From the NYT:
Reversing Trend, Life Span Shrinks for Some Whites
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.
Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.
The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
Obviously, part of the explanation for the drop is that between 1990 and 2008, whites without high school degrees became a more self-selected class of people with problems. In 1990, an older white person who had dropped out of high school to, say, help with farm chores or get a job in an airplane factory during WWII was a pretty average person. By 2008, white high school dropouts were more likely to be notably deficient in some regard.
Still, there is a variety of evidence to suggest that white people farther down the scale are increasingly troubled. Meanwhile, life expectancy in Britain has been accelerating upward, for unexplained reasons.
These are the people who needed two parents and authoritative parenting. But society has undermined the two parent family, and told parents that laissez faire is best.
ReplyDeleteNever listen to Hollywood - ever.
Sabrina Tavernise writes about a lot of interesting stuff
ReplyDeleteOne wonders if the decline in life span for low class whites has anything to do with the meth epidemic among low class whites.
ReplyDeleteTroubled and troubling.
ReplyDeleteIf you watch that Honey Boo Boo show, it really seems pretty obvious.
ReplyDeleteThe human body can only withstand so much.
I don't watch it myself, but someone mentioned it on another board, so I watched some youtube clips.
The little girl is called "Honey Boo Boo," and she is given "Go Go Juice" to drink. This stuff is a mixture of Red Bull and Mountain Dew.
Her favorite meal is "sghetti." This is spaghetti noodles covered in a sauce made from ketchup and margarine heated in a microwave.
Strangely enough the sauce looks like what you see on Chef Boyardee pasta in a can, but whatever.
I wonder what an actuary would make of these two.
I think these two probably have one of the most unhealthy diets in the world. You could starve to death. You could eat poison.
But other than that I don't know how it could get worse. Smoke cigarettes in addition, and I doubt you see 60.
Isn't that what a meritocracy does? The intelligent, ambitious and capable whites are sifted out of the lower classes generation after generation until only trash remains. In England this process appears to have gone even further.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if diet is a major factor here. Many poor people regularly eat fast food, sometimes multiple times per day. If they do eat at home it's mainly packaged foods.
ReplyDeleteIn the past the poor ate homecooked meals.
Modern white high school dropouts are the lowest of the low. It's rare for a white person not to finish high school nowadays unless there is some major dysfunction going on.
ReplyDeleteObesity is clearly a huge problem. There's also a long lag time with cigarettes. For a long time, more men than women smoked, then women caught up and surpassed men. I also suspect that other drugs that got popular in the wake of the Sixties tend to knock years off peoples lives later on.
ReplyDelete@Sunbeam
ReplyDeleteI can't believe no advocacy groups have put pressure on TLC over that show. It's racist to depict whites in such a way.
Don't expect the "nation of immigrants" to shed a single tear.
ReplyDeleteThis is at least partly a result of immigration undercutting wages in the service sector, which used to be a source of jobs for Americans without high school degrees.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to increase the income of this demographic over a few year period and see if lifespan improved.
You destroy a people's customs and practices (its culture), you destroy a key survival mechanism.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was that something like Sailer's self-selection point: Maybe the change is partly genetic. For the reasons Sailer said, the genetic profile of this category has probably changed recently. Longevity is heritable, just like IQ. (The two are positively correlated as well.) So maybe the title should have been, "Charles Murray's The Bell Curve Vindicated."
ReplyDeleteI didn't understand this clause:
ReplyDeletewhites without high school degrees became a more self-selected class of people with problem.
Or this explanation:
In 1990, an older white person who had dropped out of high school to, say, help with farm chores or get a job in an airplane factory during WWII was a pretty average person.
Commoners are moderated at whim?
ReplyDeleteI think its a misconception to assume that meritocracy only started in the 20th century. In any period, smart healthy capable people are going to rise to the top, and unhealthy irresponsible people fall to the bottom. Our sorting mechanisms may or may not be a little more accurate, but maybe the problem with increasing lower-class dysfunction these days is about differential reproduction.
ReplyDelete@Aaron
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was that something like Sailer's self-selection point: Maybe the change is partly genetic. For the reasons Sailer said, the genetic profile of this category has probably changed recently. Longevity is heritable, just like IQ. (The two are positively correlated as well.)
You think genetics has changed significantly in 10-20 years among people who were identified as white from start to finish?
We should look first to an economic explanation particularly in light of the short and recent time frame. Have economic opportunities for this demographic cratered? We know that real wages for working class whites (those with decent blue collar jobs) have been stagnant since 1972. This demographic has surely fared far worse.
This is the fate of a conquered people. Due to immigration, you don't need to invade another people's country with violence anymore.
ReplyDeleteOccam's Razor time again.
ReplyDeleteObesity, plain and simple. While the incidence anywhere in the U.S. is pretty shocking, it is utterly unreal in lower middle class communities, like being in some house of mirrors.
I started really noticing this obesity epidemic about 10/15 years ago. I'd go to the beaches, the same ones I went to as a young man. And I'd see many fewer hot women than I remembered from my youth.
This really struck me, since presumably as one ages, one's standards for young ladies go down.
Anyhow, obesity is a proven killer and there is plenty more of it these days.
Lower class whites seem to keep degenerating year by year. The biggest difference seems to be the lack of shame people have about being obese, covered in (expensive)tattoos, smoking, using drugs, dressing like slobs and being lazy. I think the lower class has lost any concept that there is a right and wrong way to do anything. They just do whatever they want and see nothing wrong with it.
ReplyDeletePeople who did these things a generation or two ago were not so in your face and self-satisfied. Lower class people used to be humble.
The obesity thing is really sickening and inexcusable and I believe is a major cause of the hostile attitudes educated people have for poor and rural whites. Subconsciously, and often not so subconsciously, most affluent and well educated people loathe the obese. It's seen as a sign of infantile lack of self control. I never ceased to be shocked at the size of rural people these days. I've been in areas recently where it seems as if most women were over three hundred pounds.
We also need to discuss the wiggerization of the younger lower class whites. When you go to rural areas, especially in the South, you see ridiculous retro wiggers in Fubu doo-rags and tent like shirts -- many of them grown men. No one gave them the memo that even young blacks in big cities stopped dressing like that years ago. They look like fools. It's increasingly looking like Idiocracy out there in flyover country with hoards of porcine slobs in ugly pajamas aping underclass blacks while scarfing down oxies, roxies etc.
In the urban areas on East Coast, most young blue collar Caucasoid persons have embraced the "guido" fashion, lifestyle and attitude, regardless of ethnic background. This would have been unthinkable ten years ago, let alone in the 80's when these people were limited to a few ethnic enclaves in NY and NJ.
Is this not what the "elites" want?
ReplyDeleteTo quote prominent Jewish-American activist Tim Wise's 2010 message to White Americans:
(start quote)
So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.
The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.
Not much more now.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick.
Tock....
[...]
We just have to be patient.
And wait for your hearts to stop beating.
And stop they will.
And for some of you, real damned soon, truth be told.
(end quote)
http://isteve.blogspot.ch/2010/11/uncle-tim.html
Dear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteRead the article. The category is not whites, it's "the country’s least-educated whites." With changes in education over recent decades (everybody's gotta get a degree), and given the heritability of intelligence, industriousness, etc. - yeah, I think it's reasonable to speculate that the genetic profile of that category has changed.
Maybe the British have better dental hygiene and care than previously? They were notorious for their rotten teeth. We now know just how important it is to have clean gums and teeth to prevent pathogens from getting in our system.
ReplyDeleteJust a guess.
"Occam's Razor time again." Ex Sub Officer
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to identify Obesity as a proximate problem, but is it the root? I have consciously used food as a stimulate while trying to finish projects with the explicit goal of outrunning problems it may cause. Whether this is a good idea or not, I suspect many people seek the stimulation subconsciously as our world grows to complex for them to handle. Alternatively, others may seek the comfort of food after the stimulation has failed to impact their problems.
To make things (look?) worse, a lot of these people are, presumably, the ones who used to do all the smoking, but have been convinced that it's strictly bad for them.
I suggest we make adderall OTC.
No problem. At least we'll have 'gay marriage'.
ReplyDeleteToo much junk food.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of theories in these comments, which fits with the multifactorial nature of the problem.
ReplyDeleteMy vote for the wildcard/dark horse factor in all this is gut flora*. It's looking like, aside from obvious nutritional deficiencies, what makes a diet 'bad' is it makes the wrong kinds of flora (bacteria) thrive in our guts. Small differences in traditions between groups, within or between countries, could have big impacts if they lead to different types of flora.
