11 ms·

Doesn't surprise me unfortunately. While in theory anyone in the US can make it with sufficient effort, the reality is that some people get economically shat o

Doesn't surprise me unfortunately. While in theory anyone in the US can make it with sufficient effort, the reality is that some people get economically shat on through no fault of their own. Our national mythology/culture doesn't take this into account, and as a result we're incredibly vicious towards those who struggle. As more and more capital needs less and less labor to be profitable and create value, we're going to need to find more effective ways to make sure everyone's needed, or things have a potential to get much worse before they get better. EDIT: As others have noted, we also severely undervalue social capital, so we by and large firesale it to accumulate more material value. We work more instead of spending time with friends and family, thereby dangerously isolating ourselves. Thank you all for pointing this out.

maxerickson 11y ago
Isn't part of the problem you are identifying thinking about it in terms of people being needed? I think people generally want to have purpose, but I'm not sure fulfillment has to be achieved by answering some external need.
vippy 11y ago
Violence is structural.
- twoquestions 11y ago
  Would you mind elaborating on this? I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Not the commenter, but I came across this term in the book Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong. Essentially society requires violence to function. In the beginning, someone had to coerce farmers to produce a surplus, with this surplus the first states and militaries were built. As societies evolved, the violence became less overt and more implied, embedded within the structures of the state. At some point, in order to have a society and not anarchy, you have to have people telling other people what to do, and these people can't take no for an answer. All you can do is reshuffle it so it's less and less onerous over time. It's a thread that runs throughout the book, in order to explain religion and nationalism and war were deeply entwined all throughout recorded history and well into prehistory for as long as we've had the mental capacity to think about matters larger than we are.
    - stray 11y ago
      Society and anarchy are not mutually exclusive.
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        Depends on how you define the terms.
        cname 11y ago
        The most common definitions of political anarchy (if you will, as opposed to simplistic "anarchy = chaos" definitions) indicate that it's a form of society. Typical tenets include free association and mutual aid, which are inherently social concepts.
        vinceguidry 10y ago
        Can you give me any real-world examples of an anarchic society?
- grillvogel 11y ago
  Is war as old as gravity?
- gozur88 11y ago
  Violence was always structural. That doesn't explain an increase in suicides.
  - msandford 11y ago
    Perhaps now that the rising tide that floats all boats that America had going from the 40s-80s (or something like that) has peaked, suicide rates are just going back to normal. It's pretty rare throughout history that your kids will almost surely be better off than you were. We enjoyed a brief spurt of that here in the US. It's probably over. Welcome back to the old normal.
Frozenlock 11y ago
It might very well be because of other factors, as said in the article: > "She calculated that in 2005, unmarried middle-aged men were 3.5 times more likely than married men to die from suicide, and their female counterparts were as much as 2.8 times more likely to kill themselves. The divorce rate has doubled for middle-aged and older adults since the 1990s, she said." There has been huge changes in our societies concerning the role of men and women, their relations, when/if they have children, the type of jobs available (which many are soul-wrecking pointless work), the food we eat, the move towards atheism, the increase in material wealth, the Internet... There is a myriad of possible factors and we need some serious studies before we can reach a conclusion. You can't just say "it's because capitalism" and be done with it.
- twoquestions 11y ago
  I agree with you that capitalism alone doesn't increase suicide, but needing to sell all of your time/energy to keep a roof over your head and food in your mouth and still being told you're not good enough is depressing as all hell. We severely undervalue social value for material value, and we're suffering horribly for it.
  - leaveyou 11y ago
    I upvoted both of you but you seem to contradict each other.. now I start to question my clarity. I think capitalism became very good at optimizing for profit and it pushes aside faster than ever anything that stays in it's path (and now that's more and more people). >We severely undervalue social value for material value Unfortunately the market has spoken: material value.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > Unfortunately the market has spoken: material value. Society is what we make of it. We still have a choice. Also, kudos to everyone up the chain in this subthread; this is the discourse I expect when coming to HN.
    - deepnet 11y ago
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
I think it's very simplistic to say income is the driving force in these numbers. And I would be careful about explaining phenomena like this with your own personal beliefs about society. Heres the very first study I found when googling income inequality and suicide [0]: > Our results indicate that there is a statistically insignificant positive effect of inequality on the incidence of suicide. 0: https://ideas.repec.org/p/adv/wpaper/200613.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/adv/wpaper/200613.html
- dota_fanatic 11y ago
  And yet that study is across 40 countries. It would have been nice if before putting that forth as evidence to the contrary, you'd read the second sentence of the abstract upon which you'd have found it's not relevant (at least, it's not relevant in the way that you cherry picked that quote). Having said that, your first paragraph is spot on.
- DanBC 11y ago
  >I think it's very simplistic to say income is the driving force in these numbers. For some groups of people (farmers, vets, construction workers) the correlations between the economy and suicide is very clear. There's pretty good correlation between economic downturn and increased rate of death by suicide. It is simplistic to just say "it's the economy", but the economy is pretty clearly one important factor.
