Reaganomics is Literally Making Americans Kill Themselves.
By Thom Hartmann A...
Reaganomics is literally making Americans kill themselves.
According to a new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, the suicide rate in the United States has risen dramatically over the past decade-and-a-half.
Adjusting for age, it jumped 24 percent between 1999 and 2014, with the biggest increases coming after 2006. Thirteen out of every 100,000 people now kill themselves, making suicide one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the entire country.
This is a serious public health crisis that needs to be fixed, and while we can’t bring back from the dead the people we’ve already lost, there is something we can do as a country to make sure even more people don’t take their own lives.
And that something is to stop voting Republican because Republican policies are driving people to kill themselves.
Seriously, I’m not kidding. This isn’t some crazy conspiracy.
It’s a well-documented sociological fact.
Numerous studies have found a strong connection between right-wing economic policies and suicide.
Recent research from sociologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, for example, found that suicide rates in both the U.S. and U.K. increase when working class wages and wealth decline. Things were particularly bad during the recession period here in the U.S. when, according to the study’s authors, there were 4,750 “excess” suicides.
Another study, this time out of Australia, discovered a similar pattern in that country. It found that almost 35,000 extra suicides occurred when the “Tories” (Australian slang for right-wingers) controlled the government.
This isn’t just something that happens in the English-speaking world, either.
When right-wing austerity policies began to ravage Greece in 2010, the suicide rate jumped almost 18 percent. In Athens alone, it soared to 25 percent.
The same thing happened in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. In a rush to switch the former communist country over to the free market, economists forced it go through shock doctrine-style privatization. The result was a sharp rise in suicides, heart attacks, and alcohol deaths.
Obviously, right-wing economic policies don’t cause every suicide. Some people kill themselves because they have already-existing mental health problems. Others kill themselves because of drugs. Still others kill themselves because of the shock of sudden personal tragedy.
But even so, there’s no question that right-wing economic policies, otherwise known as Reaganomics, make things a whole lot worse.
When people are unemployed, underemployed, or working dead-end jobs for starvation wages, they’re more likely to suffer from depression. They’re also more likely to resort to hard drugs to help them cope with the pain of economic deprivation. Meanwhile, the compounding effect of austerity cuts to public health services just makes the whole situation worse.
There’s a dark irony here, because Reaganomics is itself form of slow-burning national suicide.
Think about it: Reaganomics has crushed the unions that created middle-class it’s bankrupted the federal government with massive tax cuts for the rich, and it’s sent our trade deficit sky-high with so-called “free trade deal” after so-called “free trade deal.”
Oh yeah, and thanks to deregulation, Reaganomics has also left us much more vulnerable to financial crises, like the one that almost completely took down the world economy 8 years.
So whatever way you look at it, right-wing economic policies are a raw deal.
Not only are they killing our country, and they’re literally making every day Americans kill themselves because they just can’t take it anymore.
Even if you don’t care about things like, you know, good wages and fair taxation rates, that fact alone should make you angry.
Conservative economic policies kill -- it’s as simple as that.
It’s time repudiate Reaganomics once and for all so we can save our country as well as the lives of the people who live in it.
By the way, if you’re having dark or suicidal thoughts, you’re not alone. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 to speak to someone who can help. It’s open 24/7.
Comments
#2
RJ, you've got to be kidding! Please don't be so misinformed. The drop in wages started with Reagan.
#3
I am a Bernie supporter and I urgently call to him, that Democrats and Progressives must stop complaining about the wealth/income gap. Instead must show that stiff taxing of the rich grows the economy and jobs by insentivizing the rich to avoid taxes by putting profits back into growing their companies instead of into their pockets. This is what occurred during the steep progressive tax era from FDR to Reagan.
#4
So sick and tired of hearing people say that the reason companies are moving out of the U.S. or moving to other states is because they can't afford to do business in the U.S. "Too many regulations and taxes," they say.
As if business that existed and were regulated and taxed before the Reagan economics arrived didn't thrive and weren't able to pay a decent wage to their employees.
What happened is that Reagan gave the big business slave drivers the ability to do an end-run around the laws the U.S. has against slavery by simply slaving people in other third world countries.
The U.S. trade deals are simply a well thought plan for disfranchising the American middle class, and these lousy trade deals are why the American middle class has been destroyed.
I am one of the people that were a part of a strong middle class and it is plain as the nose on my face that everything for me and others like me were made to deal with America's race to the bottom, trickle down economics that Reagan and his slave driving Neo-cons stuck us with.
I will always be angry about it all, we got the shaft and it's high time we reversed everything that the modern day foriegn worker slave drivers did to us all.
#5
Ger320, In 1981, the first year of the Reagan Presidency, I was making $17,500 as a Teacher. 8 years later, at the end of the Reagan Presidency, I was making $50,000 as a Sales Rep. My salary went up from there. I retired in 2006 making close to $150,000 a year. Reaganomics worked for me.
By the way Johnnie Dorman, It was Clinton, not Reagan who signed NAFTA into law and it's Obama and H. Clinton who want the Trans Pacific Partnership .
#6
Ayn Rand espoused her "philosophical" notion that she named "objectivism" (another 'ism)
Her acolytes, including Greenspan et al worshipped at her alter
Perhaps the origin of 'greed is good' virus infection affecting modern western thought regarding consideration for other humans
#7
Ou812 - do you think you played no part in your success?
