Deaths of Despair as Related to the Value of a College Education (solutions, lobbyists)

[Atari2600]

I have, let me count... 4 full degrees, and 5 masters and post baccalaureate certifications. My lowest GPA was a 3.94 on any of them. And I was very successful before I even got a single one of them. I didn't need a degree to get into software development, or to be successful in it... including industries that are heavily regulated.


Most of the degrees we're talking about, are liberal arts degrees which are non-focused, and don't really have any serious applicability to the work being done. When I've hired people, it's been for STEM positions, and I only look at degrees for research positions. If someone has a bachelors in history, and they're applying for a computer programming position, it means absolutely nothing to me. But if I'm hiring for an AI researcher, I'm going to want someone with a PhD. At the same time, if I see two people, and one has a significant amount of experience, and the other has a degree with little experience, I'm going to pass on the person with the degree.

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by markg91359

I've seen things my whole life that just leave me shaking my head. Many of us in the older generation knew people who could have easily completed college or learned a job skill and just chose not to do it because it would have interfered with "personal time". I remember talking to literally dozens of people who started college, but never bothered to earn a degree because at the time they could get a job out at the local military base that gave them sufficient income to pay living expenses. I knew an economics professor once who discussed with me what the greatest predictor of whether a young person would attend college or not. The greatest predictor they could find was if that young person's parents had gone to college. If so, the chances they would attend and graduate increased dramatically.

I do see a lot of people out there in the community that are marginally employed and seem to have little desire to improve their lot in life. Some may be incapable of doing much. However, others are simply too lazy to make the effort.

I don't think this group has any idea how strong competition around the world is. There are groups particularly in Asian countries that would do just about anything to live a lifestyle approaching what we Americans have. Lazy groups and those of low intelligence are going to increasingly feel like the world is collapsing all around them and no government program will be able to save them from those market forces.

You know, not just in education - During college, I had a summer job at a cardboard box manufacturing plant and one machine broke down right at quitting time on a Friday. The boss asked who would be willing to stay over a couple of hours to fix the machine. I immediately volunteered, realizing this would be overtime and pay 1.5X regular hourly wage. But most of the older guys didn't want to put off "beer thirty" so to speak, there were only a few of us who stayed. It took a couple of hours to fix the machine and I got some valuable experience, and I really knew how that machine worked when I went home that evening.

As to Asia eating our lunch, well, just consider the 1970s and Japanese cars being so much better quality and a better deal all around financially than what Detroit put out. I had several uncles and cousins working at a nearby GM assembly plant, UAW, and they all had a bad attitude, all they wanted was more money for not getting the job done.

[Mike from back east]

In post 213 I wrote:

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

.... Big pharma (Perdue Pharma, Sackler family), the FDA, and Congress not only did not protect us -- they actively enabled the opioid epidemic that ravages those areas and I'll talk about that in another posting -- short version: we did it to ourselves putting greed over people.
....

Now I’ll talk about those opioids that fuel the Deaths of Despair. From Chapter 9 of the book.

Opioids is the term now used to describe both opiates (natural form) and opioids (full or partial synthetics). They can be marvelous pain relievers but often highly addictive which can lead to family disintegration and death.

Opioids are measured in terms of Morphine Milligram Equivalents (MMEs). Thus:
- 1MG of Morphine has an MME of 1.
- 1MG of HydroCodone (Vicodin) has an MME of 1.
- 1MG of OxyContin / OxyCodone has an MME of 1.5.
- 1MG of Heroin has an MME of 3.
- 1MG of Fentanyl has an MME of 100. Approved by the FDA in 1968. Illegal versions come in from China, via Mexico.

In the late 1990s advocates of pain-relief argued that we were under-treating pain and thus a tsunami of powerful opioids were let loose upon us. By 2012 enough prescriptions were written to give every American adult a month’s supply of the stuff. In 2015 about 98 million adults, fully a third of all adults, were prescribed these drugs. Deaths started growing. Reporting drug fatalities on death certificates varies, some are listed as accidental overdoses, some as suicides, some don't specify which drug caused the death, there are no central databases for deaths, all of which makes the numbers a bit squishy.

Pill producers pushed hard to increase sales. In one 2-year span over 9,000,000 pills were shipped to a drugstore in Kermit, WV which only has a population of 406 people. When the DEA tried to stop these abuses, Congress responded in 2016 with an obscenity called the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act which hindered DEA efforts to stop the epidemic of drug deaths. The bill was sponsored in the House of Reps by Rep Tom Marino (R-PA) whom President Trump tried to appoint as his drug czar. In the Senate, the bill was co-sponsored by Senators Whitehouse (D-RI), Rubio (R-FL), Vitter (R-LA), Cassidy (R-LA) and Blackburn (R-TN).

Trump’s nomination of Tom Marino as drug czar was tantamount to putting a Mexican drug cartel in charge of our drug policy. After howls of outrage by TV show 60 Minutes (and others) the nomination was withdrawn.

There’s far more amazing info in Chapter 9 of the book (21 pages), but that’s the gist of it. Much of the damage we did to our own people, profits over people. I hope people get a copy of the book and read it.

