Arkady
President
Apparently the rise in mortality among middle-age whites is being driven by poor whites, and specifically by suicide and by issues related to substance abuse, such as liver problems:
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/06/dea...lly_dying_and_this_is_your_idea_of_an_answer/
That brings more clarity to the issue. But it's still fascinating that the sudden turn for the worse dates to the late 90s, when overall things were still taking a turn for the better. Even among the white working class, unemployment was falling, incomes were rising, poverty was fading, crime was plummeting, etc. Yet, that demographic group seems to have been plunging into despair. I don't have trouble understanding that despair starting from a few years later, when that group was materially less well off. But it's odd when it's happening at a time when things were getting better in absolute terms.
Maybe it comes down to the "positional good." Basically, in the late 90s, even though the material conditions of the white working class were improving in absolute terms (until around 2001), they were worsening in relative terms -- relative to the non-white working class, which was catching up, and relative to the white upper-class, which was pulling away. In the Clinton years, incomes at the 20th percentile rose 19%, which is particularly impressive considering that in the disastrous Republican-dominated 12 years before that, incomes actually FELL 3% for that group. But consider what was happening, in the meantime, with the very wealthy. Incomes were up 26% for households at the 95th percentile, and the gains went nearly vertical at higher levels. In the midst of the dotcom boom, the airwaves were saturated with stories of newly-minted multi-billionaires and CEOs earning insane incomes that led them to compete with each other in buying gold-plated toilets, private jets, and flotillas of yachts. The middle and working classes were plunging into ever-higher household debt, to try, in some small way, to emulate the lifestyles of the super-rich.
In fact, 2000 was the year when the ratio of pay between CEOs and workers reached its highest-ever level. CEOs, who had made about 20 times as much as the average worker back in our economic golden age of the mid-1960s, were making 376.1 times as much by 2000. I can see why poorer workers, busting their asses for relatively modest improvements, could become bitter and engage in self-damaging behaviors, while they watched the vast majority of the prosperity they made possible hoarded by a relatively few people at the top. Even with your own absolute material quality of life rising, if you feel like you're badly failing in your attempts to "keep up with the Joneses," because the very rich have gotten to the point where all your possessions are mere pocket change, that's not going to lead to a particularly healthy mindset. And, unlike in prior eras, where poor whites at least had the psychological balm of knowing that they represented a social elite relative to minorities, now they were finding themselves quickly being pushed towards that bottom rung.
That's the best I can do, at this point, in explaining the timing of the onset of that cultural despair among poor whites, even at a time when the numbers indicate they were still getting richer. It would help to explain why it set in during the late 1990s, and it would also explain why we don't see a parallel worsening in other leading nations. Although the incomes of the upper-class advanced somewhat abroad, they never pulled away the way they did here. CEO pay in other wealthy nations tends to be between about 50 and 150 times worker pay, which is more in line with what it was in the 1980s, versus the 300+ times we have here now. The US is recreating something like a feudal model of economics, in terms of the relative economic power of the lords and the serfs, while something a bit more democratic continue to exist in most other wealthy nations. Maybe life as a serf is just depressing, even for a serf who is wealthy in absolute terms.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/06/dea...lly_dying_and_this_is_your_idea_of_an_answer/
That brings more clarity to the issue. But it's still fascinating that the sudden turn for the worse dates to the late 90s, when overall things were still taking a turn for the better. Even among the white working class, unemployment was falling, incomes were rising, poverty was fading, crime was plummeting, etc. Yet, that demographic group seems to have been plunging into despair. I don't have trouble understanding that despair starting from a few years later, when that group was materially less well off. But it's odd when it's happening at a time when things were getting better in absolute terms.
Maybe it comes down to the "positional good." Basically, in the late 90s, even though the material conditions of the white working class were improving in absolute terms (until around 2001), they were worsening in relative terms -- relative to the non-white working class, which was catching up, and relative to the white upper-class, which was pulling away. In the Clinton years, incomes at the 20th percentile rose 19%, which is particularly impressive considering that in the disastrous Republican-dominated 12 years before that, incomes actually FELL 3% for that group. But consider what was happening, in the meantime, with the very wealthy. Incomes were up 26% for households at the 95th percentile, and the gains went nearly vertical at higher levels. In the midst of the dotcom boom, the airwaves were saturated with stories of newly-minted multi-billionaires and CEOs earning insane incomes that led them to compete with each other in buying gold-plated toilets, private jets, and flotillas of yachts. The middle and working classes were plunging into ever-higher household debt, to try, in some small way, to emulate the lifestyles of the super-rich.
In fact, 2000 was the year when the ratio of pay between CEOs and workers reached its highest-ever level. CEOs, who had made about 20 times as much as the average worker back in our economic golden age of the mid-1960s, were making 376.1 times as much by 2000. I can see why poorer workers, busting their asses for relatively modest improvements, could become bitter and engage in self-damaging behaviors, while they watched the vast majority of the prosperity they made possible hoarded by a relatively few people at the top. Even with your own absolute material quality of life rising, if you feel like you're badly failing in your attempts to "keep up with the Joneses," because the very rich have gotten to the point where all your possessions are mere pocket change, that's not going to lead to a particularly healthy mindset. And, unlike in prior eras, where poor whites at least had the psychological balm of knowing that they represented a social elite relative to minorities, now they were finding themselves quickly being pushed towards that bottom rung.
That's the best I can do, at this point, in explaining the timing of the onset of that cultural despair among poor whites, even at a time when the numbers indicate they were still getting richer. It would help to explain why it set in during the late 1990s, and it would also explain why we don't see a parallel worsening in other leading nations. Although the incomes of the upper-class advanced somewhat abroad, they never pulled away the way they did here. CEO pay in other wealthy nations tends to be between about 50 and 150 times worker pay, which is more in line with what it was in the 1980s, versus the 300+ times we have here now. The US is recreating something like a feudal model of economics, in terms of the relative economic power of the lords and the serfs, while something a bit more democratic continue to exist in most other wealthy nations. Maybe life as a serf is just depressing, even for a serf who is wealthy in absolute terms.
