Stagnating Life in USA

Here is a report about a recent study that finds life expectancy gains in the US to be “very moderate” and a five year gap between the wealthy and the poor exists. Data from 1930 to 2000 was used to determine trends and make forecasts on what the future life expectancy might be to the year 2055.

Among the findings of the Rice University of Colorado study called Stagnating Life Expectancies and Future Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty are the following: Average life expectancy in the US for a person born today is 78.49. Recently the world’s richest man Carlos Slim and others have called for increasing the retirement age to 70 or older. This average US age ,78.49, is lower than someone born today in Monaco 89.68yrs., Macau 84.43 yrs. and Japan at 83.91yrs..  

The study also found that gains made from the 1930 into the 1960’s have flattened out and despite disproportionate spending on health care the US international ranking on life expectancy continues to fall. Seems to me health care companies’ profits may have sky rocketed during this same period life expectancies were flattening out.

Also significant in terms of the growing awareness of US income inequity,

the most deprived U.S. citizens tend to live five years less than their more affluent countrymen, according to Justin Denney, Rice assistant professor of sociology, who was principal author for the study.

Professor Denny calls this “the ugly side of inequality,”

It is ugly and how about that 8.49 years of retirement?  

2 thoughts on “Stagnating Life in USA

  1. Retirement is Socialism.  Carlos Slim and other heroic capitalists are attempting to inject common-sense capitalism into America’s Socialism.

    It is simple math: working employees until they drop dead on the job saves pension funds for the company.  

    If we don’t kill employees in order to increase profits, then shareholders will sue the board of directors for wasting money on human life.

    If you disagree with the Board of Directors and the Shareholders: that employees should be paid for their work, should only have to work 8 hours a day – 40 hours a week, have two days off every week, paid vacation time, defined pensions (one that they could actually collect instead of 401K plans that are really wealth transfer plans from the poor to the wealthy), health insurance, dental care, etc. – then you are a Socialist!

    Socialism is EVIL so paying employees anything is EVIL, not working your employees until they die is EVIL, working your employees for only 8 hours is EVIL, paying them any benefits at all is EVIL, well you get the idea.

    For a model of perfection, just look at Wal-Mart whose employees are so poor they qualify for food stamps!  Wal-Mart whose business model is running American companies out of business so that everyone has no choice but to shop at Wal-Mart for crappy Chinese crap.

    Made In America is Socialism and Socialism is EVIL!

    Don’t take my word for it, the Republican Party says so.

  2. Ok, I’m a math major…but anyone should be wary of the way the claims were cherry- picked.  What were the differences between rich and poor in the other cited countries? How stable are these rankings over time? What’s happened in Japan in the 12 years of economic stagnation since these statistics were taken? Why did the authors stop at 2000…do the numbers change if they take a different sample period?

    If we take life expectancy at different ages, does the story change? I am willing to bet lunch money that if we look at how many years people have left to live once they’re 30, the differences will shrink dramatically.  Comrade and BP focused on retirement, but the actual causes are infant mortality and murders in minority populations, which keep the poor from ever reaching 30 years. If you correct those problems (and they can be corrected, Republicans and the supreme court just won’t allow it) the differences between the US and other western societies will not be significant. Focusing on health care for the aged is fixing the wrong cause of this problem.

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