I’ll address later chapters in later postings here.

[M3 Mitch]

I think it's ironic that Fentanyl is considered a legal prescription drug, and, OK, maybe for some specific situations it's use is justified, while ordinary marihuana is still considered an illegal drug by the Feds. If someone is in pain from a terminal disease, OK, fine, give them Fentanyl if that's what they need.

I personally don't use pain drugs any more than I just have to, like to be able to sleep. I have read that aboriginal people who have not been exposed to drugs like aspirin have a greater response to it because they have never built up a tolerance to it, this was in an outdoor book so not like I read that in The Lancet or similar. But I prefer to use serious drugs as sparingly as I can.

Me, personally, if I was offered a prescription for opioids I would push back hard at the doc, I'd ask for something else less dangerous. And if the doc pushed back in return, I would be looking for a new doctor.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by M3 Mitch

I think it's ironic that Fentanyl is considered a legal prescription drug, and, OK, maybe for some specific situations it's use is justified, while ordinary marihuana is still considered an illegal drug by the Feds. If someone is in pain from a terminal disease, OK, fine, give them Fentanyl if that's what they need.

I personally don't use pain drugs any more than I just have to, like to be able to sleep. I have read that aboriginal people who have not been exposed to drugs like aspirin have a greater response to it because they have never built up a tolerance to it, this was in an outdoor book so not like I read that in The Lancet or similar. But I prefer to use serious drugs as sparingly as I can.

Me, personally, if I was offered a prescription for opioids I would push back hard at the doc, I'd ask for something else less dangerous. And if the doc pushed back in return, I would be looking for a new doctor.

There's a whole chapter in the book on pain, which is one of the reasons so many opioids are prescribed, Chapter 7, The Misery and Mystery of Pain.

Some commit suicide because the pain is unrelenting and they think it will never let up or go away; our treatment of pain is the very essence of the epidemic of opioid use and deaths.

There is growing evidence that "pain" caused by social issues like rejection, exclusion, loss and isolation makes use of some of the same neural brain processes as actual physical pain from injury.

Less educated Americans are reporting more pain which experts trace back to the slow disintegration of both their social and economic lives. Every year the number of people reporting pain increases to where millions of lives are compromised and cannot work, sleep, socialize or participate in normal life.

A map in the book shows the geography of pain which parallels the states with low education and high obesity and diabetes, i.e., Appalachia and the Southern states. High concentration of pain is also seen in various areas of isolation such as upper Maine, upper Michigan and the rural areas of the far west.

Those without a college degree are higher up on the obesity (pain) charts than those with a BA degree. As good jobs are replaced with mediocre jobs . . . up goes the pain index.

Instead of being direct employees of a company, much of the more menial work is done by outsourcing where one works for a third party firm, similar to a temp firm, who provide warm bodies to do various work, leaving workers with no feelings of connection to a firm, no feeling of being part of something worthwhile. Such jobs have few benefits like healthcare. As the pay goes down, the pain levels go up. This slow destruction of the working class over many years is one of the causes of increases in chronic pain.

Our current form of capitalism of off-shoring, mechanization, automation and out-sourcing of work is constantly degrading the financial and emotional satisfaction of work and leads to ever more pain, especially those on the lower rungs of educational achievement.

[Mike from back east]

Chapter 13 is about how our healthcare system works against us. Far higher costs, yet worse outcomes, than other advanced nations.

The high cost employers pay for healthcare insurance means less pay for workers, and worse, many firms contract-out work to firms that do not offer healthcare insurance as a benefit which leaves the lesser-educated workers out on a limb.

Between 2010 and 2020 at least 120 rural hospitals closed. The for-profit healthcare system pulls the plug on rural facilities as there aren't enough patients to provide the critical mass needed to make any profits. Most rural hospital closings were in states that did not adopt the Medicaid benefit in the Affordable Care Act; this refusal to join the program denies healthcare to lower-wage rural workers. In 2020 there were 20 rural hospitals that closed, 13 in Southern states.

The Univ of NC has more current stats, 183 rural hospital closures between 2005-2022. Looking at the map, all I can say is heaven help you if you live in the rural South.

Doctors prefer to work where they can maximize their income and that's our typical urban regions; it's hard for rural hospitals to attract doctors, especially highly trained specialists, forcing patients to travel long distances or forego treatment.

The chapter has many graphs, charts and data to display the high cost of our healthcare and the poor return on investment that millions of us are getting.

[Mike from back east]

Chapter 14 is about how capitalism is failing our working class citizens. For the past 50 years we've seen good jobs go away and real wages fall, which lowers living standards and undermines daily life for millions. Formerly reliable institutions like marriage, church, social and political clubs, union halls, etc, are no longer part of the lives of many people leaving people isolated in what I call the YOYO trap where YOYO = You're On Your Own. Many people recovering from alcohol and drug usage found the isolation of COVID lockdowns depressing which drove them back to using dangerous substances and death rates spiraled upwards.

