Politics Please say rock bottom is getting close

SlyPokerDog · Apr 21, 2023

These people have reached cement bottom.

Road Ratt · Apr 21, 2023

It was a violent week in America. That’s become the norm.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/i...&cvid=510291f754bb4af1936414085b8ca5d0&ei=119

These tragedies have put the US on track this year for record mass killings, defined as incidents in which four or more people die. But mass killings only make up a fraction of gun deaths in the US overall, and on that front, it’s not clear that this week’s spate of shootings is significantly out of the norm.
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On track to have a record year for mass shootings. Sickening.

Shaboid · Apr 21, 2023

America Fails the Civilization Test

The average American my age is roughly six times more likely to die in the coming year than his counterpart in Switzerland.

By Derek Thompson
APRIL 21, 2023, 6 AM ET

The true test of a civilization may be the answer to a basic question: Can it keep its children alive?

For most of recorded history, the answer everywhere was plainly no. Roughly half of all people—tens of billions of us—died before finishing puberty until about the 1700s, when breakthroughs in medicine and hygiene led to tremendous advances in longevity. In Central Europe, for example, the mortality rate for children fell from roughly 50 percent in 1750 to 0.3 percent in 2020. You will not find more unambiguous evidence of human progress.

How’s the U.S. doing on the civilization test? When graded on a curve against its peer nations, it is failing. The U.S. mortality rate is much higher, at almost every age, than that of most of Europe, Japan, and Australia. That is, compared with the citizens of these nations, American infants are less likely to turn 5, American teenagers are less likely to turn 30, and American 30-somethings are less likely to survive to retirement.

Last year, I called the U.S. the rich death trap of the modern world. The “rich” part is important to observe and hard to overstate. The typical American spends almost 50 percent more each year than the typical Brit, and a trucker in Oklahoma earns more than a doctor in Portugal.

This extra cash ought to buy us more years of living. For most countries, higher incomes translate automatically into longer lives. But not for today’s Americans. A new analysis by John Burn-Murdoch, a data journalist at the Financial Times, shows that the typical American is 100 percent more likely to die than the typical Western European at almost every age from birth until retirement.

Imagine I offered you a pill and told you that taking this mystery medication would have two effects. First, it would increase your disposable income by almost half. Second, it would double your odds of dying in the next 365 days. To be an average American is to fill a lifetime prescription of that medication and take the pill nightly.

According to data collected by Burn-Murdoch, a typical American baby is about 1.8 times more likely to die in her first year than the average infant from a group of similarly rich countries: Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, France, the U.K., Japan, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Let’s think of this 1.8 figure as “the U.S. death ratio”—the annual mortality rate in the U.S., as a multiple of similarly rich countries.

By the time an American turns 18, the U.S. death ratio surges to 2.8. By 29, the U.S. death ratio rockets to its peak of 4.22, meaning that the typical American is more than four times more likely to die than the average resident in our basket of high-income nations. In direct country-to-country comparisons, the ratio is even higher. The average American my age, in his mid-to-late 30s, is roughly six times more likely to die in the next year than his counterpart in Switzerland.

The average U.S. death ratio stays higher than three for practically the entire period between ages 30 and 50, meaning that the typical middle-aged American is roughly three times more likely to die within the year than his counterpart in Western Europe or Australia. Only in our late 80s and 90s are Americans statistically on par, or even slightly better off, than residents of other rich nations.

“One in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday,” Burn-Murdoch observed. On average, a representative U.S. kindergarten class will lose one member before their fifth decade of life.

What is going on here? The first logical suspect might be guns. According to a recent Pew analysis of CDC data, gun deaths among U.S. children and teens have doubled in the past 10 years, reaching the highest level of gun violence against children recorded this century. In March, a 20-something shooter fired 152 rounds at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, killing three children and three adults, before being killed by police. In April, a 20-something shooter killed six people at a Louisville, Kentucky, bank, before he, too, was killed by police.

People everywhere suffer from mental-health problems, rage, and fear. But Americans have more guns to channel those all-too-human emotions into a bullet fired at another person. One could tell a similar story about drug overdoses and car deaths. In all of these cases, America suffers not from a monopoly on despair and aggression, but from an oversupply of instruments of death. We have more drug-overdose deaths than any other high-income country because we have so much more fentanyl, even per capita. Americans drive more than other countries, leading to our higher-than-average death rate from road accidents. Even on a per-miles-driven basis, our death rate is extraordinary.

When I reached out to Burn-Murdoch, I expected that these three culprits—guns, drugs, and cars—would explain most of our death ratio. However, on my podcast, Plain English, he argued that Americans’ health (and access to health care) seems to be the most important factor. America’s prevalence of cardiovascular and metabolic disease is so high that it accounts for more of our early mortality than guns, drugs, and cars combined.

