Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

He is a member of the party of slavery, segregation and the Klan. What did you expect?

Progressive One

Yep....someone as accomplished as I am did not get here by letting the underachievers shape my self-perception....you're the D students who tried to make honor students feel bad about themselves because they could not achieve on the same level.......

S. Maturin

Yeah, I should have known better.

S. Maturin

"..here.." where exactly are you? Which penitentiary? C'mon, come clean.

Progressive One

Sad...that you all have to TRY to lower others in order to feel lifted yourselves.....what a awful way to have to lead your lives..........

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

Agreed, totally. But they are starting healthcare talks again. I can't help but think they will attempt to go down the very same road.

There is plenty of time to do this. Inventing an Obamacare patch isn't the ticket.

That being said, nothing will happen until they give up pre-existing conditions and return to the high risk pools. Then, without the pharmaceutical reform, forcing pharmaceutical industries to compete with each other outside the states, very little will change.

I have always felt that healthcare was a right, but that must only apply in the emergency/life or death arena. Doctors/hospital systems need to compete as do health insurance companies.

Hell, I'm in healthcare and I just don't see a good solution.

S. Maturin

Nonetheless... you are in prison, are you not?

Progressive One

I'll take it you have done time or currently serving time.....the careers I have held the last 30 years doesn't allow a criminal record.....top secret clearances and all..........but I do notice that many of you OPP cons do login and logout at the same times.....what gives?

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

You fight like a girl, PO.

Progressive One

Nah....just looking at you negative ass miserable crackas all around trying to project your misery...I guess it is true about you people dying at the highest indeedrates because of opioid abuse, suicide and alcoholism.......I can see you all being the types that lower the spirits of all around you....starting with your families....wow......sad indeed.....


For whites without college degrees, ‘a sea of despair’
This group of Americans has been dying at a faster rate
By Matt Pearce
In 2015, a pair of economists received widespread attention for their study showing that since the late 1990s the death rate has been rising for middle-aged white Americans.
Now a new analysis by the same Princeton University team has identified which part of that population was driving that trend: people without college degrees.
White men and women in every age group between 25 and 64 who did not have college degrees saw their mortality rates increase between 1998 and 2015. Those with degrees saw their mortality rates decrease.
“There are two Americas,” said Anne Case, who conducted the research with her husband, Angus Deaton, a Nobel laureate. “There’s an America for people who have gotten a college degree, and an America for people who have not gotten a college degree. And if you had a checklist of well-being, the people without college degrees are getting worse and worse, and people with college degrees are doing very well.”
The analysis, published Thursday in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, found that the problem appears to be distinctly American.
In Europe, mortality rates for people with low levels of education are falling more rapidly than for those with more education.
In every age group the researchers examined, white Americans with a high school education or less now fare worse than blacks as a whole — a reversal of the situation in 1999.
Blacks and Latinos have seen steady improvement in mortality rates as whites without college degrees have been going in the other direction as a result of drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide and a recent halt in a decline in deaths due to heart disease. The nation’s opioid abuse epidemic played a major role.
But the authors said an underlying culprit is the widespread erosion of institutions that provided stability in American life for much of the 20th century: the manufacturing industry, the church, unions and stable marriage.
“A long-term process of decline … began for those leaving high school and entering the labor force after the early 1970s,” and “traditional structures of social and economic support slowly weakened,” the authors wrote.
“These changes left people with less structure when they came to choose their careers, their religion, and the nature of their family lives,” they wrote. “When such choices succeed, they are liberating; when they fail, the individual can only hold him or herself responsible.”
The result, the authors conclude, is a “recipe for suicide,” adding that other risks include alcohol abuse, drug use and overeating.
The authors touch on themes of working-class white disenfranchisement that became a major undercurrent in the 2016 presidential campaign and turned “Hillbilly Elegy,” a book by J.D. Vance about hope and hopelessness within rural America , into a bestseller.
The book focused on Appalachia, but Case says the problem stretches all over America, not just in rural areas, and may explain why voters were so interested in political outsiders like Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left.
“There’s just a sea of despair; there’s an enormous amount of pain,” she said, describing “wages that don’t rise with experience” and “an inability to create and keep stable marriages” among working-class whites. “There’s a lot of lack of structure in people’s lives that give balance and meaning.”
Case said the situation may continue to worsen. “People just entering the labor market now without a college degree are getting hammered even more,” she said. And older whites won’t see comprehensive government relief in retirement, Case said.
“Social security is not going to magically wave its wand and make you whole again,” Case said.
matt.pearce@latimes.com
Twitter: @mattdpearce

S. Maturin

Well-l-l-l, just let me tell you a little secret- I worked for the gov't serving in a professional capacity dealing with repeat offenders-- felons, and I know a 'jail house lawyer' when I see one. You fit the bill about 99%.

Progressive One

I guess that is why you are speaking in past tense. I don't even do parking tickets dude................

S. Maturin

Yup, I moved on to bigger, better-paying things. And YOU? What is it you moved on to, eh? Hubcaps, pot, crack? What?

Progressive One

you people on the right live to demean and destroy the characters of others.......i've been a crack head, serial killer, molester, welfare recipient, from a broken home, high school dropout and everything except the Dr./Professor/Engineer I worked to become....based on the fact I never had to deal with your type as a grown adult, my calculation to educate myself was spot on....

Progressive One

I was an Electrical Engineer at 22.....got a Masters at 29 and a Doctorate at 35......my career has always been a continuous movement to bigger, better and higher paying situations. Never been on the bottom past my teenage burger joint days, Can you say the same? Have you been a salaried professional your whole career?