The problem is not college degrees, it's CAPITALISM. We have to call a spade a spade. Every single person is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: that means everyone is entitled to have their basic necessities met. A roof over ones head, health care and an education that is affordable. Period. Do you know how many people have BAs, master's, PhDs and they're sleeping/living in their cars? A lot of them being college professors by the way. Unchecked greed is destroying the world piece by piece. The environment, this coranvirus, the thousands of Americans just giving up on the most precious gift: LIFE. We need to start taking care of each other.
46
Hey! What about us, Hispanics?!
7
No kidding. What’s news about this?
1
Vote for Trump. He will fix your problem.
2
This explains everything.
Everything.
3
I didn't even read this, didn't need to... Clearly a load of malarkey or nobody else in this country is buying it. We'll just need to keep waiting till its so bad that nobody can ignore it. Maybe then, just maybe a candidate that has a plan to do something about it might get the nomination. Till then we'll cruise along the status quo highway.
7
The Bernie movement is about American society, like in Canada and European countries, helping people who need it instead of the elite. It is about chances to learn without going in debt. It is about decent infrastructure instead of an obscene war machine. What's with African-Americans not supporting that instead of a weak repeat of the last 'moderate' war-mongering drone Dem government? If long-time loser, poor sweet Joe Biden, makes enough further gaffes will socialism-for-the-haves find another loser to amuse a victorious Trump. Their motive is not to beat Trump which they won't, but to save there establishment butts. With a little bit of help from them Bernie's passionate and sensible good for most people would certainly beat Trump.
19
Ain't America great and capitalism. I love some on the comments defend Mr. Trump he cares. The article is bang on he cares for your vote and to make him and his friends rich. He is gutting the environmental protection act, clean drinking water, and protecting his friends on Wall Street. Do love how in this wonderful capitalist system the 1% are always protected and never get hammered. Now, today it is corporations are dealing with debt load - gee can anyone guess what is coming jobs layoffs and cutbacks. What happened to that great tax cut they cut. I know the CEO of Boeing that did the bidding for the shareholders and designed a death machine got a $60 million buyout. Sadly most of the Trump base don't get it, he hugs the flag probably made in China and never served paid his way out of the Vietnam War. He buys and sells whoever he wants to and then throws you under the bus. I love the comments that defend him bankrupt four times correction five he drove an entire football league into bankruptcy. He makes money the old fashion way he cheats and steals. and his base thinks he cares keep drinking that Jim Jones Kool-Aid. Each time he went bankrupt it was the base that did not get paid. Sadly, he plays the delusion card and race card and that is all the base thinks about. Sorry if you think he cares about you you are what Hillary said the Deplorables and get what is coming to you. Jim Trautman
16
Estimable columnists . . suggest you turn this into a PowerPoint and journey to Trump country.
Try convincing some of the very folks who are the tragic numbers on those charts the cost of voting against your own economic interests just because Trump promised you could put your boot back on the brown/black man's neck again.
16
"Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” --Reagan Campaign Ad ,1980.
"It's morning again in America." --Reagan Campaign Ad, 1984.
Trickle down and supply-side economics combined with steady tax and funding cuts. Deficit spending. Militarism and shallow patriotism. This snake oil has a long half life.
Not much has changed in the last 40 years. Both parties have been aiming down waging class warfare in the name of greed and profit. Minds numbed by consumerism, nostalgia for a past that never was, religion, appeals to patriotism, sports and endless media noise have disoriented working people.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a spike in despair deaths in Russia as well as a grab of resources by the Russian oligarchs. Who populations and cultures were devalued and disposed of either by deliberate indifference or neglect. We are on the same trajectory in the United States to redux feudalism.
We are susceptible to a Hitler prototype who will promise restore our national purpose by providing false hope.
18
But lets nominate another Neoliberal Centrist.
16
Apparently, the unexamined life is not worth living.
10
@Andrew -
"My background: Duke graduate in English and physics. My occupation: carpenter. " - in your little corner of the world you are probably an enlightened "boss" enhancing both your crew and customers' experiences - helping to bridge the "gap"
5
Its the article like this that does wish I had voted for Bernie on Tuesday.
Because that same non-college educated white is who we (and the NYT) is afraid we are going to scare away if we let Bernie and his 'crazy' socialism talk win.
The foundational belief that the guy who operates the machine in the company is as valuable as the college educated bean counter at the company, and the lucky tall white guy leading the company.
8
I read this and think of why Trump can be popular with non-degreed Americans. His appeal is based on now, not the future. If you don't feel you have a future why worry about the climate? Burn baby burn.
8
20 million illegal immigrants, willing to work for low wages, didn't help.
18
If this actually matters to you, vote for Bernie Sanders.
10
What else would you expect from American Predatory Capitalism?
10
Behold what Republican economic and social policies hath wrought. Beneath it's gleam, Reagans shining city on a hill is filled with desperation, death, and despair.
20
Since this is the NYT, there has to be an aside saying that no, this doesn't mean we need Medicare for All, even if the data say we do. UGH.
11
The American way of life leads more and more people to despair. Will King Donald correct this deplorable situation?
1
Isn't this an almost predictable result of the economic fallout from the 40-year Republican Revolution. Can't we thank Milton Friedman for his "shareholder entitlement" theory and some other intelligent idiot for "trickle-down" and massive tax cuts for the wealthy? What else created the amoral economic inequality that has pushed 50% of America's population to 19th century economic despair?
17
Political polarization has failed society in many ways but especially its lack of providing educational pathways for our greatest resource...its citizens.
Keep 'em dumb and suppress their willingness to even vote at all or in their own best interest because of the political party's ability to offer contorted, half truths that are mere crumbs of hope.
With polarization, stagnant wages, homelessness, and the weakening of the middle class...the results is hopelessness.
9
These are precisely the issues that Elizabeth Warren ran to address, but I guess she was too 'shrill' and 'schoolmistressy' so let's have change-nothing Biden instead.
19
Davis Leonhardt’s essay is real evidence of the crisis of American Capitalism and the toll it is taking on sections of our populace.
Yet he and most of the MSM continue to promote a tired old centrist who lacks moral courage and a compelling vision to reform healthcare and restrict the rush of wealth and power flowing to the top 1%.
Biden’s shameful support for the Iraq War was an act of moral cowardice that ended up in up in a catastrophic loss of life in
Iraq. I know many Americans care only about the loss of our
so called “heroes and warriors”.
But others like myself value Iraqi lives. I could never in good conscience vote for anyone who voted for the War in Iraq.
And I think there may be others who feel the same way.
Senator Robert Byrd the former Klansman who transformed himself illustrated real courage when he filibustered against the
War and penned the impassioned anti war speech “I Weep for My
Nation”.
Biden’s vote for the War was an act of opportunism and moral
cowardice. And yes he was joined by Hillary and John Kerry.
“Birds of a feather”....
And as far as vision - if Biden has any then what is it?
So Mr. Leonhardt what gives? The only person who truly addresses the issues that give rise to such despair is Sanders
and yet you serve up a washed up Cold War Liberal who will
never beat Trump as your choice to be the Democratic nominee.
10
College degrees are over-rated.The need for them is a faux idea that was pushed on us by colleges in order to drum up business.A mans' pay should not be determined by just how educated he is but also by what he does for a living.
Ask yourself this : in the middle of a hot summer who's more important to society the guy who picks up your garbage once a week or a lawyer?
Working conditions should have a great bearing on what you are paid.That's why we need more unions.We'll never stop this corrupt exploitation of workers without them.
13
What a tragedy!
Maybe a social approach change will help ...
When a society considers that all is profit gain, that the market reigns supreme and that even souls are goods for negotiation, well these are the outcomes.
That's why healthcare became a commodity, China destroyed .... sorry!, the Chinese took advantage of Americans looking for a fast buck.
Then, the current POTUS showed up, this ignoramus business creature who may finish destroying our hopes and who knows, as Bernie says: even the USA.
There's a slim chance to revert all this in November including (maybe) climate change
It's all connected.
3
Best to be skeptical about these crocodile tears.
This is the same tranche of the population that is dismissed by the Left as "deplorables" and ridiculed by the liberal elite as uneducated bumpkins.
This cohort supports Trump because it has been abandoned by an elite that allows overseas manufacturers to decimate its opportunities.
The media and Academia hold those less fortunate than themselves in contempt.
8
Having demonstrated in this column that our health system is the most expensive and therefore deadly, and having also mentioned that it is extraordinarily inefficient compared to other systems in the world, you show a good grasp of our dilemma, Mr. Leonhardt. We pay more and get less than everybody else in the world, leave millions uncovered and still others bankrupted by their encounter with the health cars system.
Yet you persist in maintaining that Democrats pursuit of Medicare4all is somehow, extreme, wild haired - just not possible.
And I keep asking The Times why, since the rest of the world all cover all their people, pay far less and get better results, just why is it impossible for us?
So now I challenge you; ask seniors if they would accept Medicare for their kids. I dare you.
I double dog dare you.
9
Actual comment on story about disenfranchised Bernie Millennials in Ohio:
"Bernie is a modern prophet in the wilderness."
This is the real problem right here: America's neverending search for golden gods who can save us all.
Bernie and Trump are the latest versions of the American savior/Übermensch . Catcher in the Rye material. It's a reminder of how Scientology took off, despite being a total joke. Velcome to America.
2
“Coming apart”
The term in this context was not coined by Case and Deaton but originated form “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” a 2012 book by Charles Murray which explores the same themes Case and Deaton do. Please attribute this correctly.
1
There is no mystery here and what has happened is not new.
All these things were known to be caused by economic depravity pretending to be fair competition and equitable justice.
ronald reagan did this to us. The solution is obvious, go back to the system he destroyed so that a very few morally degenerate people could accumulate the money that was spread out across the economy and society helping us all, to themselves.
9
This doesn’t remotely come as a surprise to one who lives in Europe part of the year.
5
If surveillance and police power were in 1775 what it is today, there would not be a USA. Period. If we lose our freedoms now, we may will not get them back any time soon. Our rights to privacy, decent climate, living wage ... our right to a government responsive to its citizenry ... our freedom not to be shot or strangled on the streets ... our freedom against big business bullying in the courts, fouling the food we eat, polluting the rivers where we drink ... our freedom from oppressive government debt ... even our freedom to vote and have fair elections ... all of this is rapidly rapaciously continuously and flagrantly being taken away.
4
It’s so demoralizing. Why can the Times run these articles, yet not support Medicare for All, adequate income taxes on wealthy people, etc. etc. Why do you not endorse and support Bernie Sanders for President? You know he just wants to have us be like Canada ,England, Denmark, with a good social safety net. He isn’t interested in anything dangerous, just getting us back to FDR social democracy. WHY, WHY, WHY WONT THE TIMES DO AND SAY MORE???
11
We still have the same old eugenics, cull out the inferiors, who are decided by the mostly corrupted rich and powerful. They are increasingly better at making people miserable, depressed and suicidal. That is capitalism today and it is why I am against it. Which doesn't make me a socialist, but more of an FDR Democrat, which is what I wish Bernie Sanders had the sense to brand himself as.
6
Isn't this exactly what Bernie Sanders whole campaign is about?
11
Of course, if these people had to bothered to vote or vote for someone who really represented their interests, instead of being concerned about abortion, guns ,race religion and immigrants, they would have higher wages, healthcare and a chance at education, and less mortality
7
Im in despair. I dropped out of college. I’m 33. The only thoughts I’ve had for the past 4-5 years is I need to go back to make a person of myself. If I keep doing weed and working this low-paying job (who knows how much longer it will last) I probably will kill myself. I’ve had this thought. All I heard in my twenties was how much horrible student debt everyone was in and I felt smart. Now I feel dumb and despaired. I want to go back but for what? How do I pay for it? I grew up as an exceptional math student by that didn’t get me anything. I chose the wrong college. I should have gone to the engineering school instead of the party school. I learned how to party. But I was 17 when I made that decision and I made it myself. My parents didn’t give me any advice in regards to my college search. I learned how to party, I retreated, and have been in despair ever since. Now I have a burning desire to learn something. But what? When? Where? And with what money? Ahhh! DESPAIR!
7
Juxtaposition of the media - article like this on one hand, and glee over Sanders' declining numbers on another, though to be fair the NYT has been restrained on the matter.
I'm not for either but there's a connection between this troubling statistic and the rise of populists like Sanders and Trump.
1
To understand what befell the American working class, I recommend to read
" Hemingway, Groton and the Corona typewriter
Hemingway used one. Cronkite, Vonnegut and Capote used one. And they were all made here.
“It was a real company town,” Shurtleff said. “ All of the social activities were centered around Corona. They had a marching band that led all the parades, a fire company, they even had their own semi-professional baseball team that traveled the circuit.” "For those looking to own and settle down, a Corona worker could finance his home through the factory’s own Savings & Loan, who would deduct the worker’s mortgage payments from each paycheck.
"In the late ‘70s, they were fighting what we call a Japanese dumping,” Shurtleff said. “Under the terms of the trade agreements at the time, Japanese manufacturers were introducing typewriters into the U.S. at a cost less than it took to manufacture them.”
"Then, 30-some years ago, it all went away."
Shurtleff recalled his father, a representative on the Tompkins County Legislature at the time, took a trip to Washington to lobby a change in the trade agreement to stop the bleeding. The efforts failed.
By 1983, Corona was gone. The factory was torn down a year later and since, Groton has never grown beyond its population of around 6,000."
https://www.ithacajournal.com/story/news/local/2016/04/29/hemingway-groton-and-corona-typewriter/78308130/
10
Of course if you read all news sources regularly you would know this, but too many of the NYT/WAPO crowd don’t do that ever. That’s why he who shall not be named rose so fast. And no, Bernie’s rob from the rich and give to the poor is not an alternative.
It's not only white male Americans without college degrees who are in despair. What about the people who can't find jobs and have college degrees and skills? What about people who have chronic medical conditions and need regular visits to specialists or medication on a daily basis but can't afford it because of premiums, co-pays, and deductibles? What about the children who suffer because their parents are relegated to the gig economy or low paying jobs, not because they aren't educated but because employers don't want to hire full time people?
What about the lack of decent affordable housing for all but the richest? Then there is the way most of us get nothing or have to jump through a multitude of hoops to get crumbs just to prove we aren't cheating the government to whom we pay taxes.
No one should have to work 3 jobs to barely survive. No one should be homeless if they have a job. America is the richest country on the planet. That's what we're told. But we act like misers when it comes to truly helping people out so that they can get back on their feet, die with dignity, have a decent old age, or live in safe and affordable housing.
This is not limited to what is traditionally called the working class. This affects 99% of us one way or another.
3/6/2020 6:43pm first submit
15
Once upon a time, education through the B.A. was free in New York City. Then came Rockefeller.
3
the destruction of blue collar jobs and the low wages for the jobs that exist for the uneducated are the problem
3
Easy: just erase what Thatcher and Reagan destroyed.
4
Note to self: You get what you vote for. Want competition to the death and survival of the fittest? Done.
7
Joe Biden: Nothing will fundamentally change.
7
They're are no working class people anymore. We are all stuck in a rut a of routine uncertainty. Healthcare is a joke until you need it. Then life becomes five prescription drugs and a bottle of rum.
6
Statistics are not causal. The divergence in measures of quality of life between college and non-college whites only began around 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. This had less to do with the sudden value of a college degree than with Reagan’s evisceration of the unions and undermining the social safety net. Reagan did this with the enthusiastic support of working class whites by appealing to their racist instincts. By the time NAFTA reached Clinton’s desk they had been voting GOP by 60/40 for a dozen years. Clinton and his fellow Dems owed them nothing.
While they were victims of their own stupidity, we then became the victims of their resulting nihilism when they elected Donald Trump.
So what is to be done?
The Dems should continue running candidates with lower middle class appeal. Bernie Sanders has no chance because these same working class whites will never vote for him or any other Jewish democratic socialist from Brooklyn, barring another 2008 type economic disaster. Biden will have to do this time around.
The Dems should never promote social programs that antagonize lower middle class sensibilities, e.g. Obamacare’s “individual mandate“. This would involve ignoring the recommendations of academic economists. Indeed, the idea that a college degree offers some kind of magic shield against despair and hopelessness is another misguided conclusion from a profession that has never had anything useful to offer except collecting data.
5
There was a time when the guy who could shoot an antelope the most accurately was the king of the village, but those days are over in America. When working class America chose to not just avoid college but insult it and pretend it was worthless, they sealed their fate.
7
Isn't it just perfect to have this article appear just moments after the shakeout of Super Tuesday. Mr. Leonhardt and his comrades at the NYTimes have been working around the clock to check Bernie Sanders campaign and get the Democratic party to nominate another status quo, corporate democrat. The kind of democrat that is indistinguishable from a Bush/Cheney/Reagan republican. The very same kind of politician that has been, for the last 40 years, responsible for the hollowing out of the middle class and the complete destruction of the dignity of the working class.
9
After reading this most people would probably need a drink. Johnny Cash sang about when The Man comes Around; greed has come in his place and it won't be leaving soon
4
Interesting data analysis.
No way. It's too late for this. NYT can't try to cover itself NOW. Super Tuesday was LAST week. How long have they been sitting on this article? This is death (literally) by a thousand cuts. Letting them off the hook, letting them do this, 'too little, too late' stuff that manages only to help them preserve their credibility is what has LED to the abysmal conditions our exploited and under-represented working class face. It's unethical.
9
So much for Reagan's trickle down voodoo economics. The rich have made off like bandits. Besides climate change, I think that income inequality has the most impact, and is the biggest threat to American society.
Read Jane Maier's "Dark Money" and you'll experience the insatiable greed of the ruling class.
4
Why is not going to church included among drinking more, being unmarried, having chronic pain, and being unhappy?
1
Don't have time to skin all the comments so don't know it its already been said. If so, apologies for cluttering cyber space (call it space junk?).
But have to say, it's clear the successful attacks on a unionized American workforce since the 1960's have turned out to be even more murderous than we might have thought.
Again, unfettered capitalism has blood on its hands.
7
In all due respect,this is hardly news! Working class and poor people (for the most part), have always had physically backbreaking, stressful jobs that have turned 20 year olds into old people by the time they are 40. This nation has always exploited and abused its lower income citizens. Period. Sad!
6
Get the facts... not the propaganda
https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/
In 2018, 1.7 million workers, or 2% of all hourly paid, non-self-employed workers, earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 82 million people were paid hourly rates in 2018. That’s 59% of all wage and salary workers in the United States.
"Fewer Americans today make the federal minimum wage or less.
In 1980, when the federal minimum wage was $3.10 ($9.41 in 2018 dollars), 13% of hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage or less. Today, only 2% of workers do. The number of federal minimum wage workers has decreased from 7.7 million in 1980 to 1.7 million today. "
If you do a deeper dive into the data you find that the "deaths of despair" are driven not just by non-college educated whites, but by non-college educated white females in southern states. Take them out of the equation and the death rate is flat.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/01/19/death-trends-update-its-all-about-women-in-the-south/
1
Please provide comparable data for other racial/ethnic groups.
You comment that the trends are more dramatic for whites, and so it's understandable why you focus on them. But completely omitting everyone else implicitly means they "don't count." That's a pretty toxic message.
1
First of all, life expectancy is lower for less educated people in europe as well as the US. So adopting a more european style of government is not likely to change much. The real problem, is that there is constant downward pressure on wages from both technology and global competition. There is no way to change this trend. Idiotic suggestions like:"keeping big business from maximizing profits at the expense of their workers, by enforcing antitrust laws and encouraging new kinds of labor unions." Are simply not going to work. Even if a business did want to forgo profit or technological progress to save jobs and pay more, that company would not be able to compete with other companies that would maximize profit. People are simply unwilling to spend more money for the same product, even if the folks who made the more expensive profit got paid more. Furthermore, an American worker cannot be paid more than a Chinese worker for doing the same job. Minimum wage laws and labor unions, simply accelerate the movement of jobs overseas.
We would be much smarter to encourage policies that recognize market forces and supplement incomes for workers at the bottom of the pay scale. Universal healthcare, free schooling, food stamps, housing vouchers, and a negative income tax might be ways to achieve this. The problem, as the European nations have already shown, is that these policies may not make much of a difference in terms of lifespan.
1
All I can think of is Honey Boo Boo. There were people like that when I was younger - didn't care much about high school (or even junior high) because they figured they had a great job waiting for them after they left school. It worked for their dads, their granddads - why not follow in their footsteps? Then you could afford an okay house, have enough money to raise a family and even support them without your spouse having to work also - if you got a union job. I think my own mom budgeted $10 - $20/month for health care, which we rarely used (although I was sick constantly as a kid). It's so different now. It's bad food that's making people fat, it's the hopelessness, the debt, the physical pain from physically demanding jobs. I completely understand the opioid crisis ("Take me away, Calgon"). But without good-paying jobs (with or without a decent education*) and a decent healthcare system, we are in deep here. *Our local high school's reader board proudly announces: "Career Developement Day!" (sic)
6
“There is something unique about the way the U.S. is handling this.”
Could it possibly be because the US is NOT handling it?
6
Before getting their knickers in a twist about this, everyone should ask how much of the increase in mortality is attributable to opioid overdoses. This is known: other, more detailed, studies have demonstrated that ODs account for most of it, even if one ignores the likelihood that a proportion of ODs are being recorded as suicides, accidents, or something else. Presumably the authors didn't mention that because it would have been inconvenient. Consider also that black Americans, who have all of the disadvantages of the uneducated whites, and more, have not incurred these excess deaths. It isn't as simple as the authors would like to make it seem.
3
We don't value the potential we each have as human beings, and treat a lot of people, and the children they may someday have, as disposable - consumers, that's all. The statistics about maternal and child health are all one needs to see how poorly we care for each other.
People who live in civilized countries seem to have a more humane view of themselves and their neighbors. They can feel this way because they know they are protected from the terrible suffering we see all around us in America. They are members of a mutually supportive society. They have high standards for their public education and health care systems, and they eat real food, not garbage. Here, we are free to drop out of school, get shot, get sick, get fired, and get lost.
We have been electing too many people who are only interested in helping themselves and don't care about the greater good. When is the last time a Republican supported legislation intended to benefit the majority of Americans? I cannot think of a single example.
9
One reads this and has to wonder how Joe Biden who has publicly stated that he would not seek and fundamental changes if elected gives us hope.
12
In the summer of 1966, I worked at USSteel in Cleveland saving enough money to pay $2250 for tuition, room, and board at Brown. We all belonged to the Brotherhood of Steel Workers Union. We were hard workers. What a great year it was to work in a plant that made the steel flow like water. We the children of the great generation were in awe of our hardworking coworkers who punched in the clock for a full eight hour day. One salary sustained and educated one family. Now we throw all hands into the work force to support the household. The workers live from paycheck to check afraid of losing their jobs. The steelworks and the jobs are gone, the pride and joy in having a job are gone. No wonder we are insane.
14
A college degree is no guarantee of job security, despite what media like the NYT like to portray it. There's a risk that the monetary benefit of getting a degree may not cover the cost, and that risk keeps rising with rising cost and rising supply of college grads. Academia is a big business, and like any other, never mentions this.
10
If we expect government to care about citizens who are not winners in the real-world board game we call "capitalism", then we implicitly agree that government has moral and social obligations to all of its citizens, winners and losers alike.
The GOP is quite open about rejecting that view of government.
Since 1980 the Republican Party dominated our political process and has degraded the public's view of government's role in society generally. We are now the outlier among western democracies in that regard.
The society that Case and Deaton described is positively Dickensian. Will our nation survive on the principles of capitalism alone? And if it does would you want to live in it?
15
Powerful story and graphs are among the best I've seen.
8
From 1992 to the present college graduates went from roughly 20% of the adult population to about 35% (source: statista.com). Stories of college graduates settling for jobs not requiring a college education are endemic as well, leading one to the conclusion that the increased misery of non-college graduates is a byproduct. From my experience having lived in Europe and seeing how young people there are from an early age put through aptitude testing and directed into various paths based on the results, the means by which European countries avoids the US problem is also a process that the US finds culturally unacceptable. The US mantra of college as a means to economic success demeans those whose path is more appropriately directed into vocational training, only adding to the problem.
14
I’m looking at 3.5% unemployment while millions of people opt to stay out of the labor force and I think, the American economy is great at producing millions of low-wage, no-benefit, insecure jobs. Rather than hoping, as politicians of both parties, pundits at this newspaper, and economists of all stripes have done for 35 years, for some miraculous and impossible transformation of our education system, our business sector, and our workforce, shouldn’t we just raise the minimum wage for those over 25 and give everyone health and child care? Shouldn’t a couple living together working full time at Home Depot or McDonalds or one of these other mega employers be able to have a modest but stable economic existence? For better or worse, these are the jobs Americans business is producing, and it’s not going to change. So let’s stop fantasizing about “worker retraining” or “the future of work” and say “these are the jobs we have, let’s make them better for the people doing them.”
18
There has to be a sea change in the economic structure of the country. Start first with having labor unions on the boards of companies. Offer incentives at work for employees to register for part time classes at community colleges, then four year schools. Start paying real living wages, educate workers in the skills needed for tomorrow, with emphasis on technological education. Bring them back into the fold with corporate identity and pride, avoid the temporary staffing agencies.
6
US citizens have consumed 25% of the consumables of the world. That is not just the !%ers of the US. We are getting downsized in a way that is out of our control and secondary to mostly unrestricted capitalism which is painful, but we could take control and downsize intentionally which would be an enormous undertaking. It would overlap with significant work on infrastructure, education, preventive health education and implementation and the Green New Deal and mental downsizing. It would require us to get very actively involved in our governance in ways not on the books at this time. It would be a multigenerational project. I wonder if our system of government is capable of pulling this together.
5
The moment Reagan broke the unions was when all of this became inevitable. This is his legacy, and that of all the worshipful acolytes who followed him.
18
It would interesting to see a graph of the decline in union jobs for the non-college group and how that tracks the death rate.
It's hard to feed a family on less than $10 an hour, or even $15.
It takes 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet.
And union jobs provided healthcare to a worker and their family.
Mainly though, it's because Republican polices NEVER do anything to help people who aren't making six figures or more. And Republican voters still haven't realized that when Congress does things that "hurt minorities", they hurt themselves at the very same time.
12
@D. DeMarco
The decline of unions matches point for point the decline of the middle class
In a nation in which the people are the govt St Ronnie convinced the trash to hate themselves
3
It is as if no one ever read about or heard about history.
The article is describing the same events in the economy & society that led to the rise of communism and worker unrest that eventually became Unionism and social advocacy. It was well known how the knock on effects of exploitation showed up in the well being physical emotional and psychological of those being exploited. You can see it in the people who were enslaved and the people who were "free" and lived no better.
Which eventually led to FDR and the new deal which gave us the best decades this nation has ever had.
The decline that has led us back to this place we have been in the past began in 1980 with the GOP and reagan destroying the New deal. Mostly by lying about what they were doing and why they were doing it. Just like they still do today.
10
"Deaths of despair."
I really take exception to this description. How on earth does ANYONE other than the person taking his / her life know what is motivating them to do so?
Perhaps the increase that we are seeing is based on better reporting from physicians.
2
It would be really informative to know the statistics on "voting". Do the same people that are suffering so much vote? Do more vote now than 20 years ago? Do they vote more often or less often than the grads? As a "bloc" their votes could make a difference.
3
I live in a rural area where there appears to be quite a bit of despair and drug abuse among younger people who did not leave here for higher education and greener pastures. Some who are clearly bright just don't seem to be able to think long term enough to invest in themselves by getting more education. It seems to me that is at least in part due to a lack of foresight and encouragement from their parents. Also there is better education for the trades and more social respect for that type of work in European countries. As technology replaces more jobs this problem will only get worse . Corporate greed and focus on short term profits has infected public consciousness and undermined respect for the dignity of work. Fair return for labor is a reasonable expectation but we can't get there by just blaming corporations.
10
Actually, suicide rate in Finland is higher than in the US. ‘Death of despair” is a label, not a diagnosis. Perhaps the truth is simply that society has become too complicated for some people to handle. Perhaps the reason that college graduates have lower rates of suicide and alcoholism is not a higher paycheck but the ability to find meaning in life for themselves. Perhaps intellectual curiosity, pursuit of knowledge and creativity are the quality that people need today to survive. Not everybody has them; and there is nothing we can do for those who don’t.
11
@Mor
Excellent observations. It always amazes me how "researchers" are the first to blame society, and to dismiss personal responsibility.
5
The lack of a consistent work schedule For many workers causes enormous economic and social problems. Having variable hours means income goes up and down out of the workers control and affects ability for low wage workers to claim benefits. Not knowing when you are going to work means you can’t commit to social activities with a regular schedule - choirs, adult sports leagues, adult education, gaming groups, or even just getting together with friends or family. That increases social isolation. And of course for working parents find child care with an irregular schedule is a nightmare. All of these factors increase stress and decrease resilience. If companies cared about their workers, and there is no reason to believe they do, they could do a world of good by addressing the variable schedule problem. Not holding my breath on that one though.
13
My father, born in 1935, now gone, would think that this article and the vast majority of the comments are better suited to The Onion -- and he was working class. The working class has always had this problem, adjusted downward for age expectancy. Those who once occupied the middle class, and now have to deal with all realities that face the working class, are just finding out what minorities and women have know for as long as the working class was defined. White working class MEN were exempted and still expect more of the same. It almost seems as though there is a confusion or redefining of terms for comical effect.
Americans who didn't already understand the facts described either didn't care to educate themselves (free education) or didn't care because their pockets were being lined (read middle class). Now that education is expensive and lined pockets are reserved for the rich, everybody wants to see what was there along.
6
We are nearing the apogee of uncontrolled capitalism. The workers the authors write about are simply a means of increasing capital and market share to their employers. They are not people; they are treated more and more like the machines that corporations wish they were.
Until that basic dehumanization of workers is reversed, there simply isn't a solution to societal dissolution and massive numbers of deaths of despair.
10
@gesneri
The productivity of American workers has tripled since 1980. All of that new wealth has gone to the "owner" class (CEO's, stockholders).
The promise of automation, robots, etc. was that working people would work less, have more leisure time, and still maintain their lifestyle. Instead they now worry about losing employment; the benefits will be going to the "owner" class (CEO's, stockholders).
In a better world, there WOULD be sharing.
8
What all workers of other first wold countries have that the US doesn't is a safety net of social services including healthcare. When you constantly worry about your ability to pay for your very existence it takes a huge toll.