Disentangling America’s health issues is complicated, but I can offer three data points. First, American obesity is unusually high, which likely leads to a larger number of early and middle-aged deaths. Second, Americans are unusually sedentary. We take at least 30 percent fewer steps a day than people do in Australia, Switzerland, and Japan. Finally, U.S. access to care is unusually unequal—and our health-care outcomes are unusually tied to income. As the Northwestern University economist Hannes Schwandt found, Black teens in the poorest U.S. areas are roughly twice as likely to die before they turn 20 as teenagers in the richest counties. This outcome is logically downstream of America’s paucity of universal care and our shortage of physicians, especially in low-income areas.

There is no single meta-explanation for America’s death ratio that’s capacious enough to account for our higher rates of death from guns, drugs, cars, infant mortality, diet, exercise, and unequal access to care. I’ll try to offer one anyway—only to immediately contradict it.

Let’s start with the idea, however simplistic, that voters and politicians in the U.S. care so much about freedom in that old-fashioned ’Merica-lovin’ kind of way that we’re unwilling to promote public safety if those rules constrict individual choice. That’s how you get a country with infamously laissez-faire firearms laws, more guns than people, lax and poorly enforced driving laws, and a conservative movement that has repeatedly tried to block, overturn, or limit the expansion of universal health insurance on the grounds that it impedes consumer choice. Among the rich, this hyper-individualistic mindset can manifest as a smash-and-grab attitude toward life, with surprising consequences for the less fortunate. For example, childhood obesity is on the rise at the same time that youth-sports participation is in decline among low-income kids. What seems to be happening at the national level is that rich families, seeking to burnish their child’s résumé for college, are pulling their kids out of local leagues so that they can participate in prestigious pay-to-play travel teams. At scale, these decisions devastate the local youth-sports leagues for the benefit of increasing by half a percentage point the odds of a wealthy kid getting into an Ivy League school.

The problem with the Freedom and Individualism Theory of Everything is that, in many cases, America’s problem isn’t freedom-worship, but actually something quite like its opposite: overregulation. In medicine, excessive regulation and risk aversion on the part of the FDA and Institutional Review Boards have very likely slowed the development and adoption of new lifesaving treatments. This has created what the economist Alex Tabarrok calls an “invisible graveyard” of people killed by regulators preventing access to therapies that would have saved their life. Consider, in the same vein, the problem of diet and exercise. Are Americans unusually sedentary because they love freedom so very much? It’s possible, I guess. But the more likely explanation is that restrictive housing policies have made it too hard for middle- and low-income families to live near downtown business districts, which forces many of them to drive more than they would like, thus reducing everyday walking and exercise.

America is caught in a lurch between oversight and overkill, sometimes promoting individual freedom, with luridly fatal consequences, and sometimes blocking policies and products, with subtly fatal consequences. That’s not straightforward, and it’s damn hard to solve. But mortality rates are the final test of civilization. Who said that test should be easy?
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Hoopguru · Apr 21, 2023

Chris Craig said: ↑

Unfortunately, with the vast divisions that exist today, it's meaning has been greatly tarnished. It is fading as we speak into obscurity, threatening to become a bygone bit of historic antiquity.
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yeah its to bad really.

Phatguysrule · Apr 21, 2023

Shaboid said: ↑

America Fails the Civilization Test

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Excellent post. We can't address the real problem untill we acknowledge it.

We don't need more restrictions. We need more empowerment and care.

Improving access to healthcare, education, and social safety net (and the improved society that would lead to) would save more lives than eliminating cars, guns, and drugs combined.

And the number of lives that would be improved is unimaginable.

crandc · Apr 21, 2023

Obviously the problem is drag queen story hour.

Phatguysrule · Apr 21, 2023

crandc said: ↑

Obviously the problem is drag queen story hour.
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Yes. Nearly everything else our leaders focus on are just horrible distractions from the real problems listed above.

Everything Beagle · Apr 22, 2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/22/ottawa-county-commission/

WEST OLIVE, Mich. — The eight new members of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had run for office promising to “thwart tyranny” in their lakeside Michigan community of 300,000 people.

In this case the oppressive force they aimed to thwart was the county government they now ran. It was early January, their first day in charge. An American flag held down a spot at the front of the board’s windowless meeting room. Sea-foam green carpet covered the floor.

The new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of office on family Bibles. And then the firings began. Gone wasthe lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a staff of 1,800. To run the health department, they voted to install a service manager from a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates.

As the session entered its fourth hour, Sylvia Rhodea, the board’s new vice chair, put forward a motion to change the motto that sat atop the county’s website and graced its official stationery. “Whereas the vision statement of ‘Where You Belong’ has been used to promote the divisive Marxist ideology of the race, equity movement,” Rhodea said.

