Trifecta of opioids, alcohol and suicide are blamed for the drop in U.S. life expectancy

It's when you have to mix for a fix is the death nail. They send people to jail just enough to get rid of their tolerance and be clean. The first thing they do is go back to mom and dad's because the have no other place to go. They soon relapse and the tolerance level is not what it used to be. I've seen the death of a few friends and I'm in rural America.

 

I don't think the Dems are really serious about addressing these issues in rural white America. Obama and Clinton were not exactly huge advocates for the working man. They may play lip service to helping out the working class but let's be honest what did they really do? Culture can't be that big of a componet of this. What really happened is bunch of drug pushes decided to act under color of authority as doctors and pharmacists to get a lot of people addicted to opiates while their buddies lobbied congress to send their jobs overseas. I really think is is a concerted effort to break their traditional culture and keep the rural white American down and dependent on government. And the Dems did just as much as anyone to make sure that happened.

You should watch "The Trade" it is a documentary on Showtime about the heroin trade. It horrible. It documents how the Mexican cartels take advangtage of our open borders to ship drugs into our streets and then shows the impact of heroin in Ohio.

 

Most states, including those that are largely rural, have a minimum wage that surpasses the Federally mandated minimum of $7.25.

The tilt away from coal has been naturally driven, not by legislation and not by promotion of green energy as much as a natural gas surge (Natural gas and renewable energy production also employ folks in largely rural areas.) Coal is dying on its own, hence why Trump hasn’t been able to deliver on his promises to the coal industry.

Really, your post is almost all “phooey.”

 

Mine site remediation is very common and requires miners to absorb the costs associated with their mines rather than externalism them to the tax payer. It's not punitive it's a roll back of tax payer assistance.

Protecting water sources is again not punitive it's a pollution control. I am a firm believer in the concept that pollution should not be free.

As to CCP, "

• The majority of CCPs are landfilled, placed in mine shafts or stored on site at coal-fired power plants. About 43 percent of CCPs were recycled for "beneficial uses," in 2008, according to the American Coal Ash Association.[2] The chief benefit of recycling is to stabilize the environmental harmful components of the CCPs such as arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, chromium VI, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum,selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds.[3][4]"

I can see a need for controls in anything that involves arsenic, lead and mercury entering the water table.



I appreciate the information you supplied but it dies not change my opinion that Obama's regulations were a roll back of coal miner tax payer assistance. If the industry quickly collapses without a tax payer prop up it means that the industry has been on life support for a long time.

If you want to support the adoption of clean renewables a good first step is not subsidising the costs of its competitors.

 

White rurals voted for Trump hoping for healthcare legislation that would cut funding for dealing with the opioid crisis because they lust for the sweet release of a fentanyl overdose.

Shrug. Maybe it's for the best. These people are too dumb to live.

 

Part of Obama's strategy in moving the US away from fossil fuels was retraining programs offered to coal communities. However, these communities did not take to them too well because they possessed a sense of entitlement generated by the coal jobs of their forefathers and so they crossed their fingers and hoped coal would come back. Trump of course was playing right to them but are his solutions good long term ones? Seems like retraining for the fields of the future would be better but you know what they say, you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink

If you don't think culture is an issue problem here do you feel the same about urban poverty? If not, what's the difference?

 

I didn't claim that urban areas are poorer, I claimed that they have higher inequality. Even if the floor is higher the ceiling in the cities is exponentially higher given that's where most wealth is generated. Inequality correlates with violence more than poverty.

Do you think cultural factors also help explain the cycle of poverty in rural America such as in Appalachia?

 

read Thomas Sowell. The current nature of the welfare state is the direct cause of black poverty. It destroyed the black nuclear family and created the culture that we see right now. Not the other way around.

Blacks were better off in the 1950s. Their women did not have their current obesity problems and
http://yourblackworld.net/2013/03/0...rse-off-today-than-in-the-1960s-report-shows/

The nuclear family is the core of a functioning society If you don't have a strong man to lead the household everything falls a part. Socialism in its current model replaces the husband with the state for financial stability. The drug laws do much of the rest by putting young black males in jail at the age where they should be learning a trade. All the while they are not forced to work so they themselves can get by on some benefits.

I am not per se against social welfare of some sort but the current model has been proven to fail.

The problems in rural America are different than in the urban black community but there are similarities.

 

Okay so its not about culture but government policy, specifically the welfare state and the War on Drugs. I can agree with some of that I suppose. I also think the waning of manufacturing hit the urban black community hard and I do find it odd that those who lament the effects globalization have had on American manufacturing and the communities dependent on it don't invoke the case of the urban black community more often.

 

lol, You don't have to speak for the poor Majority White people, they can speak for themselves. White People have this thing called a platform, you know, some race don't even have it..

 

My point on Minimum wage is the democrats agenda for federally mandated $15 an hour... too broad of an approach, and more of a tactic to garner votes... only the urban impoverished can attain that.