salmonet 11y ago
Other countries where it is harder to make it financially have lower suicide rates
- zjaffee 11y ago
  Poorer countries are on average more religious and more religious countries have lower suicide rates http://www.gallup.com/poll/108625/more-religious-countries-lower-suicide-rates.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/108625/more-religious-countries-l...
  - overcast 11y ago
    80% of the US is affiliated with a religion.
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      Self identification, affiliation, and membership are not synonyms.
  - hexagonc 11y ago
    More religious countries may have lower incidents of suicide but they don't seem to be enjoying the life they do have as much as the less religious countries. None of the top 10 countries according to the World Happiness Report[1] are religious. On the other hand, of the top 10 religious countries, according to your link, the highest ranked for happiness is Thailand at 34. This shouldn't be terribly surprising since it is a deadly sin to commit suicide in most of the Abrahamic religions and the more devout you are the more likely you are to adhere to this particular tenet. [1] http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2015/ http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2015/
    - tathougies 11y ago
      Or all the unhappy people in the happiest countries killed themselves.
- prmph 11y ago
aianus 11y ago
I was never depressed when I was poor, only when I was pulling in lots of money and spending all week at the office.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I think the main factor is sustainability and stability. I was not very happy when I was hovering around ramen profitability because it was not sustainable.
  - randyrand 11y ago
    On the contrary, I've been most depressed when my life was at a complete stable standstill. I had money. I had sustainability and stability. But I was not happy. In fact its pretty silly to think either of those things create happiness or are even the precursors to it.
- georgeecollins 11y ago
  I have never been depressed when I was poor either, but now that I am not I worry about not being able to pay for the fancy schools and activities I send my kids to.
  - dikdik 11y ago
    I'll take your money if that will help you with your dire situation.
Grishnakh 11y ago
Agreed, and this is I think why we need to start implementing a Basic Income right away, especially as we're automating away so many low-skilled jobs. There's tons of low-skilled people who just can't make ends meet on whatever low-paying job they have (today's huge housing prices have a lot to do with this), and just aren't going to be able to get themselves a higher-paying job, and they're in great danger of losing their jobs to increasing automation. They still have a lot to contribute to society, just not economically. With the abundance of resources we have, it should be possible for people like this to have a decent home (maybe not in a high-demand high-rent district though) and live a peaceful, enjoyable life without having to slave away at two jobs trying to make ends meet.
CryoLogic 11y ago
I've seen this a lot in the software industry. A few of my smartest friends, hardest working and most dedicated friends who came from poor / low class families had an extremely poor time getting into the software industry. One was turned down five times in a row for "culture fit". It's hard to fit in with rich whites / asians who have a boat from their parents and wear designer clothes when you spent your whole childhood playing with cards and worrying about money.
- Chronic51 11y ago
  > It's hard to fit in with rich whites / asians who have a boat from their parents and wear designer clothes when you spent your whole childhood playing with cards and worrying about money As a rich white/Asian, I agree. Now what? We will all go back to coding in atom/vim/etc and continue our lives, forgetting we ever had this whole conversation.
  - MaxfordAndSons 11y ago
    You're gesturing here at a general lack of engagement in solving these difficult social problems, then coming to the nihilistic conclusion that, since nobody else (that you can perceive) is engaging with them, it's a lost cause. I don't say this in anger, but it's a lost cause entirely because you (and many others, past versions of myself included) choose to believe it's a lost cause. Us all going back to our editors and forgetting this conversation in defeat is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it's particularly insidious to publicly acknowledge your privilege and then make this gesture, because it sets an example for others of your level of privilege. It's isomorphic with the problem of white people who support the BLM movement in spirit, but think they can't become proactive allies to black America because they don't know how - but it's not a matter of knowing, it's a matter of taking actions, often difficult and uncomfortable ones.
- rconti 11y ago
  I don't know about your local tech industry, but in west coast tech companies I've worked at, and among my friends, people of all backgrounds have thrived. If anything, I see very FEW people who were born with the proverbial silver spoon on their mouths.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
scythe 11y ago
Any analysis blaming the US suicide rate on individualism has to somehow cope with the fact that in (relatively) collectivist countries with similar incomes (UK, France, Japan) the suicide rate is much higher.
- tzs 11y ago
  UK suicide rate is about half that of the US, according to Wikipedia (6.2 vs 12.1 per 100k per year).
hacknat 11y ago
Well I don't know that it's the economy by itself. The data shows the suicide rate declining for black men, but their unemployment rate doubled during the recession. Let's be careful not to peg a complex social phenomenon on the economy alone. Edit: Citation: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2014.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2014.... Figure 2
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

maxerickson 11y ago

Isn't part of the problem you are identifying thinking about it in terms of people being needed? I think people generally want to have purpose, but I'm not sure fulfillment has to be achieved by answering some external need.