15
Massive obesity among all classes, but especially the lower classes. It was not the case 50-70 years ago. There was no or little welfare then. Certainly, there was less medical care then! So have people become dependent on the government, i.e., the middle class to do the lifting for them?
5
I've read recently that about 50% of college graduates earn $24,000 per year or less. As the article states, workers in a capitalist society are a disposable "expense", whenever the opportunity arises. There are many forced into retirement in their middle ages(obsolescence) and many weren't Fine Arts majors. Remember, the higher the wage, the greater the opportunity cost.
6
Is there no way of accepting that health care available to all and free at the point of use is the mark of a truly civilised society? This isn’t socialism. It’s common sense. You’re the richest country in the world, after all. Once you have it you won’t want to give it up. Take on the billionaire health care vultures and demand better.
9
Too bad the column did not make clear that the alleged benefits of church attendance have little to do with superstitious belief, and much to do with the natural presence of community and support among like-minded people.
God isn't the answer. Or if he is, he's sure finding a funny way to make himself apparent to reasonable people.
7
The first American colleges were to train the children of the wealthy and well-bred to be lawyers, doctors, and theologians. For nearly 400 years, the colleges have molded an exclusionary social structure. Much of Europe and Canada have vocational credentials, apprenticeships, and lifetime microcredential pathways. We still cling to the historic BA, MA, and PhD. If the vast resources we invest in the lucky few were invested in the many, our outcomes might look much different. We banned noble titles in our founding days. Perhaps it is time to finish the job.
6
@Susan Franz My mother is 99, and her father, two uncles all attended the University of Chicago, Rush Medical College back in about 1915, and became both Doctors, and surgeons. They grew up on small farms back in northwest Ohio, where their background, as Anabaptist Mennonites, whose parents and grandparents had come from Switzerland, there were two things they valued in the family, that was education, books, and physical work. All people in their sphere had no money to speak of. Then, from those 3, and a cousin of my grandfather so 4 in the first generation, then there were 10 more in the second and third generation, with 2 in the second generation marrying into it, and 2 in the 3rd. generation that married into it. People tend to go into the fields that their parents did, whether business, entertainment(like acting, and music) farming, medicine, law, and now real estate, tech, etc. Real Estate, is how we got DT as President. However, if the banks had taken everything he owned because he owed so much, we, as a nation wouldn't be suffering under his being in the position he is in.
4
OK. Start with the basics. Why would having a college degree make any difference? There are a vast working class of college-educated people being bartenders, theater ushers, coffee sellers, and every other job done by non-college people. A college degree doesn't guarantee anything. It is just a verification that the holder spent 4 years learning stuff he/she will never use. Something else is working here. Perhaps the reason people choose to go to college or not rather than completing college. My sons never graduated from high school. One started a successful company and earns over $700,000 a year. The other is a real estate broker earning over $300,000 a year. Both are happy. Now what? Studies like these are meaningless because they confuse the symptoms with the disease. Not having college degree does not create despair. A lot of educated bums sleeping in doorways.
5
@aranhas
The statistics on how people generally do with or without a college education are well known, and frankly not really controversial.
As you point out, there are exceptions. But exceptions nevertheless. They do not refute the overall numbers.
As far as "alot" of college educated "bums" sleeping in doorways, that's a figment of your imagination to pretend your sons' successes are not exceptions to the rule.
7
The divorce rate is higher now for those over 50. This increases the rates of loneliness, despair and isolation. At a most critical time. The prevalence of early divorce rates, by baby boomers, makes it more likely older 50-year-olds will not find a life partner. It is possible to be happy as a single adult over 50-- but it also increases the chances of self-desctructive behaviors.
3
America has been a country that since the sixties, has made alcohol easily accessible to those children, and teenagers in their homes, and if not theirs, but the home of their friends parents. The fact that other drugs, crack, meth, cocaine, marijuana, prescription pain pills, and now heroin fentanyl, shows that the culture on television, and the movies has for over 5 decades promoted sex, where no one gets a sexually transmitted disease, and now our country has one of the highest rates in the world,and the casual, make it look cool look, of smoking cigarettes, and using all other drugs, including alcohol. No, I am not naïve, as I lived in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and New York city back then, so I know what I am talking about, nor am I religious or a prude. As a society, we are one that likes instant gratification, and then want to blame others, for the situation we are in. No, we have met the enemy, and it is really ourselves, as enough is never enough. We are now 40% obese, according to the experts, and 60% of all the people in this country, including children are overweight. We have a very infantile society. However, it is one that also, shuns the messenger, and the truth, no matter what the issue is.
4
The irony is that the official view from the present administration is that the conditions in the US have never been better, Like global warming, any real problems in the conditions are officially ignored. If there are problems, then the general view is that
6
What in the world does "going to church" have to do with anything? Happily, I see there appears to be a decreasing amount of people relying on "thoughts and prayer." Maybe college grads attend services more because they actually believe an invisible man in the sky has rewarded them, whereas those less well off know better.
4
I'm 44 and have been working since 2 weeks after I graduated from college in 1998 without any significant breaks. It's becoming more and more clear to me that there's something seriously wrong with the way our society is structured. Our jobs, our housing, our healthcare, is all out of reach, and the stress and lack of fulfillment is driving us to early graves.
19
All the "shoulds" in this article would be attainable if the US didn't function under a rapacious form of capitalism. Some would argue all capitalism is rapacious, I'd say we can do better. The truth, though, is that greed eventually kills everyone in its path.
11
Last year a local newspaper interviewed some high school students who were going to some prestigious college and asked them what it took to get there. One student had the most astute answer...” first, have parents who bought a million dollar house.”
13
We have to acknowledge the brilliance of Republican political strategy.
Give these folks the culture wars, resentment of “elites,” and jingoism and they will continue to vote for their own economic suicide.
12
Well, since traditionally only a third of the country have gone to 4-year school, and even they are having trouble finding a Good-paying job after college these past few years, plus a mountain of debt whether or not they get that good job, I guess the majority are screwed royally, eh?
Because business is Encouraged to mechanize, robotize, consolidate, anything but employ more people. The C-suite and the shareholders have become their god and screw the workers and the customers (good riddance of Jack Welch and his ilk).
A job used to be a respectable part of one's life, and something you could depend on if you did your job properly, not for a few years at a time, as recent generations have suffered, but until you retired, With a respectable pension, not some poor-excuse-for-a-pension 401K, and your SS.
I agree with most of your suggestions on how to fix this, and Bernie may have some great ideas, but a), unless All varieties of colleges cut their tuition by 50%, the participation rate is not going to rise and b), a majority of this country just will not elect someone with "socialist" as their identification. That's why I think Biden/Warren would make a good team, his long government experience with her ideas about taming the corporations and the rich.
All employees should be valued as potential customers first. Cut profits to enable fair pay, hire competent managers (not Pathological liars) and utilize procedures & systems that work and don't make people sick.
3
@Truth at Last
Except not having a college degree, or a real trade (like electrician or plumber) is worse.
The American dream, work til you drop and pray you don't get sick doing it. What nations do Americans compare working conditions with? N. Korea? What hope do working Americans have? Four weeks paid vacation and paid sick leave? Superannuation? National health care? Name one thing that the United States gives its citizens? And don't give me that "Freedom" crap.
12
@John Lots of TV channels and cheap booze.
3
Not to worry. President Biden will make it all better. With maybe another bankruptcy bill (to keep them in debt) or a new war. Or maybe a tax cut for their wealthy bosses.
Just like their last savior, Trump, has.
I could feel sorry for them if they didn't keep voting for these users.
9
Why is this just about white people? Am I missing something here? Also, they are going on about the health care system, but high rents and high property taxes and the high cost of housing are making millions of people homeless. Property tax foreclosures are still common in this part of the country. As for job security, our food service employees work the hardest, but get laid off at the end of every semester. I heard someone on the bus talking about his summer job. Why should an adult have to get a summer job?
356
@Stephanie Wood Yes, you are missing something. The article is about research showing how deaths-of-despair among whites with no college education have surged since 1990 and are higher than all other ethnic groups. I know how difficult it is to imagine that white non-hispanic people might not be deliriously happy what with all the privileges they are allegedly getting.
130
@Stephanie Wood
I agree with your points about the issues other than health care are causing severe economic problems for many. I read the underlying study, not just the news, and there is much more than is reported here. Tthe charts chosen to support the article unfortunately point one in a different direction from the first paragraph.
" When the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton first published their research on “deaths of despair” five years ago, they focused on middle-aged whites. So many white working-class Americans in their 40s and 50s were dying of suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse that the overall mortality rate for the age group was no longer falling – a rare and shocking pattern in a modern society.
But as Case and Deaton continued digging into the data, it became clear that the grim trends didn’t apply only to middle-aged whites. Up and down the age spectrum, deaths of despair have been surging for people without a four-year college degre."
35
@Stephanie Wood anyone know the break down race or ethnicity , gender, parental status? those numbers would be useful as well. where's the data that shows the impact of food insecurity and homelessness among students, especially in the summer if they cannot afford the additional semester or quarter? thanks all!
14
The erasure of working class people of color is exhausting. Working class is not synonymous with working class whites. Titles like these center whiteness and are ultimately divisive when so flippantly dismiss a large block of people who are also having a rough time out here.
5
I taught public school for 30 years, so I am always supportive of better and more education. But more than a degree, American workers need jobs with decent wages and benefits, jobs with DIGNITY and SECURITY.
11
This is why Bernie. If you still don't see this, I'm probably shouting into the wind. But, I persist . . . Biden, even if by some miracle he made it to the WH will not only not even try for any of the fundamental change we need, but will be and likely already is a puppet to the corporate donors pulling that strings because he's not all there mentally. I am far from working class, with three Ivy degrees. Nor am I white or male. It doesn't matter. Fighting to turn this around matters. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. He's only been in office 3 years (although I concede it does seem much longer).
The delegate race is still close. Vote like our lives and planet depends upon it.
11
@Parapraxis
So, let people vote without calling those who vote against Bernie all sort of insulting names.
And don't blame some boogieman if Bernie loses.
If Bernie wins, I'll vote for him in the general.
1
@Parapraxis Solidarity!
So life is bad for non college-educated White Americans but they keep voting for the political party (e.g., Republican) who isn't interested in legislating solutions to their problems?
10
@professor Sadly the Republicans have convinced non college-educated White Americans that college is for the "elites". Hence they continue to vote against their interests.
3
Now can NYT explain why the US needs Moderate Centrist, rather than Radical Redistrutional options, to solve this huge societal problem? And why we need corporate-funded rather than grassroot-supported Democratic candidates?
7
If Bachelor's vs. High School is such a stark causal factor, perhaps No Child Left Behind might actually be a culprit here?
And yet, even though the data is so crystal clear, Democrats are going to allow establishment corporatists (they do exist) dictate, nay compel, voters to vote for Joe Biden?
Set aside ideology and purely let the data drive your decision making process (something we need more of - not less). Not only is the 'status quo' candidate just that, it's clear the status quo is, literally, killing us and yet Americans are going to get "business as usual" Biden? It's insanity to keep repeating this; it will only result in more pain and suffering.
You don't need to vote for Bernie but don't you want to vote for his policy just as a matter of correcting the course this nation is on? It's clear that his policy is the only chance we have of defeating Trump and if you think Biden offers a path to victory then I would suggest those empowered by what Sheldon Wolin calls "inverted totalitarianism" have sold you maya. and you're buying it.
It's very disappointing, it's depressing, that we're allowing status quo types, call them neoliberals if you wish, call them whatever you'd like, to dictate what we think we deserve and are worthy of receiving.
We deserve healthcare for all immediately - not in increments over 20-30-40 years. We deserve to end disproportionate tax advantage by the rich. We deserve a safer planet to inhabit.
If not now, when? I"m so tired of the unnecessary suffering via a flawed construct and dark narrative. We must change our heuristic because it's a wasteland of despair.
10
They left out our war on drugs and the sorry fact that we've criminalized our so called health care "system" and jail those who claim to be in despair "for their own good".
2
And hear this, that the WH is considering a tax break for airlines, travel and cruise industries!
Sen. McConnell has stopped dozens if not hundreds of bills from even coming up for consideration!
Please vote anti Republican this year; and ask everyone and their brothers and sisters to do the same.
7
In North Florida the local sheriff recently told my friend, that 25- and 30-year olds are breaking into and sniffing freon on the sides of people's homes. They're also running a coat hanger between two car batteries, get some current going, and then they spray Raid insecticide on the hot wire, which crystalizes into a white powder. Then they smoke the powder. Off! bug repellant works, too. Not much future in that, smoking nerve poison. These young. non-college people know the deck is stacked against them. Maybe they know instinctively that, for them, vampire capitalism doesn't work.
2
Of course everyday Americans are in the "deaths of despair." It's income inequality, period. As soon as people are old enough to know they need a job, they see that they will be working harder and harder to just barely eke by. The minimum wage hasn't been raised since 1990. That's 30 years. The killer is the realization that no matter how hard you work you'll never be able to afford any of the luxuries of life (like a dinner out or not having to grocery shop with a calculator in hand.) The inequality gap is killing middle and poor income earners and the rich sit idly by cutting taxes for themselves while blaming those from whom they are stealing. We need to recognize from where the problem emanates and quit believing its anything or anyone other than the greedy and filthy rich people and corporations, all propped up by every administration, Dems or Reps.
6
One way to make college more accessible is to ban intercollegiate athletics, which has a net loss of ~$20 billion per year.
Should the highest-paid public official in a state be the football or basketball coach? Should Auburn’s old football coach be a leading candidate for the US Senate from Alabama?
619
@Kevin Cahill Spelman College in Atlanta got rid of intercollegiate athletics, and left the NCAA, in 2013. The decision worked out well for the school and the students.
https://www.espn.com/espnw/voices/story/_/id/18595663/life-sports-spelman-college
34
@Kevin Cahill, a football coach shouldn’t be a candidate, but a 30 year old bartender should be leading the Democratic Party? Go figure.
12
@Kevin Cahill agree!!!!!
5
As my father told us: a lot of things can be taken away from you--house, car, family, friends--but one of the things that can never be taken away from you is education and learning.
Also, the other thing I found to be almost as important as my education for learning, better understanding, and navigating life was travel--experiencing and living in other regions, countries, and cultures.
The secret to life and living is curiosity, and you really don't have to go to college to learn.
Sadly, some people are remarkably uncurious and resistant to learning--including our president. How in the world did that man ever graduate from college? And our southern family members who comprise his base are the same.
8
The end of the draft is also a cause, I think. When the all-volunteer policy after Vietnam started, the mixing of the haves with the have-nots, the black, brown, yellow and white that deepened understanding and developed strong bonds came to a hard stop. That mixing helped in individual lives and made for a stronger society.
1
@Chris Rimel Drafts require wars. Yes, if only we had more wars, we'd have a much stronger society. Said no one, ever.
4
Why don't you also parse the data by the states? We might see more of political alignment to the degree of death rate in terms of states/geographical lines.
While other developed countries have maintained basic safety net for the poor, the U.S.gov has been robbing its citizens by allowing healthcare providers in every level to overcharge patients in every way possible - where a sickness can mean financial ruin and bankruptcy. I wonder whether some might choose to end it all quickly instead of continue living in financial or health despairs...
3
An added tier to consider/monitor would be Grad School Degrees
2
Another thinly veiled argument for tuition-free public higher education and student debt forgiveness, both of which I vehemently oppose. Thank you.
3
If you read the NYT's project article on 1619, you'll discover that America's capitalistic system originates during slavery, from 1619 to now.
All of the corporations (except a few) use their employees literally as a form of slavery. There interest and concern is more financially driven versus human dignity and quality of life of their employees.
As Americans, we know so little about how we got to where we are, and the system takes advantage of that ignorance.
They're reasons for the callousness in our society, seek and you will find, knowledge is power.
8
In the title and throughout the text, the words "Americans" and "People" are used when discussing the book's findings, yet all the data shown, and, as far as I can tell, the whole book is about "non-Hispanic white Americans". While I appreciate the reporter's attempt to broaden the scope of the article to non-whites, this still bothers me a great deal.
@Martin
Your concern is justified, but there are sections (not the charts) that point to concern outside the white community. The underlying report from the two researchers is much broader, and it unfortunate that the news article seems a bit slanted.
I'm a college graduate and I have chronic pain from osteoarthritis and I think about killing myself everyday, the pain is intractable and now untreatable, I'd rather be dead truthfully, walking is hard, can't lift my right arm, my neck is disintegrating as I write, osteoarthritis is a horrible disease, the funny thing is, my mom and Dad and sibs? they never had any arthritis, BUT my father's Dad, whom I made fun of constantly in the the 60s because of how he walked, his vibrating chair! and his anger all I attribute now to his pain with arthritis, since I made so much fun of him to my sibs it's ME up with this bane of old age. Formerly my surgeon would prescribe oxycontin (not timed release) or hydrocodone in 3 month supply (this is when it was just my hips) I was able to lead a normal(ish) life, work and sleep, so now everyone makes one sign a 5 page disclaimer, saying I won't abuse, I won't use blah blah, it isn't worth it as I didn't abuse or end up using something, I just took pain meds when it was unbearable, now my life is painfully unbearable and no one will help. Seriously, suicide seems the answer.
3
@KT B I'm sorry. This country has failed you and all the others dealing with debilitating diseases. The only people it doesn't fail are the rich.
It has taken >35 years of debunked GOP Economics (trickle-down & other zombie names for the same ruse) plus massive expansion of the Military/Industrial Complex & American Empire (>800 military bases around the world) plus giving Mega-Finance free reign (remember the unnecessary dismantling of Glass-Steagall? thanks Clinton! listening to Robt. Rubin & Phil Gramm) plus glib outsourcing of America manufacturing plus the rise of cheap addicting drugs (pharmaceutical and otherwise) plus increasing evangelical lunacy into politics to get us here. Those dying can learn to vote their economic self-interests, but probably don't. If nothing else, the system we have gives them a bunch of bad choices and punishes them for making some. Freedom works if you have a safety net better than the hard-packed earth our bottom half has.
6
So why isn't Andrew Yang, who covered all of this in his book and focused on it almost exclusively in the primary, still in the race?
299
@Daphne Because people are irrational and whether Ds , Rs, or anyone outside/ in between, they often vote against their best interests.
I donated to both Yang and Sanders' campaigns because their policies and visions were supported by all the stuff I've read, heard, and experienced. But I'm probably more data-driven as an MD/ scientist than the average person.
People get distracted too easily and rather than concentrating on policies that will affect their lives, they'd rather vote for the candidate who dresses the best (or worst), attacks other opponents the most (or least), has the most (or least) money, went to Oxford (or not), has 2 X chromosomes (or not) -- all points which have nothing to do with actual policy.
Then there are those who are easily swayed by others. I can't count the number of commenters who say they support Sanders/ Warren/ and/or Yang and then decide to vote for Biden or some other candidate on some pre-supposed notion that they "can't win." Pretty much, they fulfilled their own prophecy.
59
@Daphne Because he proposed a very novel and radical solution - UBI - and stuck to it at every turn and answering every question. If his message was more nuanced and solution spectrum wider - he could have stayed longer
22
@ms
But the reality is these other candidates actually cannot win.
We first need to win and restore sanity in this country.
Then go for the gold.
12
Okay, only 30% of the adult population are college graduates, but our economy and education system is rigged for college graduates. 70% of population is left out. And we would why our adult population is unhealthy??
I wish we were like Germany when it comes to respecting the trades. We all need a well educated plumber. Joe Biden - I hope you are reading this article.
11
This is why I supported Elizabeth Warren. The whole point of her political career is to make life better for everyone and restore the opportunities she had as a young woman. If we ever want to restore a sense of hope, we have to start voting for people who will actually do something to help people.
9
I'm sorry but not everyone can be a knowledge worker. That's just the way it is.
7
@Southern Boy but everyone can receive decent pay and health care. The cause of poverty is corporate greed, not the fact that everyone isn't a surgeon or an ap developer.
17
@Southern Boy :
Every job is important, or it would not exist.
Every job deserves the dignity of a living wage.
3
On aspect of health care cost that is never discussed in these articles is - obesity. Obesity is underlying large portions of cases of diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and cancer. Diabetes and hypertension underly most cardiovascular disease. Soaring number of obese people with arthritis at increasingly younger ages has meant more expensive total joint surgeries. yes health care costs have gone up but so has obesity. Other countries do not have obesity at American rates and their health care costs are cheaper as a result.
Perhaps US needs to examine its farm subsidies, cheap sugar and increasing tendency to eat out unhealthy restaurant food.
Anything that is in short supply and high demand (e.g. healthcare) is going to go up in price..
5
@sk I do not think that there was anything in this article which would lead a person to conclude that being overweight is the issue here. Also I am tired of the medical term, obesity, which has a specific meaning, being used to describe everyone from the mildly overweight on up. And let me just add that I have been in the normal, acceptable range all of my life and wear regular sizes, fit in the airplane seat, drive a small car and can enter, exit and fit behind the steering wheel as designed etc. But this problem has very little to do with people being overweight much less obese. Wave a magic wand and turn everyone into a Disney prince or princess and economic despair, outsourcing, forced retirement at 53, unaffordable housing, high student loan debt, low minimum wage, job insecurity and overprescribed opiates will disappear ?
4
@Consuelo - Obesity lies behind a lot of diseases. This article talked about health care costs - so that is where I put my 2 cents in.
I do not know you and this comment is not about you. You know your weight and can google out your BMI. Keeping weight at a level so BMI hovers around 25 and never exceeds 30 is excellent investment in personal health. If most people did that, health care costs will decrease by more than 50% and doctors will be wondering where their pay checks will come from.
I do not think that we can talk about health care costs unless we talk about obesity. Any insurance plan only works if most people do not use it. The reason for health care costs is that far too many people are using it instead of practicing preventive measures to keep themselves healthy.
We are seeing far too many 13 years olds who weight 200 pounds plus for height of 5'6". We are getting set up for a lot of misery down the road if we do not look at ourselves in the mirror.
1
@sk
This still does not obviate my point. I've had a lot of health care costs in recent years because I 'm in my late 60's. Several orthopedic surgeries-carpal tunnel, knee- then a manageable cancer. I have heart disease (hereditary ) and need expensive monitoring and tests. But I am not overweight.I've had arthritis since I was 30 and weighed 110 pounds. I am lucky in that I am still employed and have excellent insurance. My costs have therefore been in the thousands not the hundreds of thousands. It is not predominantly the overweight patients that drive up health care costs. It is the costs themselves. Believe me when you see your bill and it says that the surgery is billed at $40,000 for those without coverage you feel for them. And it does not say " and 50% more if your BMI is over 30. ( which mine is not ). I just think we have gone from fat shaming to fat blaming and I wonder why there is so much outrage at the bigger folks amongst us. They are mostly quite decent human beings.
6
Education level, like income, is an imperfect proxy for class. A 4 year college degree can be a ticket into the professional corporate managerial 'class", or an independent professional practice. Call this the Professional Managerial Class (PMC). Most graduates however live from (salaried) paycheck to paycheck, and some may even end up in the "non-degreed" working class. This second group is in fact part of the working class; The first is the true "middle class". The social anatomy would be:
- Without college: Working class without privileges. Cannot earn enough to become a homeowner, is a renter for life; buys used cars; poor healthcare access; works multiple jobs, employers change frequently, longer unemployment periods. Can never retire.
- With college: Privileged working class. Makes sufficient surplus wage/salary to buy a home; can buy a new car; has good employer-supplied healthcare; longer tenure with same employer; fewer unemployment periods; can pay off mortgage before retirement; can retire in minimum comfort with SS + savings at the standard age.
- PMC: Not working class, because they can make a surplus salary that allows them to become petty capitalists. They can start as upscale homeowners; they can own commercial rental property; they can "retire" early and not depend on salary or SS at all.
Thus the first two share many of the same characteristics, differing mainly by degree. The PMC *are* in a different class altogether.
3
@Matt My daughter is married to a licensed contractor and plumber. He did not go to college. They have a wonderful house on 11 acres with outbuildings. She is an R.N. They are doing well.
I know several contractors who also did not go to college and make over $100,000 net annually after paying their own contract labor and maintaining and purchasing heavy equipment. A small excavator costs $70,000. I've also known ranchers who did not go to college. They also have nice houses on acreage and expensive machinery. They keep it all afloat on good management and careful decisions.
Your groups are way too simplistic. But I concur that life is hard and insecure for most folks regardless of whether they have a degree. It does not make you safe for life though it helps you get several rungs up.
3
Over the past decade, costs have risen while wages have remained flat.
Two significant factors concerning work, finances and mental health over the last decade are the significant raising costs of healthcare and the addition of 2 new household utilities.
Each year, progressively more is taken out of our paychecks for healthcare coverage, along with increased deductibles and co-pays. Yes, everything has gotten more expensive, from food to the electricity bill. However, healthcare costs have risen dramatically more than other things.
The new, largely unavoidable utilities are the family Broadband & Cellular bills, either of which is often more than the heating/cooling bill. Many employers expect workers to be reached 24/7 via text, phone or email. Many of us end up working from home once home from the office at least on occasion, sometimes as a matter of course. In other first world countries, Broadband is provided by the government to all citizens. Schools expect students to have internet access and most people understand cell phones to be an essential element of keeping safe in 2020.
Wages have not increased commensurately to cover any of the above. In fact, most workers are lucky if we have even been afforded cost-of-living increases.
Any wonder why anxiety, depression and suicide rates are through the roof?
.
5
Bernie Sanders style Democratic Socialism can not fix the disparities and pain spelled out in this study without our entire society buying into it. And that means workers the 99 percent joining together and demanding it.
As things stand Trumpers, the GOP and democratic workers are at each others throats fighting each other rather than the corporate masters and this split has been designed by those same masters. Sanders wants a revolution, but when the chips are down the fractures in our society still dictate against it and even moderates who want even modest change can not get traction in Congress. As for Trumpers they are so blinded by their corporate master that, well, forget about it. An old geezer like Sanders can not make it happen. The ones suffering the most must step up and demand a better social contract.
2
The author says,"Governments at all levels should help more people earn college degrees, both four-year degrees (like B.A.’s) and meaningful vocational degrees"
There is only ONE state run vocational college in CA: LATTC. You can learn a viable trade (electrician, plumbing, elevator repair, pattern making etc.) in 2 years as well as an AA should you want to continue to a 4 year.
Why is this model not replicated all over our nation? Instead we have for-profit colleges promoted by this government, landing student with sky high debt if they make it through. Again and again, this government chooses profit over people.
8
Thanks to the "captains of industry" squeezing profits for themselves while the people doing the real work in this country, on farms, in factories, in service and retail, get squeezed more and more. Trump tapped into that anger against the elites, though he was obviously lying the whole time. Warren was willing to take it on, but she apparently wasn't "electable". So the question is, does anyone really care enough?
8
Our expensive healthcare system makes us uncompetitive with the rest of the world, and our k thru 12 education system isn’t training or promoting skills needed for today’s jobs. Want adds for skilled labor are becoming more and more prolific. Skill jobs pay well and are personally fulfilling.
1
The American working class are the canaries in the coal mine. The country is sick. Human beings need a reason to live beyond working long hours at a job(s) where they are expendable, shopping in big box stores, spending hours a day with devices and screens, and "treating" themselves to unhealthy food and drink. I realize this is something of an overstatement. But, unfortunately, it is not all that far off from the sad relationship many Americans in 2020 have with their own life. We need to reorganize how citizens experience work and healthcare, yes, and we also need more sense of connection and purpose. More nature, more quiet time, more exercise and fresh air, more interacting with others face-to-face. I am shocked by how many people I meet - even well-off, educated people - who rarely exit their house except to shop via car. Drive through the suburbs and countryside and you can go miles without seeing anyone outside. We need a sea-change in our thinking, a secular revival.
13
Need I point out that the white working class forms the core of Republicans’ support, and that Republican politicians have made careers out of criticizing college professors and college graduates as out-of-touch “elites” who look down their noses at “real Americans”? Not to mention slashing university budgets and attacking the elementary and secondary school teachers trying to prepare students for higher education? Something doesn’t add up.
8
Most people will read this headline and article and get even more stressed about getting their children into a good college. Instead of spending a small fortune so that your kid can get an SJW degree in a fancy school, how about hiring a tutor to help them learn the most valuable skill of the 21st century: programming. It will save you a ton of money, even a 4-month coding bootcamp is a steal compared to college, and your kid will have the skills to begin a career where even the low range salary is way above national average and there is literally no limit to how much they can make. If a person decides to become a police officer, teacher or a car mechanic then they will almost certainly never become wealthy because there is a limit to how much value you can create for the world working in those professions. But as a software developer, the amount of value(wealth) you can create for the world is only limited by your imagination. I know many people without a college degree, myself included, who have six figure incomes in the tech industry. Skills and experience are much more important to both startups and big tech. Whether self taught or a bootcamp graduate, companies are willing to pay very well for competent programmers. I understand that many people do not want to take the time to learn or think it's too hard, but if you don't already have a successful career then what do you have to lose?
1
@Tom--hey,how much education does it take to learn programming?I.'m older but I'm curious,can I learn this out of manuals and books?At home,at my own speed?I'm pretty smart,as far as seniors go.Let me,know if you can.thanks!--Curious Senior
Much of Case and Deaton’s work points to the devaluation of the human beings in general. In a world so overpopulated this makes perfect sense. When the world is full to bursting with humans, with insufficient food, water, medicine and shelter, how can people retain their “value”? We’re all so easily replaceable.
The value of education is for the well-educated to be able to rise above the great masses of people to be seen and validated. But even this marker of success is now fading and increasingly is seen as of little worth. Why? Because there are now millions with that same degree, yet fewer and fewer jobs.
7
At the time I graduated from high school--and I think this point is important to our societal well-being and overlooked--girls from lower middle class and working class backgrounds could get jobs in offices, as file clerks, clerk-typists, assistants of various kinds. The perception, which gave purpose and hope, was of rising in status, because they moved among the middle class, conversed with the MC, adopted the values (including belief in higher education). They were expected to dress like the MC, and it boosted their self-image. They had some hope of becoming salaried managers. More than one generation of girls has grown up without this stepladder to boost them. They begin as working class, they stay working class; they hear only the messages aimed at people put down and kept down.
9
OK. Argue about how to divide the economic pie. But please remember what made America great was learning how to make the pie bigger.
3
Another article touting the salvation of a college degree. Many, many people without college degrees have rewarding careers and don’t see their predicament as dire. Another metric perhaps?
