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Rural America is facing an existential crisis. As cities continue to grow and prosper, small towns are shrinking. That fundamental divide played itself out in the recent presidential election.
[...] The trend is clear: Rural America is literally fading away. It shouldn't come as a surprise, therefore, that the opioid overdose epidemic has hit rural states, like Kentucky and West Virginia, especially hard. And the latest research from the CDC also shouldn't come as a surprise: Suicides in rural America (labeled as non-core) have increased over 40% in 16 years.
From 1999 to 2015, suicide rates increased everywhere in America. On average, across the U.S., suicides increased from 12.2 per 100,000 to 15.7 per 100,0001, an increase of just under 30%. However, in rural America, the suicide rate surged over 40%2, from just over 15 per 100,000 to roughly 22 per 100,000. Similarly, the suicide rate in micropolitan areas (defined as having a population between 10,000-49,999) went from 14 per 100,000 to 19 per 100,000, an increase of around 35%.
On the flip side, major cities saw much smaller increases in suicide rates, on the order of 10%. The graph depicts a clear pattern: Suicide rates are highest in the most rural parts of the country, and they slowly decrease as urbanization increases. As of 2015, the suicide rate in rural areas (22 per 100,000) is about 40% higher than in the nation as a whole (15.7 per 100,000) and 83% higher than in large cities (12 per 100,000).
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:21PM (8 children)
Usually the argument is not framed as "automation killed more jobs than globalism in general". At least not when you're talking to anybody that wants to see the data. Most of the time, the argument is carefully narrowed down to "automation killed more jobs than trade with Mexico/China/any other single country", followed by data to prove it. Which can be true, even when automation is the smaller boogeyman. Especially since a lot of those jobs now go to several of the different countries south of China, further diluting each individual country's share of global jobs moved out of America.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:40PM (7 children)
All of that sort of analysis assumes that markets are static. In fact, trade doesn't just move jobs around, it also creates new jobs because it creates new consumers. The amount of poverty in the world has been vastly reduced, it is hard to over-state just how much poverty has been eliminated by globalism. [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday March 30 2017, @10:54PM (6 children)
Service-economy... imagine 100 hairdressers in a circle, each one tending the hair of the one in front of it. Would you qualify this as a "well-being upward spiral"?
Now, tell me what type of new customers are created when the population can not get enough money to pay for the... mmm... customs?
Middle-class is disappearing, fast; the bottom of the barrel is showing already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday March 31 2017, @12:37AM (1 child)
Yep. Services are necessary but without an underlying wealth generating economy in place (*), services become unfordable eventually. A pure service economy is like a perpetual motion machine -- doesn't work.
(*) by wealth generating, I do not mean middlemen personally enriching themselves - I mean creating new stuff that people want.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 31 2017, @05:53AM
Umm... I wish this would be a clear cut. nut it isn't.
Someone may argue that "production" is actually a special kind of service:
- the service of extracting and processing already existing minerals, a service of processing them and transforming them in tangible, a service of transporting/distributing them.
- a service of planting seeds, growing produce/cereals/animals, no different in nature from flipping burgers.
- etc
No actual creation, just many specialized services of transforming substances and energy from one form to another
And beat me if I know how to refute the above argumentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:53AM (3 children)
Service-economy... imagine 100 hairdressers in a circle, each one tending the hair of the one in front of it. Would you qualify this as a "well-being upward spiral"?
A service economy isn't just hairdressers. Its doctors. Its teachers. Its gardeners. Its musicians, authors and painters.
And a transition to a service economy is inevitable in a world of growing automation. That's because automation makes manufacturing cheaper, which makes goods cheaper. But you can't as easily automate a home health aid or a tennis pro as you can a television assembly line. So when the amount of available money stays the same and the cost of physical goods is reduced it is inevitable that more money will be spent on services because they get proportionally more expensive.
So try to get past your reductive mischaracterization of what a service economy entails and realize that not only is it inevitable, its also not a bad thing. Its just a new thing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 31 2017, @05:39AM (2 children)
So it would be, except for a nagging detail... make the wealth generated by the use of automation be distributed to the population. Otherwise you are building a house of cards on a sandy ground while a storm is blowing high winds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @07:28AM (1 child)
> make the wealth generated by the use of automation be distributed to the population.
As long as there is effective competition the prices should reflect the vastly reduced costs, which means that wealth is distributed via the increased purchasing power. You get a lot more stuff for the same price or you get the same amount of stuff and you keep a lot more cash in your wallet.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 31 2017, @08:45AM
Implicit assumption: you have money in your wallet to start with.
Verify this assumption after 3 years of being unemployed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford