13 ms·

The decline in U.S. life expectancy has disproportionately affected whites, especially in rural areas with decreased economic opportunity [0][1]. I think this e

by _iyig 7y ago

The decline in U.S. life expectancy has disproportionately affected whites, especially in rural areas with decreased economic opportunity [0][1]. I think this economic shift and its consequences largely determined the result of the 2016 Presidential election. I've only seen one 2020 Democratic candidate directly address this trend so far: Andrew Yang [2]. (I don't advise reading his tweet's replies, it's typical Twitter political hyperbole.) [0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190711122655.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190711122655.h... [1] https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-09-06/economic-hardship-suicide-rates https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-09-06/economic-ha... [2] https://twitter.com/andrewyang/status/1010207553324806150?lang=en https://twitter.com/andrewyang/status/1010207553324806150?la...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
H8crilA 7y ago
> If we exaggerate the present and future value of the stock market, then as a society we may invest too much in business start-ups and expansions, and too little in infrastructure, education, and other forms of human capital. Robert Shiller, Irrational Exuberance Populism is here to stay (both of the left kind and of the right kind), until the root cause is addressed: income inequality. It's reprehensible to have life expectancy decreased in a first world country. In fact, because this is happening perhaps we should contend with the fact that America may be, as of recently, a third world country? There's a reason why Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund manager of all times calls this problem "a national emergency" that may be "an existential risk to United States".
- pietrovismara 7y ago
  Compared to most European countries, US doesn't really feel like a first world country anymore. As a lower class member, your life would be drastically worse in US than Europe. As a middle class member it would also be much easier to lose your position, just have some health issue and you'll see how fast it takes to burn your life savings.
  - _iyig 7y ago
    >As a middle class member it would also be much easier to lose your position, just have some health issue and you'll see how fast it takes to burn your life savings. I am currently in that exact position. I have very bad RSI and can no longer write software full-time. On better days, I can drive and do errands. I've spend roughly $40k out of pocket on treatment so far, and my COBRA health insurance runs out in a year. I had looked into speech-to-text, but now I have bad TMJ syndrome and talking is difficult. I'm honestly very afraid for my future.
    - skinnymuch 7y ago
      Damn I know someone in SV who never types on a keyboard. Everything is speech to text. However if you’re getting issues with your mouth too. I’m really sorry.
    - yardie 7y ago
      I’m a developer with mild RSI. I moved from pure software dev to devops. There is still some coding but most of it is automated. Now I’m mostly point and click.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    > At the end of 2016, the rate of unemployment among young people was 42.91% [in Spain] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_unemployment_in_Spain#Current_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_unemployment_in_Spain#... Not everything is unicorns and roses in Europe. They have massive structural issues.
    - point78 7y ago
      Those are ages 15 - 24 and the numbers are a little better now. Cost of living is so low where unemployment is highest that it's not the end of the world. Still free health care and education.
      - suaveybloke 7y ago
        Pedantic point I know - but it's only 'free' at the point of access, it still has to be paid for by the taxpayer.
- Funes- 7y ago
  >until the root cause is addressed: income inequality As far as I can tell, income inequality mainly stems from inequality of opportunity. I think a country is as free as its ability to give all its citizens the same opportunities.
  - ianai 7y ago
    I agree that the US economic system doesn’t give enough opportunities. After being highlighted by the GR, the economy really doesn’t produce enough work for everyone who needs work. Precisely the sort of thing government is meant to address: problems no other actor has incentive or ability to address.
    - Funes- 7y ago
      >Precisely the sort of thing government is meant to address: problems no other actor has incentive or ability to address. I wholeheartedly agree. You've wonderfully articulated what an ideal government would be like.
    - oceanplexian 7y ago
      If that were true, we’d be seeing high levels of unemployment. Except that’s totally not true, we’re past full employment and yet businesses are struggling to hire people and the economy is booming.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  > ...until the root cause is addressed: income inequality. Agree. But I'd like to add: - MLK was assassinated when he shift from civil rights to addressing poverty and income inequality. - Bobby Kennedy was also making noise about the issue. - Currently, the mainstream media narrative is a relentless Red v Blue. There is no narrative for Haves v Have-nots. The System does work; quite well actually. And those who it works well for are not going to give up those benefits without a fight. But The People are too busy chasing symptoms and fighting each other. Change anytime soon feels unlikely.
  - naravara 7y ago
    > Currently, the mainstream media narrative is a relentless Red v Blue. There is no narrative for Haves v Have-nots. Are we following the same Democratic primary where Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both made these the centerpieces of their campaign and are 2 of the top 3 contenders? It’s a bit much to say there is NO such narrative. Even Trump ran on this narrative, he just sprinkled some racism with it.
    - chiefalchemist 7y ago
      Two candidates? That's a balance? I don't see that. And, to my point (thank you), they are both Blue. So the narrative remains a Party v Party paradigm. How's that workin' out for us? You have a point, but two is not a trend.
      - naravara 7y ago
        >Two candidates? That's a balance? I don't see that. Two candidates who, combined, are polling at nearly 40% of the party vote. >And, to my point (thank you), they are both Blue. So the narrative remains a Party v Party paradigm. How's that workin' out for us? This is a tiresome cliche that ignores how politics structurally works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law In multi-party democracies it doesn't end up being all that different in terms of any individual voter getting what they want, it's just that the tacking to the median voter happens after the election is done instead of through a primary process.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  So what makes a country "third world" in your analysis? The term arose out of the cold war, meaning countries that weren't aligned with either the United States (first world) or the USSR (second world). That can't be what you mean. Later, it started to mean countries with poorly developed economies. That isn't the case, even if lots of our infrastructure is well used (really, if you have lots of infrastructure, you want at least some of it to be near the end of the useful life...). I suppose a recent definition looks at places with stark disparities in wealth/income. The US has that, but low income people here are doing quite well compared to most of those places, with lots of support coming from the government. We are wealthy enough to do much more, but things like Medicaid are not worthless.
