You Bet It Is Embarrassing,

and you can about bet Congress won't do one damned thing to improve Social Security benefits for the most vulnerable.

Instead the assholes, taking their marching orders from their billionaire backers, are trying to find even MORE ways to screw the rest of us over.

For example, raising the retirement age so that even fewer of those on the bottom ever get it.

This is a national scandal:

Many researchers believe the gap in life spans from lower- to upper-income Americans started widening about 40 years ago, when income inequality began to grow. Earlier in the 20th century, trends in life spans were of declining disparities, some experts say, because improvements in public health, such as the invention of the polio vaccine and improved sanitation, benefited rich and poor alike. The broad adoption of medication for high blood pressure in the 1950s led to a major improvement for black men, erasing a big part of the gap with whites, said Dana P. Goldman, the director of the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. But medical improvements can also drive disparity when they disproportionately benefit affluent Americans; for example, cutting-edge cancer treatments.

The experience of other countries suggests that disparities do not necessarily get worse in contemporary times. Consider Canada, where men in the poorest urban neighborhoods experienced the biggest declines in mortality from heart disease from 1971 to 1996, according to a 2002 study. Over all, the gap in life expectancy at birth between income groups declined in Canada during that period. And a study comparing cancer survival rates found that low-income residents of Toronto had greater survival rates than their counterparts in Detroit. There was no difference for middle- and high-income residents in the two cities.

It started with the embrace of our political beliefs of the ruinous neoliberalism of Milton Friedman, and it has gone downhill ever since.

Good News for Those Bent on Destroying Social Security

Now that there's talk of raising the age of getting full Social Security benefits to 69 (when actually the age should be lowered, with the earliest age being 55 given the lack of jobs and age discrimination), fewer people will qualify because life expectancy is going into the  ditch.

You don't have to be Pol Pot or Hitler to commit genocide.

Common Sense 101

It's a no-brainer to conclude societies which have a more equitable distribution of wealth do better overall.

The problem in this country is we have politicians who are on the take from people who benefit for an unequal distribution of wealth, and there is no indication that, despite there being a Democratic Congress, things will revert to the way it should be and used to be in the three decades following World War II.

Here is a graph which is interesting. Of course readers (both of them) can click on it or on the link provided to get a closer look:

The leading countries in life expectancy, Sweden and Japan, are also among the most equal of the wealthy nations. Interestingly, they have accomplished this relative equality in completely different ways: In Sweden, the tax system redistributes income; in Japan the income is given out relatively equally before any tax adjustments. Combinations of the two methods are also possible.

We in the U.S. are becoming more and more unequal. Our poor showing in life expectancy and quality of life is a direct result. It wasn’t always this way, and it does not need to remain so. Income distribution has varied widely.

In the Gilded Age of the robber barons, income distribution in the U.S. was very unequal (see the graphic below). This was one of the causes of the Great Depression. FDR’s New Deal can be interpreted, in large measure, as a program to reverse income inequality.

Everybody suffers from this sad state of affairs. Except, of course, the rich, who can buy their own health care; they don't need health insurance and the like at all.

The Decline of the U.S., Chapter 23,993

Yet another report demonstrates the United States has plunged into social decay.

The United States is ranked 42 in life expectancy. This is outrageous, but it is a reflection on how terrible our health care system is.

Columbia doesn't give this report away, either.

So Why Is It

life expectancy in the United States is taking a nosedive?

As if the answer isn't already obvious.

Miscellaneous.

With everything else in this country going down the tubes, it is not surprising life expectancy is also taking a dive.
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I felt at least one of the earthquakes this afternoon. It shook my apartment building:

The 4.2 temblor hit at 3:55 p.m. and was centered four miles northwest of Reno, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It shook downtown Reno for about 30 seconds and caused buildings to sway.

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