Capitalism, competition, and free markets are both here to stay -- and quite beneficial PROVIDED the blessings are shared with workers such that our economic system works FOR them and not against them. We are in a reverse Robin Hood situation where wealth is shoveled upstairs to the already wealthy and with years of ever rising corporate profits. I won't bore you with graphs and charts, the numbers are there.

Thus we see union organizing at Amazon warehouses and Starbucks coffee shops, maybe other places too. Nurses are burning out from long shifts, low pay and could sure use a union or a Federal standard for maximum time on duty, same as for airline pilots, railroad engineers, truck drivers, etc.

Immigration plays into these issues. Many employers want immigrants, legal or not, for their willingness to accept poverty wages and no benefits while having no labor protections or legal standing. Most immigrants fall into two main categories; highly educated (like half of my doctors) or poorly educated (like agriculture, construction and landscape labor). The latter drive down wages for workers. Lately, some restriction on immigration coupled with so many people retiring has had some effect to raise wages for some workers, but not enough to draw our citizens into rigorous jobs in agricultural, construction and landscape work. Further, there are precious few places teaching agricultural, construction and landscape skills.

Globalization plays into these issues. An estimated 2-3 million jobs have been lost to China and in areas affected by "China-shock" the marriage rate fell and the mortality rate rose. Other jobs were lost to automation and mechanization (robots). There is a Federal program to help retrain workers but the same conservative politicians who champion free trade oppose funding these programs that help workers. Go figure.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Chapter 14 is about how capitalism is failing our working class citizens. For the past 50 years we've seen good jobs go away and real wages fall, which lowers living standards and undermines daily life for millions. ...

We have to ask, whether these are quintessentially American problems, or if they're endemic throughout the industrialized West. If say Germany or Japan are not suffering from these problems, then why not? What are they doing differently? Are their methods genuinely more effective, or are observations biased, because we tend to be most critical of what's at home? If their methods are genuinely more effective, then we have to ask, whether such methods are culturally compatible with the prevailing culture in America. Perhaps we can change and evolve our politics, but we're unlikely to change our culture... certainly not in any short period of time.

Next, we should ask if as a planet, it is wise for the advanced nations to jealously guard their advancement, or if instead it's better to allow the less advanced nations to catch up. The latter means that it's actually good for Chinese workers to prosper at the specific and direct detriment to American workers, as a global matter of fairness... and a generation or two later, for African workers to prosper in turn, at the expense of Chinese workers. So then perhaps in 100 or 200 years, Somalia will be no poorer than Switzerland. Would such an outcome be good or bad? Or would it be impossible for cultural reasons?

We should also ask, whether the 20th century prosperity of the Western working-class was but one step forward, and ought to be followed by successive further steps, if our governance and economics and so on were truly effective... or if on the contrary, said 20th century working-class prosperity was just a happy accident made possible by an intermediate level of development. So, in a feudal aristocracy, the peasants suffer. In a 20th century industrialized society, they prosper. In a 21st or 22nd century post-industrialized society, they suffer again. Is this true? Is this reasonable? Or is this a silly and prejudiced construct that's merely self-serving to the aristocracy of the moment?

[Mike from back east]

Among the things Germany does right is they have a strong apprenticeship program to train workers and also a universal healthcare system to support everyone, i.e., there's no "YOYO Trap" for those folks. In Germany, public transportation is extensive, workers don't need the expenses of car ownership to financially drag them down. On my business trips to Germany with some Army coworkers we noted how being a bus driver or subway engineer were considered real professions, with lifetime employment, while in the USA such workers are often considered a drag on profits, as we've seen in recent acrimonious railroad union contract renewals. Even restaurant waiters in Germany were considered professionals, well-trained, well paid, and service there was excellent, while in the USA we consider wait staff to be drones and many people view female wait staff as little more than hookers. It seems that workers in Germany are viewed as honorable and workers in the USA are seen as rabble.

Originally Posted by OTownDays

... Germany has a ton of polytechnic schools. Canada has gradually been rebranding some colleges as polytechnics and has expanded the options over the past couple of decades. The U.S. already has a few high profile ones (Rensselaer, MIT might fit, etc.)

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

... The authors point out: "... 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 drugs or alcohol,” Case says. “There is something unique about the way the U.S. is handling this." The NY Times goes on to point out: "Inequality has risen more in the United States — and middle-class incomes have stagnated more severely — than in France, Germany, Japan or elsewhere. Large corporations have increased their market share, and labor unions have shriveled, leaving workers with little bargaining power. Outsourcing has become the norm, which means that executives often see low-wage workers not as colleagues but as expenses. ... And the United States suffers from by far the world’s most expensive health-care system. It acts as a tax on workers and drains resources that could otherwise be spent on schools, day care, roads, public transit and more. Despite its unparalleled spending, the American medical system also fails to keep many people healthy."...

Post 89 in this thread discusses educational differences between Germany and America, as well as post 84.

[phetaroi]

Every day I see this thread it drives me crazy to see the title...the saying is not "deaths of despair", it's "depths of despair". Grrrrrrrrrr.