Except that those Cinco de Mayo party favors are all labeled “Made In China.” If all those American jobs were in Mexico, we wouldn’t have Mexicans hiking into Arizona, would we?
We had 3,000,000 manufacturing jobs go to China under Bush and his Secretary of Labor, whose family got rich trading with China. She’s now married to Mitch McConnell. Romney personally owned a Chinese factory making American appliances.
I didn’t say he was solely responsible for runaway factory… the process of deindustrialization has been happening since the 60s. But fair enough, you’re right on that point. MY point was that Clinton did nothing to help the issue and the process accelerated post Cold War.
To be fair, maybe he felt like there was nothing to be done, and that the economy was changing anyhow. We were all in love with the end of history and the rise of the dot.com boom (and the “end of work”, as some saw the computer revolution).
I don’t know… I think my point about the current situation not just being laid at the feet of the republicans stands, overall.
I’m not so sure about Obama care myself. There seems to be a spate of corporations running to screw over their workers while they can (UPS, I think, is apparently dropping spouses from insurance plans). And, of course, much of Obamacare was originally republican ideas–as much of this is using the private sector to solve a lack of health care.
EDIT: And let me point out how it’s a huge give away to private insurance, since we all have to have insurance now, and unless you are poor or old, your only choice is private insurance. This whole bill was a private solution to a public problem.
So, is it better to vote for the guy who says he is going to screw you over and then does so, or is it better to vote for the guy who is going to work for your interest and then screws you over? I’m not trying to be cute or sarcastic here, I’m curious how voting for the dems is really any better, just because they talk a good game on the issues, and continue to act like they care. I try not to vote for either, when I can. I voted for Obama in one election, during the 2008 primary, as I saw him as a better alternative to Clinton. I have not voted for him since, because I disagree with his policies on many things.
And as someone pointed out, lots of the working poor don’t vote–could be out of apathy, because they realize nothing will change for them, it could be out of their inability to get to the polls, etc. It could just be because no one seems to care about the working class much anymore.
Everything does point to that as a part of a common cause, doesn’t it?
I had a side discussion with @awjt earlier about some past life experience doing data analytic work for DHFS (the Medicare/Medicaid/Other peeps) in Wisconsin.
When it came to pregnancy outcomes, the biggest negative indicator was ‘we had no information on them’ (from private or public sources) during the prior year up until they a few months pregnant. We’re talking ‘orders of magnitude more significant’ rather than top of ten or something. Selecting by gender was actually worse (I accidentally left that in for the first run, there was one pre-op exception, so glad I didn’t filter, eh?).
That’s a pretty good indication that a lack of regular care and the stress inherent was a huge problem, and that’s a state that’s primarily forced on immigrants, those with a sudden gap in employment, and young people who never had a chance here in America. For that population when we had better documentation on those three were the only factors that popped up.
Never thought to do a run to see how many other health factors that hit on, now I’m curious but without my Data Warehouse sigh
This article is not just talking about health issues specific to women. It’s not just uterine and breast cancer that is killing these women, it is stress and lack of inability to make ends meet that is most likely contributing to this disparity. So this is something of a strawman on your part.
While having access to these sorts of services is, I agree, critical for women, if your insurance is tied to your job, and you can’t get a job that is more than part time and service work, than you are unlikely to get insurance. Women without even a high school education are most likely to be in this sort of situation.
The UPS thing applies to nonunion management
This article was incredibly poorly-done. I got two pages on a single person, no cause of death, and loads and loads of social commentary instead of even 1 paragraph of solid science. And, as we (should) know, ‘correlation is not proof of causation’’. And perhaps, here’s why:
In the early 2000’s Bill Clinton et al. insisted that the national behavioral risk factor surveys had to change the way they identified peoples’ ethnicity. These are the surveys you hear on the news around June every year, typically telling you Americans are stupider, fatter, and uglier than ever before. Suddenly, the Clinton administration seemed to have figured out that there were black Hispanics and white Africans, and plenty of other people who didn’t fit the time-honored stereotypes used in the census - so, the trend data from the agencies which collect that data (CDC and NIH) was at high risk of blowing up. Now, they would be measuring apples to naval oranges and tangerines…and so on. And good luck trying to figure out how what we thought we knew last year made any sense this year. And a decade back? Fuggedaboutit! The system used to calc healthy weights had also been changed - so much for the ‘obesity epidemic’. Whoopsie! Double-whammy.
And now, the upcoming White Lady Mortality Epidemic. Care to guess who gets the promotions amongst those who use such data at work? Yep. Fly to a conclusion quickest, get published soonest and quoted the most, and you get a career on meth, even if the study cohort isn’t using street drugs.