Differences in sanitation, how industry handles/processes foods, how much fresh foods (greens/fruits/veggies) are eaten vs foods processed enough that they don't have any natural flora (most of what's in a supermarket). Etc.
*mouth flora, brain flora, and skin (fingers+forehead) also seem relevant to health outcomes.
The science simply isn't there yet to say anything definitive. But it's painfully clear from the literature that this gut flora stuff does matter, even if we don't know how yet. I don't see how it couldn't be an important fundamental cause of many "lower-class" ills.
" life expectancy in Britain has been accelerating upward, for unexplained reasons"
ReplyDeleteThere's been a really really big decline in smoking here over my lifetime, the past 25-30 years especially. And this includes the lower classes, due to very high cigarette taxes. 30 years ago it was ubiquitous amongst the working class; now most men (especially) don't smoke. IME Americans seem to smoke much more than Brits these days.
We probably also benefitted from the removal of lead from petrol in the early '90s, long after the US did that. The air in general is a lot cleaner now than when I was young. The NHS is really bad, especially compared to the health care the middle class get in other countries, but health care seems always to be of marginal impact on life expectancy compared to environment, diet etc.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"Maybe the British have better dental hygiene and care than previously? They were notorious for their rotten teeth. We now know just how important it is to have clean gums and teeth to prevent pathogens from getting in our system.
Just a guess."
That was always crap. We've always brushed our teeth; our dental hygiene is fine. The American idea that we have bad teeth comes from our cosmetic dentists' tendency to use off-white caps rather than American-style pearly whites.
Peter A said...
"Isn't that what a meritocracy does? The intelligent, ambitious and capable whites are sifted out of the lower classes generation after generation until only trash remains. In England this process appears to have gone even further."
That doesn't exactly fit my experience of the English lower class. IME they are demoralised and depressed; especially in southern England they have no 'centre' to their lives (outside of the South and Midlands they tend to have more regional pride and other attachments). Obviously their IQ averages lower than the white middle class, but they are not stupid, nor are they presented with a wealth of opportunities for social advancement - quite the reverse. As in the US, they face heavy discrimination, lower class white men especially. Their family structures have been partly destroyed; girls tend to have 1-3 children by random men as young 'single mothers' in their teens & early '20s, though they do then typically settle down with another man (though often don't marry) and have 1-2 more children with him. Lower class whites are constantly denigrated and disparaged in a way that was unheard of even 20 years ago, when we were still more of a 'class' society rather than a US style 'race' society, and this feeds through into lack of success. But there is still plenty of residual potential there.
My best guess as to the biggest difference US/UK with women would be obesity. Both have bad diets, the US women may eat more, but I think the main difference is exercise: lower class British white women typically still need to walk to get around. They walk to the corner shop to buy cigarettes. They walk to the bus stop to get to the supermarket, job centre (if not in walking distance), or into town for a night out. They mostly don't have cars. It's now extremely difficult to pass the driving test and to afford car insurance. Criminals and ethnic minorities have cars, often very expensive cars paid for by fraudulent use of a much abused 'free cars for disabled drivers' scheme, but even underclass whites mostly are not* criminals (this is unlike the US) and mostly don't drive.
ReplyDelete*There are limited geographic areas where the white underclass has a culture of criminality, mostly these are areas of historical Irish immigration such as Liverpool and Glasgow, plus the cockneys in east London & Essex. But for Britain (and especially England & Wales) as a whole, the general lack of criminal culture is probably more striking compared to other countries.
Meanwhile Americans all have cars and don't walk anywhere, and lower class American women have got incredibly fat, as others have noted above. Fat kills.
Some commenters believe that high school dropouts are now only a tiny sliver of the U.S. white population. There is a body of scholarship finding that actual high school graduation rates (1) are lower than generally believed and (2) peaked in the late 1960s or early 1970s. One study here, another here.
ReplyDeleteMy own candidates for the causes?
1. Obesity, impacting hard in the late 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s.
2. Drugs, minimal until the 1970s but an absolute plague at the bottom end of society today.
3. Marriage breakdown and never-married people, on the increase since the 1960s.
4. The end of residential segregation (1960-1990) and the arrival of mass numbers of unskilled immigrants (1980s to present), both of which increased the stress level and decreased the disposable income of whites at the bottom.
Ex-Submarine Officer wrote:
I started really noticing this obesity epidemic about 10/15 years ago. I'd go to the beaches, the same ones I went to as a young man. And I'd see many fewer hot women than I remembered from my youth. This really struck me, since presumably as one ages, one's standards for young ladies go down.
They do? I'm approaching geezerdom myself, and I find that since I'm no longer so hormonally-driven, the negative points of the other sex are not so easily overlooked. Nonetheless, there appear to me to be more highly attractive young women than there used to be -- that is, healthier, taller, fitter, better teeth and skin, better grooming and dress, and carrying themselves more smoothly. I'm talking about Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, northern California, Toronto. OTOH, Ex-Submarine Officer is only too right that there are way more obese young women than there used to be, and that really did start getting bad about 15 years ago. The female population has bifurcated.
"We should look first to an economic explanation"
ReplyDeleteThat's not very HBD of you.
"The reasons for the decline remain unclear"
ReplyDeleteThe previous elite, for all their faults, created a culture which promoted behaviors which were of disproportionate benefit to the left side of the bell curve - because the right side already did those things without being told. The result of this was to gradually move society more in the direction of what i would call the yeoman model.
(The yeoman model is also optimal in my opinion but that's a separate issue.)
The great post-60s betrayal involves the elite creating a culture which promotes behaviors which are damaging in inverse proportion to IQ i.e. the same behavior among high IQ people is far less damaging than among low-IQ people.
The intention or at least the result of this malign culture being to build as big a gap between the elite and the rest of the population as possible to minimize the future competion for the current elite's descendents i.e. move society more towards the caste model.
Mass immigration has the same result (and intention imo).
Although one partial exception and prediction from this is that there will be increasing friction between the segment of the increasing Asian population that can compete for elite spots and those who already have those spots.
"Obesity is clearly a huge problem"
ReplyDeleteObesity and fast food are connected and both in turn also connected to the destruction of the traditional family which provided a structure disproportionately beneficial to the left-side of the bell curve.
i can tell you the causes.
ReplyDeletean explosion of cheap food packed with sugar and fat.
a reduction of exercise to zero.
that's it.
this isn't rocket science. americans are getting fatter and fatter - amazingly fat in some cases.
they drink 1 liter of soda a day now. how are you supposed to do that AND never exercise. kids appear to have a portable video game system attached to their hands now, if not a console in every room of the house.
what the education department found was that during the 00s, the average weight of incoming 6th grade public school students was going up 1 pound PER YEAR. this has slowed down, so that they're still getting heavier, but not at such an incredible rate.
so human bodies have gotten about as fat as they can on the soda + mcdonald's dollar menu + video games + no sports or exercise program.
"Meanwhile, life expectancy in Britain has been accelerating upward, for unexplained reasons."
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if health care has a time lag i.e. a health system's impact on longevity has a big impact at ages 1-20 and then a further big impact when elderly. If so people born in Britain when the NHS first started may have had an advantage not shared elsewhere.
If in the interim other countries improved their healthcare systems then they would show the same effect as Britain but with a time lag.
If other countries improved their health care system and in the process created better versions than the British NHS then you'd expect life expectancy in Britain to peak around say 2030 (i.e. around when people born in 1950 hit 80).
In short Britain may have an early-adopter bonus which will run out in the coming decades (as the negative effects on health that are happening in America are happening in Britain and for the same reasons).
"Is this not what the "elites" want?"
ReplyDeleteQuite - some of them at least.
It's the "you and yours" that clinches it imo.
by the way, a huge new study of over 100,000 ethnic british public school students found the mean IQ of them to be 101.7 or thereabouts in 2011. so even with the dysgenic chav trend, they're still not degenerating into slugs yet.
ReplyDeletenevertheless, 101.7 seems lower than what it ought to be, given the flynn effect, so dysgenic trends are probably having their pernicious effect.
My own suspicion has long been that American life expectancy is rather low compared to other advanced countries because Americans get far too much dental treatment. But that seems unlikely to explain the problem with the poor. Maybe they just drink too much brown sugar-water.
ReplyDeleteAs for Britain, the decline in the availability of NHS dentistry and therefore the wider use of private dentistry may explain increasing life expectancy. Suppose there is an optimal degree of dental treatment: prosperous Americans get far too much, while the British didn't use to get enough.
