Is Cutthroat Capitalism Pushing a Growing Number of Baby Boomers to Suicide?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/cutthroat-capitalism-pushing-growing-number-baby-boomers-suicide



***SNIP


We really don't know why humans take their own lives. But we can get a sense of what events correlate with increasing and decreasing suicide rates. Ileana Arias, CDC deputy director, provides some suggestions:

“It is the baby boomer group where we see the highest rates of suicide. There may be something about that group, and how they think about life issues and their life choices that may make a difference....The increase does coincide with a decrease in financial standing for a lot of families over the same time period."

Dr. Arias is referring to research that shows a correlation between the rise of suicide rates and economic hard times. For example a 2001 study by sociologist Augustine J. Kposowa found:

"After three years of followup, unemployed men were a little over twice as likely to commit suicide as their employed counterparts. Among men, the lower the socio-economic status, the higher the suicide risk. Among women, in each year of followup, the unemployed had a much higher suicide risk than the employed. After nine years of followup, unemployed women were over three times more likely to kill themselves than their employed counterparts."

[Fumesucker]

1. In America you are your job and your income

It's one of the first questions you ask someone upon meeting them "What do you do?", which is a way of determining income and hence status.

Lose your job and your income and you lose a big chunk of who you are in America, it used to be true mostly for men but it's rapidly becoming that way for women too.

[Skidmore]

3. Yes. And I think a subtle and sometimes not so subtle

message is being sent by big money and the younger generations that we can't die off fast enough to solve all the ills in tbe world. I've seen that floated even on DU at times. "If it weren't for the boomers..." everything would be perfect. Where do people go when they get old and are not wanted in a culture that values youth and harps on bootstraps?

[roguevalley]

24. They are told to die. I have been by younger workers. It is if I owed the little fuckers something.

I personally think we shouldn't go alone. I will personally volunteer to take Jamie Dimond with me if I decide to end it. And I will tell you, these punks will get old too and the world they will age in will make this look good.

[Skidmore]

25. My husband has experienced this at his job too.

He has already worked five years past retirement age. There is one guy in particular who was strident in his obnoxiousness. My husband talked to his boss and the guy no longer works there. Hubby will be the last perso let go because he is reliable and works a lot harder than the younger goof offs there.

[flamingdem]

29. I've gotten the vibe that younger people blame boomers

for what they think is a depletion of resources that otherwise would come to them.

The sad thing is that these children of Boomers were so spoiled by them, some, that they don't see the big picture and focus on us vs. them.

[Sirveri]

32. Considering the Boomer generation is currently in charge, why shouldn't we blame them?

I certainly wasn't responsible for the 1980's, that's the year I was born. But I certainly am going to be one of the people responsible for cleaning up that mess.

some are CA specific:
Lets see, free education for you, but we have to go into debt slavery because boomers don't want to pay anything.
When we buy a house, we get to pay the full property tax on it, but not for the boomers, they get locked in at the 1970's rate with 2% max inflation.
Boomers got to have the free love and hippie drug fest, we get the war on drugs (hurray for prison slave labor) and AIDS (thanks so much for ignoring that one Reagan).
Boomers get a sane trade policy that protected high quality American jobs and produced good quality products. We get McJobs that don't pay enough to make rent and cheap garbage from china that breaks after 5 uses, but hey, the Boomers get cheaper stuff and still hold down the majority of the remaining good jobs, so it's totally worth it.
Boomers get to retire at 65, we get 67... or is it going to be 69... maybe they'll push it to 72, why not right, so long as the boomers get theirs.
Boomers got all the good health insurance, my generation typically doesn't even have health insurance, but then it started to become too expensive, so the obvious choice was to force all the young people to buy a product that they will not use and can not afford to subsidize the boomers insanely expensive and rising health care costs.

Now I'm smart enough to recognize that the majority of those issues, were actually caused by the rich, not by the boomers. But I'm also forced to wonder why they (as a group) sat by and let it happen. So I'll blame the rich, but the boomers having a fair share of the political power deserve some of that blame game too. Not that it will matter, my generation will still be ones that have to clean it up, and I'm pretty sure we're going to royally screw that up given the way things are going.

