American Suicide & What Trump Isn’t Doing About It

It’s an epidemic with life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of Trump’s base, but the president has paid no attention to the way it is afflicting U.S. civilians, writes Rajan Menon.

[consortiumnews.com]

{If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies — should Democrats ever retake the White House and the Senate — could make a positive difference. A study based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10 percent appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college degrees.}

Seriously! That really contradicts this then---{ According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study, between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate. In 30 states, it jumped by 25 percent or more; in 17, by at least a third. Nationally, it increased 33percent. In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6 percent), New Hampshire (48.3 percent), Kansas (45 percent), Idaho (43 percent).

I'm fairly certain a democrat held office from 2008 to 2016 on a platform of change! I wish that would have covered Clinton's 8 years also. Lets go back up {A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes. What’s more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually — the suicide rate — has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s.}

Might be a sign of where this all actually started, huh? Can you give me a NAFTA--- hell yea! Rural areas? You mean farmers? NAFTA anyone?

{One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher. It increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000. Black men are 10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.}

Yea, I don't know, maybe it's just me. But a majority of African Americans for the most part have been struggling for decades on little to nothing. I think I'd go with adaptation. As a smaller percentage of the population, many have managed to win that struggle to better means. Maybe many is inappropriate wording? A good number of? Where white men have one little problem! Stigma! All that stigma our politicians and the norms of society, and themselves, through perception management, have placed a false narrative of stigma on people who they see as beneath them are now finding themselves wrapped in that very stigma. Maybe this isn't the right puzzle for me, huh?

Well, he kind of hits on that farther down the article. Sorry

WOWL--talk about voting against yourself! I've always been able to associate that to poverty and low wages, especially in the south but, oye. They literally do it to their death