Murray's analysis is clear: White working class has lost its economic role and it is increasingly superfluous. There are no jobs for uneducated middle aged persons - White or Black. African-Americans are less hurt psychologically by the fact that the economy does not need them anymore and live happily on free food and on TV series where they are doctors, scientists, etc.
ReplyDeleteMy own suspicion has long been that American life expectancy is rather low compared to other advanced countries because Americans get far too much dental treatment. But that seems unlikely to explain the problem with the poor. Maybe they just drink too much brown sugar-water.
ReplyDeleteAs for Britain, the decline in the availability of NHS dentistry and therefore the wider use of private dentistry may explain increasing life expectancy. Suppose there is an optimal degree of dental treatment: prosperous Americans get far too much, while the British didn't use to get enough.
It must be an open secret at the federal level of government that IQ is a major determinant of many of these social outcomes. The people who count know this and they willfully, purposefully hide the fact, and do not take it into consideration when implementing any kind of policy.
ReplyDeleteThe question is -- why?
Is it just fear of watsoning? Maybe at the lower levels, yes. But the higher ups? What is keeping them from putting IQ into the equation, during the implementation of social policy -- or foreign policy and foreign aid and so many other fields as well?
After so much accumulated evidence, the only reason that it is still possible to negate the influence of IQ in so many social outcomes and thus simply ignore it during the implementation of policy is because this very negation serves some purpose. Those who want to understand reality will also have to ask the following question: who? Whose purpose does hiding the IQ variable serve?
I was just listening to an iTunes U podcast from Oxford University entitled "Is IQ a 'Fundamental Cause' of Health? Cognitive Ability, Gender, and Survival", given by Robert M Hauser of the University of Wisconsin, who has been accompanying the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study for decades now. Even before he gets into his lecture he references Murray's and Herrnstein's "The Bell Curve", calls it "hideous", and sets out to disprove some of its conclusions.
ReplyDeleteHere is a quote that lays out some of his own conclusions:
"...net of social and economic origins, high school grades have a much larger effect than measured IQ, and the association between measured IQ and survival turns negative once high school grades are controlled. That is, the association between IQ and health is fully explained by its correlation with evaluations of academic performance in secondary school. ... survival is largely explained by normative behaviors, that is, doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, and such behaviors are well established by late adolescence."
Even before he got through with the lecture I thought to myself that his arguments trying to negate the influence of IQ, as it relates to longevity, and placing in its stead "class rank" would be weak at best. They wouldn't have force because class rank itself is probably highly dependent on IQ. But he actually tried to explain that class rank is not dependent on IQ, which I thought preposterous. Frankly, I didn't understand his arguments. But it all sounded suspicious.
"by the way, a huge new study of over 100,000 ethnic british public school students found the mean IQ of them to be 101.7 or thereabouts in 2011. so even with the dysgenic chav trend, they're still not degenerating into slugs yet."
ReplyDeleteDid it identify them as "public school students"? Because "public schools" in Britain are in fact private and pricey.
These are a couple of quotes from Richard Lynn's and Tatu Vanhanen's book "Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences":
ReplyDelete"...at the level of individuals, intelligence and educational attainment are typically correlated at between 0.5 and 0.8. We have demonstrated that our national IQs are valid by showing that this association is also present at the national level."
"... eight studies showing positive correlations ranging from 0.51 to 0.84 between national IQ and life expectancy. The positive correlations show that life expectancy is longer in high IQ countries.Kanazawa (2006) gives correlations for men and women and concludes: National IQ single-handedly explains about half of the variance in life expectancy across the 126 countries."
IQ would thus probably explain at least half of the variance in longevity between the American groups of the study.
Meanwhile, life expectancy in Britain has been accelerating upward, for unexplained reasons.
ReplyDeleteGreece, Italy, Belgium, Austria have near identical graphs to UK.
ReplyDeleteLower class whites seem to keep degenerating year by year. The biggest difference seems to be the lack of shame people have about being obese, covered in (expensive)tattoos, smoking, using drugs, dressing like slobs and being lazy. I think the lower class has lost any concept that there is a right and wrong way to do anything.
Gee, I wonder where they got that idea.
Simon:
ReplyDeleteWe're talking about the bottom tier of American whites. NHS may be lousy compared to Blue Cross, but how does it stack up to Medicaid or ER visits by the judgement-proof?
The concentration explanation seems like the one most likely to make sense of the speed of this change. We're measuring the outcomes for people with a certain label attached (high school drop-out) during a period of time when the label was being assigned to people on changing standards. Being a high-school drop-out in 1950 means something very different from being one in 1970, and the people who still dropped out of school in 1970 are probably the true dregs, the guys who are just not bright or functional enough to get through high school under any circumstances.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be one rarely-stated reason why employers like illegal immigration. A 35 year old white American who wants a job sweeping floors is almost certainly an all-but-unemployable fuck-up, probably with a drug problem and a prison record. A 35 year old hispanic who wants a job sweeping floors probably came here from El Salvador ten years ago, doesn't read or speak English too well, but is a perfectly functional human being who got screwed by being born in third world poverty. Any sensible employer is likely to prefer the Salvadoran.
There is a chapter in Paul Theroux's travel book Dark Star Safari where he is visiting with old friends in Uganda, where he had lived as a young man thirty years earlier. The difference in lifespans between himself and his American culture and those for his elite Ugandan friends has the effect that thirty years ago seems much longer ago for the Ugandans than for the American.
ReplyDeleteJody's on to something w/ diets, but don't forget to look at who pushed the high carb/high sugar/low fat diet on us; twas our own government lobbied by our own corn sugar fed corporations. "FAT IS BAD." Wrong. Fat is great. Carbs, especially processed ones, are terrible.
ReplyDeleteThe comment about the new libertarianism in marriage is also spot on; one of the best ways to statistically live longer is be married. Not sure why that is (I have a few ideas), but it does. The lower class used to be tut-tutted for divorce/wedlocked kids by society and religion; both of those forms of shame are much weakened. Anarchy reigns.
Smoking and drugs certainly play a role. Smoking regularly is what Half Sigma would call a "prole activity". Meth is lower than "prole". Amazingly, these are things that are more frowned upon than divorce and keeping families together these days, but perhaps because they represent a cheaper thrill for the lowest class of whites, they continue to indulge (along with alcohol, etc).
Aaron in Israel is correct:
ReplyDelete"Maybe the change is partly genetic. For the reasons Sailer said, the genetic profile of this category has probably changed recently. Longevity is heritable, just like IQ. (The two are positively correlated as well.) So maybe the title should have been, "Charles Murray's The Bell Curve Vindicated."
"The category is not whites, it's "the country’s least-educated whites." With changes in education over recent decades (everybody's gotta get a degree), and given the heritability of intelligence, industriousness, etc. - yeah, I think it's reasonable to speculate that the genetic profile of that category has changed."
Most of the commenters here are completely oblivious to this, but what you see is the natural consequence of the meritocracy (where there is also assortative mating). The "least educated" Whites have been purged of their most able members because of the opportunities afforded to their fore-bearers. What you see now are those firmly at the bottom of the gene pool. See Henry Harpending here, and my own discussion here.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/09/20/blue-politics-rotting-the-big-apple/
ReplyDeleteblue state equality. rotfl.
Meth, tattoos, lack of exercise, and a lousy diet.
ReplyDeleteDo the Meth. Or don't do it.
ReplyDeleteIs this related to Iraq War?
ReplyDeleteUSA spends 15% of GDP on health and has 78year life expectancy.
ReplyDeleteUK, like most of OECD spends 8% of GDP on evil socialised medicine, but has 80 year life expectancy.
US could save 1 $trillion per year and have everyone covered if they just adopted best socialised health care models of OECD countries.
Another $.5Trillion/year can potentially be saved from higher education and tax filing costs compared to OECD average.
By dumping expensive free-market ideology on Education and Healthcare, and simplifying taxes USA can save 10% of GDP while improving standard of living and averting coming budget disaster.
"Obesity is clearly a huge problem. There's also a long lag time with cigarettes. For a long time, more men than women smoked, then women caught up and surpassed men. I also suspect that other drugs that got popular in the wake of the Sixties tend to knock years off peoples lives later on."
ReplyDeleteSteve,
I like this explanation. It can't be emphasized enough the long lag time here. One has to look at the entirety of these lives to figure out what they've done differently from the previous generation; 1990-2012 is just shy of a standard generation.
What's remarkable is that given how much AIDS and other stds ravage black women so much more than everyone else, poor whites are still doing worse now. So whatever has been going on, or went on, with whites, it must be really bad.