1
Anybody who taught over the last 20 years could see this coming. Far too many high school students have operated under the delusion that somehow everything was going to work out for them even if they had no particular skills and no motivation.
7
So this is the society that Joe Biden brags about not making any changes to? All one has to do is trace the line to 2016 to see why the voters rejected the establishment candidates of both parties. We can only conclude that these pressures, and this despair, will be worse for the 2020 election. And once again there are only two non establishment candidates in the running, Trump and Bernie. They remain the core of electability in the coming season. And with the wide spread rejection of the Trump administration style and competence it would look like Bernie is a shoe in for the white house this fall. But he has to be on the ballot for that to happen!
So explain to me again why Bernie is not the safe choice?
4
@Bobotheclown Socialism requires great amt.of money,which means more raised taxes.The population is exhausted from taxes,and you really believe voters will vote in more taxes?
1
Look to the pronounced decline in religious participation as a key driver of many of the ills described here. Derided as the "opiate of the masses", it nonetheless is a far better salve than the deadly clutches of the real thing.
1
@Chas Smith - Institutional religion is not a salve; it’s a poison that kills curiosity and destroys aspiration.
I think we need a Third Bill of Rights modeled after President Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights as enumerated in his January 11, 1944 message to Congress in which he said:
"We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure. "
Many of the societal ills that President Roosevelt described in 1944 are with us today. Our government has failed.
4
@Dennis Menzenski that's true,but mankind has really never agreed to "make all persons have equal status in life."We have the right to pursue our goals,but no promise to make them all be equally reached.
What is the comparison with these people to their parents and grandparents that survived and many thrived socially, if not financially, during the real Depression of the 1930’s? As opposed to the recent economic changes, are people just less able to handle difficulties that in no way approach the levels of that period?
Were our ancestors both tougher, strong but not brittle, and more adaptable than us? Maybe they were the Greatest Generation at home as well as defending their families. We now seem to have many brittle people.
3
@Michael Blazin We don't believe in fed.govt,our elected leaders,or any "fairness doctrine."We see its too hard to do upward mobility,and thus sad reality defeats our goals.Upward mobility has always given Americans hope,and that hope is gone.
2
Retired teacher here with a partial pension. I’m grateful to have that pension, since half of it goes to health care for my husband and me. He was self-employed, so no IRA, no savings, and no pension for him. There is no cushion for an emergency. As soon as we retired, we bought a much smaller house where taxes are cheaper, and we watch every dollar.
Every day, I appreciate the education I paid for because I enjoy literature, art, philosophy, history, music, and all of the other subjects I would not have been exposed to otherwise. My husband and our son missed out on those opportunities because they didn’t go to college, I believe. One thing is certain though. They both missed earning opportunities that I had. Our son is a hard worker, but makes barely enough to sustain himself. I have no idea how he’ll ever earn enough to cover a mortgage and health insurance, which is why he lives with us.
I can’t say a college degree has economic value always, since many millennials have huge college debts to pay off and many don’t have professional jobs. Sometimes the stars do not line up for people to live comfortable lives. A college degree is just one star in a person’s universe.
5
Bring unions back. They were a sore that made a big difference. We need to curb the power of corporations immediately.
8
@NOTATE REDMOND HOW can you form unions when most of the working members would live outside the USA?
1
This got me thinking about my grandmother, who dropped out of school after completing 9th grade in 1906 (according to her, "everyone did" in those days). She went to work in a shoe factory until marrying 8 years later. She had 5 children. During the Depression my grandfather became disabled so back to the factory she went. Due the WWII shortage of male workers, she caught a break by getting an assembly job at her local General Motors plant, from which she retired in 1956. Said it was the best job she ever had.
She lived on to age 99.
Another day, another time...
9
This is why Trump won. It's why Sanders has done as well as he has. It won't go away until their experiences of life improve.
6
It would be interesting if this research differentiated with other non-college professional degrees as well.
It would also be interesting to look at student loan debt in this equation and split out college educated without/very little loans v loans.
I'm a graduate degree educated white woman and i find it hard to get by while working in the non-profit sector in nyc. Of course, I chose this path and probably had other options to make more money if I wanted that, and I'm probably more fulfilled by my job than most people who make as little as I do, but it sure would help my mental and economic health if I didn't have >$100k in student loan debt as well!
2
Our health care system not only taxes low income workers with high premiums and deductibles but also there is a hidden cost. Employer contributions are the same for skilled and unskilled employees, but the employer paid half of premiums (which people somehow think is "free") also may represent the bulk of their cost to employers ($10K premiums + $20K salary). So companies will try to minimize the number of employees and also will resort to tricks like contract employers to avoid this.
and then if you are laid off, you face loss of both income and subsidized health care ..
We need to fix health care to focus on actual care rather than "insurance" that is never "free".
4
As someone who went from extreme poverty and dropped out in the 8th grade and had a baby as a teenager - to someone who now has a masters degree and lower-middle class secure job, to all the people who say college is not the answer, but work is, I disagree. What I learned in college were cognitive skills unavailable to the poor and not taught in primary education: critical thinking, logic, mathematics, scientific method.
Before college, I could only react and think about things emotionally. I had never been taught any other method. Upon gaining those skills, even though I have heaps of student loan debt, struggle to make ends meet and virtually no savings, I'm not in the grips of despair or addiction because I have a toolkit on how to view each of the problems I encounter, logically. When before, I could only react emotionally to the stresses of life, everything felt overwhelming and hopeless - now I can systematically think and plan my way through circumstance, instead of trying to feel my way through problems.
Education makes all the difference. Learning how to learn instills the confidence that you can master any problem life throws your way. Jobs just pay the bills.
10
This is the result of 40 years of "trickle-down, supply-side economics" and "personal responsibility" put into overdrive by the GOP and "moderate Democrats".
This is what happens when our government representatives allow citizens lives to be monetized to generate profits for corporations who donate to these government representatives.
This exceptionalism is what citizens have voted for and continue to vote for.
12
@June I notice many replies say"We should do this"we need to fix this,"like "we need to control big corporations"but these suggestions all omit one statement;"HOW do we fix big corporations(example)we have no control over?"HOW do we change situations,leaders,access we can't get?How can we have impossible control over things we can't reach to control?I would vote for myself to go back to the age of twenty,but HOW can I do that when I have no control over TIME?
1
We no longer value human dignity and potential. It used to be taught by religions, but those are now either waning or badly distorted.
Religion is far from perfect, but what other entities can teach basic decency? You’d think there would be a ready market for it.
6
I consider myself to be very fortunate because I did graduate from college and was a librarian.
I have retired and am receiving very good health care. I like the retirement community in which I live.
We have frequent communal events. Almost everyone has a dog and we all know each other.
We are pampered here. Every bill including the rent is on autopay. Meds are delivered as we need them. Shipt brings groceries and such to our doors. There is even an app for the washers and dryers so that all we do is swipe and they start.
I would say that a laptop and a smartphone are very important for a happy and healthy lifestyle for the older person.
3
Buried beneath the class differentiation rightfully castigated in this article is an even more chilling reality.
I possess not only the shielding "four years" but a graduate degree. I guess that gives me a little bit of an edge. The flames of gross inequality may not quite be nipping at my heels. But any advantage is rapidly diminishing.
My edge provides little if any protection from callous management and economic exploitation. It doesn't help with exorbitant and devious medical expenses. It offers no shelter from the ubiquitous angry and obsessive gun wielders. It brings little confidence that my work, my source of income and self esteem, will be there tomorrow. It doesn't provide community, freedom from hatred and tribalism, or a sense of security as age descends. It carries no reassurance that our "leaders" have the foggiest notion of what to do beyond pandering to their donors.
Yeah, I'm old, white, male and highly educated... but year after year the advantages my multiple degrees and certifications are supposed to provide seem to dissipate. The day of reckoning is just a little further back than for the groups Leonhardt laments. Call it fear, call it despair... I, too, can hear the not-that-distant roar and crackling. A bleak future appears to loom for almost all of us, not just for the blatantly downtrodden.
16
This administration has sought to disassemble democracy, to destroy the public sector and to destroy public protections including social security and medicare. It is anti-women, anti-other, pro-gun, anti-bipartisan, anti-education and is repeatedly berating people who cannot afford the extraordinary expenses of daily living. People with property and investments are looking to take what the market will allow while our president fills government w hustlers, people who make money from pharmaceuticals, war, bankruptcies, privatizing jails, prisons and defiling public lands. It is a sideshow everyday. What can we expect for our children?
6
@barbara You have little control over fixing many of these things even if you vote in a different political party.All you writers keep saying"if I vote in THIS OTHER PARTY,they will fix this problem for us."-but I'm sorry to report there are no "magic politicians" or "magic solutions" .Even throwing much money at many of the problems does not help. All of you insist on living a certain way,like having several kids,living a standard level of comfort,even though these choices make our problems worse..
Well, there are a few factors at play here which are driving the angst and depression. I am not saying single payer is a solution here, but just pointing out the realities we are facing:
- 1 out of every 5 households will go bankrupt due to medical bills over the course of 40 years (i.e. over a lifetime of work), REGARDLESS of whether they have "insurance" or not
- 1 out of every 4 households will experience a family member with a major disability for an extended period (and even if you're lucky enough to have disability insurance, the drop in income and aforementioned medical bills hit hard)
Now I consider myself personally lucky enough to have a masters degree and six figure salary, however in my relatively short 12 year career in the private sector thus far, I and others have experienced the following:
Benefits Cut
- Pension
- Profit Sharing
- Discounted Stock Purchase (10-15% discount was eliminated).
- Reductions in employee match %'s on 401ks
- Longer vesting periods for 401ks
First world problems in my case perhaps? But I wonder how long do I even have before the hammer falls on me?
My first two jobs were as a statistician/data scientist; both have since been off-shored. Right or wrong I am surrounded in my current role by H1B visas, and a large part of my current role consists of managing offshore teams.
India and other countries are producing doctors, engineers, and computer scientists at 10x the rate the US is. I think we're in for further trouble ahead.
15
Living standards for the lower middle class have not kept pace for many decades. Why? It's not a lack of years spent studying sociology in college. It's simple economics: the price of labor goes down if you increase low-priced competition. And we have vastly increased the supply of less skilled competing labor for American companies. How? Unlimited (mostly illegal) immigration flows, and unlimited imports (which allows companies to move their production offshore). This benefits business owners and the well-off. But the lower middle class pay the price. Sending them all to college won't fix anything. It just adds to the enormous pile of wasted money, like our incredibly expensive health care that doesn't show up in better life expectancy.
7
I think a source of despair is an unrelenting sense of insecurity. What distinguishes the US from other wealthy countries is we have no 'floor' for people. If you fall off the mainstream economic path you can fall a long, long way relative to someone in France or Germany. Get laid off from your job and you will get an unemployment benefit equal to about a quarter of your normal paycheck - and you will lose your health insurance if you can't afford the full premium. Anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck is in economic freefall the day they lose their income.
Alternately, I think of my grandmother and the $9,000/month our family spent to care for her in a nursing home near the end of her life. She went into the home with $320,000 and burned through half of that in the year and a half until she passed away. The only reason she had that much money left to begin with was we cared for her at home for three years after she could no longer take care of herself.
The point being: Hardly anyone ever has the security that comes with feeling they have everything covered, that they have enough money. Will I be able to afford $15,000/year for health insurance if I’m unemployed for a long time? How long can I afford home health care, assisted living, or a nursing home until I’m at the mercy of America’s weak anti-poverty programs? I could have literally half a million bucks in the bank and it might not be enough – and most people don’t even have 1/10th of that.
12
Whether the rise of Fox and right wing talk hosts is a cause or a symptom of the despair might be impossible to determine. But those white working class people who only listen to or watch such outlets aren't finding much to hope for.
It would also be interesting to look at any differences between evangelicals and followers of other religions.
3
@Cayce Jones OH,YES,I'm sure that Fox News and right wing talk shows cause these real problems,and if I just listen to CNN INSTEAD ,my problems and despair will be fixed.
If only there was a democratic candidate that was trying to address these issues head on.
Oh wait there is but the corporations and centrists dems have been busy consolidating against him.
Proud that California came out to support him on super Tuesday
6
@Leo There were two, but Elizabeth Warren apparently had a likeability problem. As if the presidency is a competition for Miss Congeniality.
6
I found this article interesting and certainly used similar arguments to urge our son to go to college. But the experiences of the 45-54 aged college educated demographic are radically different than that of the millennials and Gen-Z's. People in the 45-54 age group were in college before the universities were financially gutted and more of the cost of education was passed along to students. I wonder how happy and successful this younger college educated demographic will be when they are 45-54 and compared to their non-college educated contemporaries.
2
Not just the health care industry sapping resources, but the military industrial complex must be considered. Not just as an enormous drain on resources but in keeping us constantly at war, changing perceptions about America as a peaceful and proud country to one of a disrespected warrior nation. The national psyche suffers.
I also wish the researchers had studied the influence of America's TV addiction and the media that encourages it. Even a cursory exposure shows that the middle classes and below are regarded as chumps subject to -- and deserving of -- routine digs about their failings. For an average of five hours, day in and day out.
4
The $trillions the US has spent on weapons since WW II seems mostly to have enticed it into trouble, and a toxic waste cleanup bill also in the $trillions.
Life expectancy at birth in the Roman Empire was only about 26 years. Now it is more than three times that in the healthiest countries. It is a long time to live without diverse interests and pursuits.
3
What did you think was going to happen as a result of Reagan's/GOP winning the war against the middle?
And please, no one needs to be told those that know less do less well. Those who know less make poorer choices.
55% of those who still smoke have a HS education or less, how do you think it will effect their health? If you think they don't know, you're wrong. These are the people who vote against themselves and for the GOP.
Do some real research - telling us the smarter and more affluent have fewer reasons to kill themselves is not ground breaking work
4
@shrinking food I know them,but many of them still vote Democrat to get welfare child support,and any other civil-service "social worker- covered-programs..." And that kind of help.
The increase in chronic pain is caused by the obesity epidemic. We should be seeing a decline in chronic pain, because the percentage of workers doing physical labor has gone down. Today many people are unable to enjoy life due to pain exacerbated by obesity, or the obesity itself makes them unable to enjoy the pastimes of yesteryear such as bowling, fishing, swimming, football, soccer and tennis--most of which were social. They stay home and watch inflammatory Youtube videos by hatemongers, or vile reality tv shows. They become mired in a culture of hate and paranoia and guess what, that's not good for your mental health. Neither Trump nor Obama nor any of the previous presidents have done anything to combat the obesity epidemic or encourage healthy lifestyles. Health insurance isn't health. The food and beverage companies are our enemies.
4
@Anne Well, Michelle Obama did, but you're right, nobody has stopped subsidizing the corn fructose industry. And all these activities you mention - where would you do them? You have to be able to afford the swimming pool or tennis court. Poor people in an country with inadequate welfare policies can't catch a break.
3
@Anne Those tv shows would not continue if people stopped watching them.I barely watch any TV shows any more after being fond of good TV shows many years ago..Now I only watch very old movies and some old tv,as about all new TV shows really stink. Network TV gave up on viewers like me,and I returned the compliment.
If you do one thing right you might have a tendency to do several things right. People who go to college were generally attentive, respectful good students in secondary school. At the very least they had good work habits, common sense and stable personalities. Unfortunately many many people who should be college bound aren't because of circumstances beyond their control. That is a terrible waste for everyone, and depressing.
1
Well... European countries are certainly not seeing their working-class citizens killing themselves with GUNS, that's for sure. Of the methods listed ("guns, drugs and alcohol") guns are the only method in which the purpose of use is to die (rather then for escapism that gets out of hand).
Start with the gun laws.
3
@Lex The "knife gangs"in England,even London,and rapists of little kids and women in Europe and EU countries are very prolific .I'll keep my firearm,thank you.--little old lady.
Unsafe food handling practices, too many prescription drugs that really don’t help anything. Smog, unsafe water, a medical industry instead of a health care society that helps people thrive. The over saturation from the media and the internet creating confusion and anxiety about everything, traffic, et al,. Then add in self deprecating behavior and disparities between class, What else did you think would happen?! Our race to have EVERYTHING is what is killing us not the lack of a college degree. If people felt that they had opportunity, had some encouragement I believe people would be more inclined not to kill them selves.
3
So much discussion on why the sudden Biden surge?? Here is is! So many depressed folks with little hope are desperate for a meaningful shift in their favor, for a sliver of hope, for someone to begin the process of retrieving the stolen greedy billions and redirecting resources back to the people and their just well-being. These long-suffering folks jumped to the ballot box, waited 7 hours to vote, are going to send Trump to the dust bin.
3
@Que Viva! --Unless all the "flyover states" that elected Trump like that he did what he promised to do,and vote him in again.
The 1/10 of 1 %. do not care. They believe the despairing people are responsible, have no entitlements, even the money the despairing people paid into the social security and medicare funds,, and self death is the price of failure.
4
This article defines the rightwing rot of the past 40 years. The country is not being managed for the benefit of the majority of its citizens. Rather the focus is on coddling the wealthy and accommodating corporate interests, which includes polluters, monopolists and the gun lobby. Meanwhile, social mobility in this country has practically ground to a halt and healthcare costs are potentially ruinous. No wonder people are giving up and jumping out of windows.
9
Wow, those sure are GORGEOUS graphs and the statistics are simply AMAZING!
I'd imagine that despair has grown for these people and will continue to do so. Much of it stems from actions that they took like voting out unions over cultural issues, right-to-work laws, voting Republican in national elections and elevating cultural issues to the point they eclipse economic ones completely.
Actions have consequences. And if you think the current occupant of the White House respects and cares about you? You've been fooled again.
So live with it.
5
Welcome to modern day capitalism. CEO's make 300x the avg worker's wage vs 20x in the 1970's. Inequity is up. Medical expenses are up. Lose your job, lose your health care. Workers have gigs not jobs, read: temporary workers, contract workers. 25% of workers have no sick days. College expenses are ridiculous. Retirement? Good luck. You wonder why there is so much despair...but no one wants to talk about it because everyone expects you to be happy, have the perfect Instagram/Facebook post. People are struggling. Admit it. It's a start.
12
So, David Leonhardt, which presidential candidate addresses these issues directly and will meet them head-on as President?
After publishing this today will you still maintain your centrist, status quo position? And by the way, ever wonder why so many Vermonters across the spectrum support Bernie Sanders? Think about it.
332
@Bill LaDue
I can tell you one thing with certainty: Trump won't.
And as much as I laud Bernie's goals, most of the people described in this article won't vote for him. Because rightly or wrongly, they regard him as a communist.
Now, if the Dems lose, we get Trump for four more years.
If you can tell me how Bernie will get the votes of the people described in the article, we'll be on to something. Bernie is having trouble getting the majority of Dems to vote for him. And no, theses voters are not all paid off by the "establishment".
19
@Bill LaDue
You ask fair questions about how different Democratic candidates may address the problems of working class Americans. But I and many others are afraid we first have to dig ourselves out of the giant hole of Trumpism. If Bernie loses to Trump in a closer contest, or fails to carry enough down ballot races, nothing much will change. Being angry and pointing by itself is not a governing strategy.
Also, 2020 is a critical year to win as many statehouses and governorships as possible ahead of congressional redistricting. Done to neutralize Republican gerrymandering or even advantage House Democrats (now legal), the aftereffects are incalculable for the next decade.
And need I mention the importance of potential SCOTUS openings?
I think some underestimate how much is possible with practically any Democrat in the presidency. Public sentiment has clearly shifted towards Bernie on healthcare, workers, and taxes. And I'd much rather get half a loaf than risk getting no loaf at all. A repeat of 2016 would be catastrophic.
18
@Jerseytime
The deaths of despair graph in this article doesn't start tilting upward at the beginning of Trump's administration. It rises up and up through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. For many people, electing Bernie Sanders is literally a matter of life and death. Bernie and Biden both have approximately the same lead on Trump in the polls, so your appeal to practicality really isn't based on much.
20
I am 78. I have a master's degree. I don't have diabetes or a heart condition. & I'm not a drug addict. I can't find a job & don't have enough to live on. I will have to kill myself if I run out of money, which is probable within the next 2 years. Just being realistic. I'v discovered that academic degrees don't necessarily give you an advantage.
408
@Jenifer Wolf
I am 78 and agree with you that it is difficult to find a job. At this age, our health becomes an issue and unpredictable. I am sorry for your predicament and hope that you can live without such despair. Under Republican administration we are expendable, they care only for the unborn. As the safety nets are being eliminated, people in your condition will suffer most.
171
@Jenifer Wolf I am very sorry about your situation. Please try to reach out for help. There may be sources of assistance available. I don't know if you've ever heard this song from the 1930s but it does say that we are not alone.
Too old to work, too old to work
Too old to work and too young to die.
Who will take care of you
How'll you get by
When you're too old to work
And you're too young to die.
You don't have to be alone in this and very sad that this is a common problem in this day and age. The education you have is a personal asset although not a financial one.
67
@Jenifer Wolf
Its not a question of educational degrees, it is the universal age discrimination that is mandated by HR departments across the nation. Most corporations consider it a legal liability to hire anyone over 50, and most corporations legally target over 50 age workers for layoffs to craft a younger and cheaper workforce. The laws against this type of discrimination are so weak and so universally ignored that they cannot be considered to exist. Add to that the fact that there are very few jobs of any type beyond minimum wage and the jobs that exist are targeting cheap young workers, it is a death sentence to age in this society.
How did it get this way? By planning and a concerted effort by both political parties to reengineer the domestic workforce to advantage global corporations. And it has worked! Corporations and their CEO's are making more money than at any time in history, and the average American worker has not had a functional raise in 40 years. And since the crash of 2008 the average pay for the American work force has been going down. Our leaders and their corporate friends have apparently decided to slowly starve us, and to quicken the pace of starvation once one turns 65.
But don't kill yourself. It is always better to attack outward rather than inward. There are a lot of places where a well thrown monkey wrench can still stop the gears of the system from turning. And burning down the system will make a lovely light.
180
Amazing article. We need to change our lifestyle, beliefs and folow our happiness.
2
The Chronic Pain that so many suffer from is a largely a result of anxiety, depression and stress -- not any underlying physical injury. It's very real, but it's what you would expect considering all the other indications of despair. Many people can get rid of their pain simply by reading the books of Dr. John Sarno.
5
The Silver Line Helpline is a support group in England and Wales. This is one of the first organizations to recognize and address the often devastating and truly sad effects of loneliness. I have nothing but admiration for Dame Esther Rantzen, founder of The Silver Line Helpline. She wrote: "What kind of society have we created when an articulate, intelligent woman feels her life is pointless, and she is a waste of space?" Isolation and its accompanying loneliness can lead someone to feel that they're just "a waste of space".
2
And the Left continuously keeps pushing for open borders, unrestricted immigration of low skilled workers who will compete for the same meager jobs that the lower class Americans have.
7
Besides all the “obvious” reasons listed in the research, there are two more overlooked. 1. Americans are so overweighted and unhealthy (compared with other developed counties and even developing countries). This eats into individual’s health, happiness and wallet every, single, moment. (A life carrying 20-40 extra pounds 24/7...) 2. Over spending. By standard of Asia or UK or Canada or France or Japan, Americans buy way too many stuff and over spend on almost everything...even people with high income are maxing out on their credit cards...
1
And the moment anyone tries to do anything about this issue, the powers that be, including and especially The New York Times, circles the wagons and beats them back into silence! This article makes me sad, not just because of the suffering on display with me fellow countymen, but because my own reaction at this point is "so what?" The people dying of despair apparently want it that way, based on their voting pattern and their other choices (guns, poor diet, drug use, etc.). Unfortunately, people (and our entire society by extension) often have to reach rock bottom before they will change. It's not pretty, but that's human nature.
4
Jack Welch. That person who was held up as an idol to all in business as the personification of how "it should be done", "maximizing shareholder value" at the expense of almost all else, the future, the feeling of pride among workers, innovation, and on and on. I could never understand why that man was held up as an example of how America should conduct business, as he probably bears far more responsibility for any single individual for the destruction of so much that was good about the working middle class in America. Don't think so? While I could list any number of things he promoted that turned employees into disposable commodities, I look to how his company showered him - and he embraced - some of the most extravagant retirement benefits any executive has ever enjoyed. How about $8,000 / month for dry cleaning and laundry? How about a sumptuous luxury apartment in NY paid for in full by the company? One can only wonder how a person who was otherwise vastly wealthy and claimed to do so much good for the economy could have embraced such lavish treatment. The guy should have been utterly embarrassed. Hardly a hero, more like a greedy egomaniac and a fraud.
11
Vote for Bernie, he focuses on policies to bring a change, not like other democrats who want to be just capitalist pleasers.
5
@Dean ...I agree,and I'll donate a trillion bucks to his campaign so illegal aliens proliferate and I can pay them pennies in wages.
Many commenters seem to have misread this article. It was pretty clear to me that the college degree factor was not intended to be a causal factor for unhappiness, but rather a convenient way to identify the social class that suffers from more misery. Some of you people need to go back to college to be able to follow an article like this.
2
@McFadden The population that suffers the most from misery are the isolated elderly. It's not a class issue. Loneliness, whether in the young or elderly (although the elderly are more prone) can cause an overwhelming sense of isolation and a feeling of worthlessness. That they are no longer a part of of anything. Just "taking up space."
"Back in my day...."
The problem is rather simple- We once lived in a world that was built on ideas and beliefs that could never last.
In The United States:
From about 1920 to about the year 2000 the world was changing for the better- for those who has everything to gain and not much to lose.
What happened?
In 2020, you really need to look around for that answer.
We have a -relatively weak- virus that is causing major fear spasms throughout the world. I really dread what we will all do once one of those viruses from those Hollywood movies does arrive. Can you imagine a world where people are dropping dead in the streets from a virus?
We -all of us- are so intoxicated with consuming debt that even China can't walk a straight line. The world is 250 trillion dollars in debt. Who's going to pay this bar tab?
Many White folks no longer feel as though they are in control. They no longer see people of color as though they need a helping hand to fight discrimination, but as a people that threaten their livelihood. See: Trump
One of my children- A teenage boy who is smart, good-looking and is popular in high school... (Yeah, he's one of those guys...) He told me recently that he fears for his world. He honestly doesn't believe "...things will get better..."
Climate change/Automation/Immigration/Political Ideologies and the fact that most of his friends have no idea what they want to be when they "grow up"...
Our "Working-Class Life" is just a canary in a coal mine...
1
Could somebody please pull the data on the following and report on it? Suicide rates of the working class as already reported vs. suicide rates of the enlisted military. The enlisted military is from the working class and very few of them have college degrees. They have the stress of the military and deployments, but they also have access to free health care, full time jobs that pay reasonably well, and a sense of connection with their employer.
6
One huge factor that is always ignored about the good old days is that the productive capacity of Europe and Japan was decimated after WWII. Europe also had to borrow huge sums of money from the US and the US arms industry also profited greatly. The lack of competition from Europe and Japan and wealth that the US acquired from WWII is primarily what created the healthy working class, not unionization.
1
It's not surprising people turn to drinking and substance abuse more when they struggle with depression and don't have medical insurance to get help or medication. An intensive outpatient therapy program will run well in excess of 10 grand without insurance. One month's fill of basic antidepressants without insurance will run you on the order of $200 or more. Get sick or injured and have no insurance? A trip to the ER will stick you with a bill starting around $5000. Don't pay it off and your credit is damaged. Then nobody wants to rent you a decent apartment or help you out with a loan. Want to further your opportunities with college? Tuition is roughly the same as buying a new car- each year. You struggle to find a job and when you do are worked into exhaustion to bring home a salary that is hardly covering rent let alone food. Pay off college debt in a couple years? How about twenty? And a huge percentage of Americans have no retirement savings. Pensions have gone away for most private businesses. You don't have enough in your paychecks to have basic safety margin in your savings let alone 401k investments. If things are expensive now how about when you retire? Wall Street's housing grab is putting home ownership out of reach. I watch whole neighborhoods in my city get eaten up by gentrification and new condos only wealthy people can afford and the rest get pushed out. It goes on and on. It is getting harder to survive.
8
The American market economy finds itself saddled with extra workers and paying to keep them alive. The market reacts by reducing their numbers. This is just the way markets work; it is part of the Invisible Hand.
The specific mechanisms and causal chains by which the Hand works its magic are complex, obscure, interrelated with each other, and frequently concealed or hidden from general view. But the general statement that markets tend to eliminate surpluses is still true, and so it remains true that markets are eliminating workers for whose labor there is a surplus.
Eliminating surplus workers when this is cheaper than retraining them and creating something for them to do is just the natural operation of the market. To stop this from happening, we must force the market to do unnatural things by applying external bribes and punishments to it. The market resists by funding forces that criticize government planning and social engineering as bad and socialistic and inevitably leading to Venezuela.
Big Tobacco used to dispute that smoking was unhealthy because the mechanisms by which smoking made cancer more probable were unknown and unproven. The market economy generates the same sort of defenses against accepting the statistics in this article as signs of a problem and reasons to act against the market. Whether the people involved know what they are doing or not, the Invisible Hand continues.
2
All true. So you would think folks as smart as the authors here would be supporting Bernie Sanders rather than joining the folks who are primarily responsible for the damage the article reports in attacking him. I guess agonizing over all this is easier than upsetting the dominant forces in the country?
3
I hope people understand that this is largely Republican policies at work, including those policies adopted by Democrats like Bill Clinton, and yes, Barack Obama.
If folks don't start voting, this spiral will continue. We need to take ownership of the government or it will be sold to the highest bidder. It's that simple.
4
Good article but the author doesn't differentiate between those who went to college because their families were from the middle or upper class and those who went to college on their own dime or on a scholarship. It is not education alone that distinguishes which citizens are despairing. Social class has become rigid social caste as the United States moved away from funding safety nets such as F.D.R.'s new deal and Johnson's Great Society. Reagan and friends accelerated the demise of our society by anti-union policies. Citizens United and dark money in PACs increased oligarchs ability to devastate our political process. Jefferson said there should be a revolution every 20 years; it seems we are due for one.
3
My dad raised a family of six on only his income, he was a inspector for the FAA in the fifties and sixties. Every family on my street (almost all WW2 vets) did the same. We were solidly middle class. We never went hungry.
2
Its almost as if we have a modern, post-industrial nation whose policy initiatives must be squeezed through a regressive, rural-based political system with a history of oppression and discrimination. But that would be crazy.
