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Life Expectancy Study: It's Not Just What You Make, It's Where You Live (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report on NPR.org: Poor people who reside in expensive, well-educated cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than low-income people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records. The study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, bolsters what was already well-known -- the poor tend to have shorter lifespans than those with more money. But it also says that among low-income people, big disparities exist in life expectancy from place to place, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Stanford University. "There are some places where the poor are doing quite well, gaining just as much in terms of life span as the rich, but there are other places where they're actually going in the other direction, where the poor are living shorter lives today than they did in the past," Chetty said, in an interview with NPR.The New York Times' take on the same study: New York is a city with some of the worst income inequality in the country. But when it comes to inequality of life spans, it's one of the best. Impoverished New Yorkers tend to live far longer than their counterparts in other American cities, according to a detailed new research of Social Security and earnings records published Monday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. They still die sooner than their richer neighbors, but the city's life-expectancy gap was smaller in 2014 than nearly everywhere else, and it has shrunk since 2001 even as gaps grew nationwide. That trend may appear surprising. New York is one of the country's most unequal and expensive cities, where the poor struggle to find affordable housing and the money and time to take care of themselves.
I refuse to take seriously any topic where inequality of life circumstances is held up as some sort of moral evil. Imposed equality needs to be limited to very few domains, like equality -before the law-, to the extent even that is possible. But to use inequality as a cudgel against different people living longer or better than others ... hell no, go away. Free people aren't equal. Equal people aren't free.
Wealth pays for good health care system with good hospitals and trained physicians. Also more hospitals are located in the well doing areas. If the poor walks in to the ER, first they have the ability to reach the hospital on foot, and second they also benefit from the same higher quality materials and equipment, and not the least from the experience of the doctors, which is going to be not surprisingly better. So they do have a better chance of receiving good quality health care that is set up for the wealthy people, and they have much better change of actually reaching that healthcare than in the middle of nowhere town, where the closes hospital is the large animal vet in the next town 10 miles over. Also, the article speaks about poor people. Not those that are homeless, not those that are in poverty. Just poor people, and in New York or San Fran you are poor making 40 - 50k annually, which is actually not bad compared to the below the poverty line homeless living on the corner.
When there is no public transit, the threshold is a few hundred dollars. One fender bender, one blown tire or busted alternator is all it takes for a poor person without public transit to fall off. Can't get to work, can't earn the money needed to fix the car. They would depend on the kindness and help from near and dear to get past that kind of emergency.
Most poor people would rather have a dependable transportation system to their work place and affordable child care than dole. Poverty rates can be halved just by providing/subsidizing transportation and child care.
Urban area unemployment rate is over 33% approaches even 50%. That means even in those blighted areas 50 to 66% of the people actually go to work. Somehow, despite all the hardships, despite seeing the drug dealers and pimps rolling in dough, people line up to work for minimum wage in a burger joint. Shows how much poverty could be alleviated if we make it possible for them to work.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Nice rant for mod points, but that's where the niceties end.
Free people aren't equal. Equal people aren't free.
I have no clue what planet or country you live in, but here in the USofA we are not free. You can't own a house and land, you pay rent to the Government and a Bank. You can't own a business, in fact good luck with all the regulations and paperwork required even if you are doing 1 person contracting. Work in the city? Well, some rich person is going to make sure that the majority of your income goes to them in rent. Don't like it, don't live in the city and spend 4 hours a day commuting. And even if you "buy" a house in the sticks you are only rending the land from the Government. Have doubts, refuse to make your tax payments and call me so I can laugh at you. You sure as hell can't buy land in the city, because property value is intentionally over inflated to keep people like you and me out. You can't drive the car you bought until you pay the State annual fees to drive, and depending on where you live pay for the proper testing on your car, and pay for the right amount of insurance, and of course you can only drive as fast as the Government tells you you can drive.
You are not free to work, free to eat what you want, free to hunt, and you are no longer free to practice your religion.
I emphatically state that it IS a moral evil to have people like Gates and the Koch brothers with billions and billions of dollars, who use their money as bribery to influence the system to further enrich themselves. Meanwhile we have people that can't afford basic clothing and food, and mentally ill people on the streets with no support system what so ever.
We have no equality because people like you not only ignore the morality of certain people who abuse the system, but attempt to claim that does not happen or have influence if it does.
See Socrates the story of the Artisan. Nothing new here except the people who spout the same tired bullshit. .
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.