I suspect you're right that it is drugs, but don't know. As a Floridian, we're much more affected by it so I may be biased. Did whites use much more than blacks in the 60s-80s? Alcohol? What about now?
Well, people are not taller in California about 38 percent of the population is Hispanic. And they are the lower middle class thru out California and they long longer than upper-middle class whites on average in California. Also, asians whether they are lower or upper class tend to outlive whites. What is intersting is Orange County Ca which is only 2 percent black. Blacks there live as long as whites since they didn't have the ghetto class blacks.
ReplyDelete"by the way, a huge new study of over 100,000 ethnic british public school students found the mean IQ of them to be 101.7 or thereabouts in 2011. so even with the dysgenic chav trend, they're still not degenerating into slugs yet.
ReplyDeletenevertheless, 101.7 seems lower than what it ought to be, given the flynn effect, so dysgenic trends are probably having their pernicious effect."
The dumbest in Britain are race mixing at a very high frequency. This should probably keep up the average IQ for the ethnic British population. But the British IQ is of course declining due to high immigration from Asia and Africa.
That was always crap. We've always brushed our teeth; our dental hygiene is fine. The American idea that we have bad teeth comes from our cosmetic dentists' tendency to use off-white caps rather than American-style pearly whites.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was because Brits drank so much tea with sugar.
People are eating more and burning fewer calories. And they're eating foods with very high calorie to nutrition ratios.
ReplyDeletehttp://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/09/more-thoughts-on-macronutrient-trends.html
"The graph suggests that fat consumption has gradually increased over the last century (+ 30%), carbohydrate consumption has decreased and then rebounded (currently - 6%), and protein consumption has increased modestly (+ 10%).
The modern "obesity epidemic" began in earnest between the 1976-1980 and 1988-1994 NHANES survey periods, and corresponded with an increase in calorie intake. According to the adjusted data, this increase was 350 calories per day since 1970. 65 percent of the increase in calories can be attributed to carbohydrate, 24 percent can be attributed to fat, and 11 percent to protein.
The excess carbohydrate and fat came mostly from processed refined foods such as sweetened soda and processed snacks."
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-hypothesis-of-obesity.html
ReplyDelete"Finally, let's take a look at my country, the United States of America. Total energy intake has increased since the 1970s, and the excess energy came from carbohydrate (primarily refined). But what happens if we go back further, to the turn of the 20th century? Here's our per capita macronutrient consumption in calories per day from 1909 to 2006, according to USDA data*:
If we take the long view, the only thing that has consistently increased is fat, not carbohydrate. The prevalence of obesity was very low at the turn of the century (36), yet our diet was 57% carbohydrate by calories, much of which came from white flour."
There's this recent headline in The Onion: "2nd-Grade Teacher Can't Believe How Much Fatter They Keep Getting"
ReplyDeleteThink about a typical diet for the poor in the past, before cheap fast and processed food.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been a hunk of bread, some sort of prepared cereal meal like gruel, grits, porridge, etc., and boiled or stewed veggies, often root veggies like potatoes, onions, carrots coupled with a bunch of miscellaneous veggies, and sometimes with chunks of meat included. A separate piece of meat would be part of the meal occasionally. Water or milk would be the only beverages normally consumed with meals.
Relatively high in carbs as a percentage of calories, but quite low in calories and higher in nutrition than contemporary diets.
Steve, I think this topic deserves another thread. Why are has the self discipline and willpower of this population of white Christians fallen so dramatically? the massive increase in meth usage combined with obesity has led to tens of thousands of needless deaths each year.
ReplyDeleteSteve, to expand on the point about white christians killing themselves with obesity and meth. If you google the statistics you will see that the number of whites that essentially murder themselves through obesity and meth is more than 100 times as large as the number of white christians who are murdered by african americans each year.
ReplyDeleteAs I have said before, Larry Auster is my all time favorite blogger, but his focus on african americans who murder white christians is sort of silly when the number of white christians who in effect murder themselves is more than 100 times as great as the number who are murdered by african americans
@Simon in London:
ReplyDeleteThe UK life expectancy graph takes in all; perhaps Asians (esp. Asian females) have somewhat better habits than native born UK whites, or UK born Asians? (NOTE: this is NOT a pro-immigration comment, just saying.)
Regarding the massive obesity of lowest tier US white women, I don't think it has to do with caloric expenditure of walking to the corner shop. It is because you must maintain at least the ability to walk to the corner shop that you'll cut back enough to weigh 225 pounds and not 325 pounds. Whatever that is in stone. That is the way it is in NYC. We have plenty of fatties here (of all races) but very few morbidly obese. You have to walk up and down subway stair cases, etc.
@Aaron in Israel,
This downward spiral is NOT genes. I know many people, and have some distant relatives, who have become downwardly mobile, and who died earlier than their parents. What did them in was smoking, obesity, drugs, and in general "mishigass." Just having a few screws loose shaves off a few years, IMO. I do not believe in the myth of the happy nutcase. Maybe that is true of a few eccentrics but for the most part being a maverick is bad for the health.
@Steve,
I don't think it is only low-class white women who are suffering as a result of obesity & smoking. High school dropout guys have a low marriage participation rate. The link between better health and marriage participation with men is circumstantial but has a lot of evidence.
"other drugs that got popular in the wake of the Sixties tend to knock years off peoples lives later on."
ReplyDeleteI've been noticing a lot of greybeard boomers my age, riding around on cheap bicycles or panhandling, who look like they took one acid trip too many. I wonder what kind of life decisions caused them to wind up on a street corner in their dotage holding a "WILL WORK FOR FOOD" sign.
My mother and friends' mothers, died of lung cancer associated with cigarettes, and against the usual stats, died well before their husbands. In fact, when I count up about 10 reltives friends/acquaintanances (I'm not that gregarious), I counted that all had lost mothers before fathers. While not the mothers had died of lung cancer, most were heavy smokers. All were white, and most were middle class, and all born after 1920 were HS grads.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of obesity--sometimes I think they ought to criminalize it because it endangers others.
ReplyDeleteI have been on busses where a parade of passengers getting on (or off) look like whales on feet. Or whales on wheels--a lot of them are in wheelchairs and I feel for the conductor who has to help them on and off. Fortunately the technology is pretty good, the bus "kneels", the chair can be wheeled on and off. But the occupants are scary fat. They must just sit and consume and they look about to burst, like in the Monty Python movie where the fat man busts open in a restaurant.
Event the bus conductors are often huge, just sitting on padded seats all day long, hauling around a many tons of lard.
Most of the obese people I see are black, because I live in/near D.C.
It's gotten to be a relief just to see a group of people who look to be of normal weight.
In 1990 about 10% of 16-24 year old non-hispanic whites were dropouts, in 2009 it was 5%. This Olshansky paper is comparing the bottom 10% in 1990 with the bottom 5% in 2009. Not quite, of course, cut it is telling that the impressive list of social science authors did not mention the most obvious explanation.
ReplyDeleteSource is Table 2 of
nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012006.pdf
"A spike in PRESCRIPTION DRUG overdoses among young whites". Yes Meth is a problem, but this excerpt was not referring to meth.
ReplyDeleteIt's about prescription opiates, especially when mixed with alcohol.
Kids get together, take random pills (usually stolen from parents or siblings), drink a few beers and see what happen. Seriously. Google SKITTLES PARTY.
Other drug sources are pharmacy technicians, nurses, and prescriptions written on stolen prescription pads.
Worse than this are Fentanyl pain patches. Fentanyl is 80 times more powerful than morphine. It's far worse than heroin. Kids are cutting patches into tiny pieces called "chicklets" and chewing. They go to sleep and never wake up.
Google FENTANYL CHICKLETS.
Copy and send my post to every parent or grandparent you know.
ReplyDelete"I suspect you're right that it is drugs, but don't know. As a Floridian, we're much more affected by it so I may be biased. Did whites use much more than blacks in the 60s-80s? Alcohol? What about now?"
It's got to be the drugs. My father is from an middle class family but his siblings were artsy-fartsy types who were heavily involved with the counter-culture in the late 60s/early 70s. They experimented with a huge amount of drugs in their college years and 20s- speed, cocaine, any and all psychedelics, etc. Now they are all either pushing 60 or over 60, and all of them seem to suffer one serious health problem after another for the past decade- most of them gastric or kidney related.
Pretty much all lower-class whites today use drugs, most of them much harder (meth, oxycontin, large doses of xanax) than the ones which were popular back then. I'd wager they probably use more often too. And of course many of the ones who don't use drugs have problems with weight which were nonexistent a few decades ago.
there appear to me to be more highly attractive young women than there used to be -- that is, healthier, taller, fitter, better teeth and skin, better grooming and dress, and carrying themselves more smoothly. I'm talking about ... northern California.