- Dumblydorr 7y ago
  Don't forget wealth inequality, which is worse in some ways as it is less talked about but the gap is even wider there.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    Income is the real deal. Point is people want to be able to afford normal things like housing, medical care and some good education for their children. I don't see this as problematic that Buffett sits on hundreds of billions. But the fact that 150k annual income qualifies for subsidized housing in SF - well that's ridiculous.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > until the root cause is addressed: income inequality. There isn't any evidence for that root cause though. If someone has a comfortable, secure life with food and shelter they aren't going to be unhappy no matter how much someone else has. Fixing "income inequality" completely misses the actual root cause. I don't know what the root cause is, but I have lived next to some people who were substantially wealthier than I was and I didn't feel anything negative. Some inequality is healthy and nobody knows how much is ideal.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    > someone has a comfortable, secure life with food and shelter That's the thing, they don't. If they did I'd agree with you that the problem isn't very bad. You just don't see it around you. If you don't believe me search the FRED database for rent inflation and median wages, for example. Human brain is desperate for explanations. Populism is getting a lot of votes at the moment - people will prefer something that at least attempts to explain their pain over something that denies that the pain exists. "Drain the swamp" by Donal Trump and "Tax the rich" by Democratic hopefuls like Elizabeth Warren.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      But you have identified a root cause that wouldn't cause the problems you are observing. If I changed things (eg, for sake of argument, a highly effective welfare program combined with non-transfer-payment spending cuts and a tax cut to the wealthy) inequality could increase and the problem could go away at the same time. So the root cause is somewhere in the direction of 'people can't comfortable, secure and resourced'. That isn't related to inequality - people can be safe, comfortable, resourced and unequal. Root cause has a specific meaning; I'm basically saying I've done root cause analysis professionally and you havn't actually picked a root cause. You've picked something closer to a guess at a solution.
      - H8crilA 7y ago
        Inequality is the problem because everything happens in a single market. Rich people push the real estate market high and suddenly no affordable housing exists. I actually think that the FED is largely responsible for this setup. Unintended consequences of QE and cheap money - everything is now expensive. Same as the seeds for 2008 were laid out in the post-dotcom ultralow interest rates.
- WrongThinkerNo5 7y ago
  It is unfortunate that you think income inequality is the root cause, which would be rather humorous on a forum like this where the average person is wildly representative of that very income inequality and even fuels it with manic zeal. I keep saying it. If income inequality is the root cause, then everyone that believes that is more than free to voluntarily either give more of their money to the governments at any level, or even just simply give money to the people who they see as gaining unequal income. You and all similarly liberal minded types are all free to do essentially all of the things you support, advocate for, and believe in. No one is stopping you. But in reality the truth is that it has nothing to do with any of the things the liberal minded types say or are trained to repeat; because the common denominator is ALWAYS control, taking it from those who earned it, having it, and most importantly wielding it with impunity. If one untangles the intentional Gordian Knott created by designing groups in most and an ever increasing number of people's minds, it becomes quite apparent that the rhetoric never matches reality, that basic if-then statements reveal that it's basically all lies. * If it's income inequality, then why did Obama reward the housing fraud perpetrators and not even try a single one of the, then instead then shoveled trillions of dollars into the pockets of the ruling global aristocracy? * If it's income inequality, then why do so many people support the influx of low wage and low skilled workers from Latin America to undermine the working and middle class? * If it's income inequality, then why is it permitted that ~$120 BILLION dollars are drained out of American communities (of ALL ethnicities) every single year in remittances, which is a real loss of money and wealth that will no longer circulate in that community, which translates to several times that amount in GDP and wealth drain damage to working class people in particular? * If it's income inequality, then why are foreign nationals imported under H1B visas to undermine middle class education and job opportunities? * If it's income inequality, then why are skilled technical educational tracks that pay well not supported over the vast number of "liberal arts" "education" tracks that leave people unskilled, uneducated, and student loan debt slaves? * If it's income inequality, then why are working and middle class people robbed of the product of their work and labor to ship money overseas to pay for things and make the corrupt leadership of corrupt countries richer while also forcing people to pay for immigrants that are on public assistance at the same time that they are working under the table/under-reported and not paying taxes? No. "Income inequality" is just a feel good (mostly latched onto by guilt riddled whites) hot button slogan by the ruling aristocracy to distract from what they are really doing with the right hand. One thing is for sure though, this all will have immense consequences for all of us, regardless of where you currently are or whether you think you are on the good and self-righteous side. The consequences of actions can only be held back so long before they overcome the resistance and come crashing in with many times more force than if they had been allowed to operate and function normally and organically like the laws of physics they are a function of. Populism is indeed here to stay, and it is and was predictable farther back than most here have been alive. It's just that no one wanted to not stick their heads up unicorn asses to gain access to the very source fo that sweet sweet unicorn poop, until we invariably snap out of the hallucinogenic delusion were were in and realize what we did to that cow that is now a rotten carcass. We are not quite yet over the threshold of "third world country", especially considering that there is no third world when there is no more first world country once we realize in retrospect when the USA crossed the threshold, but you are quite right, we are rapidly and in an accelerating manner speeding towards that invisible crux threshold from which on out the gravitational pull will make things even more inevitable. Every con eventually comes undone unless it can be handed off to a greater fool, it's the model silicon valley has operated on for decades now, and this USA con job is clearly not only coming apart at the seams, but even being torn apart by enemies, foreign and domestic, foolishly not dealt with and even welcomed into it's midsts. As Lincoln long ago said,: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." And suicide is on order.
- tempodox 7y ago