[flamingdem]

33. I appreciate your honesty

But don't feel any responsibility for your plight. It's history and started way back. That's the perspective that is needed, plus intergenerational activism.

[Sirveri]

35. I might not feel responsible for the Bush admin, but I am.

I didn't vote for Bush, but his crimes happened while I was a citizen in what is nominally still considered to be a representative democracy, as a result I am somewhat responsible. Maybe less so as I was politically marginalized to an extent, but why didn't the party I voted for do more to oppose the President in what was clearly a gigantic mistake? Why didn't I do more to hold them accountable, what could I do to hold them accountable? Ultimately, what does it matter, I still have to clean up the mess, but I sit un used and unwanted. Nobody knows how to cooperate anymore for the greater good, and when we try we get beaten and gassed in the streets. If there is any crime being committed today, it is one of marginalization.

The oligarchs have won, it's only a matter of time before enough of us wake up and do something about it, if we still can.

[flamingdem]

36. As you know an individual can do a lot to change things

It's always a handful of people who start something, you could be one!

You sound depressed and probably are. I am sorry that things are so deteriorated, for all of us.

DU is not the best place to hang out if you want to shake that however, there's a lot of people
who focus on suffering. There are many out there that would be better role models.

[femmocrat]

2. The article doesn't mention health concerns.

As boomers age, their health declines. Unemployment also means no health care.

[HiPointDem]

7. people always have health concerns. that wouldn't affect the *rate* at which people

kill themselves.

[Autumn Colors]

9. Of course it would

In the past, people always had health concerns .... and so most people would BE ABLE TO go the doctor and get it taken care of. People had a means to pay for that healthcare via either health insurance or a reliable income to be able to make arrangements to pay off the bill over time.

Now things have changed. The same number of people in their 50s and 60s are having health concerns, but find that they have (a) no job or means to set up payment for treatment, (b) no health insurance, (c) may be in the middle of losing their home to foreclosure already, or (d) see no future for themselves if all they have to look forward to is foreclosure/bankruptcy just to pay the medical bills.

So yes, people have always tended to start having health concerns at that age, but a growing number of people no longer have any hope of being able to treat those concerns. The mindset may be "better to go out now at a time of my choosing than have to suffer".

Health hasn't changed, but life for many certainly has.

I'm guessing it hasn't for you, though.

[femmocrat]

12. I agree with Autumn Colors.

I am a boomer and understand the fear of "becoming a burden" on my family. I am still working beyond retirement age because I get to continue my "cadillac" health care plan. We read posts on DU all the time about DUers who are dealing with hardships over no income, no health care, and extended unemployment. We recently held a fund-raiser for one such member.

We never know how long a person can hang on when it seems hopeless. Health issues are a huge contributing factor to such despair. Some people just give up the fight.

[HiPointDem]

16. Health insurance & medical costs have been a problem since the 80s. There's no reason to

think they became especially problematic around the time of the 2008 recession, and more reason to think that the effects of the housing bubble and crash are drivers.

[Autumn Colors]

19. All of these factors combined

May be enough to push more people over the edge, though.

[HiPointDem]

20. no doubt. i'm just saying that the precipitating factor is the increasingly lousy economy since

approx. the post-911 recession and singularly weak 'recovery,' followed by the 2nd bush 2 recession and the even worse 'recovery'.

not to mention the idiotic attempt to simultaneously implement various kinds of austerity at all levels.

[Autumn Colors]

26. OK, we'll agree to disagree

I think it's more of a "perfect storm" of factors combining.

[Recursion]

4. Older caucasian males have always had a very high risk of suicide

I don't know that it's capitalism doing this as much as the fact that the baby boom is presenting an unprecedented number of older white males.

[HiPointDem]

5. the number of white males doesn't affect the rate at which they commit suicide. and old white

males have *not* 'always' had a very high risk of suicide.

did you miss the point?

"Among men, the lower the socio-economic status, the higher the suicide risk."

[Recursion]

6. Since about 1960 they have (nt)

[HiPointDem]

17. link?