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed golf clubs getting smaller, too? Jeez.
Peter A said...
ReplyDeleteIsn't that what a meritocracy does? The intelligent, ambitious and capable whites are sifted out of the lower classes generation after generation until only trash remains. In England this process appears to have gone even further.
Let me tell you a little story.
I'm of generation X. My dad and mum were old enough to be my grandparents. My dad was in the British Army at the end of WWII. My dad rarely spoke about his mum and dad. A couple of years ago I mentioned this to my sisters. It turns out my paternal grandmother was a maid in my paternal great grandparents house. My grandfather got my grandmother pregnant and his parents told him to pay her off. He refused, married her, and they disowned him. My father grew up in one of the first council houses. Yet his parents were wealthy enough to have servants. I do remember my father saying that a relative of his, an uncle maybe, went to Cambridge University.
My mother's family although not rich, seemed far from poor. My maternal grandmother's sister married a stockbroker, which although not such a big cheese job nowadays, was possibly quite something back in 1910 when we had 250,000 working in coal mines. I have photos of my grandmother in her Edwardian finery looking quite a lady. Her mother kept horses, which means they had pony and trap to go to church in on a Sunday. This at a time when less fortunate women were suffering horrendous injuries from working in match factories or dying from VD acquired through prostitution.
If Jack London is to be believed, social conditions in England were considerably worse than in the USA.
The point is, people always assume social mobility only goes in one direction.
Yet if you go back far enough, one of my ancestors came over with William the Conqueror and was awarded a plot of land, no doubt with peasants attached, for his trouble.
I, like my dad, grew up on a council estate.
I call myself (on this occasion) working class Englishman. but if you met me, you probably wouldn't think I was working class - even if you were also English.
But I've got the perfect resume, including, council estate, secondary modern, left school at 16, the whole nine yards as you people say.
My dad was fortunate enough to have a works pension. I face destitution in my old age.
The culture of the lower classes is FAMILY GUY and JERRY SPRINGER.
ReplyDeleteIn the 70s, the raciest things on TV was double entendres on THREE'S COMPANY. And there were only network TV. So, adult stuff and R-rated stuff was for adults in theaters.
Now with cable TV, there is filth for everyone. And even regular TV shows stuff like reruns with MARRIED WITH CHILDREN and other filth for the masses.
Shameless.
"Murray's analysis is clear: White working class has lost its economic role and it is increasingly superfluous."
ReplyDeleteThat alone doesn't cut it. When America was making a huge transformation from agriculture to industry, a lot of people were displaced and disoriented. Same in Europe. And during the Depression, many men were out of job and felt useless. But did they turn into slobs we see today? No, the sickness today is cultural and moral.
The okies of 1930s watched John Ford's GRAPES OF WRATH on the big screen. And if a young girl got pregnant, it was shameful and the guy was expected to marry her.
Today.... look at our pop culture. Look at our values. Look at the utter shamelessness all around. The only thing to be ashamed of is being 'racist' and 'homophobic'.
After working in a small town in Nevada for a few months, my son had a succinct description of its inhabitants: "sun-baked meth-heads."
ReplyDelete"Lower class whites seem to keep degenerating year by year. The biggest difference seems to be the lack of shame people have about being obese, covered in (expensive)tattoos, smoking, using drugs, dressing like slobs and being lazy. I think the lower class has lost any concept that there is a right and wrong way to do anything."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, many of these do vote, and are part of the 47%!
That was always crap. We've always brushed our teeth; our dental hygiene is fine. The American idea that we have bad teeth comes from our cosmetic dentists' tendency to use off-white caps rather than American-style pearly whites.
ReplyDeleteThen you must be exporting all your Brits with bad dental hygiene to the US. Not only do many of the ones I know not care about their teeth, but they're PROUD that they don't "obsess" over them the way we do.
Anonymous said:
ReplyDelete"As someone who grew up lower-class and white in a neighborhood right next to Fishtown I can tell you that drugs, especially prescription drug abuse, is what is causing this drop-off. I'd say poor whites do more drugs than poor blacks and hispanics nowadays. It is literally all we do for fun. Unlike blacks and hispanics who do seem to have dancing, sports, and other hobbies (cliched I know) poor whites have drinking, drugs, tv, and video games."
I am from the south and went to public schools.
It was a total surprise to me when I found out blacks had a reputation as drug users, at least moreso than whites.
That didn't fit with what I experienced in my life. I have never met a hardcore black drinker who could hold a candle to hard drinking whites. Most of the heavy drug users I ever knew or heard of were white.
The same for cigarette smoking.
I honestly thought, and still think substance use/abuse is more of a white thing than black. Crack is the only thing I can think of that was worse in the black community. A lot of white people used that too, but it was more widespread with blacks.
On another note, when I was younger blacks drank malt liquor heavily. Now when I'm around blacks in a bar, they drink the same beers white people drink, the standard stuff like budweiser, etc.
The cigarette thing is still kind of segregated. Menthol always has been more of a black thing than white. I used to see black people smoking Salems (and Kools for older folks), but it is all Newports now. It must have something to do with hip hop, because all the whites who are into that seem to smoke Newports too.
Whites smoked Marlboros in my day. Now the kids that smoke seem to go for stuff like Camels.
Man, that takes me back. What I wouldn't give to be young and dumb again. I'd buy a pack of Winstons in a heartbeat (while I still had one). Well maybe not now, the price is a lot higher than when I smoked.
Also bear in mind this is data from the rural and small town south. I think I see less smokers (due to price I think) but the drinking and drugging is as bad as ever.
On another side note there are more dippers than ever, but tobacco chewers used to be common but I haven't seen one in a good while. They still sell the packs so someone must be buying, but I haven't seen someone take a good spit of the brown stuff in a long time.
And Half Sigma will tell you that these proles aren't worth the bother...
ReplyDelete"Nonetheless, there appear to me to be more highly attractive young women than there used to be -- that is, healthier, taller, fitter, better teeth and skin, better grooming and dress, and carrying themselves more smoothly. I'm talking about Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, northern California, Toronto."
ReplyDeleteThe locations you mention are key to what you observe. Polarization. The unfortunate are getting more unfortunate, and that affects their appearance too. Meanwhile, the children of professionals have access to more potent antibiotics for their acne with less side affects, affordable, effective ways to get their teeth whiter and straighter, resistant cardio machines that both burn fat and fight flab, water filters, hair/skin care products to address specific issues and so on.
I'm happy for you that you get to enjoy the view on the beaches of Vancouver, but that view is entirely different on the beaches of Alabama. And, yes, the first thought that comes to mind when looking at those poor teenage girls is, "My God, they will need blood pressure meds soon, if they aren't taking them already." It's really tragic.
"Today.... look at our pop culture. Look at our values. Look at the utter shamelessness all around. The only thing to be ashamed of is being 'racist' and 'homophobic'. "
ReplyDeletewhy stoop to pop culture?
The comment about the new libertarianism in marriage is also spot on; one of the best ways to statistically live longer is be married. Not sure why that is (I have a few ideas), but it does.
ReplyDeleteIt may just be that people who have unhealthy habits are considered poor partners for marriage and therefor don't get married as often.
Let's say a 20 year old woman bulks up to 300 pounds. She's going to have a difficult time finding a husband, and she'll also have obesity-related health problems that will cut a decade or two off of her life.
Same goes for the guy who gets hooked on meth in high school. He might be able to find a wife, but not as easily as the guy who stayed clean.
There used to be a recognition of a link between the lower classes and self-destructive behavior (call it sin, if you like). We recognize the causality arrow that goes from poverty to poor health, but the arrow has two heads - some people have joined the lower classes because they have bad habits.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteAs someone who grew up lower-class and white in a neighborhood right next to Fishtown I can tell you that drugs, especially prescription drug abuse, is what is causing this drop-off. I'd say poor whites do more drugs than poor blacks and hispanics nowadays. It is literally all we do for fun. Unlike blacks and hispanics who do seem to have dancing, sports, and other hobbies (cliched I know) poor whites have drinking, drugs, tv, and video games.
9/21/12 1:17 PM
This rings true with me. I've never met a NAM chain smoker. It seems to be a neurotic white thing. Whites in the lower classes tend to be more despondent than NAMs. Did you really think that Putnam was talking about NAMs - no, they have a culture down at the bottom and not all of it is pathological. When whites descend to a certain level they lose the desire to live and commit drawn out suicide. I remember a study which found that cynics died younger, the reason this is hard to remedy is because they don't care.