vippy 11y ago

Violence is structural.

twoquestions 11y ago
Would you mind elaborating on this? I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Not the commenter, but I came across this term in the book Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong. Essentially society requires violence to function. In the beginning, someone had to coerce farmers to produce a surplus, with this surplus the first states and militaries were built. As societies evolved, the violence became less overt and more implied, embedded within the structures of the state. At some point, in order to have a society and not anarchy, you have to have people telling other people what to do, and these people can't take no for an answer. All you can do is reshuffle it so it's less and less onerous over time. It's a thread that runs throughout the book, in order to explain religion and nationalism and war were deeply entwined all throughout recorded history and well into prehistory for as long as we've had the mental capacity to think about matters larger than we are.
  - stray 11y ago
    Society and anarchy are not mutually exclusive.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      Depends on how you define the terms.
      - cname 11y ago
        The most common definitions of political anarchy (if you will, as opposed to simplistic "anarchy = chaos" definitions) indicate that it's a form of society. Typical tenets include free association and mutual aid, which are inherently social concepts.
        vinceguidry 10y ago
        Can you give me any real-world examples of an anarchic society?
grillvogel 11y ago
Is war as old as gravity?
gozur88 11y ago
Violence was always structural. That doesn't explain an increase in suicides.
- msandford 11y ago
  Perhaps now that the rising tide that floats all boats that America had going from the 40s-80s (or something like that) has peaked, suicide rates are just going back to normal. It's pretty rare throughout history that your kids will almost surely be better off than you were. We enjoyed a brief spurt of that here in the US. It's probably over. Welcome back to the old normal.

Frozenlock 11y ago

It might very well be because of other factors, as said in the article: > "She calculated that in 2005, unmarried middle-aged men were 3.5 times more likely than married men to die from suicide, and their female counterparts were as much as 2.8 times more likely to kill themselves. The divorce rate has doubled for middle-aged and older adults since the 1990s, she said." There has been huge changes in our societies concerning the role of men and women, their relations, when/if they have children, the type of jobs available (which many are soul-wrecking pointless work), the food we eat, the move towards atheism, the increase in material wealth, the Internet... There is a myriad of possible factors and we need some serious studies before we can reach a conclusion. You can't just say "it's because capitalism" and be done with it.

twoquestions 11y ago
I agree with you that capitalism alone doesn't increase suicide, but needing to sell all of your time/energy to keep a roof over your head and food in your mouth and still being told you're not good enough is depressing as all hell. We severely undervalue social value for material value, and we're suffering horribly for it.
- leaveyou 11y ago
  I upvoted both of you but you seem to contradict each other.. now I start to question my clarity. I think capitalism became very good at optimizing for profit and it pushes aside faster than ever anything that stays in it's path (and now that's more and more people). >We severely undervalue social value for material value Unfortunately the market has spoken: material value.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > Unfortunately the market has spoken: material value. Society is what we make of it. We still have a choice. Also, kudos to everyone up the chain in this subthread; this is the discourse I expect when coming to HN.
  - deepnet 11y ago

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

I think it's very simplistic to say income is the driving force in these numbers. And I would be careful about explaining phenomena like this with your own personal beliefs about society. Heres the very first study I found when googling income inequality and suicide [0]: > Our results indicate that there is a statistically insignificant positive effect of inequality on the incidence of suicide. 0: https://ideas.repec.org/p/adv/wpaper/200613.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/adv/wpaper/200613.html

dota_fanatic 11y ago
And yet that study is across 40 countries. It would have been nice if before putting that forth as evidence to the contrary, you'd read the second sentence of the abstract upon which you'd have found it's not relevant (at least, it's not relevant in the way that you cherry picked that quote). Having said that, your first paragraph is spot on.
DanBC 11y ago
>I think it's very simplistic to say income is the driving force in these numbers. For some groups of people (farmers, vets, construction workers) the correlations between the economy and suicide is very clear. There's pretty good correlation between economic downturn and increased rate of death by suicide. It is simplistic to just say "it's the economy", but the economy is pretty clearly one important factor.