[michigandem58]

8. I admit it has crossed my mind

I really don't believe I have the makeup to do it, but unemployment and economic uncertainty can certainly have an effect on your thought process.

[bemildred]

10. I can assure you that poverty will do the job, and that Market Capitalism cannot survive

without poverty, and plenty of it.

[Newest Reality]

11. Suicide can become a destination

We hear so much about the taboo of suicide. There are hotlines and laws and religious inducements to not commit the act. One assumes that this is all motivated by caring and concern for person's life.

Now, let's put ourselves in somebody else's shoes. Well, take a 55-year-old male. He has no family members left. He is divorced and only has a couple of close friends who are not doing well financially at all. He owns a small home. He loses his job and has no found another one after an extended period of searching.

His house is foreclosed on and he is now broke, in debt, and facing eviction. He finds out that there are no other options. He broke down and applied for food stamps, but that won't solve the rest of his problems.

While things were getting more critical for him and as he was reaching the edge, he started to worry constantly about survival issues. He notice the homeless people on the streets and, when he had access to the Net, he read enough about it to get an idea of the vulnerability and total loss of status, power and familiarity that he may have had. He found out that he would potentially be abused, treated like a criminal and end-up scrounging everyday exposed to the elements on the street.

Would thoughts of suicide really be only a form of mental illness in this case? Once our example case had a clear idea of what life is like without a job, place to live, or any support or safety-net it is not hard to make a comparison between death on the streets, (you are much more likely to die early being homeless) or a quick, self-inflicted ticket out.

I am not advocating it, but the richest country in the world is not doing much, if anything to address this growing problem, so people may take care of it themselves as if the underlying implications are that these people really don't matter and we will just look the other way, or try to rationalize it or call it irrational or mental illness.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

13. Well, it's like this,

for the ones who are mid-fifties and younger, they got in just behind the older ones who still had defined benefit pension plans. So they (we, I'm one of them) got the worst of every world: no defined benefit pension plan, a 401k that's not as big as it would have been had that been the deal from the start of our working lives, and then you have to remember our history: people in my cohort hit the labor market just before or during the Reagan recession, which was the first one to feature double-digit unemployment since the Depression.
So we already had a really hard time establishing ourselves in our careers, just because of the lousy luck of the draw we got. I once went over my employment history and realized I didn't really settle down into a groove until 1991, 12 years after I graduated college. Prior to that I had been in and out of the workforce for various reasons, but mostly because I was trying one thing after another to try and break in and break the cycle of no work unless you have experience, which you can't get unless you've worked.
12 years it took me to break that.
So, we get settled in, finally are able to start saving something for retirement, and then 2008 happens, and for a lot of us blew up what savings we had accumulated. It didn't do that badly to me, but it did hurt. But think, for instance, about the folks at Enron or Global Crossing who were forced to put their entire 401k into the stock of those companies and then saw all of it go up in smoke when those companies collapsed. People at Lehman, Bear Stearns, or any of the big banks that got hit in 2008 experienced something similar, even though those companies didn't have policies that forced you into their stocks. People just naturally put some money into the companies they work for, and an ordinary moke would have no idea that the earnings these companies were reporting were entirely fictional.
So, we were bookended: Reagan in the beginning, 2008 at the end. That's the story.

[bemildred]

15. Yep.

The "conservatives" have done their best to shaft the Boomers after Vietnam, but the two post-boomer generations reallly got the shaft, no free school for you, no draft and GI-benefits, no welfare that will do the job, no free health care, no pensions and unions, and now no decent jobs unless you are in the elites.

[magical thyme]

30. you don't need to cut it off at 55, either

I'm 59, and experienced the same struggle to get established working. When I finally did, it was entry level which for a single woman means secretary. My full time job lasted 9 years while I climbed the ladder a bit until the '93 high tech crash, so my pension will be all of $300/month when I hit 65. It helps, but really is a drop in the bucket. They were pushing us hard into 401Ks, but I didn't trust it and didn't bite, due to the way I was raised. Stock market is a gamble, and it's rigged. 2008 proved my early lessons right.

