The thing I find bemusing about works like this is that rarely is any effort made to even see how consistently, or even if, a hypothesis holds up in other natio

The thing I find bemusing about works like this is that rarely is any effort made to even see how consistently, or even if, a hypothesis holds up in other nations. Instead it seems like the idea is to take the inequality in the US, find a negative issue in the US, and suggest a link. That's awful science. So for instance here are two relevant lists. [1] List of nations by income equality. [2] List of nations by suicide rate. There are approximately 180 nations ranked in each. What immediately came to mind here is South America. They have absolutely raging inequality, but also negligible suicide rates. --- #11 income inequality Brazil #135 suicide rate #12 income inequality Columbia #135 suicide rate (tied with Brazil) #13 income inequality Panama #142 suicide rate #16 income inequality Honduras #155 suicide rate #17 income inequality Guatemala #174 suicide rate That alone looks quite damning of any attempt to link income inequality to suicide. In fact South America in particular shows a very strong link between high income inequality and low suicide rates! For completeness, these are the top 5 nations in income inequality and their suicide rates: --- #1 income inequality South Africa #54 suicide rate #2 income inequality Namibia #87 suicide rate #3 income inequality Haiti #67 suicide rate #4 income inequality Botswana #48 suicide rate #5 income inequality Suriname #6 suicide rate --- One thing I would add on the suicide rates for the top is this [3]. That's a list of nations by AIDS/HIV prevalence. South Africa is #4. Namibia is #5. Haiti #24. Botswana is #3, Suriname #35. That's more than a slight confounding variable! Perhaps income inequality causes AIDS! Of course that's a tasteless joke, but the point is the absurdity of correlations. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_...