salmonet 11y ago

Other countries where it is harder to make it financially have lower suicide rates

zjaffee 11y ago
Poorer countries are on average more religious and more religious countries have lower suicide rates http://www.gallup.com/poll/108625/more-religious-countries-lower-suicide-rates.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/108625/more-religious-countries-l...
- overcast 11y ago
  80% of the US is affiliated with a religion.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    Self identification, affiliation, and membership are not synonyms.
- hexagonc 11y ago
  More religious countries may have lower incidents of suicide but they don't seem to be enjoying the life they do have as much as the less religious countries. None of the top 10 countries according to the World Happiness Report[1] are religious. On the other hand, of the top 10 religious countries, according to your link, the highest ranked for happiness is Thailand at 34. This shouldn't be terribly surprising since it is a deadly sin to commit suicide in most of the Abrahamic religions and the more devout you are the more likely you are to adhere to this particular tenet. [1] http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2015/ http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2015/
  - tathougies 11y ago
    Or all the unhappy people in the happiest countries killed themselves.
prmph 11y ago

aianus 11y ago

I was never depressed when I was poor, only when I was pulling in lots of money and spending all week at the office.

nitrogen 11y ago
I think the main factor is sustainability and stability. I was not very happy when I was hovering around ramen profitability because it was not sustainable.
- randyrand 11y ago
  On the contrary, I've been most depressed when my life was at a complete stable standstill. I had money. I had sustainability and stability. But I was not happy. In fact its pretty silly to think either of those things create happiness or are even the precursors to it.
georgeecollins 11y ago
I have never been depressed when I was poor either, but now that I am not I worry about not being able to pay for the fancy schools and activities I send my kids to.
- dikdik 11y ago
  I'll take your money if that will help you with your dire situation.

Grishnakh 11y ago

Agreed, and this is I think why we need to start implementing a Basic Income right away, especially as we're automating away so many low-skilled jobs. There's tons of low-skilled people who just can't make ends meet on whatever low-paying job they have (today's huge housing prices have a lot to do with this), and just aren't going to be able to get themselves a higher-paying job, and they're in great danger of losing their jobs to increasing automation. They still have a lot to contribute to society, just not economically. With the abundance of resources we have, it should be possible for people like this to have a decent home (maybe not in a high-demand high-rent district though) and live a peaceful, enjoyable life without having to slave away at two jobs trying to make ends meet.

CryoLogic 11y ago

I've seen this a lot in the software industry. A few of my smartest friends, hardest working and most dedicated friends who came from poor / low class families had an extremely poor time getting into the software industry. One was turned down five times in a row for "culture fit". It's hard to fit in with rich whites / asians who have a boat from their parents and wear designer clothes when you spent your whole childhood playing with cards and worrying about money.

Chronic51 11y ago
> It's hard to fit in with rich whites / asians who have a boat from their parents and wear designer clothes when you spent your whole childhood playing with cards and worrying about money As a rich white/Asian, I agree. Now what? We will all go back to coding in atom/vim/etc and continue our lives, forgetting we ever had this whole conversation.
- MaxfordAndSons 11y ago
  You're gesturing here at a general lack of engagement in solving these difficult social problems, then coming to the nihilistic conclusion that, since nobody else (that you can perceive) is engaging with them, it's a lost cause. I don't say this in anger, but it's a lost cause entirely because you (and many others, past versions of myself included) choose to believe it's a lost cause. Us all going back to our editors and forgetting this conversation in defeat is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it's particularly insidious to publicly acknowledge your privilege and then make this gesture, because it sets an example for others of your level of privilege. It's isomorphic with the problem of white people who support the BLM movement in spirit, but think they can't become proactive allies to black America because they don't know how - but it's not a matter of knowing, it's a matter of taking actions, often difficult and uncomfortable ones.
rconti 11y ago
I don't know about your local tech industry, but in west coast tech companies I've worked at, and among my friends, people of all backgrounds have thrived. If anything, I see very FEW people who were born with the proverbial silver spoon on their mouths.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

scythe 11y ago

Any analysis blaming the US suicide rate on individualism has to somehow cope with the fact that in (relatively) collectivist countries with similar incomes (UK, France, Japan) the suicide rate is much higher.

tzs 11y ago
UK suicide rate is about half that of the US, according to Wikipedia (6.2 vs 12.1 per 100k per year).

hacknat 11y ago

Well I don't know that it's the economy by itself. The data shows the suicide rate declining for black men, but their unemployment rate doubled during the recession. Let's be careful not to peg a complex social phenomenon on the economy alone. Edit: Citation: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2014.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2014.... Figure 2

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]