John Burn-Murdoch has another of his quite amazing statistical analyses in the FT this morning. In this one, he compares US life expectancy of various groups in society with that of similar groups in other broadly similar societies.
At the top of the pile the US behaves pretty much like other countries:
In the middle, things don't look quite so good:
A decided gap in life expectancy has opened up.
At the bottom the situation is horrendous:
For the bottom ten per cent in the US, life expectancy is about 20 years less than in most other equivalent n countries at just 36 years.
Gun deaths and opiate addiction are the obvious factors making up the difference, but healthcare must also come into it.
If you want to see what the impact of unfettered neoliberalism and its causal indifference to life looks like, then that bottom chart is it.
And that's where the UK is heading, too. We are almost as willing to treat people as expendable now with our callous benefits policies and the casual indifference that the Bank of England has to the wellbeing of most people when setting its interest rate policies.
And you wonder why I get angry?
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The narrative camouflage that neolibtards use is “you gotta take personal responsibility” everything is reduced to the personal which is a quite nice get out for the neolibtards –
lost your job? – get another, no jobs around? – move, overweight? exercise, addicted? go cold turkey & so on & so forth. This narrative is strongest in the USA & as you observe, gaining traction in the UK. The correlation (rich/middle ok – poor tanking) demonstrates the importance of social systems & is a verification of Rawls and his thought experiment.
Most of those at the reins of power in the USA and UK have never experienced failure, disfunctional families, poverty etc. In turn this leads to a lack of empathy/understanding.
There is a short animation, called “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse. Doubtless some visitors to the site will have seen it. The direction of travel is set when the mole asks the boy what he wants to be when he grows up, & the boy replies with one word: “Kind”. Reviews of the animation were highly approving – apart from one by The Spectator. The animation fulfills a similar role to the Greek tragedies – the development of empathy in people = that could be me. This lack of empathy amongst elites (manifest as actions) lies at the heart of most of the problems that socieities in the USA and EU/UK face.
Which the UK/EU face?
Sorry, the UK is an outlier. Feel free to compare the former part of the UK, now a Tory-free and feudalism-free zone, with the UK. That is, Ireland. It’s ahead of the UK on every metric of human wellbeing from child mortality to longevity and everything in between (education, social mobility, gender equity etc), and the gap is widening and Brexit is accelerating it. Life expectancy is 2 years higher and rising. It’s falling in the UK.
The UK is a outlier when it comes to its electoral system, its network of offshore tax havens and organised money laundering for global kleptocrats, its bloated and unrepresentative legislature, and, almost certainly, the scale of tax avoidance by the well-connected rich. It’s also an outlier in the scale of influence of billionaires whether through backdoor meetings at Nr 10, political donations, ownership of newspapers and other media, and funding of so-called think tanks that lobby against the public interest and whose finances are non-transparent. In short, it’s a deeply regressive society, riven with corruption and unearned privilege at the top and callous indifference to those at the bottom. Much of the toleration of this and of the outrageous inequality in the UK depends on a culture of deference that begins with the monarchy and extends through the UK’s class system.
EU countries have fairer and more equal societies and are very much less prone to delusional exceptionalist beliefs – – because all of them are better governed.
Mr Johnson, you make valid points comparing social structures and their availability UK vs large numbers of EU countries.
However, in the case of lobbying & indeed in the case of the politicos/bureacrats that run the EU “show” you are wrong. It is as bad over here as in the UK. Taking Germany as an example, industry lobbying of Berlin is formidable & all pervasive. Ditto the EU & the Brussels village (I speak from 1st hand experience). Even in extremis, the combo of politicos/bureaucrats react very slowly to “events”. Household energy bills started to double 2 years ago – only now is the EU addressing this. In theory, politicos and bureaucrats care, and they certainly say that they care – but actions speak much louder than words – & it has taken 2 years to get their act together on elec market reform or collective buying of gas etc etc. Energy bills for Euro serfs went up massively – but such an event has minimal financial impact on those that run the EU show. So no need to act with urgency.
In terms of the press, Springer verlag comes to mind – the German version of Murdoch and like the Murdoch press has its up-market publications – Politico. A recent issue had an article whining on about AfD the right-whinge German party, whose growth has been fostered by other Springer titles, this should sound familiar. Oh and like Fart-rages bunch, AfD wants to extinguish the Euro, does not “believe” in climate change and so on & so forth. Marine le Pen & her imbeciles are the French version.
There are also a number of serious structural problems in the EU (UK – snap!). For example, the need for people willing to work out of doors (might sound trivial – it ain’t). Many of the crews that lay cables and pipes in the road in Belgium are – Bulgarian (I know cos I talk to them). I was talking to the Polish guy whose team repainted our house – he owns a Belgian building company. He is puzzled by the high levels of unemployment in Belgium – whilst struggling to hire workers. I have had similar comversations with other craftsmen. Think you have problems with the Bank of England? ECB every bit as bad – probably worse due to the lack of any democratic control.
I hope this has been useful.
