COVID hasn’t been successful enough. Those darn Nobel winning scientists came up vaccines too fast and millions of lives were saved. I am sure that w will find other ways to encourage more Americans to cross the Rainbow Bridge. Don’t they want to meet their old pets?
Gifted article:
Sticks in my mind that USian life expectancy did improve a bit in 22, compared to the worst of the plague, but that probably will not reverse the long term trend. Remember the words I heard some luminary speak, in the early days of “supply side economics”, wrt Proles “in a perfect world, you would die the day you receive you last paycheck”.
Steve
A lower life expectancy will reduce business costs and taxes when Universal Basic Income becomes a necessity.
Lack of Medicare approval for Ozempic and other weight loss drugs will reduce life expectancy for seniors.
intercst
An industrial factory buildout with higher pay for the bottom 80% will fix all of this. It a huge revenue raiser.
The life expectancy rate will rise as well as the living standards rise.
Those what would cut pay would purposely bankrupt SS. Talk about ejits. We have seen them grab power to be ultra stupid for some 40 years.
Discussions like this always get me a-wondering just what life expectancy ought to be. As in, what’s the genetic potential for a given demographic or individual…followed closely by what’s the difference between expected/potential and actual, and why the disparity.
Given that the #1 reason for premature death is heart disease…and even with our current state of knowledge and tools available is already largely preventable for the majority…this disparity ought to be getting noticably smaller as an overall trajectory.
I have serious doubts that factory build outs or Medicare coverage for “lifestyle” drugs enhance that too much.
That isn’t what the data show for men or women under the age of 50.
Graph from this article:
Data from Major Studies of Premature Mortality - Measuring the Risks and Causes of Premature Death - NCBI Bookshelf.
The question is should US life expectancy be a political priority? I mean, what do you want the government to do, mandate that everyone live a healthy lifestyle?
In a free society, individuals are allowed to make their own decisions. Everyone knows how to increase the odds of living longer. Eat healthier, more physical activity, don’t take addictive drugs, reduce alcohol, etc are all common knowledge and inexpensive.
How many times have we heard some variation of the sentiment that a long life isn’t worth giving up Krismy Kremes or Jack Daniels or Popeyes chicken sandwiches?
Most Americans choose to reduce their lifespan relative to other nations in order to have a more pleasurable life. This is not a political decision, it is a personal one.
If lifestyle drugs can reduce average weight, permanently, then we should expect to see heart disease numbers drop in the few decades later. Weight and heart disease correlate very well. Though it is possible that people will modify their eating habits to negate that effect (appetite goes down but consumption of “bad” foods remain the same while consumption of “good” foods drop due to reduced appetite, for example).
People under 50 are still useful to the “JCs”. It’s the people over 65 that have no value to “JCs”.
Steve
Well it wouldn’t, would it? The end results of ASCVD tend to be diseases of an older age group since, outside of the mercifully few monogenic causes (that have kids in their teens having strokes and heart attacks in their 20s) these end results are time dependent. Generally speaking, the under 50s just haven’t had time for the diseases to have gotten so bad as to kill them…yet. As obesity and its related side effects have started to affect an ever younger demographic, that might change.
For sure, these common causes in different age demographics all add up to the ultimate figure for overall life expectancy, but they don’t alter the ranking for premature death across the same age spectrum.
Edit: It’s also worth noting that a good many of the folk in these graphs had some manifestation of ASCVD/heart disease which, had they dodged the bullets listed above would’ve added still more numbers to an already big figure. Quite literally, dying with rather than of
Indeed…but Medicare coverage doesn’t kick in until those later decades, right? Interventions need to start early on to have a meaningful effect.
Ah yes, I didn’t notice the medicare part … in any case, coverage or not, if enough people use those drugs to cause a durable average reduction in weight* then we may see an effect in decades hence.