  We had thousands of years to address the root cause and income inequality is still very much here. There are just too many forces in favor of keeping and expanding it.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  > we may invest [...] too little in infrastructure, education ... It sounds like a nice-to-have-thing but how on earth does that actually follow? The US spends enormous sums on education, the 2nd most of any country on earth (behind Norway) and ~33% more than OECD average. How can you be sure the problem is that we are investing too little? Investment hardly seems like the issue, ROI seems a lot more pertinent. For infrastructure, even heavily unionized countries can build public works projects like subways at far less cost than the USA. So its hard to buy that we invest too little per se. We get very little for our investments, whatever they are, which makes people in-my-opinion rightly cautious about investing more until some honest root cause analysis of the poor ROI is performed and openly acknowledged.
claudeganon 7y ago
Bernie Sanders commissioned a report on this back in 2016, before Yang was even in politics, and defense of the working class on issues like this describes pretty much his entire career: https://www.vox.com/2019/9/10/20857668/life-expectancy-wealth-gap-bernie-sanders https://www.vox.com/2019/9/10/20857668/life-expectancy-wealt...
- _iyig 7y ago
  Bernie also said, "When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be poor." [0] While his policies and voting record may tell a different story, that comment left a lasting impression on a lot of people. I have yet to see him speak directly to poor white people as Yang did, and I suspect he (Bernie) is afraid of alienating his younger, left-learning base. To see who I mean, check out those replies to Yang's tweet. [0] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-poverty-debate-white-people-220405 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-povert...
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    This kind of laughable “gotcha” politics actually has no impact on his support. I’m from a poor white family in Michigan, Bernie is tremendously popular here, as he was in 2016 when he won the primary. Working class people understand completely that Bernie and what he advocates for, things like Medicare for All, are what are in their interests. And likewise that Yang’s plans to dismantle the welfare state and replace it with a check that will get eaten up by all the landlords and insurance companies that have always preyed them will accomplish nothing. It’s why Bernie has the largest donor base of any candidate and especially among donations from working class people.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - 7y ago
ptah 7y ago
it sounds like it is self-inflicted?
- Funes- 7y ago
  Decreased economic opportunity is self-inflicted? It seems to me that many people are far more comfortable attributing blame to people that could very well be victims to a certain degree--and not the main perpetrators, in fact--than to make an unbiased and braver observation of the facts.
  - oceanplexian 7y ago
    There are no perpetrators. In 2019, anyone with a pulse in the United States can find a $15/hr service job. In most of the country that’s a living wage. (Except for California, ironically, one of the places instituting the policies people here advocate for). In fact, a couple making 60k is in a position to buy a house in most of the country. Now, will most of these people save up and become millionaires and by a condo in San Francisco? No. But life isn’t fair. I wish I could afford a few Supercars and an oceanfront villa, but I can’t and I don’t blame that on income equality.
    - _iyig 7y ago
      >In 2019, anyone with a pulse in the United States can find a $15/hr service job Source?
  - ptah 7y ago
    responses to decreased economic opportunity is a choice
    - Funes- 7y ago
      Yeah, that's easy to say when you are a privileged person belonging to the bourgoisie instead of a dude born in the middle of God knows where. You think people living in poor countries have any reasonable margin to act on their lack of economic opportunity? I'm done with this site.
corporateslave5 7y ago
The crazy thing about it, is most people are unwilling to discuss why Trump was elected in 2016, the concept of middle American whites on a rapid decline is almost never in the media. The democrats flat out ignoring this problem, even if they do win the next election, is going to cause more problems down the road.
- EasyTiger_ 7y ago
  They deal with it by labeling them as "nazis" it seems to me.
- madengr 7y ago
  Trump was elected because of Clinton. If the Democrats could field a candidate that wasn’t hell bent on gun banning, they’d probably win. As it stands, Trump will win again. The “hell yes, were are coming for your guns” probably cost them the election.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    If the Republicans could come up with an effective plan for ending the regular mass shootings, perhaps some sort of compromise? Then there would be much less momentum for gun control or gun bans.
    - corporateslave5 7y ago
      What if mass shootings are tied to the destruction of the white working class? You have an easy fix for that?
      - pjc50 7y ago
        Are they? Some, like the Vegas shooter with his arsenal, appear to have been well off.
      - krapp 7y ago
        We already have a "fix" for domestic terrorists - arrest them or shoot them.
EasyTiger_ 7y ago
Life expectancy is also falling in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/07/life-expectancy-slumps-by-five-months https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/07/life-expecta...
- Sharlin 7y ago
  Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the UK has also seen an intentional and systematic erosion of the basic institutions of a welfare state by the neoliberal bloc, including the Blair "labor in name only" governments.
  - sdwa 7y ago
    Blair massively expanded the welfare state by any measure. The Tories wouldn't have had anything to cut from 2010 onwards if that wasn't the case.
acdha 7y ago
I get that you back Yang but it’s weird to say he’s the only one talking about a trend which Obama, Clinton, Sanders, Warren, Harris, etc. have all talked about, often starting before Yang got into politics. It’d be more useful to talk about actual policy differences or why you think his plan would be more successful — especially in the context of an entire political movement having been funded into existence to oppose the previous attempt.
- DayDollar 7y ago
  They all talked, and did then nothing to adress the issue. You need a new deal for that- something nobody opposes.
- _iyig 7y ago
  I'm not interested in a discussion of Yang's policies, or a debate of his plan for UBI. I highlighted his tweet specifically because it singles out the suffering of rural whites by name. Bernie, Warren, Harris, etc. speak directly to issues which disproportionally affect other groups (police violence against blacks, immigration policy that mainly affects Hispanics, etc.), but never this one. It gives an impression of unequal treatment, and leaves some feeling unnoticed and ignored. This creates opportunity for the first politician to say, "I see you, I see your suffering, and I will not ignore you."
  - smt88 7y ago
    So you already moved the goal posts by quietly removing Bernie Sanders from your list of people who supposedly aren't talking about these things. I don't know if she says "rural whites" verbatim, but Warren talks about rural issues all the time. It's one of the central tenets of her campaign -- that previous Democratic candidates (other than Sanders) ignored rural America, and she isn't. She campaigns in small rural towns that few other candidates will campaign in. https://medium.com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-invest-in-rural-america-94e3a80d88aa https://medium.com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-invest-in-rural-am...
