This has got to be one of the most incoherent things I’ve ever read. Conservative writer and plagiarist Ben Domenech has noticed that the American working class is not doing so well, a fact that progressives have been hollering about lo these past few decades as conservatives like Domenech have championed anti-working-class policies. In particular he points to a study titled Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. A quote:
From 1978 to 1998, the mortality rate for US whites aged 45–54 fell by 2% per year on average, which matched the average rate of decline in the six countries shown, and the average over all other industrialized countries. After 1998, other rich countries’ mortality rates continued to decline by 2% a year. In contrast, US white non-Hispanic mortality rose by half a percent a year. No other rich country saw a similar turnaround. The mortality reversal was confined to white non-Hispanics; Hispanic Americans had mortality declines indistinguishable from the British (1.8% per year), and black non-Hispanic mortality for ages 45–54 declined by 2.6% per year over the period.
If you look at the charts, the big leap was in the rate of non-intentional poisonings, which are mostly drug overdoses. This is followed by an increase in suicides and in liver disease, mostly caused by drinking. There was a smaller uptick in diabetes. And this effect is mostly seen in people with a high school education or less. Mortality rates for college-educated non-Hispanic whites have been in decline.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of reasons why this particular group might be stressed. Income inequality is a biggie. Blue-collar jobs that pay a living wage are in decline, for example. This is also a group that was most hit by loss of access to health care, and still is in a lot of states. Obamacare hasn’t been with us long enough to see a turnaround, IMO. This group reports more chronic pain and poorer general health.
But according to Ben Domenech, the real villain here is Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).
In part, the reason for the ability of Americans to access SSDI as a kind of unemployment benefit fallback is due to a Reagan-era policy shift – via the unanimously passed 1984 Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act. This measure, which loosened criteria for eligibility, led to dramatic increases in those “hard to ascertain†diagnoses of chronic pain and mental illness as an avenue to benefit access.
Domenech says access to SSDI money has turned middle-aged non-hispanic white working folks into moochers who would rather stay home whining about their aching backs than go out and earn a living.
As a cultural matter, the picture is even worse. The surrender to the permanent trap of disability payments is a consequence of a loss of a certain American working class stoicism, which grappled with the tragic nature of life with what was essentially a 19th-century mentality. It was hard enough to deal with such a vision before the disintegration of working class marriage in the country – notice the contrast drawn by Charles Murray between the attitudes toward marriage and the experience of divorce in the white working class versus professionals.
Murray, like a lot of conservatives, gets things backward. The social psychologists find that marriage doesn’t give people more financially stable lives; they find that people with financially stable lives are more likely to marry. The moral, social and cultural erosion in working-class whites Murray clucks about did not cause the financial insecurity of their lives; the financial insecurity of their lives brought about moral, social and cultural erosion.
And if ease of getting one’s hands on SSDI benefits is causing all this sloth, how come it isn’t impacting black and Latino Americans, eh?
What Domenech is doing here is part of a campaign by the Right to attack and demonize SSDI, which they consider to be the “soft underbelly” of the Social Security system. If they can dismantle the Disability fund, maybe the Retirement fund can be whittled down next. Rand Paul recently issued a diatribe about how Social Security was being robbed. Turns out that this was just a surplus of retirement funds re-allocated to make up for a deficit of disability funds, which is a normal thing. This article explains why Paul was screaming about nothing.
I am reminded of the study which determined that laboratories cause cancer in mice.
Or the study done by three different ethnic groups (the joke works well with any). Group A determined that the penis was shaped as it is for the pleasure of the male. Group B determined that the penis was shaped as it is for the pleasure of the female. Group C, tasked with the same study determined that the penis is shaped as it is to keep the hand from sliding off.
And there’s a great one with the punch line, ‘Frog goes deaf’. Google it.
The point being that if you are willing to discard scientific objectivity & methodology you can make an argument for any damn fool thing.
My sister is on SSDI and she gets a whopping $400 a month from it.
This talentess weasel-faced punk, who’s never worked a day in his worthless life, doesn’t ever have to worry about being disabled, and having to try to live off of a monthly SSDI payment.
Not just because he’ll be a lifetime recipient of Wingnut Welfare, but, in order to be “dis-abled, you must first have been “abled.”
He’s paid to do what any sociopathic child with hyper-elevated anger issues and no intelligent adult supervision -and, naturally, no friends – can do – as long as s/he has hands, a computer, and at least rudimentary hunt-and-peck skills.
And believe me, this punk knows from hunt-and-peck !