"We recognize the causality arrow that goes from poverty to poor health, but the arrow has two heads - some people have joined the lower classes because they have bad habits."
ReplyDeleteThat is just plain wrong. Poverty doesn't cause stupidity or bad health. Bad health causes stupidity which causes poverty. A poor person who makes good choices doesn't stay poor. He figures a way up and out and disciplines himself to stay focused on doing better. Health is the cause of healthy thinking, doing and thriving.
"Now with cable TV, there is filth for everyone. And even regular TV shows stuff like reruns with MARRIED WITH CHILDREN and other filth for the masses.
ReplyDeleteShameless. "
after a long UK run, here's the US version.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1586680/
here's the intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciFzoaZS7T8
another factor, perhaps not considered, is that most states made it easier to graduate high school between 1990 and 2008. so if you're a european american who drops out of high school now, you're REALLY some kind of major loser.
ReplyDeletehigh school graduation rates in most states have been going UP for the last 10 years, but this is misleading. it's because the curriculum is being made easier, specifically to raise the graduation rates, which had been falling to appalling levels.
10 or 15 years ago the high school graduation rates were approaching 60% in some states. that's statewide. not the bad school district in the biggest city in the state. but all high schools everywhere. a high school graduation rate of 60% for an entire state spells major long term trouble.
With all the talk about meth on this thread, I just thought I'd point out this nugget:
ReplyDeleteUntil the early 1990s, methamphetamine for the U. S. market was made mostly in labs run by drug traffickers in Mexico and California. Indiana state police found 1,260 labs in 2003, compared to just 6 in 1995, although this may be partly a result of increased police activity.[139] As of 2007, drug and lab seizure data suggests that approximately 80 percent of the methamphetamine used in the United States originates from larger laboratories operated by Mexican-based syndicates on both sides of the border and that approximately 20 percent comes from small toxic labs (STLs) in the United States
More benefits from south of the border.
Question: Since Mexicans make it, do they actually take it too?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2202872/Man-137-traffic-ticket-pays-137-origami-pigs-Dunkin-Donut-boxes.html?ITO=socialnet-facebook-dailymail
ReplyDeleteCREATIVE white trash in action.
A poor person who makes good choices doesn't stay poor. He figures a way up and out and disciplines himself to stay focused on doing better. Health is the cause of healthy thinking, doing and thriving.
ReplyDeleteMost people go with the flow of their upbringing. Certainly poverty isn't destiny, but regardless of IQ on average a person who grows up in a poor neighborhood is going to make worse choices than a person who grows up in a middle class neighborhood.
Of course people with the right habits and drive don't remain poor, just like middle class people with the wrong habits don't remain middle class. But peer groups matter. A lot.
Henry Harpending's comment kind of makes all of our comments moot, doesn't it? I feel pretty stupid for not seeing something that obvious.
ReplyDeleteIf 22% of whites were drop-outs in 1990, but now the number is down to 12%, a comparison of the averages of those at or below the 22nd and the 12th lifespan or socioeconomic percentiles, then and now, would obviously be more telling. But the Old Gray Lady wants page views, and I guess, so does Steve.
ReplyDelete"We also need to discuss the wiggerization of the younger lower class whites. When you go to rural areas, ESPECIALLY IN THE SOUTH, you see ridiculous retro wiggers in Fubu doo-rags and tent like shirts -- many of them grown men.”
Rural areas truly are the last bastions of wiggerdom, at least here in the Midwest, but I think you’re way off about the South. I have a friend going to school in South Carolina, and he’s mentioned a few times how amazed he is that they simply don’t have wiggers. At all. I’ve been all over the South, and I can’t recall any wiggers either. And to think, most of these kids went to schools that were at least 1/4 black, but it just doesn’t touch them.
Jayman said:
ReplyDelete"Most of the commenters here are completely oblivious to this, but what you see is the natural consequence of the meritocracy (where there is also assortative mating). The "least educated" Whites have been purged of their most able members because of the opportunities afforded to their fore-bearers. What you see now are those firmly at the bottom of the gene pool. See Henry Harpending here, and my own discussion here."
So why didn't it happen before? I mean we have had civilization for quite a while. Shouldn't we have split into Eloi and Morlocks by now if that is all there was?
There an English saying that goes something like "Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in three generations."
Now it seems like poverty is a roach motel, you can't get out.
Plus neither your nor Harpending's comment include any discussion of the incredible increase in obesity, which is obvious to everyone. Many of us have observed it in our lifetimes.
"the lower class has lost any concept that there is a right and wrong way to do anything."
ReplyDeleteThey didn't just "lose" it. There has been a concerted 60 year media campaign to destroy every aspect of traditional morality.
Drugs for example are a major factor in this and who has been glamorizing and promoting drug use for 60 years?
This didn't just happen. The culture was poisoned. The most susceptible succumb first creating negative peer pressure which pulls down the next tier creating more downward peer pressure and the cycle repeats and the poison spreads.
...white people farther down the scale...
ReplyDeleteFurther down the scale. (Unless you can see or touch said scale.)
It seems this distinction is more likely to be fumbled today than not, i.e., the error rate is worse than random guessing. Farthermore, at this rate the words will soon exchange meaning.
In England this process appears to have gone even further. --Peter A.
Peter gets it right. He must be in the élite!
There's an expression that there're no fat people in nursing homes. They die off early. It is truly astonishing to me to see how many obese people there are walking around these days. I figure it has got to be all the added fructose in the food supply.
ReplyDelete"I think I'll convert to Islam myself. "
ReplyDeleteI hope it works out for you, but I'd advise you to shoot for the elite ranks. Prole Muslim women tend to die early for a multitude of health reasons. And the young prole Muslim men spontaneously combust, like, all the time.
"Do Mexicans use meth?"
ReplyDeleteYes, yes they do.
"Irvine police officer John Sanders arrived at the active residential crime scene in January 2007 and took a defensive position behind a concrete wall.
What Sanders saw is the stuff of a horror movie starring Jason Voorhees.
Professional landscaper Woo Sung Park was lying face-down in the back yard while his zombie-like, non-English-speaking day worker Ernesto Hernandez Avalos held a shovel "like a baseball bat" and moved into a position to strike Park."
...
"Using a Spanish interpreter, Avalos admitted to police he was a heavy user of methamphetamine and had smoked the drug just before Park, a 45-year-old Rancho Santa Margarita husband and father, hired him that day."
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/03/the_stinky_irvine_day_worker_h.php
A tale of modern California indeed.
Interesting link:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/03/the_stinky_irvine_day_worker_h.php
What has been vindicated is really The Bell Curve. It was there that Murray made the point that universal access to education would separate the classes by IQ, robbing the working class of its most valuable members. Whites, with a large number of very high iq members have left their brethren behind to dwell with the NAMs, where they are lost and lonely and without guidance. The fact that bright whites are less likely to run stores and small businesses and tend to go corporate has further separated them from their dull uncrededentialed relatives who at one time they might have directly employed and mentored.
ReplyDelete"What has been vindicated is really The Bell Curve."
ReplyDeleteThe same Bell Curve existed in the recent past.
If you create a eugenic culture the gap slowly narrows. If you have a dysgenic culture the gap rapidly increases.
What has been vindicated is the view that the West has developed a dysgenic culture.
I ready Jayman's post, and commented there. I was going to copy and paste it but it's not there in my clipboard now.
ReplyDeleteThe thrust of your post seems to be that conservatives are r selected and liberals are K selected. I don't think that is the case, if anything, high IQ are K selected and low IQ are r selected.
The other thing which you correctly mention is that contraception has had a big impact on fertility. What has happened is that it has prevented the people who don't want children (but would have had them because they desired sex) from having children. And these are often liberals.
My contention is that people who basically shit kids out as a by-product of their sex drive (not because they want kids) tend not to be high parental investment folk, and hence r strategists. It's these people bereft of kids because they can have childless sex who make up the bulk of white liberals.
And they are dying out. Much as they would like to force suicide on their co-ethnics through status whoring, they are committing demographic suicide at a faster rate.
White males and white females are coming apart. White women cum with black men, and white men come with online sex.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelstabile/how-live-sex-is-saving-the-porn-industry
http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-country-formerly-known-as-india.html
ReplyDeleteWe need Johnny Appleschwarzes.