    - _iyig 7y ago
mc32 7y ago
At its root we can go back to Bill Clinton and MFN and fast tracking into WTO —with no plan to address displacement in the workforce and no milestones by which to measure China’s adherence, which did happen yearly before the fast tracked admission into WTO. People blame reaganomics, but it was Clinton’s globalism that plunged the dagger into the blue collar worker of America and he gets very little Fl.a.k. for it. Damnit. Mr Perot was right. We’d have been better off with him than the guy who sold us off.
- mcny 7y ago
  If we're getting into politics, I can't leave this uncontested. I think this is very disingenuous to say it didn't start with Reagan's "starve the beast".
  - mc32 7y ago
    He brought deregulation and busted some unions. He didn’t sell off the workforce wholesale to ship the jobs overseas and tell them to be happy because they’ll get cheap disposable stuff we can fill landfills with instead. Busting unions looks bad. Shipping jobs overseas is magnitudes worse but it’s indirect and underhanded so you don’t get the blame. Actually, even better, you get to blame people for not “skilling up”!
- corporateslave5 7y ago
  The biggest lie in economics is that aging workers are retrained for completely new fields
  - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    Really? I don't think this is a lie people believe, nor is it the biggest. The biggest lie, I think, that Americans tell themselves is that hard work always leads to success.
- rpedela 7y ago
  Reagan started the "trickle down" BS, and manufacturing globalism really started in the 80s. You are right that Clinton promoted it and Reagan didn't.
peteradio 7y ago
Seems to be a meme that rural whites are the strong voting block for republicans in 2016. Any stats to suggest it wasn't the suburbs? That's what I've seen but seems like people who at least represent themselves as liberal only want to blame the white rural folks.
- x86_64Ubuntu 7y ago
  Rural whites are the strongest voting block for Republicans, but Republicans in the general win pretty much ALL whites at any given economic or educational level. The only white economic/education subgroup that didn't go for Trump in 2016 were educated single white women.
helpPeople 7y ago
Curious a Yang/Bernie fan who is aware of populism/demagoguery. How is this not a repeat of the ancient Greek Athenians? (Serious)
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  What myth of Athens do you have in mind? Athens isn't without publically supported dickery given it was kind of a long history. The closest examples I can think of are voting to go to war for slaves and establishing a naval power empire extorting tribute until their vassals allied agaist them. Neither are exactly applicable to even strawmen interpretations.
rayiner 7y ago
Except the whole thing about increasing rural white poverty is largely a myth caused by failure to properly analyze the data. Adjusted for cost of living, rural areas have lower poverty rates: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2006/november/adjusting-for-living-costs-can-change-who-is-considered-poor https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2006/november/adjusting.... Employment suffered less during the Great Recession in rural areas than in urban areas. Many of the places tagged with the travails of white rural people, in the Midwest, have some of the highest incomes for rural people relative to urban people in the country.
- _iyig 7y ago
  Your link only examines data up to 2003, accounts only for poverty vs. other measures of economic opportunity, and does not account for the steeper decline in life expectancy among white Americans vs. other groups.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Other sources show the trend only getting better through the recession.
    - bart_spoon 7y ago
      Then link them.
- roenxi 7y ago
  Adjusting for cost of living is a little bit risky though; because part of what that means is that they don't buy things they can't afford. It doesn't matter how low the cost of living goes; a rural hospital is not going to have the same resources as a city-centre hospital attached to a university with a strong medical research focus. And there are probably other confounding factors; eg, it may be much more difficult for a homeless individual to exist in a rural town than a city - the stats would show that as more homeless in the city, even though the ambient conditions are better. So sure the stats say that there is more poverty in the cities - but that might just be signalling that poverty is much more painful in rural areas. This means that people could be saying things that are technically wrong (hence the myth) but are very accurate to the lived experiences and pressures on someone in a rural area.
todd8 7y ago
The CDC report[1] that the article cites contradicts your statement. Life expectancy, both sexes, at birth: 2013: hispanic 81.9 white 78.8 black 75.1 2016: hispanic 81.8 white 78.5 black 74.8 Delta: hispanic -0.1 white -0.3 black -0.3 I would say that the decline has affected blacks equally, but considering their lesser overall life expectancy this otherwise equal decline has a greater negative impact for blacks. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf
- _iyig 7y ago
  The trends examined by UPenn researches in the paper [0] from my first link span from 1990-2016, vs. that CDC report's 3-year span. From the paper: "We focus on non‐Hispanic whites because their mortality trends were particularly adverse in the last decade and differ from those of non‐Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics. In contrast to non‐Hispanic whites, mortality has continued to decline among Hispanics and non‐Hispanic Blacks, although death rates remain substantially higher for Blacks than for whites (Harper, MacLehose, and Kaufman 2014; Murphy et al. 2017; Stein et al. 2017). The underlying mechanisms driving mortality trends for non‐Hispanic whites are fundamentally different from those driving trends for other racial/ethnic groups, as suggested by James and Cossman (2017)." [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12249 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12249
  - todd8 7y ago
    The CDC report[1] has data that spans the years 2006-2016, eleven years not three. However, all racial groups have greater life expectancy now that they did in 2006. I was specifically addressing the comment's statement that "The decline in U.S. life expectancy has disproportionately affected whites". The CDC report seems to disagree. Specifically looking at declines: the highest white life expectancy is in 2012 and the highest black life expectancy occurred in 2014: 2012 white 78.9 years 2014 black 75.3 years 2016 white 78.5 (-0.4, a 0.51% decline) 2016 black 74.8 (-0.5, a 0.67% decline) Black life expectancy appears to have declined more (an even bigger concern to me is the absolute disparity between white and black life expectancy). [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf
orbifold 7y ago
While Yang seems nice on the surface, his policy idea to finance 1000€ in cash per month for everyone by a VAT is a prime example of a regressive tax policy. If you spend ~2000€ a month at ~10% that is 200€ already gone. So you end up paying out something like Hartz IV Level (German Social Security) to everyone. I can’t imagine that it would be particularly fun to support yourself based on that.
- rpedela 7y ago
  > If you spend ~2000€ a month at ~10% that is 200€ already gone. Can you clarify what you mean by that?
- 3131s 7y ago
  Essential goods are excluded from Yang's VAT though.
Nasrudith 7y ago
I think statistics proved the opposite overall with affluence overall even though it was an especially popular hairshirting trope.

