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Economics and Suicides

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 15:17:15

Plantagenet wrote:
onlooker wrote:The Great Recession Caused A Sharp Rise In Suicides


I'm sure the Great Recession didn't help, but the beginning of the rise in suicides in the US pre-dates the Great Recession by 13 years, and the suicide rate has continued to increase every year for the last 8 years since the Great Recession. The rise in death rate has now been going on for over 20 years---its related to some bigger secular economic trend -----its not just due to the recession

Good post Plant. But OTOH, eyeballing the chart for the 45-54 age group for white males, that has suicide at about a sixteenth of the total deaths. Not great perhaps, but not the end of the world.

Looking at the overall causes would seem to be a lot more productive than people focusing on just the suicides -- but suicides have a moral overtone even in a society with a decreasing participation rate in organized religion over time.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 15:20:22

MD wrote:All I can say is: those that are contemplating a self-directed exit need to consider what they might miss, and more importantly, what small thing they might be able to do that could make a difference. Take a "pay it forward" attitude. Help someone, even when you have nothing left. A smile at the right time to a child, or a helping hand to an elderly person that needs a step-up, or water a plant, or feed a bird, or... anything that comes into your path. If you are sad and suicidal, give life a happy nudge, and keep watching the show.

That's advice from someone near the end of the road (not self-directed). It's all good!

That's easy to say for those of us who have plenty of time and health left (with any luck, me included).

For those who are, say, in their 80's and have been having very BAD things happen to their health for decades (like I watched happen to my father) -- who are we to judge if they decide that enough is enough? (I don't believe in organized religion or a God that conforms to human definiton, so that's a factor in my attitude).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 15:27:05

Cog wrote:For many white males, they anchor themselves so firmly in their jobs, their jobs become who they are. If they lose that job for whatever reason, even retirement, they struggle to find some meaning to their existence. At least that is my 2 cents on it.

I've seen that attitude a lot. It seems to be common among the greatest generation, especially.

My girlfriend's mother (of that generation) predicted I'd be that way.

Well, that's ONE advantage of the way many corporations tend to treat their employees in recent decades. By the time I left the workforce I was so sick of my employer and work that I was THRILLED to leave and do something else.

Each day, getting up when I choose (instead of being called out at all hours by the pager), rested and relaxed, and knowing the day is mostly mine to do with as I choose is just fantastic. It's like pretty much the opposite of my emotions about waking up to go to work (generally 7 days a week) the last several years of my career.

Attitudes will vary, but I wonder if much of this problem will go away with, say, the under-40 crowd, or whether this is largely an American cultural thing -- or something else.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 15:47:37

I think part of the increase in sucidides in white males is due to the cost of health care.
If you get a serious disease, you might be able to leave your family in better shape if you don't go for the $200 K in costs during the last year of your life.
And about the racket of health care - this guy has a solution. It will never be implemented because it would break a lot of corporations, but healthcare doesn't have to be so expensive.
https://www.market-ticker.org/
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 15:51:54

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Each day, getting up when I choose (instead of being called out at all hours by the pager), rested and relaxed, and knowing the day is mostly mine to do with as I choose is just fantastic. It's like pretty much the opposite of my emotions about waking up to go to work (generally 7 days a week) the last several years of my career.

This has created problems for me. Like this morning, I was wondering if my road was dry enough to start grading again, or if I wanted to maybe cut some of the overhanging trees on the road for firewood. I finally made a good pot of coffe, said screw it, and decided to read and play in my shop for the day. Its terrible! :-D
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Ibon » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 17:50:52

MD wrote:
Ibon wrote:
This also does explain a little bit the scapegoating of immigrants, whether legal or illegal. Why? Because they come to this country with zero entitlements happy to work cleaning bed pans in an old peoples home or in agriculture or whatever menial job and many do then rise and progress in the classic story of the American Dream. This is a whole other mindset then the privileged white man who lost his job and feels lost.



zero entitlements? This is no longer the case for the immigrants who are well informed. Free education (adult males in freshman high school). Free health care (just show up, they will get care for free)

As for white males in their middle to elder years? We have been marginalized. Yes, men of my age are not happy to see how we have worked for 50 years in america, paid into the social systems, and now find ourselves cast off in favor of immigrants who are fresh and new and finding all kinds of benefits. Yes, it's demeaning, and unfair. Not all of us had silver spoons stuck up our ass. We delivered newspapers, flipped burgers, and swept floors. I did all of that. Now immigrants and refugees get to gain the benefit of those efforts while we are marginalized and a safe target for derisive commentary? Yeah. It sucks to be a white male in america at age 60. "reverse racism".