Reagun did this for you?
You mock yourself!
Legislators allow or dis-allow us to do or not
And, thereby have effects that become observable
#8
Hephaestus, I was being facetious. I played every part in my success. To say Reagan is responsible for my success is as silly as saying Reagan is resonsible for peoples failures and suicides.
#9
So if conservatives push for and create economic policies that have literally proven to cause citizens to kill themselves, shouldn't that be considered verifiable economic violence which has lead to death? Conservative economic policy is put in place by conservative legislators. So It looks to me like the families of the suicide victims should have lawsuits against both the conservatives who create the legislation, and the president who signs it into law.
Wow, conservative economic violence makes window smashing and looting look pretty tame.
Extreme concentration of wealth is and always has been the problem.
Enslavement is still widespread, it's just much more subtle and insidious in the 21st century.
BTW: Charles Koch says even he would support Hillary as president. Bernie remains our only hope for real progressive change. Bernie is the "good government" enightenment thinkers and some of our founders envisioned.
#10
When Reagan took power the US was in a major recession. It was much worst than what Obama came into. The difference was Reagan convinced people with money to spend it something Obama can't seem to do. When it comes to jobs leaving, the world just seem to shrink. It was much easier to ship products world wide which opened up trade offshore. For the first time the US wasn't a closed economy. The only thing to stop it is some kind of import tax but That opens up a whole new can of worms. 812 I am with you the 80's where great to me as well my wages never stopped growing until I went into business for my self
#11
Seems like the capitalist system of business, or, more specifically, the manner in which many capitalists practice, could be a prime mover in causing suicide in our modern society, although I have no quantitative data on this. Not being able to put bread on the table and the resulting psychological damage might have strong correlations, beginning long before Reaganomics. Greed can be a killer.
#12
Part of the reasoning for the Reagan tax reductions was that if the Marginal Propensity for Investment was increased by tax reductionhen then job creation rates would be increased. However, the Marginal Propensity for Spending does not dictate where the excess over necessities of life the money will be spent, saved, invested or whatever. The desire for personal satisfaction, aggrandizement or leisure enters into the equation so that bankers bought expensive yachts for weekend parties for pretty secretaries to show off their wares. This was not investing for productive jobs that increase the national economy but would be calssified as the type of spending the Roman elites did prior to the fall. Too bad we don't read history.
Just because two factors vary together done not mean that one is the cause of the other. Thee are many variables that vary together and it is sometimes easy to think that one is the cause of the variable characteristics of the other.
Nevertheless, it is an interesting fact that suicides tend to increase when far right economic policies are dominant in politics.
#13
Part of the reasoning for the Reagan tax reductions was that if the Marginal Propensity for Investment was increased by tax reductionhen then job creation rates would be increased. However, the Marginal Propensity for Spending does not dictate where the excess over necessities of life the money will be spent, saved, invested or whatever. The desire for personal satisfaction, aggrandizement or leisure enters into the equation so that bankers bought expensive yachts for weekend parties for pretty secretaries to show off their wares. This was not investing for productive jobs that increase the national economy but would be calssified as the type of spending the Roman elites did prior to the fall. Too bad we don't read history.
Just because two factors vary together done not mean that one is the cause of the other. Thee are many variables that vary together and it is sometimes easy to think that one is the cause of the variable characteristics of the other.
Nevertheless, it is an interesting fact that suicides tend to increase when far right economic policies are dominant in politics.
#14
Johnnie Dorman: Indeed Reagan was the beginning of the race to the bottom for the vast majority of us, but simultaneously Reaganomics has also been the race to the top for the one percent. Concentration of wealth is off the charts in this country with no signs of slowing. We're well on our way to becoming a full blown feudal state run by a handful of passionate fascists.
It is well known that wages have been flat since 1979.....$4.03 per hour then had the same purchasing power that $22.41 per hour now has. Throw in that our generation got screwed under the 1983 Reagan/O'Neil Social Security retirement age scam. They not only rasied the age of eligibilty , they also made it so beneifits for example of people retiring at 64 only get what people used to get retiring at the age of 62...and so on.
Ain't trickle down just dandy?
#15
ya know. . . . . . for being such an intelligent person - your 'thinking' is certainly: narrow... 1-sided... and closed... to the point of being--->Nasty !
#16
It's sad and pathetic that the left is trying to politicize suicide. For those who commit suicide, the pain is over. For those left behind, the pain doesn't end. I would like to point out to you lefties who are attempting to politicize this terrible act. If you keep killing yourself because of "right wing" economic policies, plus the pro abortion lefties, in about 15 years, there will be no more lefties.
#17
Hi Kend, what you say is absolutely, positively true....I spent the last 6 years of my sales career in Canada as National Sales and Marketing manager. I lived in T-O, but traveled the entire country. I especially enjoyed Alberta. The work ethic is alive and well there. I spent more time in Edmonton than Calgary, how can I forget those -39° mornings. Stay well, you have great insight.
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The earnings of the Poor have only drop the years of Obama, not during the Reagan years. It was Democratic Policies that has hurt the Poor, Middle Class, and Small Busness.