7
@Bill Man is that on the mark
Is it possible that the dysfunction is caused by substance abuse, rather than the substance abuse as a result of the dysfunction?
3
As college has become more imperative for a good job, it's also become stupidly expensive. When I went to college in the early 80's, my tuition, room and board for a year was $3000. My son just graduated from the same school--$19,000 per year. My 401(k) hasn't grown anything like that.
3
@Chris When I attended college in the early 1950s, I paid 300 in my first year and it increased to 500 for my senior year. And yhe third Avenue el im NYC cost five cents. I earned most of it with ummer work.
1
This headline from yesterday's Axios: Health care stocks surge after Biden wins.
Another 4 years of no solutions and no progress, whether Trump or Biden. Until people in this country wake up and vote for change, it is going to get much worse. People with a college degree will soon be suffering as well, since there is no ceiling on the profits the healthcare industry will continue to demand.
7
I really do not think this makes sense all the time when people generally compare the United States to other developed western countries. America was built on capitalism which also contributes to the high inequality rate in the USA and I believe people pursuing the American dream are aware of this!
I grew up in a Midwestern city where a unionized meat packing plant was one of the largest employers. Those blue collar workers earned a good living. They had nice homes, drove late-model cars, often had a boat and enjoyed paid vacations.
Forty years later the plant is still there, but now it's a low-wage, non-union, Chinese-owned subsidiary with a history of ICE raids.
Part of the blame for this has to be on American consumers who chase the lowest price for everything, regardless of the actual cost.
9
@Randy I think everyone chases the lowest price, not just Americans. And I don't think you're going to be able to stop people from doing that. It's going to take government regulation and enforced standards.
4
Not everyone is cut out for college, and there are all kinds of college graduates just barely scraping by. Why no mention of trade schools? We need carpenters, welders, plumbers, truck drivers, iron workers, electricians, and more. Trade schools are cheaper, certifications from them take less time, and many if not most of the jobs in those trades are high wage, union jobs.
3
@Patti O'Connor Union jobs are mostly a thing of the past--your info is a bit dated there. And those trade schools aren't cheap.
@Chris Show me a trade school that costs roughly $100K for a four-year program. My neighbor just finished a 6-month welding program at the local community college and had a full-time job with great wages and benefits lined up before graduating. Unions may not be as prevalent as they used to be, but they're not dead yet.
3
This is everything Sanders is literally shouting about for the last several years. Free public education, a higher minimum salary and much, much better healthcare. What does it say about people who either choose to not believe what he is saying or denying or discounting the proposals?
We keep complaining that Trump voters are voting against their best interests and famously called "deplorables" but what about Democrats and Independents who do the same?
8
Inequalities and lack of social mobility are greatest in the US and UK. This is by design, not accident, and is the result of being conned since Reagan and Thatcher times into believing that the 'free market' - to which read socialism for the rich - is good for the masses. It isn't, and plays out in an excess of people dying as they have done in the continuing period of austerity here in the UK, as well as a great loss in wellbeing and productivity.
4
Very discouraging, yet some people refuse education when they have the opportunity. A case in point: a bright young man who helps his father with my lawn. He had a full four year scholarship but instead got a two year associate degree after deciding to become an electrical lineman. Now that is a fine and honorable job, but why not finish his education before making this decision that will affect the remainder of his life? On the plus side, his employer has good benefits.
Great article. It isn't by accident that the divide is happening. The taxation policies enacted over the last 20 years are specific and cruel and targeted at creating a wealth divide, ensuring that money flows from the poor to the rich.
And of course it's not just the money that flows upwards, but all the good things in life, and this study shows - marriage, happines, social belonging. That's what 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' has brought, a bunch of freeloading billionaires who feel happy when they inflict pain.
Time for a change, anyone?
4
My parents were able to put five children through college with no debt. On a school teacher's salary and a nurse's part time salary they were able to buy an enormous home in the country (yes, it had to be totally renovated, but it was liveable). Money was tight but we had plenty and felt well provided for.
My parents owned four homes, each of which was sold for a significant profit (because they worked their hearts out restoring, renovating, beautifying them).They sold their first home for such a profit that they bought the house in the country outright, so no mortgage.
My husband and I have four degrees between us and we work nine jobs between us (yes really). I teach full time, tutor, teach summer school, and am an AP reader. My husband coaches squash at one school, tennis at another, subs, is a tennis pro at a club and gives private lessons on the side. And we cannot provide for two children what my parents did for five. We won't own our single home for seven more years; we will have taken on staggering debt to pay for college. Yet we do not squander money ever. We have saved a great deal for retirement, only buy what we can pay for, and do not believe in debt, but at the rate this president is going, there will be nothing in our retirement fund.
I'm a lifelong thrift store buyer, fix-it-upper, do-without-er. This is the reality this nation has created. And some of us are at the point of exploding with being fed up.
This isn't sustainable. It's inhumane and obscene.
13
I can shed a little context here. When my parents bought there first house in 1956 in Mountain View, it cost 16,500. Virtually all the dads on the street were veterans. The man across the street was a milk man, as pedestrian a job as you could think of, but he could buy that house. I just looked up his house on Zillow and it is estimated at over $2M. If the job of milk man even existed anymore, where could he afford to live, let alone buy?
8
The visualizations show the American oligarchy has accelerating control over those who don't have college degrees. The message seems to be: certify that you are useful to industry or else.
1
So where are the numbers for 2018 and 2019, so we can see if Trump has made things better or worse? He and Sanders certainly know how to channel the anger, but that doesn't mean they have working solutions.
"...executives often see low-wage workers not as colleagues but as expenses."
But all those corporate press releases. "Our people are our greatest asset." Do you mean they were all lies?
3
Many other socio-economic studies which compare the US to Western European countries, the US does relatively poorly across a wide number of indicators - not just select death rates for certain economic levels and education. It is the whole social system which is not providing value to American society.
I think Sanders is saying this system is not working for the US - primarily for the under 50 year old segment as per this study.
If you are doing OK - you won't vote for Sanders as he is stating comments which result in uncomfortable answers for American society about their so called American dream (or nightmare for many).
3
It says something about how corporations look at workers when they switched from having "Personnel Departments" to "Human Resources".
To corporations, education just means training workers for their job openings as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Anything that might expand or enrich the person's mind is looked at as useless fluff.
6
This is occurring, due to the fact that the type of person their parents were, and the fact that the culture shifted about 50 years ago. I had my two children, a year apart starting in 1972, in a small town, mostly white at the time, except for a few adopted children of mixed races, all adopted by a rural family. The religion of these people was for the most part, Lutheran, Evangelical, and Mennonite, and a few other small churches. The invention of the birth control pill, a godsend at the time, gave females the ability to go get a mostly low paying job, go back to college, vocational school, etc. Since there wasn't daycare except in homes or with relatives, most women just stayed home and raised their own children. At the time, these were all married women, as welfare was just coming into the picture, so a divorced female would have no support, if she became divorced. As females, got their freedom away from the home, they also started to opt out of their marriages as well. More college, vocational school, and welfare, helped them be able to do this, because the cost of living at that time, was low, like $80 for rent, gas was $.39 a gallon, etc. This happened quickly, upset the balance of the children, who were left alone a lot, which you can do in a small town, and it was the beginning of the end for the nurturing, and support that children needed to insure emotional security, and doing well in school. Television became the parent, and role model, and here we are.
2
@MaryKayKlassen I worked the whole timewe were raising our only child. TV was certainly not his parent. Our Sundays were family days: gardening, hiking, visiting family and friends, making a nice meal, paying with the dog. No church. He is now a gainfully employed recent college grad, living in an apartment with a friend. In short, so at a success. I'm not sure I get your point, but I sure disproved it if you were putting down working moms.
1
@karen We have had a lot of teachers in our family. My son gave up the career in 2000, as he didn't want to be a social worker and that is what the job has become. My husband was a special education teacher for about 25 years, and two of our friends taught in our small town school, for 4 decades, one math, and science, and the other EMR. Both of them have said for over 2 decades, that the kids coming into junior high were less, and less academically inclined. A large part of that has been the culture of that age of television, digital media, working mothers, many single ones, and divorce. Not all kids suffer because of a single parent, or a working mother, but depending on the emotional state of the mother, and how many children she has in her home, can have a lot to do with the self esteem, of her children, and their ability to navigate daily life, and even want to be in school, or study much. As almost all states have exponentially increased funding per student across the country, academic scores have gone the other way, down in math, and reading, whether inner cities, suburbs, small towns, etc. In Switzerland, many children still have either a stay at home parent, father, or mother, or the mother works just part time. They seem to believe that is best for especially small children. For those that want, or need childcare, it is prorated according to income, so all can have it.
2
@MaryKayKlassen Thank you MaryKay, yours is a clear and true voice. [Karen, she wasn't putting down working moms. The opposite.]
Many corporations do not treat people like human beings. Often, they will not give workers more than 35 hours per week, so they do not have to pay any benefits. Often, they will not give people a standard weekly schedule but change it up depending on how busy they are (I'm thinking of retail). And yet, now corporations are somehow considered to have the right to "freedom of speech," as if they are human beings. When laws are broken, there is no person to blame, it is just the corporation. It is just about the financial report for the most recent quarter that they can report to influence the stock market, and they often cheat to have higher numbers. We need to stop treating corporations like people, and make corporations start treating people as the valuable human beings they are.
4
In 2018, moderate Democrats flipped a net of 40 Republican seats to take control of the House. They did so by appealing to swing voters—independents, suburban women and moderate Republicans.
They focused on kitchen-table issues important to those voters, while avoiding grandiose schemes with fancy names, and divisive cultural issues that would turn them off. In other words, they were credible.
Since winning the House, the Democrats have passed over 400 pieces of legislation, among them 50 big bills covering all the major Democratic issues.
Of course, the Far Left always wants to claim the moral high ground, so they dismiss such a "big tent" strategy as a sell-out to the "establishment" and big corporations. But in politics, as in life, the proof is in the pudding.
5
What changed to create this problem? Our laws changed. Corporations were allowed to use low wage labor from countries with limitless human rights violations. Companies were allowed to outsource and consider regular workers freelance so they don’t have to provide basic benefits. The United States sold out their own working class in favor of corporate profit and then wonder why we have Trump.
Perhaps we need another Black Plague. When the dust settled there were so few working class left that they could charge a premium for their labor and the nobles couldn’t argue as there was no alternative but to pay or do the job themselves.
5
Americans vote to be punished. Perhaps they are masochists, perhaps they are victims of cults. It is up to the people in places where elections occur to make wise choices. For the past 50 years Americans have consistently voted for people who any rational person could see would work only for the wealthy. Phrases like "it's the economy stupid" have been the refrain. Well David, the economy is what people care about, not suicide deaths or overdoses.
The NYTs is most concerned with Wall Street and the market.
3
College degrees alone are not a magic bullet--
it's necessary for there to be an abundance of decent-paying jobs and access to good healthcare.
3
It is angering that the problems Black people have dealt with for generations are suddenly urgent and catastrophic when white people are impacted. Preserving wealth and ever narrowing white privilege are why life is so hard for so many in the U.S. What are we going to do about it?
1
Assuming anything in The New York Times is not fake news - a big assumption, the problem is not government related, as liberal media always try and make everything under Trump, the problem in the US is cultural.
People make their own decisions. Of course liberals lover the believe, falsely, that government always has all the answers, which could not be further from the truth. Unfortunately, many people succumb to peer pressure, just look at most people who smoke.
Plan your education, marry very carefully, ignore peer pressure, plan your work career - and you are almost certainly not going to run into the problems outlined in this article.
2
@john sloane Your advice actually boils down to choose your parents wisely. Not possible, I'm afraid.
5
Driving productivity to everhhas driven workers
David Leonhardt, tell us please how Joe Biden's policies will address these calamitous conditions? Does anyone know the proposed policies of our presumptive nominee?
5
@Barry HIs speech last election night detailed a lot of progessive plans' Please read it'
Makes a great case for Democratic Socialism! Unregulated heartless, libertarian capitalism is a killer; profits over the needs of people is always a poor choice. Funny how Americans fear Medicare for All when it could help millions of people get the comprehensive care they need and deserve. It's a no-brainer. Sadly, Americans fear-driven allegiance to a system that doesn't value human beings demonstrates a level of ignorance that doesn't bode well for the future of the country. And if Mafia-Don gets re-elected, expect the level of anxiety and despair to skyrocket. Not a pretty picture.
4
As long as K Street and Wall Street control the government, i.e. write the bills that become laws designed tp protect and increase their profits, life for the middle class and the struggling poor will just get worse and worse. There may come a time when the people will have no choice but to resort to violence against the 0.1% and their stooges. Biden won't change much. He is a "gradualist" just talking out the both sides of his mouth. Only Bernie tells it like it is. Unfortunately I will have to hold my nose and for Joe just like I had to for smug Hillary.
3
Many comments in the last weeks always include a shout out to the preferred candidate, and the doom we will face because this or that person wasn't selected. As if the messiah is going to save us all. Readers blame the Times for not supporting this or that messiah. It's not going to get better until people stop this political warfare, and makes for really boring reading.
1
Get off your devices including television. Quiet your mind. Despair is promoted through these outlets stay away.
1
@fme Funny you should say that! Every week for one or two evenings I have a "No tech" evening where I catch up on my reading...with a real book! It's very refreshing.
I also quit Facebook for the most part. I felt it was causing me anxiety and depression I didn't need.
1
@fme Yes. turning the TV off will certainly help cure illnesses for uninsured Americans and pay the rent for those in perilous financial circumstances.
Excellent suggestion!
2
@Tim.. Trump does despise you. He just does a fine job of mouthing the words you wish to hear.
5
I think what killing the so-called “working class” is their continuing votes against their own self interest. Whether voting for republicans, voting against union representation, against the ACA (Obama Care), against a fair tax on the wealthy and keeping anti working class people like Mitch McConnell in office. Most of their problems are self inflicted.
3
@Bob McFeeters tough love, but I agree. Add this: refusal to move to a better place with better prospects. And this: continuing expectations that "the jobs will come back," in spite of 40 years of evidence that they will not. And this: having children one knows one cannot properly provide for.
1
@Bob McFeeters MANY VOTERS DO V0TE THEIR INTERESTS IN RACISM,, ETC
The only good Socialism is Corporate Socialism.
Socialize costs. Privatize Profits. MAGA.
2
@gratis eat the rich.
American culture provides little opportunity for people, especially working-class people and non-college educated people, to find meaning and purpose in life. Corporate American promotes the acquisition of material things and the money necessary to buy them with as the road to happiness when, in fact, happiness lies in a completely different direction. It suggests that sex and vicarious violence (check out Hollywood's offerings and professional sports) are among the most satisfying experiences one can have. A liberal arts education opens people's minds to interests and activities that can provide life-long satisfaction. The visual and performing arts, literature, philosophy are avenues to a better understanding life and how to create one's own meaning and purpose. Sex and loud, obnoxiously loud music, and professional sports are not the kinds of experiences that lead to a deep satisfaction of life. Look at the Superbowl half-time show to see what I mean. Work you tail off, buy a lot of stuff, and participate in mass cultural activities! Despair is not surperising.
3
@Mark You are right on the mark. (sorry about that) I don't understand myself, what is with the NYT. Biden is from Delaware the corporate capital of the world. He is not going to challenge the corporate aristocracy. And as you mention Bernie is advocating what this article is pointing out that needs to take place, oh that's right human kindness. It funny how something so simple can be made so complicated. I think it was Yuval Harhari who said "never discount human stupidity".
2
this format, where the graphic changes as you scroll down
am i the only person who finds it counter productive ?
5
Advertising of distilled spirits on TV and radio began in 1996.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/08/business/liquor-industry-ends-its-ad-ban-in-broadcasting.html
2
But, hey, these people have anti-abortion politics, homophobia, and guns to make them feel better about themselves.
1
why is this study only about White people? Are Black Americans, Asian Americans, etc. NOT American?
All of the misery of low skill citizens is aggravated by large scale immigration of low skill folk from other countries. Why is this so hard to understand? Just shut down immigration of uneducated English-illiterate people and watch the income/health/morale/status of the low skill citizens quickly improve.
4
How you can write this Mr. Leonhardt, and trash Bernie Sanders and the Green New Deal the way you and your paper do, is beyond me, it's a complete intellectual disconnect.
Vote for Joe Biden, who has been happy and comfortable as the corporate Senator from Delaware for most of the Neoliberal period which has intensified these findings.
It's an outrage, Mr. Leonhrdt.
3
@William Neil
Yes, it is an outrage! NYT can't try to cover itself NOW. Super Tuesday was LAST week. How long have they been sitting on this article? This is death (literally) by a thousand cuts. Letting them off the hook, letting them do this, 'too little, too late' stuff that only manages to help them preserve their credibility is what has LED to the abysmal conditions our exploited and under-represented working class face. It's unethical.
1
Just keep voting Republican America!
3
No worries folks, Biden's on it. You know he's got big plans in store. Oh, wait, what's his message? He said nothing will fundamentally change? Oh, I see . . .
2
@Jeremiah Crotser
Maybe Hunter will get a raise, LOL.
And the mainstream media--including The Times--wonders why Bernie Sanders and his supporters are "angry". Folks should see how the other half--er majority--live.
2
They are a huge vote blocking so have no one to blame but themselves. Reagan decimated their lives and they'd still hang his portrait in their family room. Anyone making less than 150k a year that does not base their vote solely on their own Economic self-interests is a fool.
1
Why is a college education the NY times answer to everything? Not once does this article mention trade schools. Give me brake NY Times. This is why the elites always need a deplorable handyman around, the elites are useless in domestic settings.
5
And who is the only leading candidate who is trying to fix this problem? Sanders. Who is trying to keep it just the way it is? Biden. Who is the NYT pushing or demeaning at every opportunity? Yes, we can see through you.
2
Good article. Getting to the dark side of our “liberal economic order”. I’m on board with one payer health care. But our problem was created by the ECONOMISTS! Not the medical profession. It was economists, whispering in the ears of politicians, while lobbyists greased the palm, telling Congress over and over: we need more and more workers and consumers to “make the economy grow”! All together now. Everyone repeat.
It’s the economists and their brain dead orthodoxies about constructing a “liberal economic order” – which isn’t very liberal—Forcing massive population increase—we never asked for it! - driving down wages and generating vicious job competition for folks without a degree, even while outsourcing whole industries. What did they expect? Its an asinine plan for governing a nation.
Labor unions? They have no power without leverage. Economists don’t like tight labor markets.
Americans used to do basic jobs. They could support their families. They had pride in their work, and communities. They weren’t depressed, committing suicide, or having children out of wedlock.
But economists, politicians, academics, lobbyists—the open border gang-- ganged up and destroyed their livelihood! And then along comes Trump and puts his finger on the pain. No wonder we’re saddled with him.
And the solution? Send everyone to college? Give me a break! Then who’s going to do the real work? I think we can guess.
179
@jonette chistian why exactly do you think this is liberal economic order? this status quo is the exact opposite of the bernie campaign. vote for change.
and what do you think conservative economic order looks like if not this? this is right to work in action, no labor unions, no worker rights. all the money goes to the top of companies and shareholders. it'll trickle down any day now.
35
@Maggie If you think providing a safety net, universal healthcare, enacting workers rights, educating the future generations without crippling debt, etc... is all change for change sake i don't know what to tell you.
or how you can equate that with trump's exploitation.
maybe bernie's plans will meet to much opposition to see the light of day, but joe biden's corporate sponsors won't let him even think about changing the status quo.
28
@jonette chistian The Chicago School of economists did help to create today's societal problems through their influence on our elected plutocrats/politicians. Other economists certainly did not.
10
It's too bad that this study didn't include those with humongous college debt and then in spite of that never got a job that could help them manage their payment.
I have heard so many college graduates who thought they'd be able to get a good job but who were unable to leave their parent's basement because they had to pay their loan back without managing to get a college educated job.
Just look around you and you'll see billboards, ads on TV and magazines offering over the web schools. These people were given school loans which had to be paid back whether they managed to get a good job or not.
Our country has become rife with thieves that are willing to swindle anyone with a dream. And we are being led by the crook-in-chief Trump.
1
@sheila Nobody "gives" you a loan. You fill out the paperwork and apply. That's how it works. The problem with those in humongous debt is they can't do simple math or understand basic English. What do they think the word LOAN means? Those going to colleges of any kind need to look at the cost of school versus the wages paid and employment opportunities available. Make some phone calls, do an internet search. If you can all download a you-tube video or use any other social media platform you can look up info on the internet. Oh, my bad, I'm actually thinking they should use those critical thinking skills they were supposed to learn in high school.
If this isn't a study that promotes the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, I don't know what is.
This country is a horrible country. It is that way because of its stress on unhelpful liberties (the 2nd Amendment and laissez- faire capitalism) which really work against the welfare of the general population.
We may be a capitalistic society, but capitalism definitely requires rules and constraints which will allow it to work in a harmonious manner for society.
There is one man, Bernie Sanders, who is trying his best to address these national faults and make life better for all in the nation, but once again the population is too stupid or too greedy to heed his message. Instead we will likely opt for Ole Status Quo Joe.
580
@Tom Krebsbach Again, no way someone with "socialist" as part of his identification gets elected by a majority of this country; there simply are not enough young radical Bernie bros. to make it happen (if indeed, they all bothered to show up to vote).
"Ole Status Quo Joe" does have experience actually getting things done (even if some of them in hindsight were bad compromises in exchange for good) and is trusted, felt to be genuinely sincere, and open-minded.
Elizabeth Warren came from humble beginnings and is not a Harvard or Establishment elite, who has many of Bernie's good ideas backed by better math and without his baggage.
She and Joe are the best chance to put a dent in the corruption in this country which is making people sick, sometimes to death, at least until the Almighty rights it all with Armaggedon.
36
@Truth at Last
"Elizabeth Warren came from humble beginnings and is not a Harvard or Establishment elite...
I guess you missed the part about Warren being a professor at Harvard. I'm cool with that. But to say she is not part of the elite is a stretch.
For the record, I am not young. Although I wish I was. I don't know if that disqualifies me from being a "Bro" or not. But I do support Sanders and his political movement.
37
@Truth at Last
Hear, hear! Elizabeth Warren stands for the working people of our country and offers the same policies as Bernie Sanders, but better plans and better math, yet the Bernie bro's are favoring Bernie's incomplete plans and his socialist moniker for reasons we can only guess at. And the Bros are totally hung up on wrecking the Democratic party and trying to rebuild it from the ground up. Bernie and his droogs sell themselves as "socialists"even though they really aren't and even though much of the electorate is terrified at the thought of living in a socialist government.
Bernie and his bros should ask themselves how to help the working people without scaring them or doing the unthinkable -- vote for a woman.
19
Fitzgerald was prescient in the last line of THE GREAT GATSBY when he said, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Fitzgerald was watching the greed and excess of the corporations of the 1920's corrupt an entire generation. In a time before the Great Depression and the social reforms of the New Deal, the landscape for the working class was as bleak as the Valley of Ashes.
Now we seem to have circled back to that global tipping point. Either from a pandemic or climate change or international conflagration, we seem to be heading to a moment of reckoning. The real question is whether we have any vision or leadership commensurate to that of an FDR to steer us to some future prosperity.
1
This is a very interesting and concerning article. The charts depicting death rates over time capture the issue in one clear graphic and it is a disturbing trend.
I'm bothered by the later graphs that suggest these trends are the result of some changes in social structure, status, or meaning. These graphs begin at earlier time points and are misleading comparisons to the death rate data. For example, look at the church attendance graph which begins in 1975 (death rate graph begins in 1992). Why is church attendance displayed like this? It demonstrates that most of the separation between college grads and non-college grads in church attendance occurred from 1975-1995. By 1992 the two groups already have much different church attendance rates. If the church attendance graph started in 1992, it would appear both groups declined at a similar rate but started at a different point. In other words, church attendance does not appear to be a causative factor. It's a strange and misleading presentation of the data.
3
This is what people voted for since Reagan. Americans wanted this. Small government, low regulation, low taxes. Even the Dems are all for this. Which means corporations step into the power vacuum, increasing work and hours, and profits, while decreasing the percentage of wages the workers get. Decreasing the quality of the infrastructure by paying less taxes, by getting rid of regulations, by lessening the policing done on them, with legislation allowing them to police themselves. Now Americans are depressed and all from their own choices. What a sad sad story.
Well, at least they are not like socialist Scandinavia, you know, Happiest Countries on Earth. Socialist, so no need to look at how they do things. None at all.
4
So called "Liberals" often acknowledges the negative impact of income and wealth disparity but seldom embrace the obvious solutions. Bernie Sanders offers solutions to the problems mentioned in this article but his policies are constantly attacked as "unrealistic" or "un-american". The oligarchy reign supreme in America. Perhaps America deserves its fate.
6
Did Nikki Haley read this piece? Unbridled capitalism will inevitably have some negative effects. The advantages of capitalism are ubiquitous, but will conservatives like Haley have the courage to acknowledge the shortcomings?
The problems these people face are largely due to a political structure which fails to take them into consideration. That political structure is due to a campaign finance system which leverages the power of the wealthy who can influence it through large donations. The campaign finance system is due to the Citizens United decision by a Republican dominated Supreme Court and Republican congresses which do not wish to change it. Those Republican congresses were put there by the people who are affected by these problems
5
Statistics like this tell us there is a problem. It doesn't show the causes.
I would argue we should look at the chemicals and poor food that are poorly regulated. There are few regulations on what can be included especially in fast foods (that people at low incomes eat more of.)
I have a sick son with a serious health issue: I have learned how diet and vitamins (and avoidance of chemicals) can have a major impact -- especially when one has genetic defects that don't allow us to naturally detox well.
We allow our agribusiness to slowly poison us -- so those with detox defects in our genetics -- will become sick, including mentally.
I wish the NY Times would cover more details on this.
Unfortunately this falls under alternative healthy (including MDs such as Dr. Brownstein, and Dr. Amy Meyers) They describe how our medical profession has a blind eye to anything that isn't from a pharmaceutical company. (My son's primary care physician, an MD in internal medicine, explained to me -- "I don't know this area, it was not covered in medical school).
How can we have public healthcare for all, while ignoring this important area.
Perhaps David Brooks will read this column as he contemplates how many Americans consider whether the establishment deserves one more chance. Perhaps Joe Biden will address these issues in ways that persuade us to once again embrace that potentially devastatingly costly emotion: hope. Despite the best efforts of Obama and Biden, too many Americans didn't get what they needed in that duo's 8 year term that began with hope. The Republican, Democratic, and Business Establishment makes other things (greed, what big money can buy, how seats in Congress may be kept) a higher priority. And Joe is taking their money instead of taking the path chosen by Bernie and Elizabeth.
2
Unfettered capitalism doesn't work. It privledges profits over the health and well-being of people. The democratic socialist movement isn't about getting free-stuff without having to work hard. It is about the establishment of a social safety net, a social contract. Is there a way to enjoy economic growth and prosperity that comes from capitalism while still providing for social/emotional/spiritual needs of our citizens? I hope this alarming data will propel some thought...or even policy change.
6
This is the house built by the DLC\Clinton wing and the Rs since Reagan. Strip mine US industry through take overs and tear companies apart. Remove the controls on the financial services industry with GLB, removing or circumventing usury laws and Bidens awful bankruptcy bill. Allow massive consolidation of media ownership. Promote incarceration and of course bad trade deals to make the US a shell. Hence the drive to prevent Sanders by the Ds as they do not want the game changed anymore than the Rs do. Time for a change and I would say a new progressive party. Or soon that despair may turn to anger and ....
4
The charts show that the spread between the haves and have nots expanded during the Great Recessions' so called recovery. If you're an educated IT worker in San Francisco - wow - you got the recovery of recoveries! If you're an autoworker in Youngstown, OH, you're saying "what recovery?!"
It's the recovery where the Democrats lost traction. One candidate/party comes to your factory town (or former factory town) and not only promises to implement policies to secure your job (regardless as to whether those promises can be kept), but to also bring back the jobs that were lost. The other candidate/party wags its finger at you for not having gone to college. So, who are you going to vote for?
Sadly, when then candidate Barack Obama made his "clutcher" comment, many missed his point that the Democratic Party ignores the working class at its peril.
The haves, or what we seem to almost have now, the Ruling Class, needs to make post secondary education more obtainable. If that happens, with time, perhaps the other obstacle, the sometimes working class suspicion/contempt for higher education will get turned down a notch or two.
2
All this data misses the most salient data point: population. A surging population lowers wages both domestic and foreign. As everyone on the very Left's favorite example Denmark illustrates, with a relatively stable population, wages increase markedly. Since 1970, Denmark's population has increased only about 15%. The US's about 60%, We have also taken in 60M, or 20% of the world's refugees, which culturally can be great, but increases the competition for native born, especially those without a degree. It's no wonder that Trump's anti-immigrant rants and policies have resonance. However, we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. With climate change, global refugees will increase, and the US cannot be humanity's only safe refuge. It's not a question of defining the problem, it's a question of finding a common solution. We used to have welfare capitalism, and corporations willingly, after much push back from the likes of the working man and TR, for a 40 hour working week, higher wages, defined pensions, and health care. Since 50% of all Americans still work for large corporations, we must bring them back into the collective welfare conversation. American multinationals still control as much of global finance as they did in 1945, however they are not sharing it with the American worker. Their taxes need to increase and so do their sharing of income.
7
Too many companies focus on making a quick buck by ripping off or exploiting ordinary Americans. I also work in the "gig economy," because it was my only option after a layoff. Your hours and pay are very uneven. Sometimes, I feel desperate, and many people who feel this way self-abuse with drugs, alcohol and/or food. I manage to stay healthy through sheer will power alone. I have little support system. Our healthcare system WASTES money compared to all other countries' healthcare systems with either the same or worse outcomes. We are not making people healthier by spending more per capita on their care. We are doing worse than Canada, France, etc. It's all designed to boost profits for the companies involved, and they love billing Medicare most of all. Guess what...you pay for that: your taxes, your healthcare costs in your paychecks, etc. The healthcare industry has frightened people with the "bogeyman" of "socialized medicine" for years. Let's just talk about new ideas and find solutions.
4
I don't think this article is complete without a discussion of the opioid crisis. It has hit the United States particularly hard and its abuse has in large part not be driven by despair, but been responsible for creating despair. Unless the impacts of opioid abuse are controlled for, I'm not sure one can accurately draw the broader conclusions the authors do.