I got contracted back and went for the cash instead. When I was laid off post 9/11, I couldn't get re-hired so put everything into a little antique farm with the intent to "slow flip" by fixing it up and re-selling. But I was defrauded when I bought it plus the first contractor I hired trashed the place with his bulldozer, so it took me 2 years just to undo that damage and the first round of upgrades.

I did ultimately find work...at 20% of what I used to earn. I went back to school to retrain in health care, but the job prospects were a blatant lie, as was the salary range. So 20% of what I used to earn is the level I'm stuck at, but now with student loans that I can't even begin to pay off.

I swing between hope and hopeless. If the economy would improve enough for me to sell my house, I could pay off the student loans and downsize further north. I have my eye on a cute little cottage which was all I wanted to begin with.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

31. Yeah I know

In the place I was working the folks just a few years older had the good pension deal, but I know that's not universal by any means. But if you're over your mid-fifties there's a better chance at having hit the pension lottery than younger folks have.
As for your situation, you should still try to set aside something in a 401k. You don't have to put it in the stock market. I only ever did 10% of mine myself, and I can tell you that still hurt when 2008 came along. But you don't have to put a dime in if you don't want to. Keep it all in a money market, but save a little bit with every paycheck regularly if you can. It'll help a little after you retire. You really don't want to have to be a greeter at Wal-Mart to afford your groceries.
And make sure you get that cottage thoroughly inspected! But I probably didn't have to tell you that...

[magical thyme]

34. at 20% of my former income, I'm living hand to mouth

I saved religiously when I made decent money. Now my "hobby" of gardening has become my 3rd part time job. I save several hundred dollars/year by growing as much of my veggies as I reasonably can. I'm facing some big expenses this summer: at least 1 dead maple, possibly 2, must come down. Toilet leaking. Septic must be pumped. I broke a tooth celebrating the $%#$!ing election with popcorn. It's holding up but will need to be crowned sooner or later.

I had the house inspected. Mine was land fraud. It happened to a lot of people up here. I called many, many lawyers. Only one took the time to talk to me. He finally admitted I was right and I had a case, but it wasn't enough money to be worth it. I remember back in the 80s overhearing 2 people walk down the hall at work. The woman said, "Well, MAINE acres..." and then rolled her eyes while the 2 of them burst out laughing. That memory comes back to me every so often now...

[byeya]

14. In India, over 150,000 small farmers have committed suicide due to the globalization of

agriculture and monocrops grown for export. These farmers cannot compete and many were forced off their land which was their identity and means of supporting their families.

I have no idea what the statistics are for Mexico but I do know that maize(corn) is a near-sacred crop and Mexico has been flooded with subsidized corn from the USA making farmers of small plots marginalized and uncompetitive.

So my answer to your question is Yes capitalism is causing people to commit suicide.

[Recursion]

18. You know India is an explicitly socialist economy, right? Particularly as regards agriculture

Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scissors_Crisis

[HiPointDem]

21. not any more, it ain't. and that's why farmers are committing suicide. duh.

The economic liberalisation in India refers to ongoing economic reforms in India that started on 24 July 1991....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_India

Following the liberalizing economic reforms of 1991 the government withdrew support from the agricultural sector.[72] These reforms, along with other factors, led to a rise in farmer suicides. Various studies identify the important factors as the withdrawal of government support, insufficient or risky credit systems, the difficulty of farming semi-arid regions, poor agricultural income, absence of alternative income opportunities, a downturn in the urban economy which forced non-farmers into farming, and the absence of suitable counseling services.[73][74][75]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India

[Recursion]

22. There are still price and production controls

They just took away the subsidies that many countries (including the USA) use to achieve that. Hence the scissors crisis.

[HiPointDem]

23. I don't think so. From 2012:

There are many reasons why food prices have risen at such a rapid rate, and all of them point to major failures of state policy. Domestic food production has been adversely affected by neo-liberal economic policies that have opened up trade and exposed farmers to volatile international prices even as internal support systems have been dismantled and input prices have been rising continuously. The prices of all key agricultural commodities have risen sharply. Significant price increase has been observed in commodities like arhar dal, sugar, potatoes and onions...