It’s not only what he has to do when he has to pee, but, since not even the dumbest and horniest conservative women would want to be alone with him, is what he has to do to yank his tiny wrinkled flesh-gherkin, to reach sexual satisfaction.
And he won’t care at all that ‘Playboy’ won’t have no pitchers o’ nekkid women anymore. As long as people keep making snuff-films and “Faces of Death” video’s, he’ll never run out material worth trying to hunt to find his pecker.
What a waste of protoplasm and space and time this vile, bigoted, stupid and ignorant punk is!i
Okay, Ben, I’ll play the spurious correlation game. But unlike Ben, I’ll do it while actually fitting the results for all the groups. Note that the group with the rising rate is the same group, and pretty much the only group, which voted consistently for politicians who act against that group’s interests. So the reason for the drinking and drugging that underlies the bad result is the subconscious realization that they screwed themselves over, and screwed over their families, their kids and grandkids.
There you go. It’s guilt over the way they screwed themselves and their loved ones via incredibly bad voting choices. Fits all the results on the chart, unlike Ben’s spurious correlation.
I have been on SAD I for the past 20 years After I paid for it with my tax money by Working for 30 years.
I have been married for 38 years and am not suicidal.
He is an idiot. Yes some people abuse the system, but I the money I receive helped put food on the table for my 3 children when they lived at home.
Most of us do save this money. It goes right back in the economy, and I pay my taxes with it.
My tablet will not let be abbreviate social security disability.
I’m not SAD!
“the ability of Americans to access SSDI as a kind of unemployment benefit fallback is due to a Reagan-era policy shift”
So this is all Saint Ronnies fault? While these mortality rates have risen among whites 45-54 sales/rentals of VHS movies have all but disappeared so I blame the dvd and cable/internet on demand sales for the decline! Also too black President!
I think uncledad is right; we should be blaming the decline in VHS cassette renting for the increasing mortality rates. The slackers don’t even have to leave home to return the rentals; they just stream stuff off Netflix. Whatever happened to “be kind — rewind”?
Coincidentally, the slide begins shortly after NAFTA and continues with similar trade pacts. What’s a guy to do when he loses his manufacturing job and all that is left is Wal-Mart or McDonald’s?
The ’19th century mentality’ led to the communist revolutions of the 20th. I’m really sick of these people making excuses for the ruling class and their abeters in government who shipped our jobs overseas and killed our collective bargaining rights. All the while watching our job productivity skyrocket while not seeing a raise in 30 years and being expected to take up a bigger part of the skyrocketing health care costs and retirement. I can’t imagine what these people think we should do. When Obama told the bankers after they trashed our economy that he was the only thing between them and the pitchforks he should have gotten the hell out of the way so that we could have handled the situation the right way.
One of my conservative relatives posted a “liberals vs conservatives” comparison on Facebook. I’m sure you can all imagine it without further description, it fit the formula of countless others. It was probably fashioned by someone with their eyes on the kind of prize that Domenech has secured. There was a childish obstinance about it, but the author still had to work on his intellectual postering before he could submit his resume and work samples.
My favorite was “if a conservative wants health insurance, he buys it or CHOSES a job that provides it as a benefit.” This would normally stand out, but there are so many examples of complete conservative cluelessness that it is difficult to choose a winner.
So often, I really have to ask myself what planet these people are from.
“So often, I really have to ask myself what planet these people are from.”
Some of them have led really sheltered lives; some of them are just utterly oblivious, as in the “keep government out of my Medicare” crowd.
I also blame the advent of the Hoverround.
I spent years working next to a guy who reasoned like this idiot. He was even dumber, an engineer and a bona fide twit (engineers range from brilliant to twits). If Rush Limbaugh told him that “the Sky is Green”, not only would this boob believe it, but he would start to concoct reasons why the sky REALLY IS GREEN. And he would think he was being clever.
Later on, I learned the term “motivated reasoning”. The right does it all the time.
“I also blame the advent of the Hoverround”
What’s that the six volt? You know what else has expanded exponentially since these mortality rates have gone up? Right-wing hate radio and FAUX news, just saying!
Just another wet behind the ears whippersnapper running his mouth on theory. He should wait until the experience of aging gets a hold of his ass and then he might have a better grasp of what he thinks he talking about.
I know, we’re all a bunch of freeloading deadbeats. Gulag made a comment awhile back that summed up exactly my thoughts on what I’d like to tell assholes like Ben the unmensch.
“Hobble a mile on my ankle!”…. and then you’ll understand.