by _iyig 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

H8crilA 7y ago

> If we exaggerate the present and future value of the stock market, then as a society we may invest too much in business start-ups and expansions, and too little in infrastructure, education, and other forms of human capital. Robert Shiller, Irrational Exuberance Populism is here to stay (both of the left kind and of the right kind), until the root cause is addressed: income inequality. It's reprehensible to have life expectancy decreased in a first world country. In fact, because this is happening perhaps we should contend with the fact that America may be, as of recently, a third world country? There's a reason why Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund manager of all times calls this problem "a national emergency" that may be "an existential risk to United States".

pietrovismara 7y ago
Compared to most European countries, US doesn't really feel like a first world country anymore. As a lower class member, your life would be drastically worse in US than Europe. As a middle class member it would also be much easier to lose your position, just have some health issue and you'll see how fast it takes to burn your life savings.
- _iyig 7y ago
  >As a middle class member it would also be much easier to lose your position, just have some health issue and you'll see how fast it takes to burn your life savings. I am currently in that exact position. I have very bad RSI and can no longer write software full-time. On better days, I can drive and do errands. I've spend roughly $40k out of pocket on treatment so far, and my COBRA health insurance runs out in a year. I had looked into speech-to-text, but now I have bad TMJ syndrome and talking is difficult. I'm honestly very afraid for my future.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    Damn I know someone in SV who never types on a keyboard. Everything is speech to text. However if you’re getting issues with your mouth too. I’m really sorry.
  - yardie 7y ago
    I’m a developer with mild RSI. I moved from pure software dev to devops. There is still some coding but most of it is automated. Now I’m mostly point and click.
- seibelj 7y ago
  > At the end of 2016, the rate of unemployment among young people was 42.91% [in Spain] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_unemployment_in_Spain#Current_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_unemployment_in_Spain#... Not everything is unicorns and roses in Europe. They have massive structural issues.
  - point78 7y ago
    Those are ages 15 - 24 and the numbers are a little better now. Cost of living is so low where unemployment is highest that it's not the end of the world. Still free health care and education.
    - suaveybloke 7y ago
      Pedantic point I know - but it's only 'free' at the point of access, it still has to be paid for by the taxpayer.
Funes- 7y ago
>until the root cause is addressed: income inequality As far as I can tell, income inequality mainly stems from inequality of opportunity. I think a country is as free as its ability to give all its citizens the same opportunities.
- ianai 7y ago
  I agree that the US economic system doesn’t give enough opportunities. After being highlighted by the GR, the economy really doesn’t produce enough work for everyone who needs work. Precisely the sort of thing government is meant to address: problems no other actor has incentive or ability to address.
  - Funes- 7y ago
    >Precisely the sort of thing government is meant to address: problems no other actor has incentive or ability to address. I wholeheartedly agree. You've wonderfully articulated what an ideal government would be like.
  - oceanplexian 7y ago
    If that were true, we’d be seeing high levels of unemployment. Except that’s totally not true, we’re past full employment and yet businesses are struggling to hire people and the economy is booming.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
> ...until the root cause is addressed: income inequality. Agree. But I'd like to add: - MLK was assassinated when he shift from civil rights to addressing poverty and income inequality. - Bobby Kennedy was also making noise about the issue. - Currently, the mainstream media narrative is a relentless Red v Blue. There is no narrative for Haves v Have-nots. The System does work; quite well actually. And those who it works well for are not going to give up those benefits without a fight. But The People are too busy chasing symptoms and fighting each other. Change anytime soon feels unlikely.
- naravara 7y ago
  > Currently, the mainstream media narrative is a relentless Red v Blue. There is no narrative for Haves v Have-nots. Are we following the same Democratic primary where Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both made these the centerpieces of their campaign and are 2 of the top 3 contenders? It’s a bit much to say there is NO such narrative. Even Trump ran on this narrative, he just sprinkled some racism with it.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Two candidates? That's a balance? I don't see that. And, to my point (thank you), they are both Blue. So the narrative remains a Party v Party paradigm. How's that workin' out for us? You have a point, but two is not a trend.
    - naravara 7y ago
      >Two candidates? That's a balance? I don't see that. Two candidates who, combined, are polling at nearly 40% of the party vote. >And, to my point (thank you), they are both Blue. So the narrative remains a Party v Party paradigm. How's that workin' out for us? This is a tiresome cliche that ignores how politics structurally works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law In multi-party democracies it doesn't end up being all that different in terms of any individual voter getting what they want, it's just that the tacking to the median voter happens after the election is done instead of through a primary process.
maxerickson 7y ago
So what makes a country "third world" in your analysis? The term arose out of the cold war, meaning countries that weren't aligned with either the United States (first world) or the USSR (second world). That can't be what you mean. Later, it started to mean countries with poorly developed economies. That isn't the case, even if lots of our infrastructure is well used (really, if you have lots of infrastructure, you want at least some of it to be near the end of the useful life...). I suppose a recent definition looks at places with stark disparities in wealth/income. The US has that, but low income people here are doing quite well compared to most of those places, with lots of support coming from the government. We are wealthy enough to do much more, but things like Medicaid are not worthless.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
Don't forget wealth inequality, which is worse in some ways as it is less talked about but the gap is even wider there.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Income is the real deal. Point is people want to be able to afford normal things like housing, medical care and some good education for their children. I don't see this as problematic that Buffett sits on hundreds of billions. But the fact that 150k annual income qualifies for subsidized housing in SF - well that's ridiculous.
roenxi 7y ago
