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I find it astounding that the opioid epidemic is so severe that there's a measurable reduction in life expectancy in the USA. Interesting that "deaths of despa

I find it astounding that the opioid epidemic is so severe that there's a measurable reduction in life expectancy in the USA. Interesting that "deaths of despair" have also had a measurable impact. It seems that since the Global Financial Crisis, we've been locked in this sort of terminal pessimism. Hunter S. Thompson wrote back in 1971, "We are all wired into a survival trip now". Are we locked in the same survival trip from almost 50 years ago, or is it a cyclical thing? Is the world really worse than the 60s? Or are we just more aware of our helplessness?

emodendroket 8y ago
Wages were rising until the 70s and they've been stagnant since then; in the mean time college, health care, rent, houses, etc. have gotten more expensive in real dollars. People who had well-paying jobs with strong benefits are now often, if not unemployed, in jobs with less pay, fewer benefits, and more precarity. In short: yes, things are worse for many of the people who are turning to opiates.
- myth_drannon 8y ago
  From the many statistics I saw usually the breaking point is the middle to end of eighties. I'm thinking the fall of Soviet Union had a large impact on the middle class Americans. Basically the middle class was discarded as something that served its purpose as a shield from communism.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Decades of “trickle down economics” have robbed from the vast majority and given to the tiny, select few.
    - dcgudeman 8y ago
      How has anybody been "robbed"? Per capita income has gone up for everyone, yes the top has gone up faster but at the end of the day the lower tiers still have increased in wealth. Honestly I don't understand how you come to your conclusion.
      - gonvaled 8y ago
        Prices have gone up faster. We consume junk, continuosly. "robbed" because voters accepted capital concentration by accepting that it would trickle down, which is a lie.
        adventured 8y ago
        It's not a lie. The US welfare state has massively expanded since 1980. The percentage share of GDP transferring via welfare state policies has doubled in 20x years. Both poverty and homelessness are near 50 year lows. Healthcare coverage is near an all-time high, thanks in part to the vast expansion of the welfare state. All of that is being paid for by the rich. The US has one of the most progressive taxation systems in the developed world. The US middle class is among the least taxed of any middle class in the developed world, which is also why the US median disposable income is among the highest. If you go back to 1980, the inflation adjusted per capita income transfer going to welfare policies, was close to $3,500. Today it's near $9,000. That's a dramatic expansion of the social safety net in the US, and it has had very tangible, very dramatic positive results (including a large reduction in homelessness).
      - eppsilon 8y ago
        Inflation adjusted per capita median income was about the same in 2016 as it was in 2000. The last significant increase was in the 90s. Income shares of the top 1% and top 0.1% have doubled and tripled respectively since 1980. Maybe calling it robbery is hyperbole, but it certainly doesn't seem fair.
      - ionised 8y ago
        So the poor can now have smartphones and financed cars but their education and healthcare is prohibitively expensive and they have no chance of owning a home. All the while those GDP increases have gone to fewer and fewer people. I'm sure they'll feel reassured when you tell them GDP per capita has gone up. It's not about the poor being a bit better off with things like luxuries. It's about their piece of the overall wealth and stake in the economy gradually shrinking.
  - smhost 8y ago
    First as tragedy, then as farce, or something like that. If the banks are right about what they've been saying recently, Warren is going to be elected against the threat of seizure once the recession hits its stride.
- jtr1 8y ago
  If you look at union membership rates, that's when they begin to falter. Countries with strong social democratic safety nets usually have high union membership (in the range of ~80%.) Working class power was built on militant labor movements in the first half of the 20th century. Without the threat of strikes (essentially the only tool in labor's pocket) there's no incentive to pay higher wages or to not seek rents in industries that serve basic needs like healthcare, education, etc.
