It seemed to me that you were attributing the lower life expectancy due to US' diversity compared to many wealthy nations. My point was: Canada is similarly diverse and yet its life expectancy is higher.
No, I was saying the diversity of American society means that aggregate measures won't tell us much. If Canada is similarly diverse (that seems contested, but accepting it for argument's sake) then aggregate measures there also won't tell us much.
I'm really not sure what this means. Yeah, the U.S. is a multicultural society, but so what? Are we supposed to focus only on the certain cultures and ignore others when we talk about health and life expectancy?
I think I've heard this argument before in the context of gun violence in the US - as in, the US wouldn't have a gun violence problem if we excluded cities like Chicago and Baltimore from gun violence research. Is this the same basic argument?
Say Canadian Whites and American Whites both have mean lifespan of 81, and Canadian Blacks and American Blacks both have a mean lifespan of 71. Using that data and the fact that the US has 3X the proportion of blacks, you could calculate how much of Canada's higher life expectancy is due to demographics. It could explain the entire difference!
Alternatively, if Canadian Whites and Blacks live proportionally longer than American Whites and Blacks respectively, you would know that demographics could not explain the difference.
I mean, okay, but what if black people live 10 years less than white people in such statistics?
That's still an abysmal thing, as the US would have something like 30% of their population getting clearly worse health and not caring or doing anything about it?
If the difference is down to demographics, surely that's really bad?
Maybe so, but touting Canada's "superiority" over the U.S. would lead to the "obvious solution" of getting rid of black people. If the difference is down to demographics, you want to know that, rather than look at people in country-sized blocs.
>Are we supposed to focus only on the certain cultures and ignore others when we talk about health and life expectancy?
If you want to get anything done, then hell yes! If life expectancy is low in Concord because of too many Doritos, but it's low in Phoenix because of a bad medical system, and it's mysteriously high in Fresno, you very much want to disaggregate. And you definitely don't want to ask "What is going so well in 'the U.S.'(Fresno)?" and then look at Concord.
It makes a lot of sense actually, a lot of this stuff comes down to what the smaller groups are doing. It's for the same reason no one cares about global gun violence statistics.
Talking about behavior patterns of US people like they're all part of a single nation stopped making sense long ago if it ever did.
It matters in discussion forums like this involving ordinary people. There are two reasons we might care about statistics and trends like this.
One, you're a public health official or maybe even just a voter trying to weigh various policy options or assess the success of what has already been done. In this case, sure, you have to care about national averages and other measures of central tendency and ways to characterize distributions.
Two, you're an individual American trying to figure out how much you should worry about an early death. In this case, national averages or even per-culture averages seemingly mean next to nothing for you. I can't speak for all Americans, but I expect to outlive the average by quite a bit.
For gun violence, it's often travelers and visitors worried they're going to get shot if they come to the US, and we're trying to tell them that whether they really need to worry heavily depends on where they're visiting. Even if they're actually visiting Chicago or Baltimore, gunshot deaths in tourist districts are damn near unheard of, and besides which, the vast majority of people ever killed by guns at all are either killed by themselves or someone who knows them. There aren't a whole lot of random stranger attacks happening anywhere.
Per Google:
"In the United States, life expectancy varies significantly by race and ethnicity, with Asian Americans generally having the highest life expectancy and American Indian/Alaska Natives (AIAN) the lowest. In 2021, life expectancy was 83.5 years for Asian Americans, 77.7 years for Hispanics, 76.4 years for Whites, and 70.8 years for Black Americans, according to KFF. AIAN populations experienced the lowest life expectancy at 65.2 years. These disparities are largely attributed to factors like socioeconomic status, access to healthcare, and the disproportionate impact of certain diseases like COVID-19 on specific racial groups. "
The reply has been flagged but if they implied that the OP was being a bigoted dickhead then they were correct.
Practically every single time a comment like that is made, with exceptions so rare as to be irrelevant, the commenter is implying "Well if it weren't for the blacks and immigrants we'd be on top" which isn't true.[1]
But I couldn't be sure, so I looked into it.
The OP is a far-right (his self-description NOT mine [2]) Christian unhealthily obsessed with commenting on posts that contain an opening into which their opinions on race and/or gender may be inserted.
So, if the now-flagged comment was somehow asserting that the commenter was being a bigoted dickhead, the exact right amount of reading into was done.
But which of those actually fits the present situation? Four years haven't passed. Congress is not dissolved. It's literally just a bunch of executive orders and firings within the executive branch, which, last time I checked Article II, is under the authority of the president.
I think “unlawfully assume extraordinary powers” may apply.
It’s certainly debatable, but shutting down agencies created and authorized by Congress and refusing to distribute funding legislated by Congress seems to be an overstep of executive power, and therefore an undermining of Congress’s power.
My main point was that ousting an incumbent or defying an election is not a requirement for something to be a coup, as the previous comment was suggesting. A legitimately elected official seizing more power than they are legally entitled to is a form of coup.
anyone can call anything anything, sure(is it a "coup" when I paint a good painting, or win a game of chess? https://www.thefreedictionary.com/coup), but the great-grandparent comment referred to a "bizarre and highly illegal" coup.
I don't think this is an apt analogy. It would be more like "I only robbed your house b/c you threatened to join the neighborhood watch, after twenty years of explicit promises by the neighborhood watch that you wouldn't." And the "neighborhood watch" vs "crime" thing is stacking the deck a bit---in modern society we have a professionalized police force and a norm against vigilante first-strike violence, but sovereign countries can by definition go to war.
This doesn't even mean I "want Russia to win" or whatever, but I definitely would like NATO to put on its adult pants.
after twenty years of explicit promises by the neighborhood watch that you wouldn't
You've been lied to. Instead of propagating the lie, please consider informing yourself. Begin by understanding the fact that any such promises were made to a state that no longer exists by people who were unauthorized to make them. Moving on, consider that nobody spends billions of dollars or Euros preparing to defend themselves against countries who are not a genuine threat to peace and stability, particularly those whose leaders have stated their revanchist goals publicly and unequivocally.
Then, go back to the people who lied to you, ask them why they did so, and ask them not to do it again. Chances are, someone lied to them, too.
I also find that proposition very inauthentic because the first reason for the approach is showing interest to your friend (how do they do?) but he second reason is literally (not judging) selfish (how can I get a new job?).
Someone call you after 10 years to know how you do, precisely at the same time he look for a job… what a coincidence! He might genuinely care for me but the original reason of his call wasn’t that and he probably wouldn’t have call me if not. I would receive better an honest call:
"hey I know its been 10 years but I look for a job, any idea?”
Some people around me find that way of communicating too direct and impolite. I find it genuine. But I’m probably the one that should be fixed, others seems to find relations easy and pleasant.
I agree with you :-) I like the "Hey it's been 10 years and now ..." approach.
Nothing strange about that at all? It's just not possible to stay in active contact with everyone one has met in life and likes being with. (Well, of course it depends)
I have in mind a friend who on first contact, comes off as somewhat superficial and business-brained, b/c he's always hitting people up for lunches, or calls, and likes to talk about jobs.
The thing is, he does that all the time. Employed, unemployed, rain, shine. And he doesn't just like to talk about (or look for) opportunities for him, but for everyone else, too. So over time, you realize that's just how he is/what he does, and it comes across as completely natural.
The goofy thing about all this is that HotS is really good if you judge it on its own merits. I played DotA for a long time, switched to HotS, and never looked back.
I run a startup accelerator with a law firm partner (but not a legal accelerator) - and some of the stuff I hear in the lunchroom is wild. No doubt the firm is going to do extremely well un-fucking gen AI legal mess.
