same chance, but that's what half this thread is doing. Whatever the US is doing, it works for producing prosperity and innovation. Whatever the EU is doing doesn't work to produce that. Sure, people there are comfortable, but should comf…

>> Whatever the US is doing, it works for producing prosperity and innovation.

For some, at the expense of others.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#775

Post by twodave »

yason wrote: post #744
SilverRed wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public drinking laws are not because the government thinks the average person can't be trusted. It's because the homeless population has a large drinking problem and it often results in people getting assaulted on the street. These laws let the police do something about this before it results in harm.

often results in people getting assaulted on the street. These laws let the police do something about this Aren't there laws against assaulting people on the street that the police could use, then?

Sure there are, but those require someone to be assaulted to enforce them. If they can short-circuit the process during the "drinking in public" preamble to the assault then one might say violence was prevented instead of punished. The perpetrator ends up with a lighter sentence (DIP not nearly as frowned upon as violent crimes) and the would-be-victims aren't even involved.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#776

Post by gmadsen »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #348
misiti3780 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, these articles are ridiculous. If you have alcoholism in your family -- dont drink. If you're overweight because drinking causes you to eat shitty food and not exercise -- stop drinking. If you have anxiety because of drinking -- stop drinking. If drinking makes you an asshole and is causing relationship problems (I know a lot of people in this category) -- stop drinking. If you like to go out on the weeks a…

>If you like to go out on the weeks and drink 8 beers with your friends, all the more power to you. People have been drinking since time immemorial, it's part of who we are as human. This just isn't true at all and it's probably offensive to large groups of people who view alcohol drinking (with pretty good reason) as a vice. Abstaining from alcohol is also a praised act since time immemorial. Trying to keep one's mi…

noble is very subjective. I'm sure some religions(judio-christian) might see it as noble, but that is far from the only view point, before or since those religions

Re: America has a drinking problem

#777

Post by grvdrm »

dayvid wrote: post #721
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote: post #636

Whenever I explain the "USA" to (Eastern) Europeans, I always simply state the notion: "diverse country of the extremes". Yes, widespread obesity, but health obsessions also run deep in that country, gym memberships, elite universities with sports programs full of money. How many weird diet fads start basically in the US? Self-help books, alternative gurus, etc. Bad education? Yes, pretty much. But also some of the b…

When I was in Japan, I met a guy who was a manager of a Japanese supermarket branch in Hawai’i for some time. He said in Japan, people are usually about the same. But in America, people are either really smart or really stupid.

Interesting comment. I'll say it another way: in America, people either agree or disagree with you. That's not my personal viewpoint but one that doesn't seem inconceivable to an outsider.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#778

Post by kesselvon »

golergka wrote: post #754
dougmwne wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of this is just because the USA is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the USA:) Plus, this is a country made up of a little piece of every other country in the world. "American identity" is an ex post facto rationalization. Not to mention that politically we often oper…

Russia is bigger in terms of area, just two times smaller in terms of population, but 10 times more uniform, at least. You wouldn't be able to tell apart two typical provincial Russian towns from the opposite sides of the country. So, no, just the size itself doesn't seem like a complete explanation for this.

U.S. divisions at this point run largely rural versus urban. Russia has the same thing - folks in Moscow live completely different lives than those in a backwoods provincial town.

If anything, Russia and the U.S. are pretty similar in terms of regional and cultural tensions.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#779

Post by madcows »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #732
madcows wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might be more effective to stop giving people money and use it instead to create programs to provide better jobs and skill training. That's a false dichotomy. There's no actual lever for "provide better jobs and skill training." In reality, it's either more money directed at the poors, or more directed towards the rich. And that's how people vote. "Better jobs and skill training" means "give it to the rich so th…

Maybe this is true but I hope not. I'm specifically thinking of trade schools etc where people can prepare for a career without the frills and cost of university. Honestly maybe a marketing campaign would be effective in letting people know that blue color work is honorable and needed and they can be productive and get a job that will support them and their family without having to go to Yale. I really like what Mike…

> blue color work is honorable and needed and they can be productive and get a job that will support them and their family

Honorable? Maybe.

Able to support a family? Not without a secondary income from a spouse. And who's looking after the kids at that point? I hope you also have extended family that are willing and able to help, otherwise that's not much of a family.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#780

Post by gmadsen »

fy20 wrote: post #543
blhack wrote: post #116

Some of my most cherished memories are those where I was out drinking wine and having really good food with my wife and friends. When people were telling stories about Jesus, the central figure of their religion, one of the miracles they told of was him turning water into wine. This is held up as one of the most important stories in their entire moral system. When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid…

If anything your comment just reinforces how much of a problem it is, and how deeply it is engrained in society. If sugary processed foods had been developed 5000 years ago, would you be saying the same about those today? You are associating alcohol == good times, which if you want to do so is fine (we are adults, we have free will), but know that you can have good times without alcohol as well. They aren't mutually…

I went my whole life not enjoying being social. Drinking allows me to be social when I want to be. I don't really see that as a problem. Socializing is just not something I have ever enjoyed sober.
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