New research identifies a sea of despair among white, working-class Americans

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Sickness and early death in the white working class could be rooted in poor job prospects for less-educated young people as they first enter the labor market, a situation that compounds over time through family dysfunction, social isolation, addiction, obesity and other pathologies, according to a study published Thursday by two prominent economists.

Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they reported that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had risen steadily since 1999 in contrast with the death rates of blacks, Hispanics and Europeans. Their new study extends the data by two years and shows that whatever is driving the mortality spike is not easing up.

The two Princeton professors say the trend affects whites of both sexes and is happening nearly everywhere in the country. Education level is significant: People with a college degree report better health and happiness than those with only some college, who in turn are doing much better than those who never went.

Offering what they call a tentative but “plausible” explanation, they write that less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely to experience a “cumulative disadvantage” over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-research-identifies-a-%e2%80%98sea-of-despair%e2%80%99-among-white-working-class-americans/ar-BByCdsY?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp

[KingCharlemagne]

1. 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth and 10%

Control 80% of the wealth. This is not rocket science.

[Orrex]

5. Wait... Isn't that 120 percent?

Regardless, your point is spot-on.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

8. No

Because the 1% are part of the latter 10% group

[Orrex]

9. SPARE ME YOUR SORCERY!1!!!!!

[Squinch]

13. .

[world wide wally]

10. The 40% is included in the 80%. Not in addition to it.

[Orrex]

12. So they each get 2 percent?

2 x 80% is 160%

[world wide wally]

16. Lets try this

There is 100 total dollars and 100 people.
One guy has $40 (40%)
9 others have $40 between them (40% more or 80% total)
This totals 80% between the 10 of them
That leaves $20 for the other 90 people

Does that make sense?
My brain tends to shut down on weekends. That's why I like football.

[Orrex]

17. Well, I'm kind of being an asshole on purpose

But your explanation is excellent. Thanks for taking my question seriously even though I (honestly) didn't deserve it.

[world wide wally]

18. I just hope spelling doesn't count

[Yavin4]

28. "That leaves $20 for the other 90 people" Or as Paul Ryan calls those 90 people, "Takers"

Who leech off that hard working guy who got $40. Now, if we take that $20 from those 90 and give it back to the one guy with the $40, then everything would work out.

[KingCharlemagne]

27. LOL. posting from my PITA phone, not fron my laptop. The top 10% control

80% of the wealth.

[dembotoz]

2. and a good explanation of why trump did well with those folks and hrc did not

exactly the wrong campaign

[Jonny Appleseed]

6. Because he told them all this was the brown people's faults and that coal is totally good for them?

[GoCubsGo]

20. Not just him, but all of the right-wing media, who have been brainwashng them all their lives.

They also demonized Hillary and her husband for 30 years, along with Democrats, liberals, the educated, science, and academia--the very people who would be helping them. I dare say that a lot of them also heard that same garbage from their preachers every Sunday. I find all the claims that Hillary doomed herself by not reaching out to these people to be laughable. There isn't a thing she could say or do to bring them over.

[edhopper]

3. As long as they continue to listen to those

that blame the poor and the non-white.

And not confront the Rich and the Corporations that did this too them, they will continue to lose what they have.

[Jonny Appleseed]

4. Maybe something to do with all the fun boomers had with radiation before people knew it

was bad.

[haele]

7. The difference between going through life knowing -

Anyone can treat you like a second class citizen any time they feel like it so you're just going to have to deal with it and going through life expecting that if you play by the rules, you'll always be able to get what you need goes a long way to explain why anger and suicide rates are going up in the less economically secure members of the majority in the US.
A lot of the majority demographic can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that once Greed became Good, they could do very little to live any portion of the American Dream - unless they were lucky enough to land an opportunity to pay for it - or to get others to pay for it.

Haele ( being politically correct)

[geek tragedy]

11. a lot of the problem is cultural.

All that stuff they said about poor people of color is actually true of white working class voters with the opioids etc.

There's no entitlement to a job just for being born a white guy in this country. Just like everyone else, they have to have useful skills to offer. Contempt towards education and learning doesn't help in that regard.

[brush]

30. There certainly used to be an entitlement to a good job for white males...

that has gone away with the off-shoring of jobs and now with automation taking jobs too, thus the despair, suicides, additions, obesity and other maladies described in the OP.