3
I don't think it's the economic value of a bachelor's degree that matters, but the family structure, expectations, and actual education gained getting that degree that are important.
Plenty of working class, non-degree jobs pay well. It's something deeper.
3
The animation is too fast to really be able to derive anything from it. Just because your programmers "can" doesn't mean they "should". The static charts and text are much more useful and informative.
2
The core reason for despair among the working class is from hyper-capitalism. No longer parried by unions, the powerful corporations for decades extracted every ounce of blood and benefits from ALL non-executive workers, not only from the working class. This is a solid trend, irrespective of whether an employee was white-collar, blue-collar, or no-collar -- irrespective of one's education, area of the country, age/sex/race, or any other demographic criteria.
Only "top management" benefited. Everyone else effectively lost wages, benefits, and their ability to control their working future.
This attack on all workers mostly hurt those at the bottom - those without a college education.
This left people near the bottom of our economy with low resiliency, ability to tolerate, access to care, education, support, family ...
With Americans having low access to quality healthcare (because good healthcare is too expensive and only available near largish cities), these most depressed and "under attack" workers turned to self-harm such as over-eating, substance abuse, addictive behaviors (extreme shopping, sex, dieting), etc.
Our governments tried to help by adding safety nets. However corporations undid the govt's help by squeezing us faster & stronger than the safety nets could help.
A few corporations were ethical. Many were not. And most were unfair.
Now, Citizens United gave corporations power greater than ours.
They control our nations and our lives. They are the survivors.
3
So perhaps Elizabeth Warren could become majority leader in the Senate. She still has plans to address these matters.
1
Having lived for the last 15 years in New Zealand, there is one other difference here (aside from the all important access to healthcare. Work is important here, but people do not define themselves by it.
In addition, the work/life balance is completely out of whack in the US.
Americans are work and career obsessed. I left the LA TV business and work in a public library here in New Zealand. I get five weeks of paid vacation a year and I get sufficient sick leave. I don't have a high-flying career, but I have a small roof over my head and I have a life.
8
@Bill I agree with you and have enjoyed a similar life and career. Unmentioned in the article is the definition of a good life as propagated in American popular culture. Just look at some of the most popular TV shows and moves in recent times - so many depict people as heroes when they spend their lives at their desk trying to tackle this or that problem or injustice. Spending any time at leisure is almost frowned upon as evidence of a person not taking their career and work seriously. How often have you seen people shown at their desks with sleeves rolled up, lat at night with empty food containers on their desk, slaving away? I always felt sorry for people who buy this image of happiness in life.
2
@Bill : NZ pays a living wage, too.
Americans are not worked and career obsessed. They are obsessed with eating and having a place to live.
1
To the authors, could you help me understand the statistics? Is the death rate as quoted (say 100 per 100000 at age X) the cumulative deaths up to that age, or is it the number of deaths in that year for that age? If it is the former, it is really bad. If it is the latter, then the cumulative impact could be approaching 3% to 5% of a given generation. That is devastating.
This is interesting data backed up by a narrative that intuitively makes sense. However, I wonder how much this data is skewed by the uptick in deaths from opioids over approximately the same time period. According to the authors' definition, death from opioid overdose counts as a "death of despair." But developing (and dying of) addiction does not necessarily mean that someone was unhappy before they tried opioids.
2
Ronald Reagan declared war on the working poor in this country. When do the history books just come out and say it? If you lived through the period and saw how the Republican Party set the wheels in motion to destroy millions of lives through substandard pay and no necessary health insurance, all of this is frankly gilding issues most of us have known for three decades.
Now it has caught up with the United States and it is quite obvious the country is in a massive death spiral regarding it's working poor.
And we are running out of disposable people. The arrogance of this country since 1980 is unmatched in the rest of the developed world. No more faking it--we have been killing our own for the sake of bequeathing a second gilded age in this country.
Yet so many Americans live in a state of denial. It is real.
16
You can blame the decline of the middle class directly to the euphemistically-named 'Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act' of 2005. It has created a debtor class beholden to credit card and loansharking companies, as well as health care/insurance companies. That law eliminated the "fresh start" that bankruptcy is designed to give to consumers who are no longer able to pay their bills as they become due, thus eliminating any bargaining power that the consumers may have had.
The two main sources of debt driving consumers into bankruptcy are: health care bills and credit card debt (often as a result of health care bills).
Ridiculously, a credit card company borrows money at less than one percent interest, then endlessly encourages consumers to use their card ("What's in your wallet?"), and charges an annual rate often exceeding thirty percent of the original amount borrowed. Then, these usurious companies stand on the moral high ground provided by Congress, ascribe moral hazard and otherwise incompetence to the consumer, and demand that the consumer never be released until the debt has been paid in full -- with interest, of course.
Three years later, those same companies who lobbied Congress to enact that Bankruptcy law were, themselves, begging for money, claiming they were too big to fail, so no moral hazard.
Eliminate the 2005 Bankruptcy law if you want to see our middle class return to prosperity.
4
Of course, another way to look at it is as Darwinism in action. The theory might be just as valid in social survival as it is in nature. Nobody ever said life was going to be either easy or fair.
@TDurk :
We see the result of the environment we set up. We can get a better result with a different environment. We can look elsewhere for examples of better environments. We can change our environment for the better.
If that is what we choose to do. If...
2
@TDurk Actually that is not what Darwin's theory says. Social Darwinism is a rather weak position. The ones I know who hold it are well the merchant class. Faced with real strife, the kind that happens in nature, well I doubt they would last very long. I do enjoy making things real tough for them when I encounter them.
1
Since the time of Ronald Reagan, The Republican party, funded by the Koch brothers, has systematically defunded public elementary through higher education. By doing so, they have undermined the ability of government to insure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all our citizens.
10
Life has meaning when a person has an open and curious mind and cares about other people. This isn’t just about going to college – what matters are that there’s a desire to learn and be part of a society. Many of these desperate people likely live in Red states where individualism prevails and the public schools aren’t well-funded, so students do not develop a love of learning or a sense of belonging. Their hopeless lives are the manifestation of decades of Republican policies that they probably support.
4
"...college itself — both the classroom learning and the experience of successfully navigating college — brings long-term benefits. "
I can attest that such benefits also accrue to those who attended vocational and technical schools in lieu of college, which doesn't prepare all graduates for the challenges of life in the real world.
Ability, talent, and intelligence are possessed by all humans, but not in equal measure or proportions. The authors failed to take this into account, which is why the column leaves readers with more questions than answers.
5
I get that Sanders supporters are deeply convinced that he is the savior for all of this.
On paper... looking at what he says... they might be right. But paper lions do not slay enemies.
Sanders has shown no signs in his many years of Congress of actually having any ability to push forward Any of his progressive policy positions. This has been true in both Democrat and Republican controlled legislatures and administration.
It really is time for Sanders supporters to wake up and realize that talk gets nothing done, it only garners voters from idealists.
Unless/until Sanders and the rest of Washington can and will walk-Sanders-talk, all of your idealism is built on shifting sand.
1
@Chuck No I formed my views all on my own based on analysis and looking at policy and how things work. Later I found Sanders and Warren. If need be I support forcing the issue by splitting off the progressive Ds and uniting them with the progressive Is and forming a new party. Also, of chucking this civility stuff and going for no quarter politics.
1
@Robert
Spoken like a true revolutionary, including willingness to destroy the party if you don't get your way.
You are perfect for Sanders, and a disaster for the nation. Breaking the Democrat party will simply hand the nation to Republicans for the next generation, possibly two. In that regard, you are playing right into Trumps hands here.. because he loves noting more than a divided or fragmented opponent.
2
@Chuck ah the don't even try to achieve equality argument, let's just sign on for more corporate owned government, even if the frontman is clearly senile and incompetent.
In 11th grade I worked that summer in a factory making tires. It was shift work and the men working there kept talking about how much it had improved with the UNION agreemant. I thought it was awful. I couldnt believe people did this for 30 years. I went back to 12th grade and got straight A's and headed for college and Medical School.
@Dr Joe :
That is great for you. You used your talent to the max. But some of those guys you worked with, that may have been the limit of their talent. For a society to work, for Americans to pass to the next generation a society better than the one we got, the society has to work for everyone, regardless of talent. All work needs to have the dignity of a living wage.
11
@Dr joe While a good story who pays the bills. Meaning you benefit from a medical industrial complex that makes profits from peoples death and suffering. It works for the haves but leaves a trail of misery and debt for others. Or people who cannot afford care so they simply forgo it which will in the case of Corona cause national havoc.
@Dr joe
Nothing wrong with having a boring job like working a production line. Not everyone can be a doctor or programmer, or should everyone. They're entitled to as much dignity and respect as anyone else.
Education is nice and all, but some our most educated people ae some of the poorest paid. Teachers, of course.
7
Imaging a working class where people did not worry about the cost of healthcare, or the cost of child care, or the cost of education, or the cost of retirement. I would imagine a lot of the stresses simply would not be there. Perhaps people could focus on living a decent life. Like the 1%.
Oh, wait, I do not have to imagine. I worked in Europe. Nobody thought about any of that nonsense. Well, in Europe it is nonsense.
3
@gratis
Imagine being able to pursue a dream and not being tied to a job you dislike just to keep health insurance.
(I don't understand why this very persuasive aspect of universal health care is not exploited to the max.)
4
@caljn :
Which is why it is easier to be a small capitalist in Scandinavia than in the USA.
Those who think the USA is a Free Market Economy have no idea what a Free Market Economy is.
2
“These findings suggest that college itself — both the classroom learning and the experience of successfully navigating college — brings long-term benefits.”
The percentage of Americans with a BA degree has been steady at 30% for decades. This suggests that college, particularly the achievement of a degree, is perhaps the result of the kinds of people who get into the college and persevere to earn the degree. Employers don’t hire the degree, they hire the person who had the skills to earn the degree. In other words, 30% of the jobs require the skill that enables the earning of a college degree. Graduating more people with degrees won’t automatically create more jobs that pay more for a degree.
What the US is missing is apprenticeship programs that teach advanced technicals skills for which employers are desperately in need. Those jobs require high level thinking in concrete terms, as opposed to the abstract style of thinking that colleges foster. Both are needed, and generally people tend to do better in one or the other.
What used to be called vocational education got a bad name 30 or so years ago. In a highly technical world, we need to recognize that high level, technical skills should be rewarded as well as the ones that college fosters.
4
PLEASE check out "Unnatural Causes" - a PBS series that explains this.
The social, economic, and physical environments in which we are born, live and work profoundly affect our longevity and health – as much as smoking, diet and exercise.
"The series sheds light on mounting evidence of how lack of access to power and resources can get under the skin and disrupt human biology as surely as germs and viruses. It also reveals a health gradient tied to wealth: those at the top of the class pyramid average longer, healthier lives, while those at the bottom are the most disempowered, get sicker more often and die sooner. Most of us fall somewhere in between."
3
In the US, the assault on the working poor is both powerful and multi-dimensional. One unique dimension is the immense resources we have allocated to road and highway infrastructure at the expense of walkable neighborhoods and public transit. In virtually every corner of the US, if you can’t afford a car you are a third class citizen. Not only are you deprived of employment opportunities, dependent on overpriced processed foods, and forced to spend hours each day attempting to commute to work, school, etc., but you also are invariably forced to live in an environment where you as a person are a nuisance to giant gleaming steel suvs running 50 mph on massive thoroughfares carving up the neighborhoods holding decaying housing that working poor can hope to afford. Public transit gets maligned if it can’t break even on fares, but the real boondoggle is to hat we subsidize so much harmful infrastructure for the benefit of those with means to use it.
4
These stats might be the tip of the iceberg. About 48,000 Americans died by suicide in 2018, and there were an estimated 1.4 million attempts. At least 10 million suffer from chronic suicidal ideation, but do not act on the impulse. Nevertheless, they are plagued daily by thoughts of suicide. Tens of millions more take anti depressants and anti-anxiety meds every day, despite unwanted, unpleasant side effects. Does this qualify as a mental health crisis?
3
I wonder how this will affect the election. Indeed that's an implied subtext of the article, as the "demographics" (population patterns as well as in terms of base of support) involved are at the heart of the Sanders movement.
So here's the question it boils down to: Will the status-quo's-not-so-bad, neoliberal, "New Democrat"/"Third Way" centrism pioneered by Bill Clinton, continued by Obama & personified by Hillary Clinton & Joe Biden (and endorsed by David Brooks in his latest column) successfully KILL OFF enough of this working class demographic/Sanders supporters in time to hand Biden the nomination? It's a day-by-day race against the clock.
Working to Biden's adavantage is that the dynamic involved isn't a case of "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," but rather the opposite. The despair that stops just short of killing, by definition neutralizes capacity and motivation for action. The slow-death incapacitation involved manifests in political neutralization.
Keep at it, Mr. Biden, & Mr. Brooks: This article suggests you have every reason to be hopeful about Biden getting the nomination. How this despair will play out in the general election is another story; more likely than not, past (2016) is prologue to future. Trumpism too shrewdly understands & capitalizes on the realities neoliberals like Brooks, Biden & the Clintons both cynically exploit & culturally sweep under the rug.
1
Like most, I am upset about the income inequality in this country. Past generations of taxpayers didn’t pay taxes for intellectual and physical infrastructure so that only a few could profit from this community built foundation. This has to be part of the problem.
1
The data may show a correlation between lack of a college degree and despair, but no one should be mislead into thinking that a college degree insulates us from the despair that derives from systemic inefficiencies and lack of a safety net. Strong employment numbers mask the effect of underemployment on college-educated adults who can't find jobs that pay what they used to make (and whose lives include mortgages, car payments, tuition, and other expenses that were incurred when times were better). Having COBRA or even retiree benefits isn't enough to protect us from inadequate health insurance and stupid policy decisions (like excluding dental coverage from medical coverage). I have multiple advanced degrees, as do my sons. None of us is employed full time. My fight to enforce the health insurance benefits to which I am entitled by law is my full-time job. I even filed a complaint with the Department of Labor and received no response. Every day brings a new frustration, the cumulative effect of which borders on despair. Coronavirus is starting to sound like a blessing in disguise...
4
I would love to see some of these charts imposed on charts with average wages, executive wages, corporate income and corporate profits. Without looking or prior knowledge, I would bet the correlation would be interesting. I might even suppose causation.
3
And now it is likely that the Democratic nominee will be Biden who bailed out Wall Street after the economic collapse and is backing Obama Care that is presently being challenged in court and is promising to return to the status quo before Trump. A candidate that is now backed by Bloomberg and corporate establishment that tried to buy the election for the rich. Biden and the moderate wing of the party has made it clear that they do not want change. They just want to be the ones in the White House. I also wonder how committed to beating Trump they really are. The fact that they did everything they could to stop Bernie even though they know that Biden is a weak and flawed candidate. Beat Trump is a great diversion from the problems facing this country.
1
Although he's often classed with the "Robber Barons," Andrew Carnegie considered it immoral to die rich. He worked diligently to give away his fortune to worthy causes before he died. He was the epitome of the "self-made man," yet he knew that he owed his success to education, libraries, his family and a community of aspirational people. Carnegie provided libraries all across this nation. Harry Truman was self-educated by his reading of every book in the Independence, Mo., library and was not able to pursue a college degree. Yet, his judgment was grounded in a keen sense of what was right and proper for the common man. What made America great was the generosity of the American people, especially those who grew wealthy from its bounty. Today, we are led by a con artist whose "charity" was just a sham designed to further enrich himself through phony tax shelters. The "poorly educated" must wise up and realize they've been had.
2
The very demographic being portrayed here has been let down not just by the economy and spotty recoveries from 2008, they are also being let down by the healthcare system which largely ignores mental health.
These folks are suffering, and are in pain, feeling hopeless, and falling into depression as an actual outcome. How many are receiving any credible level of care for their mental health and wellbeing?
When you are left to feel helpless, hopeless, and in despair... you reach for anything that can dull the pain. Hence.. in the absence of actual mental health and well being care, you resort to self treatment through alcohol and drugs, and that actually makes matters worse.
By the way, you think things are bad for this white working class demographic.. check out the high rates of hopelessness, depression, and thoughts of suicide in our younger generation of children and teens growing up today. They are negatively affected by the same pressures, AND many simply cannot cope with the pressure of social media either.. and the amount of clinical treatment for this is overwhelmed by cases in many parts of the US, particularly large urban communities.
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College teaches people to solve problems. Therefore it isn’t surprising that people who have been to college are, in general, better problem solvers than people who haven’t had this experience. Poverty introduces a lot of problems into people’s lives, and there is a certain amount of fatigue that accrues when a person has limited resources to solve their problems. Compound that with all the societal changes of the past several decades, such as the disproportionate increase in the cost of housing and education, the rise of gig work without a social safety net of health insurance or pension, and you can see why people are in despair.
1
A major cause of the loss of decent paying manufacturing jobs is automation and as the capabilities of artificial intelligence continue to advance, many working class jobs (cab driving, truck driving, real estate appraising) and many jobs in the professions like law and accounting that entail repetitive tasks also are going to be displaced by automation. I fear that even many college graduates may experience lives of despair as our economy renders ever larger parts of the population superfluous to requirements.
2
Many of the rich started out poor. Many of the poor originally came from well-off families. The results that we may find unfortunate don't just happen. The choices that people make as they lead their lives are the differentiator, education being one of them. So, let's focus on the path people take, which will determine the destination that they reach.
1
@David Anderson Some have more opportunities than others and luck plays a big part. I'm an atheist but live by "There by the grace of god go I". I made some poor choices as a youngster but had family to help me recuperate. There are many that don't have that support system and one bad choice ends up being devastating.
2
@David Anderson :
Studies have found that upward socio-economic mobility is twice as easy in Western Europe than the US. 3 times in Denmark.
3
Dali Dula here, obviously, some typos above, "There but for the grace of god go I".
I have earned a B.A., M.A. and doctoral degree from accredited schools by attending them, being of age before anything "online." The Masters and Doctoral programs were also certified by my profession--psychology--and I obtained a state license, thereby. Moreover, I was able to be employed in my profession with job changes that were always advancements. They were never significant money-makers, however, and I'm now semi-retired with a limited income and assets. Though I would be considered one of the advantaged employed, my concern remains in any case about the behavioral (emotional, mental) impact on those people who suffer in employment. It's especially disturbing that they tend to be included in the supposed jobs "boom" statistics but without the clarification that this NYT piece and the Case and Deaton's book provide. Other reports by Mr. Leonhardt in particular have noted what seems like a facade or Potemkin Village behind those glowing statistics that can of course have Trump grab personal credit, which increases his support among under-informed people. I'm a Sanders supporter, clearly stated, and continue to hear and see how he properly and directly addresses his campaign message to the working people like those noted in this article and that book. So, it's no wonder to me that he talks about a revolution. "Not me, Us!"
4
The dispair isn't just among the working class. Go onto LinkedIn (where virtually everyone has a college degree) and post an article about age discrimination. You'll be swamped by comments from people over 50 who have degrees (often multiple ones and many in STEM fields) who lose their obs at 50 and never find work again. If they do, it's often at multiple jobs that pay barely above minimum wage. Note that the highest percentage of long-term unemployed are women over 50. Note that IBM is being sued for systematically firing people when they hig 50. Dispair is all around ... I know it, I'm living it despite 225 hours of college credit and 40 years of professional experience which makes me highly competent iin 3 different fields. Thousands of job applications over at least 15 states & no offers in 5 years (although lots of interviews). Age discrimination is pervasive ... no one wants to pay for experience. AARP news magazine had a big article on this in January.
12
I would say people were happier and less anxious before the late 80s because they felt secure. Many jobs were seen as life time providing good pay, healthcare and retirement while providing training for advancement. Housing was affordable along with city and state college. That's all gone, people now live week to week seeing no light at the end.
5
The Trades. I personally would find 100,000 or more of college tuition debt impossible. The trades are suffering from a lack of workers. My younger son, 3 years of college lost/left a call center job that he had for 8 years that was chewing him up. For 2 years he thought hard and researched what jobs cant be outsourced. He settled on HVAC and Plumbing. My son is thriving. He comes home so proud and makes excellent money. He is in a union, hood benefits. He has a career.
9
@Debbie Yes! The trades are a way to make a good living.
Our neighborhood of homes built in the 1920’s desperately needs a good and fairly priced handyman. I’ve suggested this to many young people who did odd jobs for us (and were good at it) over the years. Over the past few years what we’ve seen is the rise of handyman service corporations that charge a large amount just to come out and look at the job. Their workers are largely from other countries (the man who replaced the condenser in our refrigerator was from Turkmenistan, he did a good job). That man was trying to get out from under the corporation that he works for. I wish him luck.
Part of this problem stems from our tax code, which makes it difficult for someone (who doesn’t want to be a part-time accountant) to run a small business. There are other local regulations that discourage it too. All in the name of quality control, so that what we get is corporate rip-offs.
2
I've a college degree myself but deliver mail for the postal service that doesn't require a degree. I've worked various jobs with the so called gig economy only to find it's as volatile as it is rewarding. I bought and sold a house, got married and so forth but couldn't face the ups and downs that came with it any longer. So I withdrew half my retirement to pay off debts and start from scratch with the USPS. Now I'm union protected with a pension plan coming, paid time off and benefits and I couldn't be happier. So I think I debunk many of the findings and agree with some that 1) you don't need an elite education 2) you might not even need a college education at all and 3) if you make smart, healthy choices in life you will be better off than others that don't, that simple. But not everything that's so bleak lies in blaming society as a whole but rather it's also individualised choices as well that are contributing factors to the strife or decline in American health and welfare
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@TJR :
Everyone is different.
For some, an every day, same same, union job with no real chance of advancing is pretty darn good. Great, in fact.
Every job is important and deserves a living wage.
1
Political Juice on youtube has a Civil Society series that talks in length about these issues, and others. It's long, but if this article interests I think you'd enjoy it.
"Their basic answer is that working-class life in the United States is more difficult than it is in any other high-income country. “European countries have faced the same kind of technological change we have, and they’re not seeing the people killing themselves with guns or drug or alcohol,” Case says. “There is something unique about the way the U.S. is handling this.”
Mr. Leonhardt, this is the core of Bernie Sanders campaign message, yet you and this paper have strongly discounted and even disparaged his campaign. I really don't get it. Few other papers would do this kind of reporting, but when faced with this information, it fights for the status quo. I don't get it.
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I thought Warren was a better proponent of the things you need to do to make American society more just, but it doesn't change the main point. People are just obsessed with getting rid of Trump. Sanders just scares away the moderate Republicans and independents.
This paper, as good as it is for news, is editorially really the domain of limousine liberals. They want somebody non-threatening.
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@Mark I would agree with you if you widened your comments to the other candidates. While the paper did endorse Warren and Klobuchar, two women, they did not get the eyeball time given to Biden directly or indirectly through the related Trump crimes. Nor did any of the other candidates but of those Bernie probably got the most except for Biden. Frankly, I believe it is the loyalty to Bernie who I am grateful for getting a wider democratic conversation going but is not by himself the best candidate to go up against Trump because of his style and alienating rhetoric that does not appeal to the base. I blame the media as you do, but I blame them for not aiding and supporting that wider discussion instead allowing the discussion to devolve into all or nothing positions like Medicare for all vs. something else not exactly determined that most people went for even when they didn't know what that was.
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@Mark
Ironic, isn’t it. Every day the New York Times publishes stories about the challenges faced by ordinary Americans and also every day the Times also publishes articles and opinion pieces tearing down the last candidate standing who wants to go after the causes of this despair.
Joe Biden may be a soothing presence but I doubt his corporate backers will allow him to address these issues even if he, a staunch defender of the status quo his entire political life, wanted to.
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My observation on this article is that the premise is wrong. For most people the problem is that, at the end of the day, they do not have enough money. If working Americans had more money, regardless of the job, America would have less of the described problems.
I will never forget my lunch in Narvik, Norway on a Sunday in 1999 when every restaurant was closed except a burger joint where I paid $25 for one burger, fries and a. drink. McD's quality. But I knew the kid that worked there got a living wage, healthcare, and 4 week paid vacation, minimum. If that kid wanted an education, he could go for one, if he had the talent. If he had a family and wanted to start his own business, he could try without losing healthcare for the family, without worry about child care, without risking education costs for his kids, without worry about his retirement. If that kid who served me the burger had a $400 sudden expense, it would not be a big deal. The kid just gets paid more and has a decent government. Does not have to do anything with education, except some enlightened self interest. We all do better when we all do better.
Most Americans just see the $25 inferior lunch.
4
Very scary. Perhaps we should stop focusing on race and identity, which is all we seem to want to talk about anymore, and realize our real challenge is social economic issues, which spans all Americans
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@GermanMajor
People focus on race and identity because it is a socio-economic issue. Talent is distributed equally among all humans. Discrimination against anyone, deny equality to anyone, lessens their chance of success and weakens the strength of the society as a whole, economics as much as anything else. That is why the Rule of Law matters. The law sees everyone equally. The "race and identity" legislation is to make sure everyone is treated equally. The Right Wing says, it is OK for the law to discriminate against any person in any capricious way, and fights to keep that "right".
@GermanMajor
Nah. This is one of the shortcomings of Sanders sometimes. He wants to reduce everything to class and economics. Race and gender intersect with that of course, but they are neither equivalent, they are not less important, and they require different solutions. Lastly, people VOTE based on their identity. Again and again.
Fulfillment in love relationships and family is much more difficult now, or at least, we have so many choices for avoiding the challenges of such relationships that we can't rely on the possible benefits when we need them. The reasons are myriad. More than education or career success, these basic needs are not being met. It is telling that the highest rate of suicides are for people in their early thirties. This is the time in life when you should be hitting your stride... but apparently, too many people at these ages are now despairing of attaining basic life achievements, and the means of suicide are readily at hand.
1
Could this also be fueled by a shrinking percentage of non-college educated people in each population over time? In 1992, it wasn't unusual for a 40 year old to not have a college degree, it was the norm.
I worry that folks reading this may come away blaming non-college-graduates for their troubles. Not attending college is not even slightly the cause of despair in today's USA.
The problem is a society which does not afford basic necessities to support self-esteem, plus systems of governance and economics which prioritize at zero delivering a solution to that problem. That flawed set of priorities was itself fostered ideologically, with both the political left and the political right fully participating.
It was not just Republicans who got rid of unionism. Democrats too were eager participants. And Democrats, no less than Republicans, have been quick to endorse and encourage: job loss to automation; privatization of government services; outsourcing abroad; monopolistic corporate giantism; and money-is-speech politics.
Blue collar America has merely been leading the way. College graduates, especially recent ones, are becoming similarly stressed, and will presently manifest similar indicators of despair.
No one should be surprised that a nominally democratic political system has begun to respond, albeit in ways which frighten many. Responsibility falls on keepers of the status quo. If they do not want disorderly solutions imposed upon them, they must implement orderly ones themselves. Before that happens, they will apparently need help noticing their own responsibility. Expect redoubled efforts to help them see, and to encourage action. Vivid times lie ahead.
5
Despair has indeed descended like a thick cloud over our middle and working class. The reasons and causes no doubt are deep and complicated and they are very real.
But I can't helping thinking, too, that perspective is required to understand where we are and where we may be going.
The truth is that the glory period for American workers was really only relatively brief, about 25 to 30 years, from the end of WW 2 to the mid-to-late 1970s. For many of us, life is not as good as it was for our parents, but it is still better than it was for our grandparents and their parents generations, when there were no social safety nets, no social security, no Medicare or Medicaid and a pound of sugar was considered a luxury.
3
This excellent article providwes striking visual documentation of the issues that drive the campaigns of Sanders and Warren. The graphics show that there are not only gross inequalities in income and wealth in America, but also of opportunity and hope. The costs for society are tragic. But the policy proposals to address these inequities presented by Sanders/Warren have been criticized by centrist pundits like Leonhardt as unrealistically costly. These critiques usually fail to consider the tremendous social costs of the status quo, which centrist Leonhard now has shown so clearly. From this perspective, the small bore proposals offered by Biden seem grossly inadequate to the moment.
5
Yes, a college education clearly gives one a better chance at surviving and thriving here. That's not the real story. The research and data says more about the society we've created, or destroyed, depending on how you look at it, in the United States than the value of a college education, which isn't for everyone. The social compact that other societies have and we once had, has been deteriorated and destroyed from within. It's really sad and only going to get worse.
2
@Alex Your right as same way i see it, the top 10% are pulling at the Ladders at orders of corporate oligarchs above and the 90% are being bled out!
@Alex Your right as same way i see it, the top 10% are pulling at the Ladders at orders of corporate oligarchs above and the 90% are being bled out!
Everyone should work for minimum wage at some point in their life. I don't think I could comprehend what it means to be a low wage worker without having been one. I worked so much harder in my minimum wage jobs than I have after college. On my feet most of the day, incredibly disrespectful bosses, schedules that were erratic and unpredictable (one boss made the schedule the day before it started - ie. writing on Sunday who was working Monday - the only reason for this was to ensure no one hit full time), not to mention a wage and hours so low I had to piece together multiple jobs in order to get close to forty hours/enough to pay rent. For years I couldn't make plans with family or friends more than a few days in advance because I didn't know when I was working and was penalized for asking for specific dates off. Calling in sick was another landmine. It was much better to come in hacking a lung up than risk earning a strike for calling out. There is no expectation in these jobs that someone might get sick and not be able to work - any missed day is treated as an infraction that counts against you. I even had a boss who attempted to require doctors' notes for single sick days. What that would have meant is that someone making $8 an hour would have to both lose their day's pay and spend more than a day's pay going to urgent care.
It's no wonder that people who live this their whole life, who raise children like this, are so profoundly miserable.
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@Elise
Great comment. Check out Sorry We Missed You -- Great film that exposes the gig economy in Great Britain.
Sobering, opinion piece. I see these statistics reflected in several members of my family. They see themselves as victims, and keep voting GOP even though it means they do not have healthcare or will have to work past 65. They have made decisions that have doomed their health, but seem to be unable to overcome. This is why there are so many angry people, rude people, it’s the despair they feel being projected. We desperately need healthcare for all Americans, and need to make corporate greed and corporate welfare our enemies!
1
The darkest of the red falls on those who were 31-36 in 2017. That means they were 22-27 during the financial crash of 2008 -- the youngest hires and the first to be fired and those with the least protection/savings. By the time they dug out of that, they had probably been slammed by unemployment, debt, and lack of experience to compete.
When I grew up in the 1960's in rural, coal country Pennsylvania those rural coal country families wanted nothing more for their children then for them to get a good education and go to college so they wouldn't have to work in the dirty, dangerous, deadly coal mines.