And so began a new era for Ottawa County. Across America, county governments provided services so essential that they were often an afterthought. Their employees paved roads, built parks, collected taxes and maintained property records. In an era when Americans had never seemed more divided and distrustful, county governments, at their best, helped define what remains of the common good.

Ottawa County stood out for a different reason. It was becoming a case study in what happens when one of the building blocks of American democracy is consumed by ideological battles over race, religion and American history.

Rhodea’s resolution continued on for 20 “whereases,” connecting the current motto to a broader effort that she said aimed to “divide people by race,” reduce their “personal agency,” and teach them to “hate America and doubt the goodness of her people.”

Her proposed alternative, she said, sought to unite county residents around America’s “true history” as a “land of systemic opportunity built on the Constitution, Christianity and capitalism.’”

She flipped to her resolution’s final page and leaned closer to the mic. “Now, therefore, let it be resolved that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners establishes a new county vision statement and motto of ‘Where Freedom Rings.’”

The commission’s lone Democrat gazed out in disbelief. A few seats away,the commission’s new chair savored the moment. “There’s just some really beautiful language in this,” he said, before calling for a vote on the resolution. It passed easily…
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crandc · Apr 22, 2023

Good illustration of how Republicans have no interest in governing. Just performance and white rage.

julius · Apr 23, 2023

crandc said: ↑

Good illustration of how Republicans have no interest in governing. Just performance and white rage.
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They know the playbook well. It's the same reason why so many people stay in cults, or stay in a religion. They don't realize how gullible they are.

It doesn't surprise me when grifters find what works and keep doing it. But it does surprise me that in the year 2023, we STILL have people who fall for some of the stupidest shit in the world. But than again, they're the same people who use the exact same fallacies in their arguments that have worked for 100's of years, and think they're somehow smarter/more knowledgeable than the rest of us.

SlyPokerDog · Apr 23, 2023

Everything Beagle · Apr 23, 2023

julius · Apr 23, 2023

Everything Beagle said: ↑

View attachment 55655
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Yeah, that's true and all, but how do we fix that I feel like I'm being emasculated by someone who is trans?

I mean, that's what matters. And the like.

crandc · Apr 23, 2023

Alabama governor fired longtime director of early childhood education. Her crime was using the award winning national manual for teacher training which referenced diversity and the impact of racism on learning. Alabama wants something non "woke". Because of course there has never been racism in Alabama.

SlyPokerDog · Apr 23, 2023

Road Ratt · Apr 23, 2023

There Is No Capitalist Solution To The Overdose Crisis

The United States has weaponized its response to the overdose crisis it helped create.

Uses it as an excuse to further its own imperialist agenda at home and abroad.

https://popularresistance.org/there-is-no-capitalist-solution-to-the-overdose-crisis/

Overdoses are still soaring throughout the U.S. According to the National Institutes of Health, “More than 106,000 persons in the U.S. died from drug-involved overdose in 2021, including illicit drugs and prescription opioids.” From September to January 2022, almost 80,000 people died from overdose. And the epidemic goes beyond the overdose numbers. While most politicians talk about the risks of drugs laced with fentanyl, that is not the only risk. Thousands around the country are at risk of using drugs contaminated with dangerous additives such as xylazine, or “tranq,” as it spreads through the drug supply in various cities. These additives put those using drugs at an increased risk of health complications such as chronic, debilitating wounds that sometimes lead to amputation or severe infection.
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Over 100,000 people died from overdose in the U.S. in one year. Clearly our "War on drugs" isn't working. Though the "war" has never really been about drugs, or we would have a better handle on the problem now.

This is truly a sickening stat. More than a real wars worth of Americans died from a drug overdose in one year. This level of mismanagement shows the lack of care our government has for it's own citizens. And is why I can't back any politician in America.

Phatguysrule · Apr 24, 2023

Road Ratt said: ↑

There Is No Capitalist Solution To The Overdose Crisis

The United States has weaponized its response to the overdose crisis it helped create.

Uses it as an excuse to further its own imperialist agenda at home and abroad.

https://popularresistance.org/there-is-no-capitalist-solution-to-the-overdose-crisis/

Over 100,000 people died from overdose in the U.S. in one year. Clearly our "War on drugs" isn't working. Though the "war" has never really been about drugs, or we would have a better handle on the problem now.

This is truly a sickening stat. More than a real wars worth of Americans died from a drug overdose in one year. This level of mismanagement shows the lack of care our government has for it's own citizens. And is why I can't back any politician in America.
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Same as the homelessness crisis

SlyPokerDog · Apr 24, 2023

Hoopguru · Apr 24, 2023

My son told me to look this up.
Sounds reasonable?

RR7 · Apr 24, 2023

SlyPokerDog said: ↑

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Par of me is appalled by their stupidity, and the other part of me really wants to figure out a way to exploit it and profit it off of it while the getting is good!

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