The Bible simply says "Man does not live by bread alone". Brain science says people need connections to others, a sense of competence/value, and meaning in their lives.
The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.
“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,”
“This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”
Dr. Deaton had but one parallel.
“Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” he said.We know who these people are. Obama calls them "bitter clingers". Many of them are in the south, or in "flyover country". They are often "racist, homophobic, low information, etc". You don't have to listen to much media to know that these people are not someone that America currently cares about.
While the article claims that it is just "the uneducated", I certainly know of and personally understand the same pains and temptations from those with more education. Life used to have certain anchors -- religion, family, work and community being very large. In the US the left has attacked each of these systematically, along with destroying the culture that was once America -- this is unlike what has happened in Europe and Japan.
In Europe, the state has grown and religion has suffered, but since church and state were intertwined, most of the people are at least nominally part of "the church" -- for baptisms, Christmas, sometimes Easter, weddings and funerals. As a practicing Christian, I don't applaud that, however, it is "something" as opposed to "nothing".
Even more importantly, it is completely fine -- and EXPECTED to be a PROUD "Irishman, Brit, Frenchman, German, Swede, Italian ... etc, etc". The rising statism in Europe was not anti-culture, nor anti the dominant ethnicity of the nation state. One can even take pride in being a German, although the nation was largely responsible for two world wars and the genocide of six million Jews.
Not so white Americans -- we are guilty for slavery over 100 years ago, it is a stain that our leftward marching elite wants ever fresh so that even though they were the party of both slavery and Jim Crow, eternal white guilt must be recognized to keep their black voters voting over 90% for them -- ONLY "Black Lives Matter".
We could go on, but this is likely a case where a more complex analysis obfuscates rather than clarifies. Just as AIDs in the developed world was the result of a complete breakdown in sexual morality among a specific group -- gay males, what we see in middle aged whites is the ongoing destruction of the culture and values of Americans of European descent.
We know that black inner city culture was destroyed by welfare and urban development in the '60s -- their numbers for this same age group are still worse, but whites now largely infected by the same pathogens -- rampant out of wedlock births, welfare and unemployment, dependency, loss of community and religious values, are rapidly falling to the same fates. This was well covered and predicted in "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray ... an excerpt and few comments here.
So far, Hispanic, largely Mexican culture has resisted the statist pathogens -- they cling to the Catholic Church, family and since they are often undocumented, they are more likely to live in packed houses working hard for often less than minimum wage to keep their families intact and send money back to other family members. They don't earn a lot, but they earn what they earn, it is respected, and has value.
the rate for middle-aged Hispanics is far lower than for middle-aged whites at 262 per 100,000.Will the next generation of Hispanics be able to resist destruction by "The Party" (D)? The temptations for the young women are great -- get pregnant, get aid and raise children with a series of young men -- often with what appears to be a better economic deal, but one that goes very sour at middle age. As I covered here, the unmarried young woman with HS or less education and children has this choice ...
A). Stay at home and get from $20 - $35K a yearThe choice doesn't come with a warning like a pack of cigarettes:
(B). Go to work 40 hours every week often at two jobs, since BOcare has mandated benefits MUST be provided for a job regularly over 30hrs, with no vacations and take in MAYBE $30K.
"Warning, living on welfare as an unwed mother may entail risks of depression, substance abuse and even death by suicide before age 60 for you and your sexual partners"!
Not very likely that the very people that produce and push the values and pathogens that lead to the problem are very likely to warn where it leads is it?
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