This is NOT to say that the subject doesn’ t deserve some serious study! Obviously, a question has been raised. And, even if we skip past the wholly made-up answers in this article, it deserves some attention. The problem is still older data-subsetting vs. newer data-subsetting, and I’m not at all sure the twain shall ever meet (and make any sense). But the part I dread most is the spectre of this becoming yet another ‘everybody knows’ piece of nonsense merely because some speculation caught a little press. Best thing that could possibly come out of this is some realization that people who are not yet seniors and also not ‘officially’ disabled aren’t being cared for very well at all. That’s certainly something - but it ain’t science! It’s human-screwage.
Bottom line, we DON’T know. And we aren’t likely to know for a good long while.
Thank goodness we have a Democrat in power. Now we can close down Gitmo, reduce scope of the Patriot Act, end the TSA, pull out of the Middle East, and no longer make laws protecting corporations.
Oh… wait…
I think Mindysan33 hit the nail on the head with comments like “We’ve all been sold out by the power structure and both parties are responsible for these horrible conditions.” Us and Them isn’t Dem and Rep, its the people and the politicians in power.
I get your point and understand what you mean–really pinning down these problems, in a scientific manner, not getting carried away with emotion–but what’s wrong with social commentary? If things aren’t place in a social context, what do they matter, anyway–do we just do science for sciences sake, or do we do science to help improve the lot of humanity. As you point out, some people aren’t being cared for–and isn’t that what matters here?
I do find it interesting that this is all happening well before all of the Obama care provisions are in place. The article I read about it said that it applies to 15000 employees, who have jobs and presumably alternate insurance. The problem with that is that being employed might not necessarily involve insurance.
This whole thing is a cluster fuck. Why can’t we just have single payer?
The decline in life span has a time lag because it’s based on survey data, as well as real world events that contributed to mortality years before that… So we are looking at changes that were underway before Obamacare even passed or Obama was even elected. Obamacare is likely to be part of the solution rather than the prolem.
The effects of Obamacare remain to be seen–I think we’re aware of that. I’ll admit I’m skeptical, though I’mnot coming at it from a “it’s Obama, so it’s bad” perspective, rather from a perspective of skepticism that the private sector can fix everything.
I would like to see it succeed, given the stakes, and if it does, great. However, I’m not hopeful. I guess maybe I’m just generally pessimistic about the world lately.
Did I suggest solutions?
You do know the science of reading involves looking at people’s actual words?
I’m trying to explain a delta. You are trying some other thing there.
You could add.
& lack of employment correlates with lack of education, which young single moms tend not to get, because they are busy raising their kids. Without the basic education that everybody else receives, they remain in the dark about basic things that we take for granted. It’s a vicious cycle. There is a poster on here who parrots, “Birth Control” all the time, whenever young moms are mentioned. But I have to say, respectfully, that birth control would really solve a lot of these problems.
AS WELL AS community health centers, single-payer coverage, and a renewed national interest in nutrition and exercise…
It’s never just one thing.
The Democrats and Republicans are both far to the right of the American people on most serious (economic/labor and foreign policy) issues. Neither represent our interests. However, anyone who would support the worse of the two must be insane or malicious. Republican voters are indicating that they want things to go even faster and further in the direction of concentrated wealth and power. Not voting or voting third party is probably more rational than voting D, but voting R is simply an indication of being either crazy or evil. People who think their only choice is R or D, who vote D simply to slow down the decline, are making the better choice than those who want to run full speed into the abyss.
Does the working class avoid voting because of apathy, inability, or because there are no good options?
All of the above.
Another big problem is the job description for ‘politician’.
It’s only a good fit for a very specific sort of person, and that sort of person has demonstrably bad decision making skills. ‘Learning when presented with new information’ and ‘Being reasonable and rational’ are negative traits in the political arena, the process of getting elected is daunting and expensive . . . and who wants to have to hang out with those lunatics??
Then you add in ‘desire to amass wealth and power’, that’s what politics does in this country. It’s appealing to exactly the sort of person we don’t want and offends those we really do.
Yeah, so not so much for evidence based policies coming from them. Evidence based analysis indicates quite the opposite.
If you think things will have to get markedly worse before they can possibly get better, you should probably vote Tea Party.
If you think there’s a very big invisible sky-man who is going to make everything all better, you should probably vote Democrat - or not bother to vote at all.
If you want real change, you should definitely vote, but you probably shouldn’t vote for either of the above.
You missed the most obvious one (to your credit, so does ALL OF AMERICA): High-quality, publicly-funded early childhood care and education.
