New Report Shows the Left Was Right — Lawmakers Must Take Action to Save Lives
A new report from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine should alarm everyone. It should innervate workers desperate for change — and it should terrify lawmakers into taking immediate and swift action if they care about saving human lives.
What’s so damning about the report? Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 are dying in droves. What’s causing the increased mortality? Deaths of despair. These terrifying findings put science behind what the left has been screaming about for a decade or more — we need a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, expanded childcare options, and a Green New Deal.
The alternative is literally death.
Why Is American Life Expectancy Declining? Why Are American Workers Dying in Droves?
Reading this report, recently published in JAMA Network, should bring tears to the eyes of anyone who knows and loves a working-class American. Why?
The answer, sadly, is the tragic deaths of American workers.
Among the 16 wealthiest nations, life expectancy rose in every one since 2010. Every one, that is, except the United States. There, this telling figure declined between the years of 2015–2017, primarily due to increased mortality among working-age adults.
This increase in premature deaths should terrify legislators at a time when they are concerned with plummeting birth rates and a declining population. Low birth rates are already so bad that folks at the conservative RAND organization consider the matter a national security risk — conveniently ignoring why people aren’t having kids.
It can cost $30,000 to give birth without insurance — and that’s assuming you have an uncomplicated vaginal delivery. That price tag alone is enough to dissuade many from parenthood, and the costs only increase if you need a C-section or have other complications. When you couple that with the fact that the U.S. also has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate among the wealthiest nations, it’s a no-brainer to see why so many choose not to procreate.
We’re already producing fewer babies because no one can afford to have kids without living wages and healthcare. Now, our working-age citizens are dying out en masse. What’s killing them?
That’s where the report becomes even more damning. The number one increase in causes of death among this age group is drug and alcohol overdoses. It’s followed by suicide, then cardiometabolic disease.
Deaths of despair.
Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 are dropping like flies from deaths of despair.
Dear lawmakers: Now, will you listen to those of us at the bottom about how bad it is? Now, will you cut the crap with the cute curtsies and acknowledge that your citizens are dying and pleading with you for help? Science now supports these claims. It’s not bellyaching. It’s not a lack of bootstrapping.
Life in America is killing us.
We Must Raise the Wage
If there is any doubt that we need to raise the wage for everyone — not just federal employees, but every worker in America — it’s in black and white in this report.
Paying less than a living wage should be criminal, anyway. It is theft. It is the theft of the value of someone’s labor. Demanding someone work for you while paying them an insufficient amount to survive is, in many ways, as bad as slavery. You may remove the physical whip, but you replace it by beating them over the head with messages like, “If you want to get paid more, get a better job,” when they are already pushed to their physical and mental limit, and when every position they submit an application to offers a starting salary of $8.
Many abuse victims state that emotional wounds hurt more than physical ones. When it comes to how America has woefully forsaken the labor force that makes it great, the same principle applies. Over the past 40 years, we have been beaten into the ground, paid less than we need to survive — then blamed for our plight, like many abuse victims.
We’re seeing a slow general strike of sorts with people refusing to return to low-wage labor. Of course, it didn’t take long for Republican lawmakers to literally try to starve people back to work by cutting off their pandemic benefits. You can draw whatever comparisons you like about a government that says, “You must risk your life at this factory, or you and your family will starve and die.”
However, with both parties primarily representing the predatory elites, people feel they have nowhere to turn for help from their elected officials. Who can forget Democrat Kyrsten Sinema cruelly dismissing the pleas of poor working women with a thumbs-down and a curtsy when it came to raising the minimum wage?
People are justifiably outraged. The wage discussion is no longer about bootstrapping or paying your dues. Trying to survive as an American worker is now a steel-cage match where only a few make it out alive. The science shows the deaths — and people have an instinctive human right to fight for their survival. Is it any wonder the nation is a powder keg?
Raising the wage won’t fix every problem in America — but it will go a long way. It will also save lives.
We Must Provide Healthcare to Everyone Free at Point-of-Service
Another issue is the way we leave the sick to suffer and die — including those workers who desperately need mental health care. They’re going to need these services even more to recover from the trauma of American capitalism. The time to reform the healthcare system is now.
The only way to do so is through a single-payer, Medicare for All style system. 32 out of the 33 leading nations already have such a program in place, so arguments that it is too expensive and can’t be done here are as easy to see through as a pane of clear glass. The only reason we don’t currently have such a system in place is health insurance companies and Big Pharma greed, coupled with that of politicians who take money from them to protect their interests.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, even though the concept is so simple, a caveman from a Geico ad could grasp it — as long as anyone has to choose between a roof over their family’s head and healthcare, they’ll opt for housing — often with tragic results. Which leads us to the next need.
Yes, We Must Provide Childcare — but Children Need Their Parents, Too
One thing that President Biden is doing well is emphasizing families — but he’s forgetting the parents in the equation. He’s set to announce $200 billion in funding for universal pre-K, something that will make a tremendous impact on student outcomes according to most every study. Democrats also want to expand tax credits for families to help offset childcare costs.
However, as vital as expanding childcare access for families is, kids also need their parents. They need them alive, they need them accessible, and they need them healthy.
When mom can’t afford healthcare to treat her spinal stenosis and lives in constant pain, unable to take her children to the park, that impacts their upbringing far more than any pre-K program.
When kids never see their dad because he goes from hustle number one to hustle number two and then off to number three without skipping a beat, just to keep a roof over their heads at $8 an hour, that affects their upbringing more than a free school lunch.
When children lose a parent from a preventable death of despair, it’s impossible to describe the impact.
We need to keep and expand these new initiatives, and yes, we should give credit where it is due by praising those implementing them. However, they alone are not enough. Lawmakers need to also help the parents — who are, quite often, the struggling, dying American workers.
We Must Implement a Green New Deal to Fund Needed Changes and Save the Planet
Of course, in any policy decisions that come down to lives versus the almighty dollar, the question arises: how will we pay for it? Fortunately (using that term loosely), we have a climate crisis to solve.
Here’s the thing: It isn’t enough to “create jobs.” Ask many restaurants these days. Tons of open positions exist — but they don’t pay living wages or afford those who labor in them any sort of dignity.
That dynamic needs to change. After all, food is vital to human life, and the people who make and serve it deserve praise — and enough income to live on themselves. But you also have to restore the dignity component, and for that, you need purpose.
You can find purpose in feeding people and nurturing their bodies and souls. You can also find tremendous meaning in saving the planet we all need to survive.
Clean energy and sustainability have the potential to create new jobs — and they will be quality ones where workers feel like they are laboring toward a worthwhile endeavor. They won’t feel like they are merely clocking away hours of their life, often for substandard wages, fueling more deaths of despair.
New Report Shows the Left Was Right Using Science — Lawmakers, Do Your Job and Save Lives
The new report from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is damning and deserves immediate attention from those in charge. Science now shows that what the left has been saying is right. Lawmakers must act swiftly with reform efforts if they want to save American lives.