Sorry but I will challenge you a little bit here. There is a tad bit of scapegoating of immigrants in your post. You are correct in that immigrants can game the system and are entitled to benefits that could and perhaps should be unwound. Let's assume the current administration succeeds in doing just that. Now where would we find these white males? They would still be competing against immigrants fresh off the boat legally here. Or women for that matter who have gained a stronger foothold in the job market in the last 40 years. Or other minority groups. Resolving the immigrant problem would not remove the funk the white males suffer from IMHO. This funk has deeper roots.

I personally have a hard time with the argument of reverse racism. There is some granted but this is whining sorry to say. Does the white male really want to follow this victimization game that they were all so recently claiming other minorities where doing? I don't think playing victim succeeds in lifting you up from your bootstraps and making a success of yourself whether you are a minority or a fallen member of the privileged class.

I brought up my father for a reason. Following his bankruptcy and in his retirement he pulled from his earliest roots as a farmer to access the hard work and humility that allowed him to shampoo carpets of rich people for the last 20 some years of his active years. He was a chemist and retired working for Merk and Co. the big pharmaceutical firm. He was not uneducated. And yet he was out there shampooing rich peoples carpets for the last 20 years of his life.

What is it about white males who became unemployed who having felt entitled do not have the humility or the hard work ethic to follow in the footsteps of what my father did or what you see many immigrants do.

I have the answer to this I think but at the moment I prefer to pose the question.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Fri 31 Mar 2017, 21:05:16

Ibon wrote:What is it about white males who became unemployed who having felt entitled do not have the humility or the hard work ethic to follow in the footsteps of what my father did or what you see many immigrants do.
I have the answer to this I think but at the moment I prefer to pose the question.

Interesting question. As usual, it probably has as many answers as there are unemployed white males.
If generalizing, some might believe it is just laziness.
I believe it could be some part laziness, some part a feeling of loss that some will not be able to overcome, some part a physical inability after a certain age (due to our countrys poor diet and sedentary lifestyle), and possibly even a feeling of shame after having fallen so low.
Your father is only one case, and since he was once a farmer, probably not a good basis of comparision with the typical North American worker.
Farmers have always been the fix-anything, keep working daylight to dusk, kind of people that I have always admired.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Cog » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 06:59:46

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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Cog » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 08:41:28

If there is any advice I could give a younger guy is to take on minimal debt, live below your means, save money, and have another marketable skill besides the one you work in. You can ride out a lot of bad situations if you do this.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 12:42:21

Squilliam wrote:One major problem with the economic system is that it is a form of slavery. The modern status of 'work' only really became apparent to people in the great depression because before then a significant number of people didn't 'need' a job to live. In slavery 1.0 you put the fences on the outside of the property to keep people in. You tied people to the land that they often were born on. In slavery 2.0 you have the same fences, but you use them to keep people out. When everything is owned by someone else there is no choice with respect to opting out of the system because you cannot go anywhere to escape. This IMO is the unacknowledged truth of the economic system.

I couldn't agree more. And that is the reason that I believe that the suicide rate will continue to go up, as more people come to the same conclusion.
Every regulation, every tax code, every resistriction tightens the noose a little more firmly. And all of them tend to do the same thing - push the poor into the servant class for the rich. Lately it is becoming more difficult for the elite to hide the facts. The only thing that saves them is that it is a somewhat "soft" slavery. You can live well if you don't protest too much. You can even join the elite club if you have the good fortune to find the tiny opening in the route to the top.
From usury to taxes to rent to victimless crime- who benefits in the end?
No one wants to feel like a slave, and suicide is often considered a preferable alternative.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby evilgenius » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 12:55:08

I think the same thing that drives gamblers drives white males, the need for control. The thing is, while gamblers have this ability to see only when they win, white males are more than aware of their losses. In fact, as these losses point out their loss of control, they may appear larger to them than they are.