* Our hyperbolic news media seems to have convinced themselves that enough people have already started taking these drugs that food sales at large chains are already declining. I have my doubts about the veracity of that, but I suppose it is possible.
While this might have been tongue in cheek, it is also wildly inaccurate. Those over 65 have significant spending power, and that percentage will increase every year for the near future. Demographics with spending power are of enormous value to the corporate world. Also relevant is that when people with spending power spend money, it generally creates jobs.
Have to be careful about this correlation vs causation thing. BMI probably also correlates with diet and exercise. A person whose diet is 90% Big Macs and Krispy Kremes might eat less with Ozempic, but I wonder how healthy that heart will be even in a skinnier body if that diet doesn’t change.
Just want to add in edit that there are numerous examples of unhealthy weight loss, particularly for older people. For example, weight loss could result in loss of muscle, which is bad of the elderly as it exacerbates the natural tendency to lose muscle while aging. Taking these diet suppressants have to be combined with some type of exercise program to mitigate muscle loss.
Obesity can be seen as a symptom of an underlying and more fundamental diet and exercise imbalance. Treating only the symptom may not improve health as much as one might expect. It is actually hard to be obese on a healthy diet based primarily on vegetable/fruit/nuts. Few can gain weight eating broccoli.
They may have “spending power”, but that is only half of the equation. “JCs” profit from younger people by both their labor, and their spending. Old phartz only consume, so the profit flow from them is less than that realized from working people.
Steve
Back at you as this is also only half of the equation. JCs also have to pay for that labor. This is significant as 20% of companies fail in their first year or two and the majority fail within 10 years. Hard to be a JC.
btresist,
This epitomizes “close but no cigar arguments”.
“Choose”, “pleasurable”, “political”, and “personal” are all extremely complex notions you use in their most cartoonish, non-reflective, simplistic forms.
Individual persons rarely individually choose anything, not even their beliefs as to what an “individual” is nor how said individual is “formed”, either by themselves nor their parents and family and community, nor by the intentions of God, gods, corporations, happenstances… Whole philosophies hinge on addressing the issue.
Similarly with each of those other words.
david fb
“JCs” also have to pay “cost of goods sold”, or the cost of providing the service that they provide. They make a profit on the goods and services sold, and they make a profit off the employees, as the value of their production is worth more than what they are paid.
As noted before, I have watched arrogant, delusional, “JCs” run large, well established, once profitable, companies into the ground, like the honchos at RS insisting their prices being 40% higher than the competition was justified because “we do people a favor selling them our stuff”. The honchos at the pump seal company also pushed price increases higher than what customers were willing to pay, vs buying someone else’s seals, and their order book imploded.
Steve
Sure, one can certainly get into these discussions on free will for which there are no answers that a majority will agree on. A fun academic exercise but of little practical relevance.
From an operational point of view, I think it goes like this. If one believes in concepts like democracy and individual freedom, then one has to assume free will and personal accountability.
Totalitarian regimes, whether political or religious, are founded on the assumption that some small elite are best suited to govern because of genetics or upbringing or being blessed by a Higher Power. The masses have to be guided because of inherent deficiencies resulting from, using your terms, “how they were formed”.
In contrast, governments “by the people” are based on the assumption that although people are different, they are still generally rational, good, and can be held accountable for their actions. This means they can self-govern.
If you believe most people “rarely choose anything” but you yourself can because of some enlightenment or good fortune, well that is almost textbook elitism.
Or a belief in an invisible man in the sky, who told you what everyone should think?
Steve
Relatively speaking pay is increasing. People in the working generations are happier. You can not talk 80% of the public into being happier with less pay.
Pay is directly correlated with health outcomes. We can look at ghetto average pay rates and see huge stress levels, horrible behaviors, and much lower longevity rates.
If you do not believe me ask the younger generations in your own family if they would live in a ghetto because they would thrive. You seem to think it makes no difference. I bet you get a few looks at the dinner table. It is not okay for the next guy.