Today I have relatives who live in rural Maine, about as rural as where I lived in Pennsylvania. Jobs up there were mostly shoe factories and lumber or paper mills. Today all of those factories and mills have been shut down. There's some work but it's low skilled, low paying, and besides a paycheck gives no meaning to their lives. So you'd think they would want their children to better themselves with a college education so as to get out of their terrible situation. But no. They look down on and are distrustful of anyone who is going for or has a college degree. They consider them as being "elitist," "socialist" or worse. Most of them are financially strapped and have multiple risk factors- smoke cigarettes, are obese, and abuse alcohol and opioids. Death from these risk factors and suicide are rampant up there. But don't you dare go to college and get a degree.
I have to believe it's the same in other rural areas of the country. Something is seriously wrong with America.
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@Gaston Corteau
That is truly sad, and yet consistent with things I've read about in some other economically depressed areas. I can't imagine anything sadder than parents imparting a worldview/life-outlook to their children that measurably handicaps their odds of success in life. As one apt bumper sticker once said, "If you think paying for education is too expensive, try doing without it".
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@Gaston Corteau
That is tragic irony of the GOP's strategy: Those who would benefit the most from more affordable college and healthcare, a higher minimum wage, and more economic equality are the most opposed to it.
By keeping poor Americans poor and uneducated Americans uneducated, the GOP deprives this segment of the population of the political sophistication and economic leverage needed to voice objections to the status quo.
This is where I give Sanders and Warren a lot of credit. They have finally brought these issues to the fore in a way no Democrats before them had done. Socialism may not be the answer to the problem, but, if nothing else, it provides a new framework for looking at the state of the country - from the point of view of the working class.
1
BTW- these relatives of mine are all Trump supporters, they all hate and I mean HATE Democrats (they’re the type who would wear the t-shirt “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat”), they place confederate stickers on their pickup trucks (and they live in northern Maine!), and they believe very little in science but are not that religious.
There’s nothing smart about being stupid.
1
So, who has a better vision for addressing these issues, Biden or Sanders?
1
Pretty scary stuff. Pretty much mirrors our drop in collective intelligence. Even many of the comments I see below, from supposedly smart people, are amazingly ignorant. Everyone sees the problem through their own bias so we make zero headway. Capitalism is good, socialism is bad. Universal health care is too expensive, etc., etc., etc. Everyone already knows the answer, the heck with the data, and the problem for that matter. I think at one time we were a solution oriented society and we would test and take risks; we did not already have our minds made up. Those days appear long gone. Now, we just look for people who agree with us and draw battle lines. Will be our epitaph.
4
Affirmative action has harmed and demoralized large numbers of white Americans of all social classes, but it has particularly mauled the working class. Failure to obtain jobs or promotions because employers are mesmerized by a concept of "diversity" or because they fear discrimination lawsuits naturally generates despair. Many white workers find racial preferences particularly offensive because they often favor nonwhites who were born into more privileged circumstances than they were. Many white workers also are resentful that the liberal elites deny that they have any kind of grievance about affirmative action and denounce them as ignorant or racist if they complain. Progressives often express puzzlement about why white workers vote against their economic self interest by supporting Republicans. My impression is that affirmative action is the reason why many workers vote Republican even though many are well aware that the Republicans otherwise tend to favor policies that harm the working class. Part of it is simple pride. At least the Republicans don't treat them like second class citizens on account of their birth.
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@Cromer
I concur that it appears many white voters think this way -- ample evidence exists from the last election. But your comment suggests there here is some truth behind this resentment--that white workers moved naturally to the Republicans based on an actual real trend. There is no evidence to support that. In fact, white rural areas where there are virtually no minorities are suffering -- they haven't lost jobs to black people, they've lost them to automation, anti-union public policy, globalization. Affirmative action is a red herring Republicans and their propaganda arm, Fox News, use to divert attention. Its sadly effective.
1
@Cromer I just love it when people who work in companies that are 90% white and where management is much whiter than entry level workers (i.e. the vast majority of US companies) complain about affirmative action.
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@Cromer “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
Four more years of Donald Trump dismantling our country and turning it in to a dictatorship will send a lot more people into despair. I've been in despair since November 2016. There is a chance in 2020 to change this. I hope ordinary citizens from all walks of life take this opportunity. There will be no government regulation of anything with another Trump regime. We are inches away from a slave society in practice.
5
And in spite of this NYT in months has tried to dicredit Bernie Sanders and his campaign. And in spite of this the Democratic Party Elite has steered the election in the direction to oust Bernie Sanders and his likes in the favor of Joe Biden and his likes. And Joe Biden in his likes will change no policies. Much may be said about Trump, but I cannot see much difference between him and the presidents before him.
4
I'm seeing greater alcohol consumption and greater sadness. Maybe the sadness came first, but definitely if you're drinking that much you cannot begin to pull yourself out of your sadness. And then the alcohol causes more of it, more shame, more regret, more hopelessness.
2
@KCB
Yes but drinking is big business and generates lots of profits.
If you're going to compare anything USA to, say, Japan (124 million), France (67 million) or Germany (83 million), then you should do so by comparing the same population-number states of the USA properly that combined have the same percentage of college/non-college people as those countries. Also, I see many of these y-axes-reported numbers that suggest a very-small difference despite what looks to be -- is graphed to be -- a large difference-- are those differences actually significant? We don't know, it's not reported here.
As for the term 'working-class' -- Hey, I have a Ph.D. and worked a professional job for 40+ years; am I not "working-class"? Just where do you get this terminology? Why not use high-school-only educated vs college-educated? or stick w/ your college/non-college term. We all work whether or not we went to college.
"Overall mortality for whites between the ages of 45 and 54 has held roughly steady in the last 25 years. But that average hides a big increase in death rates for non-graduates and a big decline for graduates. "
Interesting: "a big increase in death rates for non-graduates...".. How much each category?
Failing to report those significant differences: is it the fault of the authors of or of Stuart . Thompson?
The United States has been one big cash register for decades while the middle and lower classes has been whittled away. Corporations have no loyalty to workers they depend on for their continued fleecing of Americans. Cha-Ching.
6
As a faculty brat at Carleton College, I heard Eisenhower make a campaign speech in 1952. Under Ike, the top tax bracket paid about 91% in taxes. In those days, a worker without a college degree could earn enough to support a family of four while paying off a mortgage on a decent home and paying off a car loan. In those days, a high-school graduate could pay the tuition at a state university with the income from a summer job. Try to do any of that today on an hourly wage. Our government has been bought by ALEC and the Club for Growth, and they are driving the country backward toward feudalism--the new hereditary nobility being the corporate oligarchy. The poor buy food, the lower middle classes buy a home and vacations, while the rich buy politicians, to preserve neo-feudal corporate capitalism.
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@William Burgess Leavenworth and don't forget, in the 1950's unions were strong,union membership was high, and union workers could live well and retire with generous pensions.
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@William Burgess Leavenworth
"Under Ike, the top tax bracket paid about 91% in taxes"
This is false. Yes tax rates were much higher back then, but the amount that was paid was fairly comparable.
In fact even though the tax structure has changed dramatically over the years, total tax receipts as a percentage of GDP has remained relatively constant. But the percent of those receipts paid by top earners has gone up.
12
@William Burgess Leavenworth In those days the American middle class manufactured half of the worlds goods and Rust Belt manufacturing accounted for more than 40% of all jobs in the US.
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A college degree is not a cure-all, either. It may better one's odds, but many college grads contend with underemployment, bouts of unemployment, layoffs, etc. Just think of adjunct teachers, many with advanced degrees and stellar educations, who have no health care benefits and no job security. The mistreatment of working people is deeply entrenched.
3
@Ann College is not just about making more money when you graduate (though, as a group, college graduates do earn significantly more than non-college graduates). Just as important, in my mind even more important, is the social and intellectual context of college.
College is a place to meet and learn from other, like-minded people with career aspirations and a desire to learn about the world. College sets the course for the rest of one's life. I, for example, met my wife in college and we both had similar professional and intellectual aspirations. Today, our kids are in college and are going through the same process. Yes, they'll earn a degree at the end, but they will also come away with friends, mates, and academic/professional contacts that will have a defining impact on the rest of their lives.
@Robert I agree with your comments about college. Nowhere did I say that college is just about making money. But the problems encountered by adjunct, graduates in debt, laid-off workers, etc. are very real.
"Graduates are more likely to be employed, earn more, marry and stay married, be satisfied with their lives, be healthy and live longer. These findings suggest that college itself — both the classroom learning and the experience of successfully navigating college — brings long-terms benefits."
Or perhaps it is just that employers have for some time required college degrees for many roles that never required them in previous eras, not because the jobs have gotten so much more complicated, but because higher college graduation rates have enabled personnel departments to use a college degree as a convenient screening tool--a marker of at least some minimal level intelligence, patience, persistence, organization, and a willingness to fill out forms and follow rules.
3
@Robert M I'm not sure why you seem to think that these are mutually contradictory.
Is there a reason the researches didn't include data on gender? Given all the other metrics, it seems like very relevant information.
Technology has perversely enabled employers to monitor employee behavior and productivity mercilessly and beyond reason. People have been dehumanized to the point of having to develop ways to suppress their feelings in order to survive.This impacts their personal lives with their families and friends.
A tendency to use drugs and alcohol to deal with depression and despair is inevitable. In economic terms, we have seen a greater concentration of wealth among a smaller number of people, as the working class is being exploited and not fairly compensated for their contributions to productivity. The politics of the day support this, with the degradation of the safety net. Instead of a society that advances along the lines anticipated by the days of FDR, we seem to be regressing into more of a "survival of the fittest" mentality.
Eventually, what is at risk, is not just the future of the working class, but of our society in general.
5
The research brings to mind a thought. I wish I could remember the source:
The purpose of a liberal education is to make ones mind a pleasant place in which to spend ones leisure.
"Liberal" in this context, of course, means being exposed to books, to music, to history - to the vast buffet of ideas that can enrich our lives - and help us cope.
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@Glen Kaye :
People with liberal arts degrees wrote the stuff you read. Made the pictures you see. Arranged them on a page. All those Corporate Annual Reports are put together by people with liberal arts degrees. The VP of Human Resources probably has a liberal arts degree or two.
The false inference that people tend to draw from this is that a degree will somehow lead to happier lives.
The reality is that people with college degrees tend to hail from stable families with a cultural bias in favor of healthier sustainable lifestyles.
The actual degrees are far less important to one's prospects for health and happiness or even for securing employment these days.
2
I just wonder how/if the rise of Social Media and Cable News Networks factor into this. I personally believe those two things have a huge impact on mental health.
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@Webb C. I agree. That's why I don't use or watch either. :-)
1
In a simple picture an image of how our current economic society has failed the working class. How can it be that the richest country in the world can't afford to. pay it's foundational worker enough to live, raise their kids and retire. The pendulum has swung towards the rich for many reasons and needs to come back more to the center by way of greater economic equity for hourly workers. This is a total repudiation of trickle down economics as a viable social model.
The best way to achieve greater equity is raising the minimum wage and funding health care and child care for all Americans. It's simple math and will result in greater prosperity, lower crime, higher rates of marriage and through greater self -worth, reduced deaths of despair.
7
Humans the world over have the need to feel as though we belong, have and add value. If we don't feel these requisite elements essential for human happiness, this failure to be welcomed inside the ring of valuation causes exactly the same part of our brain to light up that lights up when we are physically punched or abused.
If our entire existence is feeling as though we have no value, then we are going to be despairing.
Money was supposed to be a tool to ease our lives. But instead we have become the tools of it.
5
Gotta wonder about the role of technology, and forecasts about technology, have in this. If you're a truck driver, and you are constantly told that computers are coming for your job, what impact does that have on your sense of self-worth?
5
@LewisPG You are right, technology has a big impact.
Robots milk our cows, soon will drive our trucks and cars, and much more. Andrew Yang was right, what will Americans do to make a living?
1
Looks to me like social Darwinism has became plain old Darwinism.
4
We're #1, woohoo!
5
How do New York Times editors consciously publish evidence like this that demonstrates the crushing immorality of unchecked capitalism while simultaneously red baiting and lying about the only remaining presidential candidate fighting for an alternative?
14
I can't take these stories by the NY Times seriously anymore considering that today they are also pushing Russian conspiracy theories about Sanders on the front page. NY Times may talk woke, but when election time rolls around, they do everything possible to protect the status quo.
12
@C I agree that the NYT running the Russia story about Sanders today is not a coincidence. But after reading it, I, for one, came away with a rather positive impression of what Sanders did when he partnered Burlington, VT, with a Russian sister city. He strongly felt that the best way to avoid war with Russia was for Americans and Russians to get to know each other. Back then, there was almost no social contact between the two countries. And Burlington wasn't the only city in the US with a sister city in Russia.
I learned all this from the NYT article and, as a result, feel that the reporting was not unfair to Sanders - in substance. But the timing is still suspect.
@C
Yes, I still say that they are all in on it, and the next election is already a done deal. TV is worse.
Hey NYT, what side are you really on?
And Biden is going to fix this?
5
@M no.
@M Biden is a bought and paid for by Corporate america politician who wants everything to go up to his masters.He has been trying to cut social security for years and thats our money! Bernie 2020!
Please share the link to the original dataset used for alcoholism, suicide square graphs.
Another article marred by a pointless animated presentation. It would be great to see those two age-by-date charts side by side, or to quickly toggle between them, or to link to them. Instead we have to suffer from a 5 second transition from one to another triggered by scrolling, information popping up then disappearing, etc. Just trying to move my cursor left/right in this edit window is instead updating the image in the background, aargh. Please get your graphics people in line NYT! If it wouldn't work on paper please don't do it on your site. If I want to see things change while I scroll I'll get a game app.
2
Donate, volunteer, canvas, phonebank for Bernie Sanders.
9
It's good to see the NYT giving a little more attention to this issue. The opioid epidemic alone, in the last 20 years, has killed more Americans than WWII.
US political discourse on the left and right is largely controlled by hyper-priviledged elites similar to the NYT crowd (there's very few people at the NYT who make less than triple the US median wage of $33k). Yet every now and then, an article emerges into this bubble of prosperity, revealing the underground suffering of the excluded. It would be amazing if this realization could lead to some adjustments in the NYT's campaigning (at this point it would be absurd to call the NYT's coverage of the elections "reporting").
4
Trump loves the poorly educated and they love him. He doesn't actually care a whit about them, nor does he do anything to help them, but he loves them. To death.
9
Given this reporting, what's the best response from the NY Times? Work to elect Joe Biden!
3
I am reading "These Truths, An American History" and when manufacturing started, women's rights were taken away (men said they had to stay home) the pay was horrible (top 1% had all the wealth back then too) the south was running on slavery and women both in the north and south were upset that they had no voice besides that the Native American's, and African American's killings/deaths.....no wonder we are a hot mess. I won't even get into how bad the alcoholism is in this country that I see daily as a nurse.
Your spiritual quest is really the only way out. How to be with yourself because as you see since the beginning the outside world does not care about you....only you care for you.
1
@Calleen Mayer I have a routine when i walk thru Walmart shopping i count the obvious alcoholics by Ruddy and mottled skin, floaty glassy eyes, very sad and many of them, both men and women.I am recovered and i recognize my people! This world could be so beautiful but the Few hoard it all and screw the Herd! I would rather live in Mr Rodgers Neighborhood when you were friends with the mailman and cared about the guy down the street.
All things Andrew Yang was talking about ...
6
"...Deaton, a Nobel laureate in economics"
--------------------------------------------------
There are no Nobel laureates in economics. There is no Nobel Prize in Economics. Why does the NYT continue to publish such fake news?
Only Krugman, as far as I can tell, has accepted the fact that the award he received for economic science is not a Nobel Prize. Other economists (and apparently journalists who don't conduct background studies) continue to propagate the myth of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
@Michael yes, there is! Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences. Look it up.
I noticed the latest year on yj
Let me say if Primo Levi’s question :”se questo è un uomo “
becoming a superfluous question even an ununderstandable
question in some Future...
Startling.
1
Correlation is not Causation!!!
1
The goal here is to kill poor people in this system of madness where God is a dollar.
5
Don't worry, Biden will save us from these deaths of despair. Never fear!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
3
Yes, in a nutshell, what Bernie said.
Too bad that when Times columnists like Leonhardt and Krugman say similar things, they never connect the dots for readers.
The dots just never lead to Bernie's words.
Inexplicably, through some mysterious, circuitous NY Times route, they now lead to Biden.
Amazing!
7
I wonder intensely at how the same newspaper that published this story could have possibly endorsed Klobuchar.
2
If anything, the study presented by Case and Deaton is a damning indictment of the current Real Existing American Capitalism, which destroys not only lives but the very fabric of the American Experiment, i.e. the Republic. I intend to read the book and prepare myself for grim reading.
I think a study which traces the influence of Ayn Rand and Ayn Randism among leading politicians and corporate leadership in the US over the past decades would very likely corroborate the findings in “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.”
If left unchecked, this present day Real Existing American Capitalism will continue to prepare the fertile soil for a totalitarian regime, coming to power by means of democratic elections in which the dying and despairing masses who have nothing left to lose will give their vote to the one man who promises them the bright future.
Which, as history tells us time and again, will only end in catastrophe.
4
And do not forget that TRUMP loves the UN-educated!!! Too bad they are depressed....Very few cures for STUPID! They blame everyone but themselves. Life changes. Get real.
4
David Leonhardt, why bother investigating and then reporting these facts when you don't use them to help America move forward? Is it so you can feel virtuous in some way? Help you sleep at night in your warm comfy bed when 500,000 of your fellow Americans are sleeping on the streets.
The NYTimes had a chance to endorse a candidate who has been trying to fix these fundamental problems for the past 30 years and yet the NYTimes has only anger and disdain for him. So. Very. Strange.
And now the NYTimes thinks that somehow Joe Biden will do anything to turn this around, should he even manage to be elected? And if he is, and he doesn't, what then? What will happen in 2023 with the climate disaster causing mayhem and citizens have even more anger and less hope?
What is the plan of the ruling oligarchy and its handmaidens in the MSM; or will all the NYTimes reporters decamp to New Zealand to save themselves in some underground bunker? Honestly, this article is breathtaking in its lack of awareness.
4
To get instant despair just read the front page of the NY Times every day for a week.
1
Virtually every aspect of this national malaise can be tracked to the (R)egime of (R)onald (R)eagan.
7
All you BA/BS and advanced degree holders. Pay attention, they're coming for you next. Between gigs, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning old fashioned traditional outsourcing will be the tip of the iceberg.
2
Yet the Democratic Party (the self-proclaimed representative of the worker) rails against Sanders and his call to make life better for the average person.
The New York Times, as good as it is for news, is editorially really the domain of limousine liberals, and now Prius liberals. Who all talk a good game until its time to vote. Then they select another incrementalist moderate. Will these people ever remove their rose colored glasses and actually put their backs and minds to work to create a just society?
Joe Biden? You have got to be kidding!
A review of Biden’s record — which spans 36 years as a U.S. senator and eight as vice president — is, in part, a reminder of how much the Democratic Party itself and the U.S. political system have changed over the last half a century.
Biden opposed school busing for desegregation in the 1970s.
He voted for a measure aimed at outlawing gay marriage in the 1990s.
He was an ally of the banking and credit card industries screw the poor bankruptcy bill.
He chaired the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings that gave short shrift to the sexual harassment allegations raised by Anita Hill.
He backed crime legislation that fueled an explosion in prison populations.
He eulogized Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who rose to prominence as a segregationist.
He partially authored Crime Bill leading to incarceration of Blacks.
He backed the Iraq war.
He backed the war on drugs.
He voted for the Patriot act.
5
All of this can be attributed to the Republican Party's decades long campaign to demonize and cripple the government and enrich the rich at the expense of the working class. Democrats were foolishly complicit in their support of NAFTA which cost Americans millions of good jobs, but the driving force behind income inequality and the widespread economic futility many Americans are experiencing today is the Republican Party.
3
Revise the rules for the permanent temp jobs. I suggest that if any person's income is derived from a company, then he or she is an employee of that company and is entitled to all the benefits the company provides any employee, regardless of hours worked or whether they are labeled exempt or non-exempt. In other words, no escape clause.
The main issue is health insurance, companies want to minimize those costs and one way of doing it is to subcontract labor or call employees part-time.
The solution is obvious, Medicare for all, prescriptions included, without deductibles or co-pays or denials of coverage. And if a company does business in America, even if it's domiciled elsewhere, it pays into the system along with the recipient.
3
Just got off the phone with the pharmacy. The medicine that had finally cured my cholesterol issue is still covered, but the pharmacy is now considered out of network and I just can't get it anymore. This is the third long phone call I've had with insurance and pharmacy this week. It's all so very depressing.
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@Islandgirl No medicine can finally cure a cholesterol issue. If the pharmacy is out of network, go to a different pharmacy
1
There's a fundamental and obvious problem with the article. The statistic of "those without college" is fatally flawed for this argument because it does not equate to blue collar occupations. Rather, it includes a broad group of addicts, alchoholics, homeless, criminal, mentally ill and "non-starters" in general. The population segment who did not do college, and did not do anything else either. Based on personal experience, I'm certain that if you compared blue collar tradesmen ie mechanics, welders, electricians etc with college graduates this "despair gap" would disappear.
1
@furthereast
The flaw in your argument is that the statistics for those groups have worsened dramatically over the past few decades. If this gap had existed in decades past your argument might make sense.
4
In our capitalist system, the business of America is business, and we've de-emphasized domestic tranquility, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in our efforts for more profits.
3
There is nothing magical about college degree, I went to top 10 undergrad and grad school.
Somehow college application and selection process gets better in filtering the population. People that are susceptible to depression, mental health issues has less chance to complete college degree (especially for low and middle class).
The question is how are we going to help those people. Are we prepared to subsidize their life? My personal opinion is that giving food and housing for those people is cheaper than extra policing, emergency care, social worker, food stamps system, welfare system, etc.
3
@aong cangkol :
Perhaps if you did not have your degrees, you might realize how magical it actually is.
If you add a second vertical axis to chart without college degree, showing year of entry to job market, assuming 70 year olds entered job market in the late 60’s, then you’ll see that present trend starts with Reaganomics around 1980. People who started their careers early enough missed the effects of right wing clawback policies, while younger people are being decimated at increasingly younger ages.
4
I could sarcastically ask if this increased death rate of younger Americans might not be convenient for the master capitalist class. It certainly takes the burden off the Social Security and Medicare systems. It also decreases the least productive workers, leading to a productivity increase and greater profits.
Before you all flame me for this inconvenient truth, ask yourselves if the top 0.1% really want to solve any of this. Deaths are a lot easier to deal with than militancy.
5
@Jazz Paw Your right but don't forget the 9.9% that assist the top 1% in screwing the rest of us.
The key nugget in this article was that "Life for many middle- and low-income Americans can lack structure, status and meaning." and “Many people used to associate the meaning of their life with what their corporation or institution was doing".
This is the underlying interest behind the cries for the old way of life to come back, for the factories to return, for the coal mines to re-open.
In negotiating, interests are what underlie people's bargaining positions. Positions tend to be rigid ("I want X and only X") but interests can often be satisfied with a wider range of solutions, including ones that satisfy both sides in a negotiation. It's essential to surface and address those interests to have a win-win negotiation.
Helping people find meaning in life is a much tougher task than merely supplying jobs and money yet I think it's going to be essential to solving this crisis in our country.
2
@Nelle Engoron I think the issue is this- if your work pays for your life and allows you to experience progress towards normal human goals (having a family, owning a house, saving for retirement, ensuring that your children have opportunity) then that work is imbued with meaningfulness. If your work is subsistence level, and you live with chronic insecurity vis the above list, then you will lack meaning and be depressed and overwhelmed and full of fear for the future. The American economy ruthlessly punishes those who are not the winners. One has to wonder if this is by design.
4
I wish skilled trades and technical workers could be broken out as a class rather than just college and non-college educated.
I just paid $210 an hour to get my gas fireplace fixed, which requires gas and electrical certification to safely make repairs. (I'm thinking about replacing it with one of those TV videos of a fireplace).
The repair person seemed to have a pretty good life, a home and lots of land, spouse and kids and an upbeat perspective on life.
There is an extreme shortage of skilled technicians in the US and growth in employer sponsored programs to meet the accelerating demand. The biggest challenge is providing remedial STEM skills necessary for technical training and certification. Community colleges are trying to fill the gap. In Seattle, CCs are free for qualified students.
A comparison among OECD countries would illustrate where vocational training is having the most favorable impact on social equality.
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Just this morning the Trump WH is considering a tax cut FOR CORPORATIONS — as if they haven’t gotten enough of a tax cut already. Yet another reason for despair among working people?
Yeah, Trump is definitely helping the middle class and working people. Really guys?
1
I'm not arguing with the conclusions, but the data presented here only seem to go back to the 1990s. I wonder if there is other data on desperation during the Depression, for example, or on the hopelessness of early-20th century immigrants who returned to their home countries having failed in the US. I am reminded of an anecdote in the late Russell Baker's memoir about a boyfriend of his mother's, a baker who lost his job during the Depression and moved West, confident that a good baker could always find employment. He does not and eventually writes to Baker's mother that he is "gone and going" and that she should forget him. There have been many desperate and lost voices throughout our history, and I disagree that this would improve if everyone somehow went to college. We have no agreed on definition of what a college education is today and a college degree is simply not for everyone. I think that what we need a national conversation about job creation and training for trades, crafts, and occupations that will be essential in the coming years.
6
This was inevitable when Reagan declared "The business of government is business" followed by a centrist Clinton claiming "The era of big government is over." And looking at the numbers, centrist Obama simply headed us down the same path. He compromised away Medicare for All with the Heritage Foundation's idea of continuous profit for insurance companies. The Republicans and Democratic centrists are just servants of the big multi-national corporations, controlled by authoritarians. They don't work for the American people.
3
@vandalfan That was Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. not Reagan..
2
Read Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano" - anticipated these problems almost 70 years ago.
2
Was just talking with another teacher at the school where we work about one of our students...he has seemed so down, so apathetic, so tired. He has not wanted to talk with us about it. Then we discover that he (age 15) and his older two brothers (17 and 19) are holding the whole family together. Mom attempted suicide; she is an opioid addict after an accident at work left her with ceaseless back pain; dad left before that. There are two younger siblings. They are trying. The bills are paid, but barely. School becomes a place where you go to get food, get counseling from the social worker and together with coaches and teachers, we try to get them "services" which would mean sending the younger two to live in foster care, so now the older boys don't want to confide in anyone and are desperate to "get mom well again." Other family members live out of town. They are floundering, and all our options are bad. Every one of them. We have not helped this woman; she is receiving only her small disability check and medicare does not cover everything but she can't afford supplemental insurance--who insures an addict? celebrities can go to rehab, she can't. Food shelves and school supply a large percentage of their meals. This is what people's lives are reduced to in this country. These are good, smart and hard working kids. They have manners and are trying to do the right thing. No wonder people fall into despair. It all feels like a novel I taught by Steinbeck.
7
@Eva Lockhart
I too teach HS and find that kids like this are the norm. My school is a title 1 school, providing a large majority of kids with two meals a day. My district does not provide a raise for teachers until the start of the 15th year of employment, and every month it seems as if we, teachers, are asked to perform something else that we are not qualified for, i.e. counseling, mentoring, feeding, consoling, modeling and you can name it.
I feel for these kids. My school is majority black/brown, and here in Jacksonville, FL their skin color brings a lot of extra harassment from store owners and authorities. It is sad when I am often told by students about being followed around a store by an employee for being black or brown or being pulled over on nearly a weekly basis when driving home from work at night. Most of my students also work to provide necessary money to the household.
From the article I would have liked to also see how many of the different groups have kids. I know many married successful couples who choose not to have children, and I know many former unmarried students who have kids.
2
@Eva Lockhart :
Conservatives believe these kids should be supremely motivated. Conservatives motivate the rich by giving them more money for doing nothing, and motivate the poor by taking everything they have away from them. And those are the policies Conservatives vote for.
Yes, and let's nominate a man who thinks that we just need to get back to where we were during the Obama years and everything will be fine. None of this happened until Trump was president, right?
Wrong. And we desperately need a people powered revolution or things will only get worse for working people.
7
And still unions are demonized, universal health care is non-existent, and corporations the wealthy are allowed and encouraged to avoid taxation.
The American Dream is just a fairytale used to keep the masses docile.
10
This piece hurts. Reading, I feel the pain in my partner's death at 44; in the stress and hopelessness of very smart friends, and on the faces of strangers riding the bus each day.
The relief - or fulfillment,even - people find in family, satisfying work, art and culture, shared experiences like sports and church and concerts - are inaccessable to so many. The wonder of learning and education is corroded by the lack of money and stability.
The unspoken words herein: Bernie Sanders
9
Just to be clear, while I'm a Democrat, I'm also a capitalist and not a Bernie supporter. That said, as much as I love capitalism, it has gone too far. Our corporate heads are not millionaires, they're often billionaires, while they have gotten rid of pensions, matched giving, most profit-sharing and benefits and increased the burden of health insurance (higher costs, higher deductibles) onto its workers. There's a never-ending race to capture every penny -- at the expense of the workers. There's a fever-like atmosphere to increase productivity -- again, at the expense of our workers. Even workers nestled in the relative "safety" of a large bank, company, law firm, etc., are miserable. In the words of a friend, who is quite senior and well-compensated, btw, "work is no fun anymore." We've allowed companies to ride roughshod over workers and even our doctors. The results are awful. Insurance bean counters with no medical degree are ultimately in charge of your health care. We have grotesque income inequality. General dissatisfaction has led to the rise of Trump, who furthers the abuse of the working class, and Sanders, who would chase companies out of the US. We need to get a grip on our rampant income equality if we're to continue to thrive. Low income workers cannot afford an apartment and a car, let alone a house, let alone healthcare or retirement. Their stressors are off the charts.
10
Education and entrepreneurial risk are the solutions. Forget the past, it's irrelevant. Simple enough. Take the risk and invest in an education or don't. Live with the consequences.
@MAA Your solution is good for maybe 1 in a hundred,Who today believes a college degree which brings no guarantee except debt till your 50 or 60.I won't accept your Winners take all mentality.NO WAY!
