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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Young adults who experience annual income drops of 25 percent or more may be more at risk of having thinking problems and reduced brain health in middle age, according to a study published in the October 2, 2019, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“Income volatility is at a record level since the 1980s and there is growing evidence that it may have pervasive effects on health, yet policies intending to smooth unpredictable income changes are being weakened in the United States and many other countries,” said study author Leslie Grasset, PhD, of the Inserm Research Center in Bordeaux, France. “Our exploratory study followed participants in the United States through the recession in the late 2000s when many people experienced economic instability. Our results provide evidence that higher income volatility and more income drops during peak earning years are linked to unhealthy brain aging in middle age.
” The study involved 3,287 people who were 23 to 35 years old at the start of the study and were enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, which includes a racially diverse population. Participants reported their annual pre-tax household income every three to five years for 20 years, from 1990 to 2010. Researchers examined how often income dropped as well as the percentage of change in income between 1990 and 2010 for each participant. Based on the number of income drops, participants fell into three groups: 1,780 people who did not have an income drop; 1,108 who had one drop of 25 percent or more from the previous reported income; and 399 people who had two or more such drops. Participants were given thinking and memory tests that measured how well they completed tasks and how much time it took to complete them. For one test, participants used a key that paired numbers 1 to 9 with symbols.
They were then given a list of numbers and had to write down the corresponding symbols. Researchers found that people with two or more income drops had worse performances in completing tasks than people with no income drops. On average, they scored worse by 3.74 points or 2.8 percent. “For reference, this poor performance is greater than what is normally seen due to one year in aging, which is equivalent to scoring worse by only 0.71 points on average or 0.53 percent”, said Grasset. Participants with more income drops also scored worse on how much time it took to complete some tasks. The results were the same after researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect thinking skills, such as high blood pressure, education level, physical activity and smoking. There was no difference between the groups on tests that measured verbal memory.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 09 2019, @10:06AM (18 children)
Ok, where's the problem with that? Why shouldn't it be under continuous attack?
Except of course, when the standard of living rises instead. There's a lot of unquestioned assumptions in that single phrase.
Fixing potholes is not a safety net function. Instead, it is a rival funding sink to a safety net, and often gets shorted at the expense of these safety nets.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday October 09 2019, @09:27PM (1 child)
Because we care about the well-being of those that benefit from an intact safety net more than you do!
Q.E.D.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 10 2019, @04:53AM
Do you? No safety net would be very easy to keep intact. Meanwhile a very plush safety net without the necessary tax base is not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Thursday October 10 2019, @12:45AM (15 children)
Huh? What kind of asshole wants to attack the weakest in society.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 10 2019, @02:30AM (7 children)
The kind of asshole Mr. Hallow is. THIS is why I keep wishing for him to become homeless and destitute; it's the only way he's going to learn. I've noticed that some people simply are not capable of giving a shit about something until the thing in question happens to them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday October 10 2019, @03:22AM (6 children)
Yes, I've dealt with kallow on and off over the years, mostly off as you can't argue someone into having empathy. Life circumstances sometimes will change a person and even then some people are so stuck that nothing will change them, the armor is just too thick.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 10 2019, @10:36PM (2 children)
The latest is he's decided to "foe" me, as he apparently thinks I've suffered too much to hold a proper discussion with him...? Buuuut I've been kicking his ass around the room and even baiting him into letting out the crazy now and then in public...? The guy's mind is like a black hole. He's an utter selfish solipsist.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday October 11 2019, @03:43AM (1 child)
I just find it depressing that there are people who think the best thing to do to the downtrodden is to tread harder on them.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:14AM
I seem to recall reading that something like 1 in 80 people is a psychopath. Given the number of people registered on the site, about 8000 last I checked, that means that all else being equal (and it likely isn't the case, given the stated aims of this site...) we have around a hundred of them. There's no other way I can explain this behavior other than a cluster B personality disorder.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)
What makes you think you have empathy in the first place?
Your first post was a great Marxist-style blame deflection. The glorious safety net is being held back by the criticism of counterrevolutionaries! Not the more mundane consideration that these bits don't actually work as advertised. Sure, you can show that overly costly and underfunded public pensions and health care are worth the price without vacuous appeals to emotion, right?
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:10AM (1 child)
I get pissed off when, in the name of tax cuts, the veterans have most of their services cut. Cut by the same people who insist on going to war on the other side of the world for no good reason. I also get pissed off when they start shutting down the coast guard, which saves hundreds of lives a year.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:42PM
Like what? When I look [va.gov] at the Veteran Administration's expenditures, I see it went up from $167 million in 2015 to $180 million in 2018 (and currently requesting $220 million [va.gov] FWIW). So no, didn't happen at least at the budget level. And glancing at 2008, it used to be $85 million. So basically, this has gone up through both the Trump and Obama administrations.
You can dump as much gas as you'd like into the engine. But if the spark plug doesn't spark, then the car doesn't go. You can dump more money into the VA. You can change to single payer for the plebes. But until the institutional problems of the US government bureaucracy are addressed and mitigated, you're not going anywhere. I think the key one is simply that the tax revenue stream is riddled with parasites: corporate ones, empire building government bureaucracies, and it goes all the way do to the individual level both inside and outside the government, from people nursing a government paycheck for a few decades in an obscure bureaucracy to that safety net we keep talking about.
None of it takes us anywhere.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 10 2019, @05:04AM (6 children)
My view is that the safety net is an attack on the weakest in society, particularly the parts, like a high minimum wage, that are the opposite of a safety net. So my answer to your rhetorical question is you are that kind of asshole.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 10 2019, @10:44PM
The kind of twisted psychopath who could think and say something like that with a straight face...good grief. You are irredeemable. You're going to need this crap burned out of you in Hellfire before you're fit to tread the Earth's surface again at this rate. I will never understand what makes some people willingly, gleefully even, discard their own humanity. What advantage do you think you're going to gain from this way of life?
Welp, can't say I didn't try with you early on :/ Oh well, you'll be in bad (but widespread) company...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday October 11 2019, @02:30AM (4 children)
So cripples should be thrown of cliffs, veterans that are all screwed up from saving your life style should live on the streets and anyone who gets hit by a car should be left to die. Got it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 11 2019, @07:11PM (3 children)
I think constructing straw men is a sign that your empathy gear is broke.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:04AM (2 children)
Pointing out that potholes damage cars as well as slow down traffic is full on Marxist?
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:15AM
Hmm, somehow this reply ended up in the wrong part of the thread.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:50PM