You can't just show up as a white male anymore and get the job over the black guy, the woman, the Latino, etc. like in the old days.

There are fewer jobs now so you have to have skills now, and the black guy, the woman, and the Latino may have them.

[ismnotwasm]

14. The lack of education and anti-science stances of this

Easily manipulated group has serious consequences in health. We are seeing a rise of diet related obesity and diabetes along with subsequent kidney disease. We who world in the renal field have known this for sometime--and this is just one factor.

What bothers me, is that this is news, when say, primary hypertension in Black males is not, or the devastating maternal death rate on Native American reservations is not. Not to mention the despair, suicides, alcoholism and drug abuses on the Reservations--it's taken as a matter of course. A norm.

[delisen]

15. Appalachian white poverty-JFK got elected in 1960 on promise to address

Kennedy and Johnson did address it.

It is 56 years later--why is white Appalachian poverty still with us? Which parts of the region are no longer in poverty?

from Appalachian Regional Commission

The Appalachian Region includes all of West Virginia and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The Region is home to more than 25 million people and covers 420 counties and almost 205,000 square miles.

[brush]

31. JFK and LBJ did address it with the war on poverty and all the Great Society programs

The problem is the repugs have continually chip away at all those programs and there has been tremendous regression.

It's not a mystery, yet those very people helped by Dem programs keep voting for the repugs who take them away.

[ananda]

32. Somehow white Appalachia never got that it was the Reeps ..

.. that took away the Great Society programs.

The tend to vote Reep, against their own best interests, and somehow
manage to blame Dems.

Also, racism is a large component of their idiocy.

[brush]

33. Yes. racism is a big part, and the repugs use it to divide and conquer

[delisen]

37. It's as though for some people being on the lower rungs of a white society is better than reaching

a higher rung in a diverse society.

Very clannish.

When I lived in a southern Appalachian county there was a definite cultural identity, a prevailing humor based on making fun of others-people who didn't fit in-, and lots of petty meanness.

However people rose above it and did wonderful things-but there prevailing attitude was judgmental

When I first got there, there were still many local Democrats in office--but the gradually left for the Republican Party, and they thought the Democratic Party had become the party of African Americans and liberals who believed in abortion.

I assume that many women in the county had had abortions-but no one would ever admit to it.

[delisen]

38. I remember when people locally were very enthusisticand thought they were going to really

do great things....and there were achievements but it seemed to fade-maybe with Reagan.

[brush]

39. Yes, the repugs started chipping away with the programs, and they are still at it.

[hunter]

35. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make her drink.

The people in these places consistently vote against their own best interests.

I think "brain drain" has a lot to do with it. The kids who have the wherewithal to leave don't go back, and honestly, why should they? Imagine you're a gay kid who got run out of town by your own family.

Hell, imagine you develop an enthusiasm for evolutionary biology and fossils in spite of your crap high school education and then you get a scholarship to a college or university that teaches actual science. I've met a couple of paleontologists who left fled in full rebellion against the religion of their parents and their home towns.

I've also met people who fled by joining the military and were then lucky enough to have their horizons significantly broadened, embracing brothers and sisters in arms not the white Christian evangelicals they were.

The sad thing is that anti-intellectualism and racism are as American as apple pie. Institutions such as the Republican Party and various white Christian evangelical-punishment-and-death cults have become very adept at manipulating these ignorant populations, and even worse, at keeping them ignorant.

I think we need to provide an "emergency exit" for any kid who lives in such a place -- various sorts of public service, education, and training beyond the military. Among those who make use of these emergency exits a certain number of brave altruistic souls will return home to see if they can lift up the stifled communities they escaped.

I grew up in an affluent 99 and 44/100 Ivory soap pure white and majority prosperity gospel Christian community. (Don't blame my parents, they are artists and we were never hungry because they went where the work was. My parents fled the day my dad retired, as me and my siblings had fled.) But sorry, I'm not that brave, there's no way in hell I'm ever going back to my home town.

I've already attended a few hometown funerals of those who stayed and crashed and burned because they could not conform, and they could not walk or run away, for whatever reason.