1
The paradigm at play here is as simple as the strong preying on the weak. This is not to say that non-college educated citizens are weak but rather that the reins of economic power are currently held exclusively by the rich, corporate and college-educated. That this group has embraced economic inequality as a means of preserving and growing their own power at the expense of their fellow citizens does not bode well. Either the presently disadvantaged will rise, perhaps violently, to reclaim a fair portion or the ruling oligarchy will continue to impoverish an ever growing underclass as the 1% becomes the .1% becomes the .01% and so on.
7
@Andrew Yes, and another strategy used to retain power and wealth? Divide and conquer - whites and blacks, men and women, hispanics and blacks and whites, boomers and X-ers and millenials. And so on.
I believe that despair and economic security are inversely proportional. And always have been. But, the lobbyist power of Wall Street and corporate America overcome that economic law with false promises that tax cuts for the rich bring prosperity because the rich allow a few crumbs to fall off the table to the working class below.
The Oval Office occupant has both hands in the pockets of what's left of America's middle class but, with the support of his rich backers, manages to blow enough smoke to keep millions of his followers in the dark. So, how about another round of tax cuts for Wall Street?
5
Unfortunately, the conclusions of these economists is the tired old American "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". Just get a college degree, and all will be well. As economists, they should understand numbers, and the fact is that even if every person in America had a college degree, nothing would change. Our system requires people at the bottom working for peanuts so those at the top can become billionaires.
Universal health care, while dismissed in this article, is a huge part of the solution, as are higher taxes on the wealthy. Too bad so many Americans see these as so dangerously radical and impractical.
5
It makes sense that the ability to acquire a 4-yr degree would be correlative to a lower likelihood of dying from alcoholism, drug addiction or suicide (itself often the result of underlying alcoholism or drug addiction). However, even based on the data here, I'd hesitate to say there's a causative relationship.
On average, college itself provides those with addictive tendencies plenty of opportunity to crash and burn. In other words, the college experience tends to weed out those for whom excessive drinking and/or drug use is the priority from those for whom it is not.
The fact that those in the former group have a higher likelihood of dying on the basis of their addiction(s) is hardly surprising.
2
@Stephen My Father was a 4 year college Graduate,very successful and a violent alcoholic.and he binge drank in college.Where does that fit in your opinion.
Whether you go to college or not is a symptom of the real problem of vast income inequality and the fact that income for the masses—especially but not limited to the U.S.—is falling at an alarming rate. To put it another way, real income hasn't changed since the 1970s while the cost of living has skyrocketed. Rents, as only one example, have gone from 1/4 of you income to, in some cases, 3/4 of your income. Meanwhile 26 people on this planet own as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent. The problem is the profit motive of capitalism that puts the accumulation and protection of private wealth above all else. That's what the military, police and prisons are for. To protect the wealth of the rich and blame the poor for all their problems like not going to college.
6
...and you still can't bear Bernie.
Why is he so threatening?
It's kind of a trick question. I know the answer. When one bases one's self-esteem on one's socioeconomic status, in a society where that status does not, in fact, sync with one's integrity as a human being...one will be inclined to neglect or actively erase proof of that fact.
5
I get frustrated with studies like this as I fit within them as an outlier.
From the Times previous article on the adjunct crisis--I am one of those very degreed people who lack any permanent employment (as I originally wanted to be a humanities prof.--and the story I was given when starting grad school in the very early 90s was that this would be slam dunk given the jobs that would become available with the wave of boomer-wave hires retiring--except the majority of those positions became adjunctified)
So, I fit all those all those various statistics of the working class in terms of being unmarried, etc. despite all the degrees (so this "a college degree is really great for you" just seems another canard from my POV) I have massive student loan debt--all the more as I had cancer while pursuing my PhD which dragged everything out and my surguries have left me severe abdominal adhesion pain that is with me always hinder my working capabilites (and bankrupt from the medical bills--but I couldn't discharge the loans)
I have just tried again with yet another degree--an MLIS--and I am exploring jobs but with the sinking feeling this was just yet one more fool's errand (with more added debt) in trying to gain some meaningful work that I can physically do (I hope) that gives me some modicum of stability beyond adjunct teaching and part time tutoring.
The despair and hopelessness I occasionally feel can be quite overwhelming.
3
this whole article could be sent straight to the Sanders campaign to be used as more proof of Sanders' economic case for the policies he promotes. Really, who is advocating for health care for all, college/trade school for all, better working conditions, union presence, better wages, child care, and on and on? Remember, the right does not believe in government "doing things" for people, so they do not offer real solutions. The Dems want to make tiny tweaks to keep the overall power structures that benefit from people's pain in power. The left wants to do something about these problems and wants to use the power of our social contract and our collective will through the government to make life fairer and healthier for all of us--but to do this, we have to stop profit over people and the unfair power structures that exist. If you believe what this article is saying, you should seriously think about the elected officials you are voting for and whether they really get the seriousness of these problems.
7
Is it a coincidence that the dispirited working class dies while the Wealthy 1% makes enormous profits from the opioid crisis?
5
When everyone around you (or everyone in the ads, on TV, etc) is successful and enjoying life, and you are struggling, despair can easily take control of you. If you don't read, and only watch Faux News, and/or are raised in such a household, the sense of hope can quickly vanish.
The increasing inequality in our society and reluctance to read are the root causes of the increased despair among those lacking a college education. It is not the lack of a college educaton.
5
It is stunning how work and health care have eroded the quality of life in America. And it can be pinned on the dominance of corporations over employees or tactical job eliminations, and a health care “system” affordable for only some of us. Two increasingly powerful, monopolistic forces. Both these causations are well within the power of our government to regulate or legislate against.
5
It would be interesting to see regional clusters where these trends are most pronounced. I suspect they are not uniform across the land. I am so tired of reading about 'the forgotten' complaining about lost jobs,decreased wages and comparing their dire conditions to their fathers and grandfathers who worked in the same industries. My advice to them is instead of complaining and waiting for 'savior' president, do what many do around the globe do - pick up and move. Don't be complacent, take your loses, your kids will adjust to new, better schools. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices and take risks for better future for your family; and I am speaking from personal experience.
4
see, this is why both Sanders and Trump have been doing so well. This situation is unconscionable in the wealthiest country on earth, and it needs to change or our society will crumble. Working class people are the backbone of the country, and they are breaking under the adverse conditions they are being forced to endure.
4
When I first started in advertising no one cared if you had a college degree ( like Steve Jobs, Stanley Kubrick any many brilliant more) as long as your portfolio was full of great ideas you could get a job. Now thanks to algorithms a young or older creative cannot even get an interview with a college degree.
With college debt becoming a modern day indentured servitude and the job market only increasing in low wage jobs and the dollar worth less how can this faux economy continue?
It seems the US has created an oligarchy vs serf economy it's no wonder why the 99% is running to Bernie, Warren and (gravely mistakenly) Trump to overthrow the wealth inequality of the establishments neo-liberalist agenda.
12
Most people just want to produce stuff and feel like they are contributing to the building of a future for their children and fellow humans (though sometimes narrowly defined), and be rewarded with a decent life without stress over medical crises or retirement. These are the people killing themselves because they longer have a place in a society that sells happiness in pills, self-help programs, unachievable material wealth on TV, and a "service" economy that sells "happiness" to those that can afford it. Around here that means people with liberal arts degrees serve cappuccinos and mixed drinks to elite software engineers and data scientists; immigrants who picked up valuable manual skills like cooking and building construction work under the direction of white managers; and those left out live in homeless poverty.
Leaders and those few who find satisfaction in studying the human condition have an obligation to promote a path where all can feel valued.
This country need so many things built: affordable housing, cities and infrastructure built with energy use in mind, conversion to renewable energy. There is no good reason why community colleges and vocational schools can't provide enough trained people even for current openings, and no good reason why these types of jobs cannot be expanded dramatically. There is easier money to be made elsewhere in the "information economy" but if that is the priority then we are lost.
1
Biden is a demagogue of words while Bernie Sanders is the best strategist, a long time fighter with common sense and activist. Economic Slavery of Latinos, Women, and other social groups must end in 2020. BIDEN will NOT end it. Biden is barely standing on his feet. Bernie has energy of a 20 year old and plans of a true leader who wants to make a real good change. In times of Corona Virus, we need MEDICARE. If Bernie Sanders is not elected the nominee of the Democratic party, things will only get worse.
6
Had to wait until the end of the article for the pitch, but I knew it was in there somewhere--
"The federal government should do a better job...."
Of course-- another government program is needed to fix this. That's the answer, I'm sure.
2
@Steve
no we should all have disdain for all government programs just like right wing radio hosts tell us. That is the plan for the future. Please make sure you refuse to benefit from them to the point you should not even get on an interstate because you think it's bad government.
The four-year college degree is often used as a proxy in studies like this one and I don't necessarily dispute the findings -- as far as they go.
But I would like to see a wider analysis of the underlying factors that contribute to these deaths of despair -- not just whether someone has a degree or not. e.g. Individual contributions of health, political leaning, urban vs. rural, education in general, income, success of one's parents, and the doubtlessly many other contributing factors.
e.g. I don't have a college degree, but I track solidly with those that do -- better than many, in fact. Why is that? I certainly understand my own circumstances, but not necessarily others'.
3
@Robert Agree 1000%!
1
Forget about economic arguments--not that personal economics don't play a significant role in this--it seems clear that going to college leads to a better life and insulates against the most extreme despair.
I think that most people around the world would love to exchange their lives for a life of the most depressed american. We live in the global world - people are willing to work for much less than demanded by the US workers. There is no way back, it makes no sense to pay $15 for something that can be done for $1. One solution is to isolate and run a closed economy - but it seems that most people do not like this solution. Another one is to fix prices - it has not worked so far anywhere as well.
2
@DL There is always a cost-benefit analysis. I could pay my workers a whole lot less, but why would I want to harm pepole whom work for me?
Money was just a tool to make our lives easier. It wasn't supposed to be the sole purpose of our lives.
If we actually put a true value on the cost of the things we buy, or what we say we care about, it would be easy to have a society/community who paid more because it was simply the right thing to do. An inordinate number of tasks can't be done by a person making $1 instead of $15. We just tolerate unfair economic behaviors by those with the most.
We tolerate a major fast food chain manufacturing a small plastic toy that extracts fossil fuels and moves through many hands and the economic costs of it far exceed the 29 cents that the fast food chain paid per unit for it.
That is what our political fight now is about. Whether we believe that humans have value beyond their economic value. Whether money is merely a tool or the entire purpose of all human activity. It appears the latter is winning.
3
@DL
We're beginning to see the fragility of the global supply chain with the Covid-19 virus and resulting shortages of products coming in from China. Globalization was always a national security problem. It's safer if you can grow and make more things closer to where they're sold and consumed. (And it makes a tremendous difference in fossil fuel consumption, too.)
@WordsOnFire You can employ struggling people from other countries willing to work for less. They need your help more than the americans do. They are humans too.
What has Europe got that we haven't got? Nearly universal health care, affordable education, strong unions, good public transportation, and a social and financial safety net. Are there problems in Europe? Yes, of course. But there seem to be more efforts to mitigate the extreme effects of winner-takes-all capitalism through socializing each individual's risk.
7
As a data analyst and cartographer, these charts are not only informative, but beautiful. Great job!! Now let’s see these on a map!
2
@Christine Feinholz Beautiful but at the same time a gigantic, anguishing tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Understand that the numbers actually represent living, talking human beings. Somebody's father, son, daughter, cousin dyingunnecessarily because of government inaction - something that shouldn't be happening if there was a balance between public and private interests. In other advanced countries this does not happen,
2
The major reason people give in to despair is that they are told they should and have every reason to do so. Just like in this Opinion Piece; you have every right to despair, so, go on, indulge. Don't go out and try, it isn't worth it. Just listen to these people commenting here. You should give in to despair. It gives them another opportunity to blame others for the own failures and attitudes.
2
If you want a four year degree with no student debt and even get paid while doing it, get a trade.
Even better go see your local union they are always looking for good young men and women.
Medical, dental, pensions, overtime at time and a half and even double time and most importantly job protection.
As an Instructor I see my students go from minimum wage when they come to the College to six figures in sometimes less than 4 years.
One catch though, you need to arrive on time, work hard to make money for your employer, stay off the booze, drugs and cell phones.
3
@Len You are wrong. Or things are just different in Vancouver.
They are NOT "always looking" for good young men and women.
NYC Trade Unions, and the Fire, Police and Sanitation Academies, call for apprentice applications VERY rarely, and receive thousands of applicants.
The journey is complex and bureaucratic, with long, long waits. You need flexible employment, too, during the process. People I've spoken to compare it to winning the lottery.
Don't make it sound like young people aren't motivated to do something. The hurdles to entry are
high.
4
@Cranky
You are right NYC locals are tough to get into.
That said move elsewhere, be adaptable. Here in Vancouver we cannot fill our classes and they all get job offers upon completion.
I meet every year in Ann Arbor with locals from all over the States and outside of NYC they all tell me that they need good young apprentices.
Also I did not say young people are not motivated I merely stated what we, as Instructors and what employers are looking for in an apprentice.
1
We live in a country that sees its population as a commodity. We are only valuable inasmuch as we can fill the pockets of the corporate overlords. Case in point, when 9/11 occurred the response of then President Bush was to tell people to go shopping. When work is all you are valued for, that makes you an ant. There is no sense of community and our shared culture is consumerism. Doesn't give people a lot to feel pride in.
7
I would like to see these charts excluding the rise in opioid-related deaths.
If the primary driver of the change is opioids, I'm not sure I'd buy the argument of "deaths of despair" as opposed to "deaths of substance abuse".
Yes, there are drivers of substance abuse, but addiction trumps most social/emotional drivers.
1
It would be useful if these figures were broken down by males and females. As compared to women the male rate of suicide is about four times more common and overdose rate about twice as common. This would mean rates well above 200 to 300 per 100 k per male without bachelor. Also women are now getting 50% more Bachelor degrees than men.
1
@paul check this out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/04/10/a-new-divide-in-american-death/?utm_term=.364cea15d296
It says that while male death rates are higher, the change is greater for women, so that the difference is evaporating
We need more articles like this, which delve into the underlying causes of our current problems. Trump is merely a pustule. People are not disposable and the "haves" who control power "have not" the empathy to fix the problem for us.
2
I fear that the our elected class, almost all of whom have a college degree but vividly show that they didn't actually learn anything while there, will seize the idea and grant everyone a college degree. Since college graduates have higher earnings and less despair, this initiative will solve both.
1
"These findings suggest that college itself — both the classroom learning and the experience of successfully navigating college — brings long-terms benefits."
And access to college for the "underclass?"
1
I am a big advocate of education--college, adult education, self-education, preschool, learning as a way of life. But in our over-credentialized society, a four-year college degree has largely become the ticket to even low-skilled jobs. Time was, graduating from high school generally assured one of decent employment. Now that most Americans do finish high school, that diploma doesn't get you very far. While I remain wildly in favor of constant learning, our society needs to reward all work as if the people doing it mattered, regardless of education. I see people every day who work 40, 60, even 80 hours a week, struggling just to get by. If you have to work so much that you are sleep deprived, miss out on time with your family, are too exhausted or busy to pursue a hobby or volunteer or tend a small garden, life can feel meaningless. A living wage, workers' rights, time off and recognition of one's contributions are due everyone who works 40 hours a week. Anymore, many of us with bachelors or graduate education are losing ground in these areas, too. While the wealthiest get wealthier and can't find enough to occupy all their leisure time.
6
With all due respect Tim I think you have that wrong. I see this data as the reason we need a president Sanders, not Trump. Outsourcing jobs and failure to pay a living wage is the stuff of corporate influence.
7
Working class life is not killing Americans any more than seeking a bachelor's degree is the key to the average American's happiness. The second is not the solution to the first.
Is this another call for big business and the government to return to the 1970's educational-industrial complex to solve our problems? Is this another want to throw money at our problem of not being responsible for our own happiness?
People with advanced educations may have more opportunity, and maybe a better income and fewer worries. But how many new graduates do you know that are working in their career field and don't complain about their college bills? How many do you know entering the trades and exceeding bachelor degree holders in many cases?
Strike down the idealistic vision of everyone being a bachelor's degree earner in our society. Stop looking to government institutions to establish your levels of happiness. Stop blaming whoever's sitting in the White House for your problems. These same one's that have allowed big business to suppress the worker, continue low wages, promote the degree myth, and plug us into their devices for the past 50 years, but we're looking to them to define our future?
It's time for Americans to take responsibility for themselves, their own actions, and to create their own futures. Turn off your TVs and devices, look in the mirror, build up your neighborhood and make a plan to reach big dreams ... but stop giving away your power and happiness to the Man.
2
@Walter C. Clark Amen
This important book tells much and implies more: maybe it's time to start asking exactly why college has become more expensive at a steeper rate than increases in other costs. Based on experience rather than data -- but I an confident that data supports this assertion -- faculty salaries do not explain boosts in tuition and related charges, namely room and board at college. Salaries of college presidents and administrators would astonish many families struggling to educate their children. Having a Secretary of Education who understood education even a little would be a good place to start.
2
The problem isn't working class life, the problem is the fantasy we call "the American Dream". In today's world, if you haven't gone on to some schooling after high school, or even finished high school, there is a good chance your are already overcome with despair.
I think the despair comes from the false hope of this dream becoming more transparent in the latter half of the 20th century. Albert Camus wrote in "The Myth Of Sisyphus ", "The deprivation of hope is the surest means to immediacy." My understanding of this is that hope, especially false hope, takes us out of our lives into pointless fantasy.
The dark side of the American Dream is what follows; 'and therefor you are nothing if you don't make it.' What follows that is, 'why bother.'
3
‘The medical system should be overhauled to put a higher priority on health than on wealth for people who work in the industry...
The federal government should do a better job of keeping big business from maximizing profits at the expense of their workers’
....and the Easter Bunny and Santa should pitch in.
1
90 percent of this could be read as part of a stump speech for Sanders. But hey, don't worry, the NYT will go back to invalidating the socio-economic preconditions for Sanders' class-based critique of the status quo (and its broad, urgent support) in no time! This despair doesn't affect them and they don't actually care about these people!
Sanders supporters get criticized for being abrasive and mean in comments... I agree; I do see it, in the way for example, a lot of Sanders people are responding to Warren, who should be seen as an ally. I think it's unfortunate, and Sanders supporters (myself included) should work to hear that critique and be better communicators. But a lot of times Sanders' tone reflects the urgency of the situation, as described in this article; we do not feel hopeful about our future, nor do we feel safe and secure, in this country. We are tired of having GoFundMe be our social safety net when we get too sick. America is simply not taking care of the majority of its citizens, and we are trying to fight for a more livable future.
8
Looking at this chart it is clear that the deepest despair is among those between 30 an 65, a time of deep responsibilities, but little support from our society in meeting them. This group without a college degree have the least chance of advancement in our income inequality society, but also pin their hopes on some sort of savior like Trump who might clear the way for them.
But an authoritarian like Trump is only about helping himself. In a democratic society supposedly there is more empathy than an authoritarian one as we all suffer to one degree or another. We need to act like a democracy and create a stronger safety net that will hold us all. Of course this is not a complete answer because so many have been lead to believe in 'you must pull yourself up by your bootstraps' and this has failed them. Do we really care about our fellow human beings or just give it lip service?
Did anyone else notice on that first graph "Deaths from ..." "Without a Bachelor's Degree" that there was an obvious trend with time to older ages for higher death rates. This trend roughly parallels age cohorts (e.g., those 40 in 1995 are 50 in 2005).
If this observation be valid, this may suggest some commonality in experience in certain age cohorts, such as veterans from this or another war, or persons in their fifties at the financial crash of 2008 who can no longer find employment and are therefore ruined financially, etc.
I'm not proposing those two examples as anything real, but merely as considerations for others who might correlate this data with other data.
The problem isn't working class life, the problem is the fantasy we call "the American Dream". In today's world, if you haven't gone on to some schooling after high school, or even finished high school, there is a good chance your are already overcome with despair.
I think the despair comes from the false hope of this dream becoming more transparent in the latter half of the 20th century. Albert Camus wrote in "The Myth Of Sisyphus ", "The deprivation of hope is the surest means to immediacy." My understanding of this is that hope, especially false hope, takes us out of our lives into pointless fantasy.
The dark side of the American Dream is what follows; 'and therefor you are nothing if you don't make it.' What follows that is, 'why bother.'
Hate to bring it back to politics, but the seeds seem to have been sown in the Reagan Revolution. Supply side economics promised to enrich everyone, but quite predictably wound up as more of a zero-sum, or at least limited-sum, proposition. Workers and their unions were disempowered, and management, investors, and profits glorified. We began the extreme financialization of the economy, as deregulation spawned all sorts of legalized scams to "create" wealth out of nothing. Big tech and big data are just extensions of that trend. Globalization and automation were seized on as a means to further concentrate wealth upwards.
Reagan's dictum the "government is the problem, not the solution" effectively discredited the whole idea of democratic self-governance and turned the levers of government over to those who would use them to enrich themselves, rather than perform public service. We used to call it "corruption." After Reagan it became "business-friendly government."
6
@Bruce F
Very well said. From Reagan until now, the game of those in power was to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Instead of fixing some inherent problems, they used those problems to negate the positive effects of government to enrich themselves. It's been going on for decades and gets worse every election cycle. And yes, I'm sorry GOP, you have been the worst example of this.
1
There are lots of studies that demonstrate its the parents ( e. Moms actually) instilling the sense of value of education. Family Courts require when possible that collage educated parents support their children’s collage education.
I can’t disagree, from my experience, that getting out of dysfunctional family situations is a strong motivator. More of my time than I would like to admit was spent thinking “ I so have to get the hell out of this place.”.. when I have enough of an education to support myself. That perception of needing to be ready and able came from Mom and teachers ( the few who seemed sane and not motivated by some insatiable hunger to demonstrate how powerful and threatening they were ).
The accumulation of capital is a social good but not the only one! A well educated public is also a good. Providing for the overall heath too. To abandon every other social good for a singleminded focus on wealth at the expense of everything else is simply insane. The results are in evident if you look. I prefer to take the advice of a Nobel laureate into my thinking rather than some psycho pseudo billionaire.
2
The reason you do not see this same problem in EU countries is because culturally they are proud to live with less (and they have health care.) The US economy is driven by the false need for more. Keeping up with the Joneses has become very, very expensive. Phones, cars, vacations. When I hear about people with little spare income planning a trip to Disney I cringe. Europeans are proud of thrift. We waste everything, water, clothing, food, electricity. Marketing executives would fill Dante's eighth and ninth circles of hell.
5
@JPP
Add to this the fact there is no benefits to a thrift/ savings account anymore with such poor interest rates due to this casino stock market economy, no one can securely make money from their money anymore unless it's stuck in a financial vehicle which always runs the risk you could lose it all . Oh yes, I forgot, diversify to protect yourself. This is great advice, for a millionaire or billionaire but hardly a good choice for the average worker. Does anyone not think these changes were by design by a small group of those looking to to further enrich themselves?
2
@JPP
That's baloney. Europeans take more and better vacations than we do.
https://www.businessinsider.com/3-reasons-europeans-are-way-better-at-vacation-than-americans-2014-8
They also have more in the way of public culture and entertainment, such as free summer music festivals.
https://www.master-and-more.eu/en/news-detail/news/10-free-summer-festivals-in-europe-2017/
We are also more car-dependent than Europeans because public transportation has been systematically underfunded in favor of highways and suburban living.
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/02/9-reasons-us-ended-so-much-more-car-dependent-europe/8226/
And because our schools are funded locally, not nationally, people sacrifice to live in a "good" school district.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/property-taxes-and-unequal-schools/497333/
Kind of ironic that yesterdays' piece was the dismal state of affairs for PhD's (and I'm one of them.) I guess the moral of the story is to get a B.A. or B.S. and then stop.
3
"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Or so said Jesus, to the rich young man.
Our corporate brothers and sisters seem to have forgotten this lesson.
Right-wing evangelists peddle false prophets; Wall Street reaps fraudulent profits.
2
@R Scott Why assume that corporate "leaders" ever thought this was useful advice? Today, such an approach will leave you destitute, homeless, and without any ability to deal with health problems. Why do people keep assuming that apocryphal quotes from someone who died 2000 years ago in the Middle East has the key to survival in the twenty first century? There are plenty of deeply seated problems in this country, but I cannot see how Jesus holds the solution.
Amazing live graphics...eye opening analyses!...
The remedy "Governments at all levels should help more people earn college degrees, both four-year degrees (like B.A.’s) and meaningful vocational degrees."...
This reminds me of the old joke: "the scientist asked a frog to jump, it jumped; then he snipped a leg of the frog and commanded, jump. it did so, but less efficiently. Then he snipped the other leg as well, and repeated the command, jump!... this time the frog lay impassive. The scientist concluded: when its legs are cut, a frog cannot follow commands".
A degree is a great quantifiable metric- but ultimately arbitrary. Bigger question is...is the"non-college" demographic the cause or the effect??
1
Of course. I belong to the demographics. Although obviously I am still alive. But I have chronic pain, I am depressed and unhappy. This country just does not value hard work as it used to and is it professes to do. It is like if one doesn't have the stupid 4-year degree he is worthless. We need to raise wages to people without college degrees. They also deserve liveable wages. And the society needs them, too. We need car mechanics, we need cooks, we need dishwashers, we need trash collectors: society cannot exist without them, yet it does not value their work properly. It pushes everyone to college. Yet it makes attaining the degree prohibitively expensive for someone from low income working class background. The entire system looks like a big Ponzi scheme to enrich one class of people and push another in the debt and penury. No wonder therefore that talks about class war are surging, and that Biden will NEVER win the presidency.
4
But hey! Wall St. is booming and the unemployment rate is low!
Ain't life great?
Uh, no.
Bernie Sanders 2020.
5
Hillary kicked us when we were down and called us "Deplorables" because we voted against the status quo.
"Good" progressives despise us and it's mutual.
5
@Tim Education must be the reason that you and other keep repeating this WRONG interpretation of what she said. She was referring to the Nazis and while supremacists who were rallying behind trump. This is extremely well-documented, but it seems that many people, you included, have bought into the lie that she was referring to millions of Americans whose lives were suffering. The Big Lie approach to national politics has not only not gone away, but has been refined.
And yet any Democrat who proposes real solutions to these problems is instantly labeled as unelectable, often by the same newspaper that published this article.
7
It’s all about your first lessons in life by parents and ! prevention by e.g. physicians visiting schools as part of municipality health programs [ hygiene,food and more]...
It’s all about early age attention and health [ also mental ] “Investments “ ; ...stages in a lifetime basically embedded in a effective sustainable health and education system ...
So this article is about inequality.
What is the world then the NYT pushes an agenda that deprives people from a leveled field and policies that ensure the “deaths of despair don’t abate” such as Medicare for All and subsidized college tuition?
This is probably the biggest question.
Maybe we can get Eaton to investigate this?
1
You work and work and work all of your life and what do you have to show for it? Not even enough money to pay for my deductible and out of pocket expenses if I get sick. Thanks Obama and Biden for the public option you chose not to go for.
You know what they keep telling us....little steps....nothing too drastic...I've waited all my life for affordable health care but I guess I'll never see it. I guess I have no patience huh? Me and my radical ideas.
4
Times have changed. For the majority born in the US in the early 1900s, a high school education was good to have, but not required to gain employment. Only the wealthy went to college. In those days, antibiotics had not been invented, and many lost one or both parents to disease; those teens had to go to work, not to high school. 50 years later, most teens went to high school, though some dropped out for blue collar jobs because their families needed the money or because they could still get decent work without that high school diploma. Now high school is not nearly enough. College or a solid trade is required, along with a marketable major (tech, medical, financial etc.) or the diploma is just an expensive piece of paper. Just the same, automation and low wage workers in foreign countries are eating into the entire US job market, even for the college-educated. Government has not caught up with reality because it is run by the rich, who always went to college and have the resources to ride out hard times. If Trump is defeated, the Dem president and the Rep/Dem Congress need to work hard to face reality and bring decent jobs and health care to the average man and woman. Times have changed.
2
For those people who've benefited from the concentration of wealth and opportunity, these results are acceptable. For most of them, I'd say that they don't think about the well-being of ordinary people enough specifically to have wanted these results, but they've distanced themselves from ordinary people as far as possible in an emotional as well as a physical sense. The problems of ordinary people aren't meant to impinge on them, and if they do notice, they get irritated and blame the ordinary people for being nuisances. That's why we sometimes see absurd suggestions for ways to deal with crises coming from this or that employer.
1
In the end it is also about how we, as a society, look at low skilled work. The mailman used to be a respectable job. Now we see the people who bring us our expensive, online purchases a some kind of newspaper boys.
4
Reaganomics/Trickle-down, and a shareholder economy. one word: Greed.
5
And yet you are not a fan of Warren or Sanders, the only candidates willing to tackle these problems head on.
7
Graphs like most of those in the story, except the first one, are easier to read when there are solid lines on the two axes.
Trace most of this to Reagan anti-intellectualism. Eliminated free college tuition in California. Big lies about welfare cheats, welfare Cadillacs. The most dangerous words in the English language, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Closing of inpatient mental hospitals. Tax policies favored cutting up manufacturing, selling it off to rationalize cheap foreign labor. The demise of the small farmer.
Track the closing of Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Jones & Laughlin, Bethlehem Steel, the domestic appliance industry, textiles, bailouts of Chrysler and GM, and the resulting suicide rates.
Any fool who can read a table can see a direct correlation.
4
Can we just try for a decade or two to put people over profits and see where we stand?
6
The authors need to keep their research alive. National debt, the instrument used to keep our mysterious economy afloat will eventually become a parasite, and eat us alive.
That debt has allowed folks to save and earn market returns in their 401k's. Government workers feel secure with their pensions. That's changing as we speak.
1
40 years ago, Ronald Reagan used to say in the 1980 campaign:
"A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
A depression is when you lose your job.
A recovery is when President Carter loses his job."
Yet, in the intervening 40 years, it's reached the point when it is more appropriate to say:
"A recession is when I work 2 jobs to make ends meet.
A depression is when I work only 1 job and can't make ends meet.
A recovery is when I die and can finally rest in peace."
Thank you GOP and complicit Democrats.
Not only have you not given us nationalized healthcare and civilized working hours, but you're actually killing us.
PS: I am a white 57 year old STEM professional with a decent job - as a contractor so there's no such thing as a "permanent job" - who will die working (*) because I cannot afford to retire.
(*) Or commit suicide because I can't work not more and will otherwise become homeless.
