Is it really hard to fathom why many people despise the US?

[Catweazle]

.....ethics and morality are not determined by majority voting.

I guess they must be determined by a superior class of person then.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes of course. They would not have happened had it not been for the US intervention. Vietnam was never part of the USA. Why did they ever go there? The French, who also should never have been there, at least had the wisdom to get out in a fairly timely manner.

Meanwhile, back in what really is the USA, we find curiously alarming data revealing a sick core to society.

A sharp rise in death rates among white middle-aged Americans has claimed nearly as many lives in the past 15 years as the spread of Aids in the US, researchers have said.

The alarming trend, overlooked until now, has hit less-educated 45- to 54-year-olds the hardest, with no other groups in the US as affected and no similar declines seen in other rich countries.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015 ... icans-aids

I don't know what is "Alarming" about cubical workers and couch potatoes dying younger then their parents that had to do physical labor to get paid.

[clv101]

Here's the paper. Figure 1 and 2 are certainly alarming. There is something going seriously wrong with 45–54 year old US white non-Hispanics, something that isn't happening in comparator countries France, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia or Sweden (SWE).

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/ ... 2.full.pdf

[vtsnowedin]

Here's the paper. Figure 1 and 2 are certainly alarming. There is something going seriously wrong with 45–54 year old US white non-Hispanics, something that isn't happening in comparator countries France, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia or Sweden (SWE).

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/ ... 2.full.pdf

It is clear to me that the rise of the personal computer is the main cause of this increase in deaths. Anybody with a brain would reach out and pull the computers power plug. Thank The computer gods that I am past the age of that demographic and don't have to worry about it.

[Catweazle]

The paper seems to point to drugs, alcohol and suicide as the drivers.

Did anyone else notice the UK on the first graph - flat, perhaps we're heading in the same direction.

[clv101]

Here's the paper. Figure 1 and 2 are certainly alarming. There is something going seriously wrong with 45–54 year old US white non-Hispanics, something that isn't happening in comparator countries France, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia or Sweden (SWE).

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/ ... 2.full.pdf

It is clear to me that the rise of the personal computer is the main cause of this increase in deaths. Anybody with a brain would reach out and pull the computers power plug. Thank The computer gods that I am past the age of that demographic and don't have to worry about it.

But the personal computer is also prevalent in the comparator counties, the opposite trends. Not clear computers are main cause.

[emordnilap]

Suicide is on the increase in my country; the preferred method is hanging. In all the years I lived in England, I only personally knew one suicide. Here, I know at least one a year, sometimes two. A friend hung himself last Thursday.

What's more, I don't know any members of the travelling community personally but their suicide rate is seven times that of the general population.

[vtsnowedin]

Here's the paper. Figure 1 and 2 are certainly alarming. There is something going seriously wrong with 45–54 year old US white non-Hispanics, something that isn't happening in comparator countries France, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia or Sweden (SWE).

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/ ... 2.full.pdf

It is clear to me that the rise of the personal computer is the main cause of this increase in deaths. Anybody with a brain would reach out and pull the computers power plug. Thank The computer gods that I am past the age of that demographic and don't have to worry about it.

But the personal computer is also prevalent in the comparator counties, the opposite trends. Not clear computers are main cause.

All kidding aside it is probably a combination of inactivity at work and at home and increased drug abuse and the stresses put on the lower middle class by the economic doldrums we are now increasingly in.

[snow hope]

What an indictment of the American dream and on a wider scale, the society we have created in the "western" world....

I do some work with a local charity which helps people with depression and over the last few years, it has been very clear that depression has been growing exponentially especially amongst young people but also across a wide age range.

I truly believe it is due to the complexity of modern life and some kind of misdirection that we all seem to have been exposed to. Also, I feel that as we get further from nature and the natural world, the problems increase.

Sad.

[emordnilap]

I do some work with a local charity which helps people with depression and over the last few years, it has been very clear that depression has been growing exponentially especially amongst young people but also across a wide age range.

I truly believe it is due to the complexity of modern life and some kind of misdirection that we all seem to have been exposed to. Also, I feel that as we get further from nature and the natural world, the problems increase.

Yes, yes and yes.

The pressure to 'achieve' is a huge factor, it seems.

[PS_RalphW]

It is the same demographic that suffered most in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Suicide, drugs (very cheap alcohol) and acute stress from falling off the slippery ladder of the social hierarchy in the dominant bureaucracy.

In the US there is more a social model of 'you only have yourself to blame if you fail'. That works just as well. Indolence and appalling diet adds to the problem.

It is a sign of a society in crisis.

[Blue Peter]

The paper seems to point to drugs, alcohol and suicide as the drivers.

Did anyone else notice the UK on the first graph - flat, perhaps we're heading in the same direction.

That's quite a badly labelled graph - can you be sure which line is USH and which is UK? I suspect that reading the paper might tell you, but I'd guess that actually it is USH which is levelling out. I'm guessing that the US graphs are spikier and also the US data seems to be more recent (i.e. USW and USH both finish in the same year),


Peter.

[vtsnowedin]

Perhaps we have Alvin Toffler's "future shock" finally coming to pass?

[biffvernon]

Maybe this will turn out to be the worst aspect of America:

Most Americans accept that climate change is real, they just don’t care that much about it

http://grist.org/climate-energy/most-am ... -about-it/

Or is it this:

It may be hard to accept, but a single company may have set back all of humanity.

Had Exxon Mobil listened to its own scientists rather than spread disinformation on climate change, the world might not have wasted three crucial decades during which global warming went from a prediction to a fact.

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/259192 ... l-has-done

[emordnilap]

There are still people who say, "I know someone who smoked all her life and lived to be 95".