ReplyDeleteHigh IQ Jews to go around poor white areas and impregnate a 100 white women each. At least the kids will grow up smart and make something of themselves.
http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2012/09/whos-left-whos-right.html
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5d1Uo-0bEQ
ReplyDeleteThis explains it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDkGnH5zlCA
ReplyDeleteLooks like this is fading.
church attendance down.
ReplyDeletefeminism, like gayism, is for smart and rich gals.
for murphy brown, single motherhood may mean independence. for white trash hos, it spells doom.
This report is not bad news. Its just news.
ReplyDeleteA lot of men think women live longer and they're pissed. Actually men and women have exactly the same life expectancies, at least for "good" life. Humans get 70 good years irrespective of sex. The years after age seventy are different and women just have more of these "not so good" years.
What is a year of life worth? If you're 25 its a whole lot more than if you're 85. I'd say at least ten to one. I wish I could get back one of those years from my twenties but I'm almost completely indifferent to making it to 85.
Lions are said to live longer in captivity. So why do they try to escape their cages?
Albertosaurus
Jewish-American activist Tim Wise
ReplyDeleteTim Wise is one-quarter Jewish by ancestry. He is not actually Jewish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqVP575Yn7U
ReplyDeleteWhite trash role model.
UK, like most of OECD spends 8% of GDP on evil socialised medicine, but has 80 year life expectancy.
ReplyDeleteThe UK also has private health care available for those who can afford it, so the percent of GDP figure does not capture total health care spending in Britain. The longevity statistics include people receiving private health care as well.
whites without high school degrees became a more self-selected class of people with problem.
ReplyDeleteOr this explanation:
In 1990, an older white person who had dropped out of high school to, say, help with farm chores or get a job in an airplane factory during WWII was a pretty average person.
I dunno, but it makes perfect sense to me to suppose that White high school dropouts are a much smaller portion of the white population than they were 50 years ago.
covered in (expensive)tattoos
I'll never understand this. The number of people who are eternally POMBOT but keep adding to the wall of tattoos. I want to slap the shit out of them when they talk about their new tattoos.
Meanwhile Americans all have cars and don't walk anywhere
Walking for an hour at 4mph (that's about as fast as possible IME) burns about 500 (at my size and age). I wouldn't suppose the walking you're talking about (2-3 mph is much more normal) amounts to more than a 100 calorie a day difference. Maybe that's significant though, haven't looked at how all the numbers scale (for my factors, no, it's not really significant). I used to think exercise was roughly as important in losing weight as diet, but after losing quite a bit of weight recently, I've revised my opinion. In real terms (i.e., what works), diet is primary, and exercise is secondary. It's far easier to just consume fewer calories.
Do Mexicans use meth?
ReplyDeleteI don't know any meth users, my range doesn't go quite that low, but from what I've read and heard, it's the sort of thing Mexicans and other "coolie" populations would tend to be vulnerable to; it's a work-enhancer. In fact, I think super-soldier research by the Army was the pioneering work on meth. Bombers who can go all night, etc.
"Henry Harpending's comment kind of makes all of our comments moot, doesn't it? I feel pretty stupid for not seeing something that obvious."
ReplyDeleteI doubt it.
HH says, basically, In 1990 we're looking at the bottom 10% of whites, now we're looking at the bottom 5%. Maybe nothing has changed; maybe it's all selection bias.
For this to be true, we'd have to believe that life expectancy for bottom 5% white women in 1990 was four years less than life expectancy for the entire bottom 10%. This implies that life expectancy for the top half of the bottom was sufficiently higher than the bottom half to bring the average up by four years.
In other words, the 5%-10% slice would need to have a life expectancy 8 years higher than the 0%-5% slice.
Impossible. Or, at least, very, very unlikely.
Cennbeorc.
>>NOTA said...
ReplyDeleteSimon:
We're talking about the bottom tier of American whites. NHS may be lousy compared to Blue Cross, but how does it stack up to Medicaid or ER visits by the judgement-proof?<<
Probably a fair bit better, judging by my limited experience of the US when I fell sick on holiday in the South. The NHS really screws over the middle class, who pay high taxes for really poor care here in London; the unwaged get the same care for free. And in poor parts of the country, nationally set pay scales mean that the quality of NHS employees is much better.
Compared to the US, the NHS probably increases the life expectancy of the poor a bit, but I doubt it's a major factor.
NOTA:
ReplyDelete"A 35 year old white American who wants a job sweeping floors is almost certainly an all-but-unemployable fuck-up, probably with a drug problem and a prison record."
Even in poor areas? I remember sweeping floors in an Edinburgh hospital with 35 year old white working class women (and the occasional man) in 1994, I was 21 and just graduated. When I first visited Nashville in 1996, the airport cleaners there were all white, and normal-looking. By about 2005 they were all Latino, but I doubt this was because it suddenly became a job "white Americans wouldn't do."
diana said...
ReplyDelete@Simon in London:
>>The UK life expectancy graph takes in all; perhaps Asians (esp. Asian females) have somewhat better habits than native born UK whites, or UK born Asians? (NOTE: this is NOT a pro-immigration comment, just saying.)<<
I don't think south-Asians as a whole have great life expectancy. Cousin marriage means huge rates of genetic disorders, and south-Asian women probably take the least exercise of any group. I'd expect some groups like Ugandan Hindus do well, but the typical British south-Asian is lower-class Pakistani or Bangladeshi.
>>Regarding the massive obesity of lowest tier US white women, I don't think it has to do with caloric expenditure of walking to the corner shop. It is because you must maintain at least the ability to walk to the corner shop that you'll cut back enough to weigh 225 pounds and not 325 pounds. Whatever that is in stone. That is the way it is in NYC. We have plenty of fatties here (of all races) but very few morbidly obese. You have to walk up and down subway stair cases, etc. <<
Yes - agree strongly! :)
Working Class Englishman:
ReplyDelete>>The point is, people always assume social mobility only goes in one direction. <<
I too am downwardly mobile on my father's side! :) He married a smart but working class Northern Irish girl, and got nothing from his family. They both became teachers then University lecturers though, and definitely think of themselves as middle-class. Thanks to the 11+ exam I went to Grammar school in Northern Ireland, so class wasn't such a big issue.
Paul Mendez:
ReplyDelete>>Then you must be exporting all your Brits with bad dental hygiene to the US. Not only do many of the ones I know not care about their teeth, but they're PROUD that they don't "obsess" over them the way we do. <<
They still *brush* their teeth, though!
McGillicuddy:
ReplyDelete>>Rural areas truly are the last bastions of wiggerdom, at least here in the Midwest, but I think you’re way off about the South. I have a friend going to school in South Carolina, and he’s mentioned a few times how amazed he is that they simply don’t have wiggers. At all. I’ve been all over the South, and I can’t recall any wiggers either. And to think, most of these kids went to schools that were at least 1/4 black, but it just doesn’t touch them.<<
Yes - I've never seen a Wigger in the South, I visit every couple years and I would definitely have noticed! Wifebeater tees, mirror shades, baseball caps and mullets, yup...
to see what i'm talking about, just go here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=23
and click the graph tab. then start comparing year to year for a couple states, and notice that graduation rates were LOWER 10 years ago, and have been creeping up over time.
no way the students are getting smarter: they're getting dumber. it's the graduation requirements which have been getting lower, to artificially produce graduation rates which are higher.
this is the data i came across a few months ago when i was trying to get a better handle on what will be happening in the future in the big 6 states which determine US national elections. i found that pennsylvania is the only good big state left. all the others, regardless of political leanings, are heading for a future where half the residents are high school dropouts.
"I've never seen a Wigger in the South"
ReplyDeleteDepends on how one defines 'wigger'. One man's 'wigger' is another man's 'white trash'.
I know plenty of people in Tennessee who have confed flag on their trucks but listen to rap music. Are they 'wigger'?
Self-selection can't explain the 5 year decline in lower-income white female life expectancy.
ReplyDeleteRead this:
By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
Black females used to outlive whites, now that's reversed. Self-selection can't explain that, as black high school dropouts are probably a more selected group too and don't exhibit the same decline in life expectancy.
I'd assume that there's something unique going on among lower class whites which is making them live less, and self selection can't explain that.
Black and Hispanics without high school degrees have seen their life expectancy increase.
ReplyDeleteSee this graph:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/21/health/a-troubling-trend-in-life-expectancy.html?ref=us
Explain that.
Black and Hispanics have increasing high school graduation rates, so NAM dropouts should be more self-selected for lower expectancy. Despite that, NAM dropouts are living longer, while white dropouts are living less.
Let me quote this too:
White men lacking a high school diploma lost three years of life. Life expectancy for both blacks and Hispanics of the same education level rose, the data showed.
