Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for 3rd Year in a Row.

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Anyone in Washington D.C. calling for lowering the age of Social Security eligibility?

 

Let me try to put a positive spin on this:

Hello congressperson, hello senator, here’s a softball for you, slow, directly over the plate, bases loaded.

Working class Americans have been told that raising the age of eligibility is fair, because people are living longer.  67  is the new 65.   For me, it’s 66 and two months.

Now, that trend is reversing and has done so for three years in a row.  Be the one, be the Democrat calling for lowering the age of eligibility to 66 and even lower if this trend continues.

Yes, I am sure that some will explain this drop to the opioid crisis, and the plight of health care in general.  Okay, not a problem use that same explanation to support a single payer system and (and I love this part) making serious changes in how we patent and sell drugs in this country, in order to reverse this change in life expectancy and maybe be able to raise the age to 70!  (but only after those changes).

There it is.  Put it on your campaign website.

You’re welcome!

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Comments

  1. The change in life expectancy is just barely statistically significant (on the order of 1/10 of a year) and is driven by staggering increases in suicide rates and drug overdose rates:

    A more responsible change to Social Security for both congressional Democrats and Republicans is to:

    a: Further increase the minimum eligibility age, and
    b: Remove the wage cap on Social Security taxes

    The actuarial issues with Social Security and Medicare are driven by demographics rather than year-to-year variations in life expectancy.

    I think that the more important lesson to learn from the decline in life expectancy is that our government in general and the GOP in particularly is either doing nothing or is worsening the two drivers of the decline — suicides and drug overdoses.

    The Washington Post report from late 2018 said this about suicides (emphasis mine):

    …
    Overall, suicides increased by a third between 1999 and 2017, the report showed. In urban America, the rate is 11.1 per 100,000 people; in the most rural parts of the country, it is 20 per 100,000.

    A variety of factors determine suicide rates, but one that may help explain its greater prevalence in rural areas is access to guns, said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

    “Higher suicide rates in rural areas are due to nearly 60 percent of rural homes having a gun versus less than half of homes in urban areas,” Humphreys wrote in an email. “Having easily available lethal means is a big risk factor for suicide.”

    Sharfstein said the most lamentable aspect of the crises is that policymakers know which approaches make a difference, such as medically assisted treatment for drug abusers and increased availability of mental health services in states where they are lacking.

    “So the frustration that many of us feel is that there are things that could save many lives,” he said, “and we are failing to make those services available.”

    These statistics are disheartening. They do provide yet another example of how the wealthy class wins and the working class loses.

    Anybody who votes for Donald Trump or the GOP based on this data is, frankly, insane. Voting for Donald Trump because of unhappiness about either life expectancy or Social Security is literally cutting cutting off your nose to spite your face.

    • Tom,
      I agree with you 100% on a. & b. and your overall post. However (always the however…..) You and I and many of us here are keen on getting into the details but we are definitely the exception and my advice to Democrats is to keep it simple, don’t get into the details.,and remember that a red ball cap with a simple message won the White House in 2016 and the message of a barn jacket and pickup truck turned Massachusetts RED in 2010.

      In his book, a Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking noted that every time he inserted an equation into the book, book sales would be reduced by 50% (or words to that extent) and kept the equations to two.

      In short, when voters ask us what time it is, we have to stop telling them how we plan to build a clock.

      We’re living shorter lives, let’s lower the Social Security enrollment age because of it.

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