  - burfog 8y ago
    This is a mix-up of cause and effect. Union membership is down mainly because the jobs are gone. We lowered our tariffs and most of the union jobs got offshored. Automation didn't help. Strikes are not required for higher wages. What is required is a labor shortage. That is all the incentive needed: wages will be exactly as high as required, no more and no less. We got a surplus of workers for many reasons: the demand was cut by offshoring and automation, while the supply was increased by women entering the workforce. Demand is picking up now, and with it wages are starting to move.
    - blub 8y ago
      That's a surprising thing to say, given that software engineers are always in demand, companies are complaining they can't find candidates and yet salaries aren't growing at a high rate. Companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe even broke the law and colluded to keep SW engineer salaries down and then paid a pittance when they got caught. And SW is an abnormally in-demand field. According to HBR "Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2% per year" in the US. So not only is the market not fixing anything, sometimes even the law is not enough.
      - tropo 8y ago
        They are complaining because that works: they are granted more visas for foreign workers. The success of complaining means that there is no shortage and thus no need to raise the pay.
- adventured 8y ago
  You're ignoring that total compensation has continued to climb. Those wage increases are going into healthcare, which has gone from 6% of GDP to 18% of GDP in terms of spending. That has consumed all wage growth for a generation. 12% of GDP is $2.4 trillion - year every. Or more reasonably, match it to a nice European nation's spending, around 11%. That 7% difference is $1.4 trillion. If you want wages to climb again, you'll have to destroy the US healthcare system as it exists, and decimate the pay of millions of well paid nurses, doctors, scientists, sales reps, et al. You'll need to abolish several hundred thousand jobs in the insurance industry and find those people new careers. It's ultimately a wealth redistribution question, a certain block of millions of people have been enriched by the healthcare system plundering the economy, while many more have suffered because of it.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Short of an attendant improvement in healthcare outcomes, why would it make things better to know that healthcare spending had gone up?
dlp211 8y ago
The world, by almost every measure, is better today then the 60's. What has changed in my opinion, and especially in the US, is the explosion of wealth celebrity which is creating dissatisfaction in our lives.
- ur-whale 8y ago
  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/
ianai 8y ago
Pensions don’t exist anymore. China’s gunning for the US in as many non-war triggering ways as possible - and they actually outnumber the US. I can think of two states that used to get snow around Christmas and no longer do. Etc.
realusername 8y ago
compared to the 60s clearly not but compared to the 70s or 80s, to the average worker without qualifications, you had a lot of things which were better back then (and of course some other things which are better now but people never focus on those).
joe_the_user 8y ago
Well, broadly I'd associate "death from despair" with rising income inequality in advanced nations. The 1960s were somewhat unique time, where you had both the US competing with the USSR and the postwar boom. Together, this helped create a situation where a significant chunk of workers could buy small but functional houses and consider themselves "middle class". Today, we have a return to the gilded age, which might be more like a return to median.
WalterBright 8y ago
In the 1960s we had the Cuban Missile Crisis.
qubax 8y ago
> Is the world really worse than the 60s? Depends on which part of the world. In the US, for sure. Incomes have stagnated since 1970 and income inequality has skyrocketed. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-... https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america We have an entire region of our nation suffering from the rust belt. Some say the last 40 years have been the greatest theft in human history. The american people have been robbed blind and we are too stupid to realize it and now we ( the children of the blind fools ) are suffering for it. Even in NYC, look at the housing prices and look at the wages. It's ridiculous.