> until the root cause is addressed: income inequality. There isn't any evidence for that root cause though. If someone has a comfortable, secure life with food and shelter they aren't going to be unhappy no matter how much someone else has. Fixing "income inequality" completely misses the actual root cause. I don't know what the root cause is, but I have lived next to some people who were substantially wealthier than I was and I didn't feel anything negative. Some inequality is healthy and nobody knows how much is ideal.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  > someone has a comfortable, secure life with food and shelter That's the thing, they don't. If they did I'd agree with you that the problem isn't very bad. You just don't see it around you. If you don't believe me search the FRED database for rent inflation and median wages, for example. Human brain is desperate for explanations. Populism is getting a lot of votes at the moment - people will prefer something that at least attempts to explain their pain over something that denies that the pain exists. "Drain the swamp" by Donal Trump and "Tax the rich" by Democratic hopefuls like Elizabeth Warren.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    But you have identified a root cause that wouldn't cause the problems you are observing. If I changed things (eg, for sake of argument, a highly effective welfare program combined with non-transfer-payment spending cuts and a tax cut to the wealthy) inequality could increase and the problem could go away at the same time. So the root cause is somewhere in the direction of 'people can't comfortable, secure and resourced'. That isn't related to inequality - people can be safe, comfortable, resourced and unequal. Root cause has a specific meaning; I'm basically saying I've done root cause analysis professionally and you havn't actually picked a root cause. You've picked something closer to a guess at a solution.
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      Inequality is the problem because everything happens in a single market. Rich people push the real estate market high and suddenly no affordable housing exists. I actually think that the FED is largely responsible for this setup. Unintended consequences of QE and cheap money - everything is now expensive. Same as the seeds for 2008 were laid out in the post-dotcom ultralow interest rates.
WrongThinkerNo5 7y ago
It is unfortunate that you think income inequality is the root cause, which would be rather humorous on a forum like this where the average person is wildly representative of that very income inequality and even fuels it with manic zeal. I keep saying it. If income inequality is the root cause, then everyone that believes that is more than free to voluntarily either give more of their money to the governments at any level, or even just simply give money to the people who they see as gaining unequal income. You and all similarly liberal minded types are all free to do essentially all of the things you support, advocate for, and believe in. No one is stopping you. But in reality the truth is that it has nothing to do with any of the things the liberal minded types say or are trained to repeat; because the common denominator is ALWAYS control, taking it from those who earned it, having it, and most importantly wielding it with impunity. If one untangles the intentional Gordian Knott created by designing groups in most and an ever increasing number of people's minds, it becomes quite apparent that the rhetoric never matches reality, that basic if-then statements reveal that it's basically all lies. * If it's income inequality, then why did Obama reward the housing fraud perpetrators and not even try a single one of the, then instead then shoveled trillions of dollars into the pockets of the ruling global aristocracy? * If it's income inequality, then why do so many people support the influx of low wage and low skilled workers from Latin America to undermine the working and middle class? * If it's income inequality, then why is it permitted that ~$120 BILLION dollars are drained out of American communities (of ALL ethnicities) every single year in remittances, which is a real loss of money and wealth that will no longer circulate in that community, which translates to several times that amount in GDP and wealth drain damage to working class people in particular? * If it's income inequality, then why are foreign nationals imported under H1B visas to undermine middle class education and job opportunities? * If it's income inequality, then why are skilled technical educational tracks that pay well not supported over the vast number of "liberal arts" "education" tracks that leave people unskilled, uneducated, and student loan debt slaves? * If it's income inequality, then why are working and middle class people robbed of the product of their work and labor to ship money overseas to pay for things and make the corrupt leadership of corrupt countries richer while also forcing people to pay for immigrants that are on public assistance at the same time that they are working under the table/under-reported and not paying taxes? No. "Income inequality" is just a feel good (mostly latched onto by guilt riddled whites) hot button slogan by the ruling aristocracy to distract from what they are really doing with the right hand. One thing is for sure though, this all will have immense consequences for all of us, regardless of where you currently are or whether you think you are on the good and self-righteous side. The consequences of actions can only be held back so long before they overcome the resistance and come crashing in with many times more force than if they had been allowed to operate and function normally and organically like the laws of physics they are a function of. Populism is indeed here to stay, and it is and was predictable farther back than most here have been alive. It's just that no one wanted to not stick their heads up unicorn asses to gain access to the very source fo that sweet sweet unicorn poop, until we invariably snap out of the hallucinogenic delusion were were in and realize what we did to that cow that is now a rotten carcass. We are not quite yet over the threshold of "third world country", especially considering that there is no third world when there is no more first world country once we realize in retrospect when the USA crossed the threshold, but you are quite right, we are rapidly and in an accelerating manner speeding towards that invisible crux threshold from which on out the gravitational pull will make things even more inevitable. Every con eventually comes undone unless it can be handed off to a greater fool, it's the model silicon valley has operated on for decades now, and this USA con job is clearly not only coming apart at the seams, but even being torn apart by enemies, foreign and domestic, foolishly not dealt with and even welcomed into it's midsts. As Lincoln long ago said,: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." And suicide is on order.
tempodox 7y ago
We had thousands of years to address the root cause and income inequality is still very much here. There are just too many forces in favor of keeping and expanding it.
simonsarris 7y ago
> we may invest [...] too little in infrastructure, education ... It sounds like a nice-to-have-thing but how on earth does that actually follow? The US spends enormous sums on education, the 2nd most of any country on earth (behind Norway) and ~33% more than OECD average. How can you be sure the problem is that we are investing too little? Investment hardly seems like the issue, ROI seems a lot more pertinent. For infrastructure, even heavily unionized countries can build public works projects like subways at far less cost than the USA. So its hard to buy that we invest too little per se. We get very little for our investments, whatever they are, which makes people in-my-opinion rightly cautious about investing more until some honest root cause analysis of the poor ROI is performed and openly acknowledged.

claudeganon 7y ago

Bernie Sanders commissioned a report on this back in 2016, before Yang was even in politics, and defense of the working class on issues like this describes pretty much his entire career: https://www.vox.com/2019/9/10/20857668/life-expectancy-wealth-gap-bernie-sanders https://www.vox.com/2019/9/10/20857668/life-expectancy-wealt...