5
@VJR Please don't commit suicide. No temporary problem justifies a permanent solution. If you even are considering it, I urge you to contact 1-800-273-8255.
@jemison
Thanks for your concern.
I am not depressed nor considering suicide anytime soon.
But I want to be clear: the problems that will be facing me are permanent. My body will give up and I will not be able to work anymore, but I cannot survive a forced retirement. Therefore, like a player in chess resigning because it is hopeless, I will likely commit suicide when the time comes. Think of it as like self-assisted euthanasia. However, it will likely not come to that; I am so unhealthy now that I will likely die in a sudden fashion within a few years so I won't even make retirement age.
@jemison You really think it's a temporary situation what he is feeling, this is our new reality!
I grew up in Germany and have lived in the US for more than three decades. The harshness and cruelty of US society still startles me almost on a daily basis. Health care that bankrupts people. Virtually no social safety net. No mandatory paid maternity leave. Insanely expensive higher education. Very little sense by the elites that we're all in this together. A shockingly cruel, and often racist, criminal law system. It is very strange, and (despite a fancy education including degrees from Brown and Yale Law School) I have not been able to understand why Americans choose to live like this. It is utterly unsurprising that such social arrangements corrode society.
12
@Uli. What an incredibly sobering commentary on our society, and one I hear from European friends and relatives myself on a regular basis. We are a very cruel society and I have watched us grow crueler during my 65+ years on this planet. I am no closer to understanding why people want to live like this than I was 60 years ago.
1
Advocates of illegal immigrants conveniently overlook this harsh and unfortunate reality. Illegal immigrants and their families exacerbate an already difficult situation and drain scarce dollars from our schools and healthcare system. Americans who are struggling and elderly are hit the hardest. Given that most paths to enter -- as well as remain -- the middle class have disappeared, the United States is simply creating a larger underclass by permitting illegal immigrants to remain. The failure of so many to assimilate or even learn English will fuel racial tensions and further weaken the social fabric.
4
Perhaps those who never attended college never learned to think critically enough to shrug off the gloom and doom that bombards them 24/7 from a media and culture-making machine that thrives on the notion that if it bleeds it leads.
All day every day Americans are force fed a gluttonous diet of sorrow and woe; incessant predictions of Armageddon; shame; fear; loathing; blame; and of course, that Tantalus inspired need to consume...not just to one's sufficiency, but to excess that would shame Midas himself - and their diminishing ability to sate that need.
While not absolute, the educated tend to be more equipped to think their way through disappointment; to seek a rational response to what they're confronted with.
How many college grads do you know that have made a run on toilet paper?
Having said that, how many people without college degrees do you see driving a Prius?
2
All of this is why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are right about American Capitalism. The problem is our voting public is too ill educated and depressed to understand the need for radical solutions and there are not enough politicians with the guts to legislate them. I did not vote for either of them (tho I love her) because beating Trump right now is the priority but they are not wrong. We the people have been brainwashed and braindeaded.
4
Sadly, these are the people who have fallen for Trump's empty promises and the false hope his lies offer. Sanders and Warren are the only ones who were in the race who'd have done anything to help them.
2
Why is it even legal for companies to demand that American workers train their replacements, mainly grossly inferior foreign workers? Talk about despair! But this practice is routine, now. Surely Joe Biden will do something about it, though. Oh, wait ...
Hard to believe this is news...
Just visit any place that's lost so-called "blue collar" jobs, see rotting buildings, roads, houses, closed businesses, schools and imagine not being able to leave, move your family, have any hope of opportunities elsewhere. People can't afford to just pack up and leave to "greener pastures" without the cash to do so... why, then, too, might we have a huge homeless problem with migrant citizens who may leave destitute places only to reach dead ends.
2
Perhaps our unfettered capitalism needs being "fettered" somewhat with an eye toward employees as people not widgets easily replaced, a business being part of a community, not a bargaining chip to be used to get lower or no local taxes for years, execs not having huge salaries, perks and bonuses. But I know that as long as Americans want cheap goods and companies want high profits nothing will change. French saying "sauve qui peut"-save yourself if you can.
Y'all think Joe Biden has a chance to fix this? No way. He'll get steamrolled by Trump.
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By far the biggest increase in "despair Deaths" has been among white women in the American South. Is you were to exclude them from this survey, the results, while disquieting, would be far less dramatic. I think research should be concentrated on the group that is suffering at a far higher rate than the general population
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As long as corporations have a say in politics, society on a whole will suffer. I think that's the elephant in the room.
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I have hired a lot of people through the years and a few observations.....
1) Going to college is not a magic bullet. In our failed K-12 educational system most are not college material. If you barely made it through our dumbed down (and yes it has been greatly dumbed down) system then DO NOT go to some overpriced mediocre "college" - TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.
2) Motivation is key. I see too many lazy, uninterested Americans who think it's too much trouble to get dressed and come to work on time. HUGE PROBLEM. I am not sure how to fix it but hiring an immigrant with a much better work ethic usually fixes this when it is an option (legal immigrants I should add).
3) Find a vocation or profession - yes, something that gives you a skill set that cannot be outsourced, offshored, or automated. This is the key to success in our world now - electricians, plumbers, painters, hair dresser, dog walkers, carpenters, etc. Not sexy, no, but can provide a good middle class way of life.
You have to work hard in our globalized world. There is no magic bullet, but personal responsibility is also a part of the equation. Work ethic is huge IMHO.
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I am sure that Mr Leonhardt and other moderate pundits at The Times know of a package of a feasible, incremental solution to this problem that will help these poor unfortunates while preserving the opportunities for profit and investment that make America great. But it should be carefully targeted to make sure that it doesn't increase the deficit or destroy incentives.
1
This opinion piece seems to imply that the non-white 39.7% of American doesn't have a working class? Or isn't statistically significant? Or they're not dying deaths of despair? Is this research by white people, on working-class whites, meant for only the 60.3% of white America to read?
France and Germany don't have the same problems because they have strong unions and take care of their people.
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@Nicola Unfortunately, at least in Germany, you have to have a permanent employment contract in order to enjoy those union benefits. Increasingly, companies are circumventing this by simply not hiring people. Instead, " external service providers" are brought in for everything from running the employee cafeteria, doing the bookkeeping, to performing the engineering tasks on major projects. Without a permanent employment contract in Germany it's extremely difficult to rent a flat, apply for a mortgage or even get a car loan. Most contracts for external workers can be cancelled with a 2 week notice . What kind of bank will lend you money under those circumstances? What sort of landlord will give a rental agreement to someone who might not have an income next month? Germany has a high suicide rate and it is probably higher than actually reported as there continues to be an enormous stigma attached to depression or any form of mental illness. The concept of share holder value over the welfare of actual employees has arrived also in Germany and it is negatively impacting society.
1
Maybe democrats could stop telling everyone how badly they are doing, how the system is cheating them and how young people have no future.
Just a suggestion.
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@AACNY Yeah, don’t talk about it and maybe it will go away. Always a viable solution.
1
@InterestedObserver
The democrats' message has been abysmal. That they would encourage an entire generation of young people to give up and wait for the government to rescue them is inexcusable.
1
Many years ago, my grandfather worked on the line at Cadillac. He once approached a man at a gas station who drove a new Cadillac for permission to show his son, my dad, how beautiful it sounded when one shut the doors. A solid, sure and secure thunk that made my grandfather so proud to work for that American manufacturer, and made my dad very proud of his father who worked for such a great company. See anyone at gas stations asking to demonstrate door closings now?
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Several thoughts most likely to be unpopular:
1) First off I find it amusing or perhaps nauseating is a better word. The assumption That the Republicans are solely responsible for the mass destruction of the working class. The Democrats are innocent woolly lambs. Who never signed off on NAFTA & had nothing to do with admitting China to the WTO and the ensuing wholesale shipping of decent jobs overseas to be replaced with welcome to Walmart or would you like fries with that? An interesting if invalid assumption I must say.
2) The assumption in this article and the commentary that the winners of Globalization. The Donor & Professional actually give a single solitary..thing for the losers. The reality is most if not a massive majority of the winners could care less about the losers. Feel free to deny it but the facts speak for themselves rather loudly!
3) A simple question for my fellow commentators & the author I suppose. Since most of them are winners in the game. How long do we have before the losers abandon Democracy & the Ballot box for the gun & IED? We've spent 20 years teaching the children of the poor how to fight an unconventional war. How long before they turn skills against a new enemy? How long before the dogs of war start to howl and the Jackboots march? For the winners have abandoned their fellow citizens for their counterparts in foreign countries. So why shouldn't the losers turn on the losers that abandoned them? It's probably better then suicide after all.
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I am so acutely aware of this.
Everywhere the epidemic of obesity is evident - visible evidence of the spiritual decline of America. People are losing the ability to take care of themselves.
Lies abound. Everywhere. First, it is human nature to lie - even to ourselves. Only with learning and spiritual development can the lies we live by be overcome.
Second, we have created an ominous lie machine - TV. Constant 24/7 messages called advertising are, in fact, biased persuasions to part with your wealth for the profit of others. Decades ago, already, advertising has hired teams of psychology PhD's to research how to MAKE people buy.
Third, the "Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is a system that promotes spin and even outright deception to garner votes for the benefit of special interest - misaligned with human interest.
Fourth, the Churches of the Republican Way - the majority of our nation's Christians - have allied themselves with the GOP like it was tattooed on their bottoms at baptism. These Christians, trapped in self-righteous delusion, fear the secular state, and fall into the arms of Satan's lies. How else could it be that they have taxed us trillions in the killing of millions for no good reason? How else could it be that the U.S. has more people behind bars than any other country?
There is a solution. Abandon the flat earth Bible. It has bread finger-pointing fascism too often. Seek the living loving Lord and you will find. I suggest the Buddhist path.
@Tracy Rupp You have something there. I would like to see deaths of despair categorized by people who watch TV and people who don't (if they can find any of the latter, other than the Amish, who I suspect have very few deaths of despair)!
And the opinion leader in NYT does not think we living a long distance from US have known this for long? Since EU was established and gradually have taken up the same economic system as has dominated US a long time both under Republican and Democratic lead, just the same has been happening here in Europe. Not so catastrophic as in US perhaps, but large groups of people in France has been in the streets now a whole year, trying to show Macron how the EU Comission has deteroriated their lives. Even though the ranks of billionaires have been growing very fast!
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I can't help but notice that all those lines on the charts shift from blues and greens to oranges and reds right about the time that the smartphone came onto the market (in 2007). Our being perpetually locked in to social media and the internet during every waking hour of every day of our lives generates anxiety and a feeling of inadequacy that is damaging us immeasurable.
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@David Well, I can’t argue with you on this one. I’ve long thought social media was one of the most emotionally destructive things the human race has ever invented. I ditched it all myself a couple of years ago and I can’t begin to describe how much better I feel as a result. And I’d like to add that I am no less informed as a result. Actually just the opposite is probably true.
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This is a direct cause of conservative thought. Let's face it, there is no mobility and no safety net. Laissez faire means good, but tough luck. Look around you and you see it every day, unless you live in some rich pocket of the country.
1
These charts explain so much about our political predicament too. Putting aside the fact that Trump doesn't really care about these people, they at least believe he is speaking to them. More importantly, he is sticking it to the coastal liberal elites. Knocking us down a peg. The timeless proverb of "misery loves company" still holds true. I suppose if you feel like nobody is ever going to do something to make your life better, you can at least vote to make someone else's life worse. Petty I know, but look at the man who leads them.
The irony is that there are democratic candidates that would work very hard to help these people, but the Republican Party and Trump have so poisoned their minds with hate, that they can't even vote in their best interests anymore. So the cycle of pain (i.e., another Trump term) will likely continue for us all.
1
Maybe people who complete four years of college are preselected for self discipline and other skills that promote health and happiness. Have Case and Deaton done similar work on non-college graduates who have completed lengthy training programs in, say, diesel engine maintenance or the skilled building trades? These days the mechanics at auto dealerships have years of training, and unlike many college graduates, have to go for yearly training on new models to keep their certifications.
Contract work definitely needs to be dealt with. All kinds of regulations could be put in place, but a good national health care plan and a decent minimum wage would take care of a lot of problems.
1
More than anything I blame the constant race to the bottom in terms of job security, benefits, and health insurance. Fact is that over the last 50 years we have seen dramatic changes across many industries. After coming off an unprecedented post WWII growth period, we have seen the demise of entire industries, offshoring of jobs, outsourcing to temp companies, automation, reduction in benefits, and rising health insurance costs. None of this will change. So the questions really is "Now what?". Hoping for the government to create "new kinds of unions" seems a bit vague and unrealistic.
1
They're the canaries in the coal mine. It's coming for many more.
There is no doubt this system offers comfort beyond imagination, but there is no doubt it discards what it doesn't need. Most would rather not acknowledge the discards. We're trying to have our cake and eat it too.
We can feel something is rotten but don't want to name it.
My father worked in the furniture industry for a long time and talked about how eventually nothing mattered to management but selling the warranties. They made no money on the furniture. One of his friends was always a top salesman and all around good guy but failed to meet his warranty quota and was fired. He killed himself.
This kind of thing is all around us. We are forced to give up our integrity to survive. Most just want to make an honest living and help make our communities a better place. We're finding out that's discardable too.
Stark Trek or Mad Max? If we're being honest, we know it ain't gonna be Star Trek.
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College is a marker, but even a college degree is becoming less and less of a sure path to financial and social stability. So many people have degrees but cannot find jobs with wages that match their skills and abilities. As the article says, it is many times worse for those without a degree.
I just returned from Colombia. There, many people with good degrees and advanced training are languishing in poor paying jobs because all the power is in the hands of the elite minority - their 1%. The U.S. under Trump and the Republicans want it to be that way here too. We must have countervailing power against the 1% here, and only the Democrats offer a way to do that. We once had a better balance between blue and white collar, rich and poor, and we can get it back with the political will to do so.
3
How does one separate the effect that college education has on feeling of well-being from the effect it has on income? It seems the two go hand in hand. I am not a statistician so cannot pinpoint how this is to be done but in my view it is important to find out.
College gives marketable skills but also much more that is intangible. People learn to get along with others from a different economic and cultural background. They have opportunities to discover new interests. They are exposed to people from other countries with other forms of government. College basically broadens the horizons of the student, so she/he learns that there is so much more out there in the world.
But college is expensive and college debt is the downside of this choice.
In the past, life was simpler so education requirements were minimal. Now not just the jobs but even social life is more complicated so the young need preparation to face this and make good choices, so college is more essential than ever.
That is why I think that the Democratic presidential candidates who want to make college education cheaper or even free are on the right track. America is a wealthy country. It can at least make community college free for those who want it.
1
This confirms what has been suspected for a long time. Low income worker have little respect and little opportunity for advancement. Value in this country is closely tied to ability to pay your way. The working class can't afford higher education, healthcare or housing. The message is that they don't deserve a decent life. No wonder deaths of despair are so high. Thank you for this article. It is a true emergency and we can't wait for incremental change. Many more lives will be lost. The house is burning and we need to rebuild a better one. (thanks Michelle Goldberg for great Bernie metaphor).
1
Maybe people who complete four years of college are preselected for self discipline and other skills that promote health and happiness. Have Case and Deaton done similar work on non-college graduates who have completed lengthy training programs in, say, diesel engine maintenance or the skilled building trades? These days the mechanics at auto dealerships have years of training, and unlike many college graduates, have to go for yearly training on new models to keep their certifications.
Contract work definitely needs to be dealt with. All kinds of regulations could be put in place, but a good national health care plan and a decent minimum wage would take care of a lot of problems.
1
"People without college degrees are also less likely to attend church." That's a good thing. Increasingly, however, it's educated people who are finally realizing that religion offers nothing of value. Except in places like Oklahoma where taxpayers will soon foot a huge bill to fund their new law to post "In god we trust" signs in every public building. This goes to show you don't need a college degree to be collectively delusional.
3
I grew up in a working class family, in a working class neighborhood, in a working class town in the 1950s and '60s. Virtually everybody with whom we came into contact worked in a factory or a supporting industry.
Most were union members and had a sense of pride in being working class. But all wanted their children to get an education. Our small wood-framed house was crammed with newspapers and magazines – for parents and kids alike. Ditto for friends and relatives homes.
Our's and our friends parents were clean, disciplined, involved and sober. The proudest days of my parents' lives were when I got accepted to an elite university and then graduated.
That culture has disappeared.
Now, being educated is considered a flaw among the working class. Information gathering and analysis has been proxied to Fox News and conspiracy websites.
And as a result, we have Trump, we have a working class that would blame others for their troubles instead of organizing, and we no longer have a functioning Constitutional republic.
In my father's final years, he could not understand why the offspring working class brothers and sister began supporting the GOP and the billionaire class.
As a proud WWII vet, he certainly would not have understood armed Nazis marching across college campuses.
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@James J I agree with these comments. I grew up in the same environment in Detroit during the 1960's. Having been fortunate to receive an affordable college education and a good career in a large corporation, in my opinion it began with the Reagan 'revolution' (Steyer was right) and the attack on unions and government support structures. I saw it myself in the company I worked for. There was a continual degradation of benefits and disparagement of unions, who despite their many faults, were the only one's fighting to maintain healthcare and retirement benefits for the employees. Instead of continuing to improve the support network for all citizens as Europe has done, the Republicans have made it their modus operandi to ensure that Americans have fewer benefits (paid leave, vacation, etc.), unaffordable healthcare, limited retirement options and no hope. It is time to reverse the trend and start to implement policies which will help the average American and give them hope for the future.
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@James J
Good observation. WW II finished the process of gluing the country together, which began under FDR. Following the war, the country became more conservative and more religious. Your father's generation was unable to grasp that their children shed their shared values of duty honor and patriotism, in large part due to LBJ's and Nixon's madness with regards to Vietnam.
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@GregB Reagan simply coincided with the globalization of American corporations which shifted jobs to those places with cheaper labor. Fighting the laws of the market, even when recognized, might have resulted in higher costs for products, loss of places to sell those products and the eventual loss of those corporations to foreign competition. No one wanted to go down that road even when they recognized it.
The squeeze on the American worker is the natural consequence of that global market where they are now in competition with workers in Asia and Africa. No one wants to deal with this because it requires higher pay for workers (not going to happen without unions) or higher taxes from corporations and the super rich in order to circulate more money to more people as they do in some Scandinavian nations. Providing a support system to everyone is not something that Americans, brought up to idolize Individualism and Individual effort, can admit to needing. Yet without it growing inequality results in greater social instability — something else that average people don’t recognize as a consequence of capitalism, but blame on individuals.
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These findings will come as a surprise only to Republican legislators and Fox "News" viewers, who, in response, will studiously ignore them.
2
This sobering article makes a compelling case for Senator Sanders’ candidacy which is fundamentally about advocating for working-class people who have been forsaken by the ruling class in this country.
I hope voters who care deeply about racial, social, economic, and environmental justice will give Bernie’s campaign a second look because it’s not really about socialism, it’s about saving lives and restoring dignity and hope to people who have struggled mightily for decades here in America.
3
All of this is big enough to challenge the dominant narrative among the elite, that discussions of race and ethnicity in the US begin and end with racism and white nationalism, and that the oppression of people of color is the only thing our society must address along these lines. I do not question the centrality of the poison of racism in the US, but this article shows this point of view is woefully incomplete.
I predict this evidence of the collapse of poorly educated white society will not change anyone's thinking: these non-college educated white people probably voted for Trump, so why should anyone care?
2
It doesn’t help that the white non-college educated Americans constantly vote against their own interests. I’ve heard them rant about their hate of universal healthcare. And for some reason they’re against the unions that might have protected them. They also vote to against property taxes that would provided better education for their children. I don’t understand how they see the world or why they vote against their own interests.
If I were in a group that’s 40% medically obese, has terrible dietary habits, likes to drink, and doesn’t have much savings...I’d want universal healthcare. But they vote against it.
2
@EP
There wouldn't be a need to increase property taxes if "huge" tax cuts weren't being doled out to banks,hedge funds and corporations. Also,there are plenty of college graduates who now pay a greater share of their health insurance premiums than ever before. There are plenty of college graduates who are anti-union. There are plenty of college graduates who feel compelled to work sixty hours a week, answering emails,texts phone calls. If they divided their hours worked by their salaries, they would be in for a rude awakening.
1
There is a direct link between the Reagan revolution and its economic policies and the despair and misery of people without a college education. Unfortunately, this piece does not mention the many people saddled with endless education debt who experience the same miseries of those without degrees.
However, this article does point out that the only people who benefit financially from our country's healthcare system support the status quo. Senator Warren has offered a sound plan to fix healthcare in our country, let's hope Biden gives her a chance to work her plan.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that Reaganomics is only one aspect of America's current problems. The sad truth is to advance the economic policies of the Reagan revolution and garner power Republicans, in 1981, initialed an attack on the rule of law and began the packing of the courts with Federalist Society ideologues. Let's hope 2020 marks the end of the Reagan revolution, the rebirth of America democracy, and a govt. that works for the many not the few.
At 71 I have watched the America I grew up in be dismantled by Reagan revolutionaries who serve America's oligarchs; therefore I am committed to cleaning up this mess caused by my generation. That said, I will vote blue, no matter who.
14
There is a direct link between the Reagan revolution and its economic policies and the despair and misery of people without a college education. Unfortunately, this piece does not mention the many people saddled with endless education debt who experience the same miseries of those without degrees.
However, this article does point out that the only people who benefit financially from our country's healthcare system support the status quo. Senator Warren has offered a sound plan to fix healthcare in our country, let's hope Biden gives her a chance to work her plan.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that Reaganomics is only one aspect of America's current problems. The sad truth is to advance the economic policies of the Reagan revolution and garner power Republicans, in 1981, initialed an attack on the rule of law and began the packing of the courts with Federalist Society ideologues. Let's hope 2020 marks the end of the Reagan revolution, the rebirth of America democracy, and a govt. that works for the many not the few.
At 71 I have watched the America I grew up in be dismantled by Reagan revolutionaries who serve America's oligarchs; therefore I am committed to cleaning up this mess caused by my generation. That said, I will vote blue, no matter who.
3
Capitalism is inherently anti-Black and racist, though it treats everyone not at the top horribly. I think it is a huge disservice to only passingly mention the effects of capitalism on Black communities. In doing so, this article/I assume this book seems to take Black suffering for granted, as part of the status quo, while white suffering is seen as an aberration & what gives rise to anticapitalist action. Of course white and non-Black people suffer under capitalism, but to focus on them exclusively is shallow & racist.
@MD
That's the way it is...
Racism will be the downfall of this United States. She's in the mist of it now and most are too clueless to see it, its over.
Nothing becomes real in this nation until it hits white America. When the chicken come home to roost, some white people blame others, make excuses or find scapegoats for self-inflected wounds.
I would like to see the data on the despair of the working class and the demise of unions.
1
@Mantis Toboggan M.D.
Bingo.
These terrible circumstances are exactly what Berne Sanders is striving to change through a living wage, protections for unions, affordable housing, Medicare for All, and tuition-free public colleges.
It's a cruel irony that the New York Times can report so thoroughly on the unlivable conditions of tens of millions of Americans, and at the same time relentlessly ridicule Sanders and his supporters for demanding systemic change.
17
@Joan Exactly what thought. "What can be done about all of this? Many of the solutions are obvious, if difficult to accomplish" - which translates as: "Let's pile on more of the status quo, what could go wrong?" When will we realize that the ancien régime is not a friend to the working man or the middle class.
8
Read Nicholas Kristof's columns and book on the destruction of the working class. It perfectly illustrates and describes what these dry statistics confirm.
1
The pain, misery and death toll from the Reagan revolution will continue to climb unless replaced with a govt. that embraces Warren's plans.
6
Getting rid of Reaganomics, aka: trickle-down, would be a good start. I believe that is the root of so many of our problems today. No society that has or ever has had this kind of enormous gap in wealth and income is stable or healthy. The sad thing is watching so many Americans continue to vote for the party that brought us this catastrophic economic model (with the help of Pres. Clinton) while crying about being left behind and repeating what the Trickle-down advocated like FOX and the GOP make sure they do, namely react a la Pavolov's dog to the word "Socialism"! It's amazing watching the powers that be in the Republican Party continue to use and abuse their own base while sticking it to them. Those bachelor's degrees would come in handy to help these suffering people realize they keep voting for their abusers and the very party that wants to further their misery.
8
We would all benefit from a country where higher education and health care are freely available to all. I'd like my fellow Americans to be as educated as possible and healthy too.
1
@KJR
Not everybody is suited for college; trade school or vocational education need to be considered as well. I'd like my fellow Americans to be able to support themselves.
1
I think these non-college whites are feeling the effects of the world changing and moving past the days of conveyor-belt manufacturing. They are being forgotten. We are in the next stage of American life, where a college education is a must when it used to be a high school diploma. If they didn't push their children to be better, generations and generations stay stagnant. But what about marginalized black and latinos? This has been happening to them for decades to the point of pushing them into poverty, yet we only focus on "recent" white struggles. We blame Mexican immigrants for "stealing jobs" when most of them are doing what these white laborers don't want: housekeeping, landscaping, childcare, etc. These jobs are a blessing for them to live a better life in the US. Which argues that maybe these marginalized white Americans should take some responsibility for themselves. They were dealt all the right cards in life.
1
@Kitty
Sure,at $7.25 per hour,no overtime pay,no health insurance,no workers compensation. Let's all race to the bottom.
3
The key is the 'elephant chart' of change in global income distribution with globalization. The global poor (except for the very poorest) and middle saw their incomes rise. So did the upper middle class and even more so, the rich. But the working and lower middle class of the developed world fell behind. There is no technological-economics brakes for the latter trend; in fact it will only accelerate as automation becomes more important than globalization. That's why retraining will not help - the jobs just aren't there - only redistribution will.
1
How can you write this lucid article, and also support status-quo politicians? Isn't the growing hopelessness of the working class a bad thing worth taking big steps to reverse?
3
That's a stunning graph. You can almost pinpoint where social media started to take over the landscape of time involvement in people's lives by virtue of color. In the older generations, you can also see where the graph color changes significantly around the financial crisis in 2008. Perhaps we're still paying the price on that.
2
Education doesn't necessarily gauge likelihood of suicide. The distinction Case and Deaton draw between the "haves" and the "have nots", education-wise and wage-wise, is compelling and valuable.
But many people are stuck in lousy jobs. 80% of Americans do not have college degrees. There must be other factors driving them to suicide, because, just biologically, it's natural to want to stay alive.
There is a school of thought that says suicide is a logical choice, at least to its victim. They think they have no purpose in life, and further, no human really has a purpose in life, so why live.
They think their death will matter to no one, and that they will not be missed. If they have loving families, they dismiss the amount these people care for them--out of depression, not because they do not love them.
Alcohol is a tricky natural depressant. It provides quick, short-term relief from problems, but depression is the lingering residue. Drugs are trickier, especially psychotropics. They alter one's feelings, but because it's done via chemistry, the depression feels very real and natural--when it could be drug-induced.
Advice:
1) don't use drugs, alcohol or food to block depression
2) find or think of one thing that gives hope, engenders thinking of the future--give this some time, it's not automatic
Hope and curiosity about the future will return.
1
@Lilou RIght now, about a third of Americans over 25 yrs. have a college degree - B.A. or higher.
@Lilou
I'm sure this will help ease the problems of people who are having to content with low wage jobs, exorbitant rents (not just NY or California anymore - it's all over the country now), escalating healthcare and food costs. My husband and I can't walk out of the grocery store or Target without depositing $100.00 into each on a weekly basis - and that just for the two of us. We're not suicidal, but this is becoming a problem for everyone, not just the non-college educating. Platitudes and Norman Vincent Peale "power of positive thinking" lectures don't help when you're having to deal with reality.
@eheck -- Advice and observations based on personal experience, not learned from other sources. Rein in the sarcasm. Just be glad you've got $200 a week to spend on food and stuff from Target...and suicide has never occurred to you.
Vast income disparity is a major problem in the U.S. It's strange, how that heroic American "rugged individualism" has morphed into "I'm gonna get mine, and I don't care about the rest of society."
Americans fear taxes, like acquiring stuff (if they can), and think their low tax rates (compared to Europe) will somehow be enough to help all the Americans who need help.
Not true. Minimum hourly wages here, in France, are 10,03 euros per hour, or $11.32 per hour. The average U.S. hourly wage (not the minimum) is $11.39 per hour.
Looking at a chart of average U.S. minimum wages (it varies by state) shows an $8 to $9 a average minimum wage.
France doesn't have the same income distribution disparity as the U.S., only because of its extensive wealth redistribution, via use of taxes, which does much to correct poverty through substantial transfers to the least well-off households.
Taxes are not as excruciating in the EU as one might think, for example 31% on 100,000 euros after deductions. But overall, taxes are higher, plus we have sales tax on everything, adding to government revenue.
France's safety net relieves the burden of survival, which unfortunately cannot be said about the U.S.
I am sorry you are struggling. I can relate.
Education has little to do with it -- many of my friends and I have college degrees but are one car repair or illness away from being on the streets. In Idaho, wages are routinely advertised as $11-14/hr, especially for administrative assistant jobs -- which are all that's open to those of us who are past 60 (no matter what our career expertise and educational pedigrees), lost our retirement in the Recession, are female and single.
Boise is in the midst of a severe housing crisis. The city is being swamped by people moving here from Seattle, Portland, the East Coast and California, and they have cash to spare. Property taxes are sky-high. Rents are sky-high. Food prices are sky-high. For most Idahoans, wages are less than what we made in the 80s, allowing for inflation and cost of living increases. Private equity investors are gobbling up whole neighborhoods for rentals. Magazines are now touting Boise as a great place to invest because you can "charge really high rents."
So how does the average person, educated or not, making Idaho wages, afford an apartment that rarely goes for less than $1600?
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Great, insightful piece of writing. Having made my living in corporate America of the '80's, 90's and first decade after the millennium, I watched as company after company fell victim to private money (hedge funds) control and the dismantling of their employee centered cultures. The investors through their 'turn around' management teams squeezed every ounce of profit from companies and jammed it into their pockets. There was little if any profit left to improve salaries and benefits for those that actually did the work. The stark difference between the U.S. and other developed countries is that most of those economies tax businesses more robustly and return that money to citizens in the form of heightened health and social benefits. We on the other hand spend 10 times more on our military than anyone else and give massive tax cuts to corporations while millions of working class people go without adequate healthcare coverage or living wages. It reflects our values and the image is not pretty.
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