As far as coal, the two examples of regulations I listed have attacked coal in a harmful way.
-I agree natural gas is cheaper and is the main replacement of coal, but why add regulations that are false in their research, and speed up the transition of coal obsolescence, as oppose to aiding in job training programs to those affected areas of america?

bad mismanagement of risk and an overzealous Environmentalist agenda IMO

 

For renewables, "not subsidizing its competitors" - seems like a common sense first step but for an industry like Coal I disagree with current tactics(regulations)
-Initially the larger scale approach for renewables was geared toward the demand side(energy efficient bulbs, insulation techniques and devices/products, and tax breaks for "getting cleaner", for a lack of a better term)
-my issue is that piling up regulations and speeding up the obsolescence of Coal(which is currently getting replaced by natural gas), does not result in a complete solution
--the demand for coal is naturally subsiding, but how are you assuring that those employed in that industry are receiving training and finding other jobs within the (energy) sector?

Basically the regulations are coming too early and are not even providing conclusive evidence in their justification. It would behoove the US to begin training programs for these areas which are also gaining in renewable energy investment.

Investment in renewable energy is the strategy to take.
AND it has been taken; I only call for a more balanced approach for this transition.

I ran into this article on a program that is aiding W.VA and Wyoming('coal country') move into the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/30/business/energy-environment/coal-alternative-energy-jobs.html

 

I don't think rural white people read buzzfeed, gawker or vox. Or listen to npr.

 

Public radio has a large presence in the midwest. I've done extended periods of work in ND and Nebraska, so I can attest to that.

 

There are also a lot of rural black communities and poor white urban areas, but I can't find meaningful data about their violence levels. I think it's a bit stupid to compare Detroit with some hillbilly town, but maybe somebody can find a better comparison by checking the data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...African-American_majority_populations_in_2000
Check the places with fewer than 25,000 people


All in all, I don't think the opioid crisis has anything to do with economics, it's just that doctors started to prescribe it for everything and that causes addiction and people then go for illegal opioids and self medicate. It's also important to note blacks still die sooner than whites, while latinos live longer, while being poorer than both. Which means given enough time the USA will be latino like the rest of the continent.

 

I think your basics of my points are a bit off; in my response to the OP, I did say SOME of the blame has been on liberal policies;
I'd hate for you to think that you are engaged in a childish discussion, if you feel that way, then you simply shouldn't respond.
-My disposition on the distaste liberal voters have on rural America does not change though;
(just too many examples, from the media, comedic-political pundits, and personal experience)... while trivial in your opinion, this distaste does influence how much help is provided to rural America.
Is it better to give healthcare and food stamps, rather than get these people to some state of employment and self sustainment?
Personally, I am not a proponent for growing and maintaining the welfare state.

Now to address your points:
Both factory closures and overzealous climate control policies have hurt rural America. Natural technological evolution plays a part in this too.
-The trade deals have lead to many factory closures, and the latest regulations have been speeding up the obsolescence of these industries without enough focused efforts to get these same employees into different industries or a different part of the same (energy, in this case) sector.
'Permanent Normal Trade Relations' (Bill Clinton's agenda 1998) is argued to be the single most, detrimental piece of legislation (it was a mod to the Trade act of '74) for manufacturing/factory in the US.(Manufacturing is one of the top 4 jobs outsourced today)

As far as outsourcing services(call centers, human resources, and IT are the examples I'll use (3 of the top 4).
While you may hope shareholders to be empathetic, the fact of the matter is the multi-national prospects' of a larger, global, market share, leads many "U.S." companies to outsource to these other areas, as well as the cheaper labor. Taxing corporations will NOT stop this and will lead to headquarter movement.
-I'll say that if there is somehow an "acceptable" legislation, that won't lead to more companies leaving the US, I'm all for it, but these types of jobs are just too hard to compete with (i.e. India and China's Cost of living are too low, compared to the US)
--Caps on H1-B visa's(significant to the IT industry), and reforming the skill set of Americans via education are two (1 short term, 1 long term) solutions, for some of this outsourcing.

The aforementioned points were to further my disposition on how liberal policies over the past 2 decades have led, IN PART, to today's issues. I reiterate, both parties are to blame, but each have their own broader objectives that are hurting rural America (Corporate profits and globalization (leading to unbalanced trade agreements and costly visa programs))

I always find that many discussion lead to an education and skill set deficiency in the US;
in this particular instance, affordable 4+ year college education in these rural regions may not be a viable solution, but job training, certificate programs, etc. in various job sectors that are growing in these rural regions is what is important here, and my overall point. Slow down the regulations for the interim.

As far as IT and outsourcing... America's skill set has to grow, followed by some clever legislation to incentivize hiring domestically.
-A high, federally imposed, minimum wage will not help.

 

Welfare is poison. It destroys families, and then that destroys communities which then destroys the entire culture. It has been most destructive for black people who were directly targeted when they were most vulnerable. It is tragic, and perhaps the worst part is politicians refuse to even talk about the problem. You are called a "racist" if you address the issue of the failed nuclear family in black communities.

 

Actually, poor white urban areas have been pretty much done away with. I guess you can find some small pockets here and there but they're mostly gone. White urban poverty was a thing until about the mid-20th century. Then they were slowly replaced by minorities of all colors, first black, then brown.

White poverty is almost strictly a rural phenomenon now. Suburban at most.

As for the latino health thing, it's puzzling and has been researched by public health experts for years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox

The bad news? These relatively high levels of health start deteriorating as they assimilate more and more into American society. So the foreign-born have good health, less so the 2nd generation, and even less so the 3rd generation and on.

So immigrants actually improve the overall health of Americans. Being in the US actually drags them down.

(In before the "Good, since they have such good health, they should stay in their countries then!" comments)