A nicely balanced set of arguments from both. In spite of it descending into a ‘who is the most corrupt, or burdened by vested interests serving themselves’ whataboutery festival; I must confess that if I look past all that, at the longer term metrics; I’m afraid Mr Parr, I think Dr Johnson just pipped you at the post this time .
After all, as Dr Johnson said, although not perhaps about the EU (!): “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance”. I would wish we had persevered with Europe and tried to make it work (what a missed opportunity of real leadership over handbagging – or was that carpetbagging?), rather than setting out to undermine its unifying purpose; and maybe one day future generations would enjoy the full fruits of what it is capable.
I would choose the EU over the UK Union for Scotland, because we can always cut an economic deal with the UK: because the truth is, in both a late, and post-fossil fuel age, the UK is going to need us a little more than we need them; and that can work for both.
This in the Guardian in June:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/21/children-raised-under-uk-austerity-shorter-than-european-peers-study
“British children who grew up during the years of austerity are falling behind many of their European peers in terms of height, a study has found.
In 1985, British boys and girls ranked 69 out of 200 countries for average height aged five. At the time they were on average 111.4cm and 111cm tall respectively.
But by 2019, British boys were 102nd and girls 96th, with the average five-year-old boy measuring 112.5cm and the average girl, 111.7cm. In Bulgaria, the average height for a five-year-old boy in 2019 was 121cm and a girl, 118cm.
Experts have said a poor national diet and cuts to the NHS are to blame. But they have also pointed out that height is a strong indicator of general living conditions, including illness and infection, stress, poverty and sleep quality.
They have fallen by 30 places, which is pretty startling,” said Prof Tim Cole, an expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London. “The question is, why?”
GPs in poorer areas of the country have reported a resurgence of Victorian diseases such as rickets and scurvy caused largely, they say, by nutritional deficiencies. NHS data shows that about 700 children a year are admitted to hospital with malnutrition, rickets or scurvy in England.
Separate research suggests that dietary inequalities in children from poorer backgrounds are driving higher rates of problems including obesity, type 2 diabetes and dental decay.”
Thanks
Also interesting though that even at the top and average levels life expectancy is still lower than peer countries. Poor healthcare is clearly going to be a factor for poorer people, but I doubt if this, or opiate deaths or shootings, play a major role further up – my guess is it’s another result of neoliberal ideology: poor regulation of rapacious big business, leading to poor food safety, environmental standards, poor diets, etc. Disastrous for the poor – but bad for everybody.
I don’t wonder why you get angry; I wonder why more people don’t. It’s very discouraging…
It’s probably because a lot of people ascribe to the Ayn Rand school of thought or “I’m alright Jack”.
Gillian Tett has argued that as America’s internal expansion ended, the imperialism it practiced against the indigenous North Americans was bound to be turned on the rest of the world. Slavery in the States also gave birth I think to Neo-liberalism (thank you Nancy MacLean).
Imperialist Britain has always been ripe for North Americanisation as it too was an imperial power increasingly pushed out by America. What better for the ‘specious relationship’ (sic) than to to get the UK Establishment to turn their extractive pauper producing ways on their fellow countrymen instead and those bothersome Scots, Welsh, Cornish whatever?
Some of you might note that I give Liberals a hard time. This is because I find the Liberal requirement or mindset that puts the individual at the centre a major weakness. The Liberals that help start the Labour movement were OK when they aligned their personal responsibility with (say) Jesus, or the bible or whatever religious ethics they were part of (they put God or Jesus within man). This made them think of their fellow man, and they saw their own moral health and survival interdependently with others including the less fortunate. Upon more reflection, traditional Liberals actually recognised the benefits of the collective this way. Why? Because it was the truth really about how human beings evolved – by sticking together and being kind, and kindness being reciprocal (thank you David Graeber and others).
What Neo-liberalism does is that it monetises the individualism in Liberalism, and with a strong dose of Ayn Rand – that mankind has no responsibility except unto itself and its own self interest – we have a bastardised version of Liberalism – where the self is at the centre but with no real connection – moral or ethically – to anyone else. A rewriting of human history as bad as anything the Soviets did in their society. Funny that isn’t it?
So the rationality that connected us to other people is now under Neo-liberalism directed towards wealth or money as a ‘rational self-interest’. This is not just the end of society (which will kill democracy and enforce inequality – pure top down rule through wealth-power structures) but also the end of humanity itself, potentially.
Data like this proves it yet again. Our changing weather patterns prove it. This is why we have to keep talking about it.
Neatly identifying all the problems the word Liberal has in politics
Thank you – I try my best.
Last night’s weownit youtube was telling us what the NHS would be like if we continue along the US way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06FjXEB5E8c&t=53s
Very depressing, told by a doctor who is American, started training there, but then came here to work in the NHS as an A&E doctor. He could not believe it when he came here and discovered how good the NHS was. He now can’t believe that we are throwing away what was the best system in the world.
It needs watching and passing on to anyone who doubts what is happening to our NHS.