This could have been an occasion to write one of your ‘Nobody notices nothing’ posts. U.S. Mestizos are almost as poor as blacks, are the fattest ethnic group are the least likely to have health insurance, etc., and yet they outlive everyone. And yet no one ever talks about it, perhaps because genetics is the likely explanation (the seemingly double-edged hybrid vigor?).
ReplyDeleteWhen people are living on benefits they can avoid the embarrassments of being fat. You can wear sweats, hunker down and eat potato chips. Once you are employed, you might have to be measured for a uniform, or wear office attire, which if you are obese you will probably have to have altered. I notice that not too many train commuters are obese, it is very embarrassing to take up two seats on a crowded train and even if you stand in the doorway, the person standing across from you probably won't be able to read the paper without hitting you in the belly. One of the worst aspects of obesity, for white people in particular, is that they become agoraphobic, sit at home and get fatter. Think of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" - a movie a little ahead of its time. I know a very smart white woman who went this path. If her husband wasn't a high earner, she would probably go on welfare, rather than face going to work on a commuter train during rush hour. I have noticed, when I worked nights, that the fat people come out after bedtime.
ReplyDeleteMestizos may have a somewhat better diet than lower class white - more beans.
ReplyDeleteAlthough obesity must be a factor, I am suspecting though that the biggest direct cause of the extreme fall in life expectancy of lowest-class US whites may be drugs, as several commenters above have postulated. Drugs like crystal meth seem now to be endemic amongst lowest-class US whites.
Why do they take so much drugs? Well, lower class whites have lower reported self-esteem than other groups, and they suffer heavy discrimination in jobs, employment, and even getting shot by cops - cops may be a bit wary of shooting lower class blacks, who have powerful friends, but no one important cares when whites are killed.
Underclass white British suffer from discrimination and low esteem too, but really killer drugs like meth are far less prevalent, and even cigarettes are too expensive to consume in vast quantities. It may be though that our general rise in life expectancy hides a decline in our underclass too, we'd have to see the data.
Simon, would you say that white Americans or white British are more dysfunctional?
ReplyDeleteMost of us Americans seem to perceive white British, especially the lower classes, to more in the gutter, but you seem to be saying that our people are in worse shape....
I think one issue might be urbanization. Lower class white Americans tend to be fairly spread throughout the general population or perhaps slightly clustered in rural areas, whereas Chavs are concentrated in urban council estates and are much more visible. So white dysfunction is much more evident in the UK than here.
I'd also say that our large black/Hispanic underclass tends to overshadow some of the problems among white Americans.
"I'm happy for you that you get to enjoy the view on the beaches of Vancouver, but that view is entirely different on the beaches of Alabama. And, yes, the first thought that comes to mind when looking at those poor teenage girls is, "My God, they will need blood pressure meds soon, if they aren't taking them already." It's really tragic."
ReplyDeleteIf you think the teenagers at the beaches of Alabama need blood pressure meds then I'd hate to see your reaction to some of the rural areas further up the state, Maya. Coastal Alabama is the least obese part of the state- sadly.
Visit Alabama or Auburn's campuses, though, and there are virtually zero fat young people. As is the case elsewhere, obesity is pretty much restricted to the lower and lower middle classes.
Actually men and women have exactly the same life expectancies, at least for "good" life. Humans get 70 good years irrespective of sex. The years after age seventy are different and women just have more of these "not so good" years. "
ReplyDeleteMaybe, but my father was about 73 when my mother,72, died. He lived 11 yrs longer, and at least 8 of them were among the best years of his life. He reconnected with an old "girlfriend" -- she was actually a little older than he -- from his youth, and did just great.
The last two yrs, and esp the last one year, were not so great although he could drive up to the last two months.
Lots of people in their 70s, and even beyond, are in reasonably good health, and most are at least ambulatory. I know it's hard for a younger person to understand how somebody past the bloom of youth can enjoy life, but if anything, most them seem happier than young people. Of course, it helps to be financially stable, as my dad was.He'd struggled with debt in youth but retired with a pension from his first and second job, the second taken when he was 54.
He didn't do badly at all in his last 20 years and everyone was quite glad he had those years.
"
If you think gangnam is bad, I found even worse Korean crap on youtube.
ReplyDeleteCopycat Asians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TluwelYxmAc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io30sSJju3Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FytYHJlHsY
One thing I notice... Koreans go for volume but lack finesse.
Japanese are better at taking American stuff and creating a sleeker product:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clzZMoRu-UE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WNuc7Im4V8
Two gay koreans sing the sappiest ballad of all time.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YxSzOuqVl0
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"Simon, would you say that white Americans or white British are more dysfunctional?
Most of us Americans seem to perceive white British, especially the lower classes, to more in the gutter, but you seem to be saying that our people are in worse shape...."
Heh... that's a very good question! We've been talking here about bottom 5-10%, lower working class to underclass. US white bottom 10% seem to be more criminal, are fatter, and take more hard drugs.
However when you go further up the social scale to the middle of the working class, blue collar workers, I think the UK is a lot worse off. In the US these people still marry, though divorce is common. In the UK they are far less easily distinguishable from the underclass, and the last Labour government spread dysfunction and dependency very far up the social scale, even into the lower middle class.
I would say that overall a higher proportion of white British are dysfunctional, but the bottom 10% are worse in the US.
@Simon,
ReplyDeleteRegarding Asians, I admit that I am extrapolating from the Mexican experience here, but bear with me.
What happens here with Mexicans is that the non-native, usually illegal, population, is relatively healthy, even though they are poor and have bad access to medical care. It is anybody's guess why but my explanation is that they actually do a few common sense things like not smoke while pregnant, not take a variety of killing drugs, and keep a normal weight. And stress, oh yeah, stress. They have strong social networks that protect them from a lot of stress. They are not lonely, and they don't take life so hard. The Hispanic (i.e., Mexican, really) infant mortality rate is the lowest of any ethnic group in the US, as Sailer has demonstrated. I attribute the latter statistic to stress entirely. Mexicans are very pro-baby and make life easy for "Mami". Whites and blacks stress out about a lot of unimportant garbage. This creates mortality.
US Mexicans may not be glowing specimens of ancient Greek beauty, they are normal peasants who don't try to kill themselves. Mother Nature replies: "good enough!" I will reward you with a longer life span and lower infant mortality rates.
The average human is pretty tough, when you give him or her half a chance. Our poor whites are not giving themselves a tenth of a chance.
Maybe I am extrapolating incorrectly, but might this not be true of your non-native East Asians, cousin marriage and all?? They don't actively go out of their way to kill themselves.
Just a question.
Re:obesity, I think the obese are very hard to look at but I do think that in and of itself, it is overrated as a prime cause of mortality.
The more I think of it, the more I believe that the reason why our high-school dropout white women are dying earlier than HS dropout black women is the drugs, smoking and stress, because both are, as a class, fat. In fact the black women are fatter, a few spectacular exceptions notwithstanding.
But while HS dropout black women's drug of choice is food and food alone(lots of it), the white women spice it up with "all of the above". This is killing them.
"Anonymous Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThese are the people who needed two parents and authoritative parenting. But society has undermined the two parent family, and told parents that laissez faire is best."
Actually, EVERYBODY needs two parents and authoritative parenting - the rich every bit as much as the poor. Rich screw-ups are just able to buy their way out of more trouble. But I agree with your essential point.
"Never listen to Hollywood - ever."
Absolutely right.
"US Mexicans may not be glowing specimens of ancient Greek beauty"
ReplyDeleteAncient Greeks were not glowing specimens of Greek Beauty. Just like Greeks built statues only of beautiful people, Mexican TV shows only good looking people. But MOST people were plain or ugly everywhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKIt1jPDd9E&feature=related
ReplyDeleteplanking the new plunging.
"I've never seen a Wigger in the South"
ReplyDeleteOh for Christsakes, are you people freakin' mad?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np3pU-dLok4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znUS2KqPYCw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfPLcQhXpCc
@Simon,
ReplyDeleteOK. But I did mean South Asians.
By the way, I don't agree that the data show that UK lifespans are "accelerating" upwards. It looks to me like they are edging upwards, not accelerating.
So it seems something is happening in the most stressed-out sector of the US public that isn't happening in the most stressed-out sector of the UK public.
Could it be the NHS helps the poorest poor in UK? I've heard lots of anecdotal data to that effect. It's the middle- and upper-classes who complain about it.
"Greek beauty"
Gee thanks. I didn't know that. I thought I was speaking completely literally and not making an analogy or exaggerating to make a point.