Part of the agricultural inflation is due to Government action or the lack of it. The Government is sitting on a buffer stock of 65 million tonnes and it is not clear why this stock has not been progressively released at least in part into the open market to control prices.

...the Government should not hesitate to release sufficient quantities of food from its buffer stocks. After all, the buffer stock is meant to deal with situations of price rise and shortage. Considering the impact of agricultural Inflation, it is very important for the Government to try and control the inflation or at least try and ensure that these circumstances do not arise again in the future...

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2171027

1999:

"Indian policy makers have traditionally coped...by resorting to...trade restrictions, price controls, price support operations....These instruments are now progressively being either reformed or abandoned...to spur agricultural growth..."

http://books.google.com/books?id=UtiFxg25KuMC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=india+agriculture+price+controls&source=bl&ots=1dVEBK_SR3&sig=ZrC8vNhAd-p1kWeNQYdlaNjL5Lo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1kWPUf2bBMbOiwLn14H4DA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=these%20include%20pervasive%20external&f=false

2006:

As we shall see, the wheat imports are part of a broader policy which will further degrade India’s “food security” and serve the interests of foreign and domestic big capital:

1. India’s production of foodgrains is being allowed to stagnate. That is, production per head is falling. This will create a large market here for imports of foodgrains (particularly wheat) from multinational corporations of the US, Europe and Australia.

2. Step by step the Food Corporation of India is being dismantled; the system of minimum support prices (MSPs) is being surreptitiously scrapped; the warehousing system is being privatised; and multinational grain firms are being allowed a free hand to purchase directly from peasants (in the absence of any state intervention). These corporations, besides, will be allowed massive speculation in foodgrains, at the expense of Indian consumers.

3. More land is being diverted to horticultural crops for export or for the urban elite. With the entry of giant multinational retail firms like Wal-Mart and Indian corporations like Reliance, such crops will be produced increasingly by contract farming.

In this larger process, millions of Indian peasants – already in the throes of a profound agrarian crisis – would be displaced by imports, bankrupted and dispossessed of their land. At the same time the food security of the vast majority of people would be made the plaything of speculators and multinational corporations.

http://rupe-india.org/42/wheat.html

The most significant changes in the marketing law is the removal of regulation of MultiNationalCorporations for location of purchase, price and volume. The APMC acts prohibited purchase from producer by traders outside the "mandi" or market yard. In the "mandi" or market yard the sale of agricultural produce was only by open auction, commission agents were barred from auction on behalf of the producers, payments had to be made the same day...The mandis also gave facility for storage of agricultural produce in case of non-sale.

The marketing laws were thus primarily laws for prevention of exploitation of farmers... However, amendments in the Marketing Acts are designed to remove legal instruments for preventing farmers exploitation. In affect, the model act is an act to legalize exploitation by removing all regulation on price and volume of purchase...The model act promotes the creation of monopolistic buying by agribusiness. Giant corporations can now set up private markets, not regulated by the market committee.

Act 5(1)(iii) of the Model Act allows ne or more than one private yards / private markets managed by a person other than a market committee". This is how ITC has set up its e-chaupals in Madhya Pradesh against which there are protests and statewide strikes. Nothing in the law exists to prevent ITC to buy cheap from farmers after one or two years of getting them hooked into a dependency on seeds and chemicals from the ITC chaupal. Since input costs have out stripped prices of produce, without market regulation agribusiness corporations will make profits selling costly seeds, buying cheap farm produce, and locking farmers in debt. This has been the process by which the small family farmer has disappeared in U.S.A, Argentina, Europe.

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-great-grain-robbery-by-agribusiness-mncs-by-vandana2-shiva

[byeya]

27. These are owners of small subsistance plots - no socialism, as in the state owning the means of

production, involved.

[socialist_n_TN]

28. I'm not going to judge, BUT...

If I was considering suicide, I'd make sure I'd try to take some wealthy capitalist with me. And I DON'T believe in random acts of violence when it's the fault of the system. But then I don't believe in suicide either.