https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/mortality-and-morbidity-in-the-21st-century/
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/6_casedeaton.pdf
Increasing "deaths of despair" among white non-Hispanic Americans with high school or less education
My God, it’s sad and awful and yes, we really do need to be paying attention and finding answers and support for this demographic.
I have a relative in this demographic–not white but definitely despair and only HS education and some addiction issues. It is VERY worrying.
It amazes me that longevity in SKorea exceeds US and makes me wonder.
Education, positive redirection, support, encouragement, and inspiring confidence. We really do have to turn this around. Some have to understand that it is NEVER going to be the way it used to be and be educated to adapt to the way things are NOW.
Yes–true, but folks have to understand if they have a limited skill set, they will only be able to get low wage customer service jobs, perhaps not the life they prefer, imagine or see on Seinfeld, Friends or many other shows. They also have to understand that many of the higher wage jobs are concentrated in HCOL cities.
Wanting to bring back jobs that are obsolete due to automation and other societal factors are simply not happening. Empty promises don’t make wishful thinking come true.
I read the longer article (not just the post).
I am not sure what this has to do with picking colleges. However, this is a significant and very important issue.
It would be very valuable if more Americans understood what is really going on. Reading the article is only a small start in this direction. Talking to “normal Americans” (not just the well educated such as might post on CC) is important. We all need to talk and listen to people to try to bridge the gaps, including political gaps, which seem to be getting very wide in America right now.
We need jobs that pay a living wage for people of average ability. I used to watch the show “How Things are Made” .I was surprised at how many steps still require a human touch. Have all these jobs gone to other countries?
In addition, there is also no reason that the executives of companies should be making 400 times their employees. In the 1970’s it was 30 to 1. Lets bring it back to something a bit more reasonable.
The average Fortune 500 CEO makes less per year than Tom Brady or Jennifer Lawrence. I have no problem with the compensation of high performing CEOs.
What does Tom Brady’s /Jennifer Lawrence’s salary have to do with what CEO’s are paid in relation to their employees?
Unfortunately, CEO compensation seems to be high even for poor performing CEOs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highest-paid-ceos-are-the-worst-performers-new-study-says/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085
It shows that society is willing to very highly compensate individual contributors that are considered to be at the top of their field. A Fortune 500 CEO is considered to be among the top of his peers. But unlike an athlete or actor, who has the luxury of worrying just about their own work, a Fortune 500 CEO is ultimately responsible for a company that often has hundreds of thousands of employees, distributed in operations around the world.
I could flip your question around and ask you what the talents and responsibilities of this level CEO have to do with say a factory line worker. Why would you assume that 30x is the correct ratio between the two?
I agree with the overall conclusion of the Forbes article. In other words, high performing CEOs should be rewarded and low performing CEOs should be kicked to the curb.
However, the details in the Forbes article are simply wrong. Disclosure: I am a professional investor, so this discussion topic is right up my alley. The reason the Forbes article gets the details wrong are the following:
- CEO pay is correlated with company size.
- Returns are inversely correlated with company size. In other words, it is much harder to profitably grow a $100B company by 10% per year than to grow a $10B company by 10% per year.
But that is still ok–it is still more difficult to run a $100B company than a $10B company and the higher compensation is justified. And investors putting money into a $100B company are looking for consistent profitability and stable growth, not heady returns that one might expect from a smaller company.
**
ETA: I have just started reading the SSRN paper. It could be that the SSRN paper did the analysis properly and that Forbes wrote it up poorly. Will know more later. **
Neither CEO nor actor compensation has anything to do with the despair deaths of those without a college degree. And the turn around in mortality has been in a relatively short period of time.
I think it mostly has to do with blue collar jobs that once paid a middle class wage disappearing in this country.
Perhaps related:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-or-just-desperate/
Describes the increase in disability claims in rural areas.