You can look at the impact of white males, and this is telling for it indicates that it isn't just white males this applies to, upon others and see what I am talking about. For instance, in the tech world, before it was the 'it' career, women used to do quite nicely while making far less than what tech now pays. Once males became interested enough in tech, once it was sexy to them, women started to fall out of favor and tech jobs started to buy houses. Oh, speaking of sex, how many times have we heard of some man, usually a white guy, but not always, killing either his wife/girlfriend, or his entire family because he saw love as possession and his loss of possession (ie control) meant so much to him that he thought their deaths best (being an affront to his control). Most of the time these real prize winners then turn the gun on themselves, but not always. Does it really come as any surprise when someone who has built up a type of personal empire, exercising control over their family, friends and anyone who comes into their realm wants to kill themselves if they lose their control over that empire?

The need to build control is fundamentally a lack of faith. Instead of building an intimacy with the universe, which is what faith requires when you have to admit you are not God yourself, the seeking of control establishes an antagonistic estrangement from it. It's a very hard thing to suddenly find yourself on the losing end of a worldview that sees life that way.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 15:04:51

Hawkcreek wrote:Every regulation, every tax code, every resistriction tightens the noose a little more firmly. And all of them tend to do the same thing - push the poor into the servant class for the rich. Lately it is becoming more difficult for the elite to hide the facts. The only thing that saves them is that it is a somewhat "soft" slavery. You can live well if you don't protest too much. You can even join the elite club if you have the good fortune to find the tiny opening in the route to the top.

I also fully agree with these comments. This is where we are headed, slowly for the past couple of decades and now accelerating faster. I think the falling from privilege and suicides we see from older white men wont extend to the emerging younger generations though since young millennials are already being socialized to this reality. Most will submit to this soft slavery as long as new Apps come along to keep them distracted and entertained.

Less cynical is my belief that starving the corporations by simply not participating in consumption is the most effective resistance. There is something passive and non violent and conscious about this path that I do believe will grow like a movement once this is underscored by consequences of human overshoot and upcoming constraints.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 15:17:21

Less cynical is my belief that starving the corporations by simply not participating in consumption is the most effective resistance. There is something passive and non violent and conscious about this path that I do believe will grow like a movement once this is underscored by consequences of human overshoot and upcoming constraints.

Yes this is definitely a trend as it satiates people's sense of outrage at the system while empowering people. From there, some seem to be going all the way to live off grid. The empowerment satisfaction of this lifestyle change should not be underestimated nor how it can afford people a sense of stability in an increasingly uncertain future. I see it here exemplified among my fellow posters. The sense of powerlessness can be very demoralizing and for white males particularly humiliating. That may give us further insight to this suicide phenomenon
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 15:37:46

Ibon wrote:Less cynical is my belief that starving the corporations by simply not participating in consumption is the most effective resistance. There is something passive and non violent and conscious about this path that I do believe will grow like a movement once this is underscored by consequences of human overshoot and upcoming constraints.

This is exactly where I would like to see thing go. I attended the RTR (Rubber Tramps Rendevous) in Quartzsite, Arizona for the past 2 years and have seen how well some of those pushed out of society are doing. It is rapidly becoming a valid alternative lifestyle. I feel kind of like a phony when I am there because I dont really have to be there. When I meet old women who have nowwhere else to live but in their cars, I feel terrible.
But I meet a lot of interesting people also, who have found their way of fighting back. This is not just dropping out, like we did in the late 60's. This is a lot of people who don't pay property taxes, pay very little or no income tax, and manage to live and build a sense of community even while moving all over the country (mainly in the west, however).
What are the odds that this lifestyle will come under increasing attack in the future, however. I expect to see chains and signs forbidding entry to all public lands in the near future.
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Re: Economics and Suicides

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 01 Apr 2017, 16:01:09

Think about the children of white males watching their fathers on opiates or commiting suicide or just the milder form of enduring declining wage slave status. Think about these white males abandoning democrat liers and out of desparation voted for a corporatist. Think about these children and the greater deception that is to follow as this trend unfolds.

We are witnessing cultural transition as we speak. The crumbling credibility of institutions as those in power overtly try to enslave the middle class who will only awaken as time goes by. You stay asleep when consumption acts as a false compensation to an empty life. This lead their fathers into despair. This will not be the same for their children and following generations.

The early saplings of a generation with a spine and integrity is emerging. Take heart all, the times they are changing and a generation with nothing to lose is on the rise.
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