emodendroket 8y ago

Wages were rising until the 70s and they've been stagnant since then; in the mean time college, health care, rent, houses, etc. have gotten more expensive in real dollars. People who had well-paying jobs with strong benefits are now often, if not unemployed, in jobs with less pay, fewer benefits, and more precarity. In short: yes, things are worse for many of the people who are turning to opiates.

myth_drannon 8y ago
From the many statistics I saw usually the breaking point is the middle to end of eighties. I'm thinking the fall of Soviet Union had a large impact on the middle class Americans. Basically the middle class was discarded as something that served its purpose as a shield from communism.
- ianai 8y ago
  Decades of “trickle down economics” have robbed from the vast majority and given to the tiny, select few.
  - dcgudeman 8y ago
    How has anybody been "robbed"? Per capita income has gone up for everyone, yes the top has gone up faster but at the end of the day the lower tiers still have increased in wealth. Honestly I don't understand how you come to your conclusion.
    - gonvaled 8y ago
      Prices have gone up faster. We consume junk, continuosly. "robbed" because voters accepted capital concentration by accepting that it would trickle down, which is a lie.
      - adventured 8y ago
        It's not a lie. The US welfare state has massively expanded since 1980. The percentage share of GDP transferring via welfare state policies has doubled in 20x years. Both poverty and homelessness are near 50 year lows. Healthcare coverage is near an all-time high, thanks in part to the vast expansion of the welfare state. All of that is being paid for by the rich. The US has one of the most progressive taxation systems in the developed world. The US middle class is among the least taxed of any middle class in the developed world, which is also why the US median disposable income is among the highest. If you go back to 1980, the inflation adjusted per capita income transfer going to welfare policies, was close to $3,500. Today it's near $9,000. That's a dramatic expansion of the social safety net in the US, and it has had very tangible, very dramatic positive results (including a large reduction in homelessness).
    - eppsilon 8y ago
      Inflation adjusted per capita median income was about the same in 2016 as it was in 2000. The last significant increase was in the 90s. Income shares of the top 1% and top 0.1% have doubled and tripled respectively since 1980. Maybe calling it robbery is hyperbole, but it certainly doesn't seem fair.
    - ionised 8y ago
      So the poor can now have smartphones and financed cars but their education and healthcare is prohibitively expensive and they have no chance of owning a home. All the while those GDP increases have gone to fewer and fewer people. I'm sure they'll feel reassured when you tell them GDP per capita has gone up. It's not about the poor being a bit better off with things like luxuries. It's about their piece of the overall wealth and stake in the economy gradually shrinking.
- smhost 8y ago
  First as tragedy, then as farce, or something like that. If the banks are right about what they've been saying recently, Warren is going to be elected against the threat of seizure once the recession hits its stride.
jtr1 8y ago
If you look at union membership rates, that's when they begin to falter. Countries with strong social democratic safety nets usually have high union membership (in the range of ~80%.) Working class power was built on militant labor movements in the first half of the 20th century. Without the threat of strikes (essentially the only tool in labor's pocket) there's no incentive to pay higher wages or to not seek rents in industries that serve basic needs like healthcare, education, etc.
- burfog 8y ago
  This is a mix-up of cause and effect. Union membership is down mainly because the jobs are gone. We lowered our tariffs and most of the union jobs got offshored. Automation didn't help. Strikes are not required for higher wages. What is required is a labor shortage. That is all the incentive needed: wages will be exactly as high as required, no more and no less. We got a surplus of workers for many reasons: the demand was cut by offshoring and automation, while the supply was increased by women entering the workforce. Demand is picking up now, and with it wages are starting to move.
  - blub 8y ago
    That's a surprising thing to say, given that software engineers are always in demand, companies are complaining they can't find candidates and yet salaries aren't growing at a high rate. Companies like Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe even broke the law and colluded to keep SW engineer salaries down and then paid a pittance when they got caught. And SW is an abnormally in-demand field. According to HBR "Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2% per year" in the US. So not only is the market not fixing anything, sometimes even the law is not enough.
    - tropo 8y ago
      They are complaining because that works: they are granted more visas for foreign workers. The success of complaining means that there is no shortage and thus no need to raise the pay.
adventured 8y ago
You're ignoring that total compensation has continued to climb. Those wage increases are going into healthcare, which has gone from 6% of GDP to 18% of GDP in terms of spending. That has consumed all wage growth for a generation. 12% of GDP is $2.4 trillion - year every. Or more reasonably, match it to a nice European nation's spending, around 11%. That 7% difference is $1.4 trillion. If you want wages to climb again, you'll have to destroy the US healthcare system as it exists, and decimate the pay of millions of well paid nurses, doctors, scientists, sales reps, et al. You'll need to abolish several hundred thousand jobs in the insurance industry and find those people new careers. It's ultimately a wealth redistribution question, a certain block of millions of people have been enriched by the healthcare system plundering the economy, while many more have suffered because of it.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Short of an attendant improvement in healthcare outcomes, why would it make things better to know that healthcare spending had gone up?

dlp211 8y ago

The world, by almost every measure, is better today then the 60's. What has changed in my opinion, and especially in the US, is the explosion of wealth celebrity which is creating dissatisfaction in our lives.

ur-whale 8y ago
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/

ianai 8y ago

Pensions don’t exist anymore. China’s gunning for the US in as many non-war triggering ways as possible - and they actually outnumber the US. I can think of two states that used to get snow around Christmas and no longer do. Etc.

realusername 8y ago

compared to the 60s clearly not but compared to the 70s or 80s, to the average worker without qualifications, you had a lot of things which were better back then (and of course some other things which are better now but people never focus on those).

joe_the_user 8y ago

Well, broadly I'd associate "death from despair" with rising income inequality in advanced nations. The 1960s were somewhat unique time, where you had both the US competing with the USSR and the postwar boom. Together, this helped create a situation where a significant chunk of workers could buy small but functional houses and consider themselves "middle class". Today, we have a return to the gilded age, which might be more like a return to median.

WalterBright 8y ago

In the 1960s we had the Cuban Missile Crisis.

qubax 8y ago

> Is the world really worse than the 60s? Depends on which part of the world. In the US, for sure. Incomes have stagnated since 1970 and income inequality has skyrocketed. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-... https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america We have an entire region of our nation suffering from the rust belt. Some say the last 40 years have been the greatest theft in human history. The american people have been robbed blind and we are too stupid to realize it and now we ( the children of the blind fools ) are suffering for it. Even in NYC, look at the housing prices and look at the wages. It's ridiculous.