_iyig 7y ago
Bernie also said, "When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be poor." [0] While his policies and voting record may tell a different story, that comment left a lasting impression on a lot of people. I have yet to see him speak directly to poor white people as Yang did, and I suspect he (Bernie) is afraid of alienating his younger, left-learning base. To see who I mean, check out those replies to Yang's tweet. [0] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-poverty-debate-white-people-220405 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-povert...
- claudeganon 7y ago
  This kind of laughable “gotcha” politics actually has no impact on his support. I’m from a poor white family in Michigan, Bernie is tremendously popular here, as he was in 2016 when he won the primary. Working class people understand completely that Bernie and what he advocates for, things like Medicare for All, are what are in their interests. And likewise that Yang’s plans to dismantle the welfare state and replace it with a check that will get eaten up by all the landlords and insurance companies that have always preyed them will accomplish nothing. It’s why Bernie has the largest donor base of any candidate and especially among donations from working class people.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - 7y ago

ptah 7y ago

it sounds like it is self-inflicted?

Funes- 7y ago
Decreased economic opportunity is self-inflicted? It seems to me that many people are far more comfortable attributing blame to people that could very well be victims to a certain degree--and not the main perpetrators, in fact--than to make an unbiased and braver observation of the facts.
- oceanplexian 7y ago
  There are no perpetrators. In 2019, anyone with a pulse in the United States can find a $15/hr service job. In most of the country that’s a living wage. (Except for California, ironically, one of the places instituting the policies people here advocate for). In fact, a couple making 60k is in a position to buy a house in most of the country. Now, will most of these people save up and become millionaires and by a condo in San Francisco? No. But life isn’t fair. I wish I could afford a few Supercars and an oceanfront villa, but I can’t and I don’t blame that on income equality.
  - _iyig 7y ago
    >In 2019, anyone with a pulse in the United States can find a $15/hr service job Source?
- ptah 7y ago
  responses to decreased economic opportunity is a choice
  - Funes- 7y ago
    Yeah, that's easy to say when you are a privileged person belonging to the bourgoisie instead of a dude born in the middle of God knows where. You think people living in poor countries have any reasonable margin to act on their lack of economic opportunity? I'm done with this site.

corporateslave5 7y ago

The crazy thing about it, is most people are unwilling to discuss why Trump was elected in 2016, the concept of middle American whites on a rapid decline is almost never in the media. The democrats flat out ignoring this problem, even if they do win the next election, is going to cause more problems down the road.

EasyTiger_ 7y ago
They deal with it by labeling them as "nazis" it seems to me.
madengr 7y ago
Trump was elected because of Clinton. If the Democrats could field a candidate that wasn’t hell bent on gun banning, they’d probably win. As it stands, Trump will win again. The “hell yes, were are coming for your guns” probably cost them the election.
- pjc50 7y ago
  If the Republicans could come up with an effective plan for ending the regular mass shootings, perhaps some sort of compromise? Then there would be much less momentum for gun control or gun bans.
  - corporateslave5 7y ago
    What if mass shootings are tied to the destruction of the white working class? You have an easy fix for that?
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Are they? Some, like the Vegas shooter with his arsenal, appear to have been well off.
    - krapp 7y ago
      We already have a "fix" for domestic terrorists - arrest them or shoot them.

EasyTiger_ 7y ago

Life expectancy is also falling in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/07/life-expectancy-slumps-by-five-months https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/07/life-expecta...

Sharlin 7y ago
Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the UK has also seen an intentional and systematic erosion of the basic institutions of a welfare state by the neoliberal bloc, including the Blair "labor in name only" governments.
- sdwa 7y ago
  Blair massively expanded the welfare state by any measure. The Tories wouldn't have had anything to cut from 2010 onwards if that wasn't the case.

acdha 7y ago

I get that you back Yang but it’s weird to say he’s the only one talking about a trend which Obama, Clinton, Sanders, Warren, Harris, etc. have all talked about, often starting before Yang got into politics. It’d be more useful to talk about actual policy differences or why you think his plan would be more successful — especially in the context of an entire political movement having been funded into existence to oppose the previous attempt.

DayDollar 7y ago
They all talked, and did then nothing to adress the issue. You need a new deal for that- something nobody opposes.
_iyig 7y ago
I'm not interested in a discussion of Yang's policies, or a debate of his plan for UBI. I highlighted his tweet specifically because it singles out the suffering of rural whites by name. Bernie, Warren, Harris, etc. speak directly to issues which disproportionally affect other groups (police violence against blacks, immigration policy that mainly affects Hispanics, etc.), but never this one. It gives an impression of unequal treatment, and leaves some feeling unnoticed and ignored. This creates opportunity for the first politician to say, "I see you, I see your suffering, and I will not ignore you."
- smt88 7y ago
  So you already moved the goal posts by quietly removing Bernie Sanders from your list of people who supposedly aren't talking about these things. I don't know if she says "rural whites" verbatim, but Warren talks about rural issues all the time. It's one of the central tenets of her campaign -- that previous Democratic candidates (other than Sanders) ignored rural America, and she isn't. She campaigns in small rural towns that few other candidates will campaign in. https://medium.com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-invest-in-rural-america-94e3a80d88aa https://medium.com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-invest-in-rural-am...
  - _iyig 7y ago

mc32 7y ago

At its root we can go back to Bill Clinton and MFN and fast tracking into WTO —with no plan to address displacement in the workforce and no milestones by which to measure China’s adherence, which did happen yearly before the fast tracked admission into WTO. People blame reaganomics, but it was Clinton’s globalism that plunged the dagger into the blue collar worker of America and he gets very little Fl.a.k. for it. Damnit. Mr Perot was right. We’d have been better off with him than the guy who sold us off.