So I had the "quitter" nightmares again last night. Some horrible authoritarian government is demanding I complete high school, making me attend high school football games, proms, etc.. etc.

Yep, I quit high school and fled, one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. I always wake up in a sweat, but that's always followed by this semi-awake feeling of joy. I escaped that hell. If I'd stayed I might have died.

[delisen]

36. Quite a History. I've known others who quit school for self-preservation.

I've always been suspicious of the blanket advice to kids to stay and get your diploma. One or two more years in a soul destroying environment can leave some lasting scars.

[nolabear]

19. People need meaning and respect in their lives. We've taken it from them.

I say "we" because all of us are in some ways culpable. This country disdains those who are doing service jobs in so many ways though we could not function without them. We do need good training in trades that continue to make us function in so many ways but we tend to look on those people as "less than" those who get college degrees, even though if we had a decent minimum wage and better benefits those people would have every bit as likelihood of living successful lives as the more educated.

We in the left do better in many ways but we have indeed insulted and disenfranchised lots of people who, yes, do things that are absolutely unfathomable to us and threaten to harm us, but as their kids grow and need to thrive I'm in favor of helping them do so. People who have our and their own respect are far less likely to look to someone like the con in chief to magically help them. They feel they can help themselves.

[VOX]

21. Job prospects & intellectual curiosity zero, plus steady diet of saturated fat and hate radio.

...will put anyone in the grave sooner than later.

In addition to losing jobs to outsourcing and automation, this particular demographic tends to be far-right wing and listens to hate radio all damned day. We've seen how worked up they get over fake crap like Pizzagate and BENGHAZI™. Their constant, simmering rage means they're blasting out stress hormones (cortisol) at a deadly rate, which also contributes to morbid obesity. That, and "nursing their sorrows" at Applebee's on a far-too-regular basis. This group also is the most likely to suffer opioid and alcohol abuse, and have multiple firearms in the house-- another factor in early death, particularly for those in despair with no means of obtaining treatment for depression.

And as long as they vote in Republicans (out of misdirected anger and fear), they will always come up short, and their lives will be even shorter.

[dalton99a]

26. They're dying off at a faster rate than natural replenishment

[CK_John]

22. They know that automation is going to wipe out the middle class.

UBI is their only option until they learn to live without having a function in society when you wake up every day.

Learning to live without killing each other will be the prime function.

[Blue_true]

24. The issue is the people they vote for hate the idea of UBI

and love to concentrate wealth and power into a small segment of society. Those voters are conditioned to ignore reality when they vote, believing that coal will somehow overcome the many advantages of natural gas to users, that having basic healthcare is more expensive than developing chronic illness, that polluting drinking water won't hurt or kill them. Their lives will get better when they wise up. I once hired a contractor whose wife worked for state government, he hated government and felt it did nothing right, yet he felt that his wife's job, which brought in most of his family's income, was important, the detachment from reality was amazing, overall the guy was intelligent and likeable.

[msongs]

23. same demographic that put Hitler in power. that plus racism n more. nt

[Warpy]

25. Big DUH of the day, I guess

When they sent the jobs away, they sent the paychecks away. When they sent the paychecks away, there was little left but a patchwork of jobs that were hand to mouth with not enough getting to one's mouth to keep one healthy. Kids got picked on at school because their clothes were second hand and shabby. All of this stuff contributes to despair, illness, and early death.

Gee, poverty is lethal, a WMD against the American people wielded by the rich. Who knew?

[Lanius]

29. And these people believe they're struggling because some immigrant or minority

is making progress at their expense, not because the party they support lied to them about tax cuts for the rich "trickling down" to them.

[JI7]

34. and they blame minorities for it instead of shitty republicans they keep voting for

[nikibatts]

41. Now they know how it feels to be second class citizens.

They have been used and abused and the robots are taking their jobs. They really can't discriminate against robots because they require no public accommodations, no access to good schools, no access to financing of mortgages in good neighborhoods with excellent schools, not drug testing for employment, no access to healthcare, no bank loans, no financing, no food. Robots even make other robots.

Now think of most of the jobs that robots can't do. That is where you will find a lot of the minority and women workforce.

[Takket]

40. it is no suprise things are getting worse for "working class whites"

they keep voting against their own best interest to spurn minorities, and lo and behold, things get worse for them!