mcny 7y ago
If we're getting into politics, I can't leave this uncontested. I think this is very disingenuous to say it didn't start with Reagan's "starve the beast".
- mc32 7y ago
  He brought deregulation and busted some unions. He didn’t sell off the workforce wholesale to ship the jobs overseas and tell them to be happy because they’ll get cheap disposable stuff we can fill landfills with instead. Busting unions looks bad. Shipping jobs overseas is magnitudes worse but it’s indirect and underhanded so you don’t get the blame. Actually, even better, you get to blame people for not “skilling up”!
corporateslave5 7y ago
The biggest lie in economics is that aging workers are retrained for completely new fields
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  Really? I don't think this is a lie people believe, nor is it the biggest. The biggest lie, I think, that Americans tell themselves is that hard work always leads to success.
rpedela 7y ago
Reagan started the "trickle down" BS, and manufacturing globalism really started in the 80s. You are right that Clinton promoted it and Reagan didn't.

peteradio 7y ago

Seems to be a meme that rural whites are the strong voting block for republicans in 2016. Any stats to suggest it wasn't the suburbs? That's what I've seen but seems like people who at least represent themselves as liberal only want to blame the white rural folks.

x86_64Ubuntu 7y ago
Rural whites are the strongest voting block for Republicans, but Republicans in the general win pretty much ALL whites at any given economic or educational level. The only white economic/education subgroup that didn't go for Trump in 2016 were educated single white women.

helpPeople 7y ago

Curious a Yang/Bernie fan who is aware of populism/demagoguery. How is this not a repeat of the ancient Greek Athenians? (Serious)

Nasrudith 7y ago
What myth of Athens do you have in mind? Athens isn't without publically supported dickery given it was kind of a long history. The closest examples I can think of are voting to go to war for slaves and establishing a naval power empire extorting tribute until their vassals allied agaist them. Neither are exactly applicable to even strawmen interpretations.

rayiner 7y ago

Except the whole thing about increasing rural white poverty is largely a myth caused by failure to properly analyze the data. Adjusted for cost of living, rural areas have lower poverty rates: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2006/november/adjusting-for-living-costs-can-change-who-is-considered-poor https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2006/november/adjusting.... Employment suffered less during the Great Recession in rural areas than in urban areas. Many of the places tagged with the travails of white rural people, in the Midwest, have some of the highest incomes for rural people relative to urban people in the country.

_iyig 7y ago
Your link only examines data up to 2003, accounts only for poverty vs. other measures of economic opportunity, and does not account for the steeper decline in life expectancy among white Americans vs. other groups.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Other sources show the trend only getting better through the recession.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    Then link them.
roenxi 7y ago
Adjusting for cost of living is a little bit risky though; because part of what that means is that they don't buy things they can't afford. It doesn't matter how low the cost of living goes; a rural hospital is not going to have the same resources as a city-centre hospital attached to a university with a strong medical research focus. And there are probably other confounding factors; eg, it may be much more difficult for a homeless individual to exist in a rural town than a city - the stats would show that as more homeless in the city, even though the ambient conditions are better. So sure the stats say that there is more poverty in the cities - but that might just be signalling that poverty is much more painful in rural areas. This means that people could be saying things that are technically wrong (hence the myth) but are very accurate to the lived experiences and pressures on someone in a rural area.

todd8 7y ago

The CDC report[1] that the article cites contradicts your statement. Life expectancy, both sexes, at birth: 2013: hispanic 81.9 white 78.8 black 75.1 2016: hispanic 81.8 white 78.5 black 74.8 Delta: hispanic -0.1 white -0.3 black -0.3 I would say that the decline has affected blacks equally, but considering their lesser overall life expectancy this otherwise equal decline has a greater negative impact for blacks. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf

_iyig 7y ago
The trends examined by UPenn researches in the paper [0] from my first link span from 1990-2016, vs. that CDC report's 3-year span. From the paper: "We focus on non‐Hispanic whites because their mortality trends were particularly adverse in the last decade and differ from those of non‐Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics. In contrast to non‐Hispanic whites, mortality has continued to decline among Hispanics and non‐Hispanic Blacks, although death rates remain substantially higher for Blacks than for whites (Harper, MacLehose, and Kaufman 2014; Murphy et al. 2017; Stein et al. 2017). The underlying mechanisms driving mortality trends for non‐Hispanic whites are fundamentally different from those driving trends for other racial/ethnic groups, as suggested by James and Cossman (2017)." [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12249 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12249
- todd8 7y ago
  The CDC report[1] has data that spans the years 2006-2016, eleven years not three. However, all racial groups have greater life expectancy now that they did in 2006. I was specifically addressing the comment's statement that "The decline in U.S. life expectancy has disproportionately affected whites". The CDC report seems to disagree. Specifically looking at declines: the highest white life expectancy is in 2012 and the highest black life expectancy occurred in 2014: 2012 white 78.9 years 2014 black 75.3 years 2016 white 78.5 (-0.4, a 0.51% decline) 2016 black 74.8 (-0.5, a 0.67% decline) Black life expectancy appears to have declined more (an even bigger concern to me is the absolute disparity between white and black life expectancy). [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus17.pdf

orbifold 7y ago

While Yang seems nice on the surface, his policy idea to finance 1000€ in cash per month for everyone by a VAT is a prime example of a regressive tax policy. If you spend ~2000€ a month at ~10% that is 200€ already gone. So you end up paying out something like Hartz IV Level (German Social Security) to everyone. I can’t imagine that it would be particularly fun to support yourself based on that.

rpedela 7y ago
> If you spend ~2000€ a month at ~10% that is 200€ already gone. Can you clarify what you mean by that?
3131s 7y ago
Essential goods are excluded from Yang's VAT though.

Nasrudith 7y ago

I think statistics proved the opposite overall with affluence overall even though it was an especially popular hairshirting trope.