Thursday Open Thread 4-13-2017

Life is a series of phases. Childhood, youth, adulthood and old age each have aspects of living to explore. Childhood - exploring and absorbing the wonder of a new world. Youth - learning the skills of life. Adulthood - using life skills to work, make a home and develop wisdom. Old age - have time to enjoy life and use the wisdom one has developed.

A phrase I have often heard in my life is "no one respects the elderly, anymore." Actually I believe as a culture America does not value wisdom. People are defined by their job, earning (spending) potential or what they own, not the lessons and skills they have acquired.

Decreasing value American society places on the experience that comes with age is getting harder to ignore.

The return to experience is not the best-known economic concept, but it is alive in most of our contemporary economic spook stories, in which the callow private-equity analyst has the final power over an industry in which people have long labored, in which the mechanical robot replaces the assembly-line worker, in which the doctor finds his diagnosis corrected by artificial intelligence. It seemed to match at least one emotional vein that ran through the Trump phenomenon, and the more general alienation of the heartland: people are aging, and they are not getting what they think they have earned.

I spoke to Case by phone recently, and she emphasized that the connections between the deaths from despair and the declining returns to experience are still at the hypothesis stage. But, if you wanted to spool out the hypothesis, you could find a compelling story. The chronology matched some general changes in the nature of working-class work, which grew less skilled over time and therefore provided lesser returns to experience. If you focussed on white workers without a college degree, the decline in returns to experience began with those born around 1955. This matched the story of despair deaths, whose appearance Case and Deaton pinpointed at 1990, just when the 1955 birth cohort passed into early middle age. As that group’s declining wages helped usher them out of the labor force, it made sense that more of them might turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide. The pattern, begun thirty-five years ago, has not abated. “There are still returns to experience,” Case said, “but they are lower for every birth cohort.”

The increase of mortality appears to effects both rural and urban areas in similar patterns. It appears the trend will continue to worsen. Long read, there will be no easy answers.

Appendix 1 soe.JPG

Figure 1.1 shows mortality rates per 100,000 for men and women (combined) aged 50 to 54 from 1999 to 2015.

Appendix 3.3 soe.JPG

What our data show is that the patterns of mortality and morbidity for white non-Hispanics without a college degree move together over lifetimes and birth cohorts, and that they move in tandem with other social dysfunctions, including the decline of marriage, so-cial isolation, and detachment from the labor force. Figure 3.3 suggests that there may be two underlying factors, not one, but they are not very different, and we do not press that conclusion. Whether these factors (or factor) are “the cause” is more a matter of semantics than statistics. The factor could certainly represent some force that we have not identified, or we could try to make a case that declining real wages is more fundamental than other forces. Better, we can see globalization and automation as the underlying deep causes. Ul-timately, we see our story as about the collapse of the white, high school educated, working class after its heyday in the early 1970s, and the pathologies that accompany that decline.

Why farm, preserve food, cook from scratch, grow fuels and create textiles? I find it interesting and provides an environment to try new ideas and skills. The skills I learn and practice keep traditions alive that humans have participated in for thousands of years. I spent my childhood in the country, youth a mixture of city and country, adulthood made my money in cities and my old age will be in the country.

Currently sharing the milk mom's producing for this guy.
calf.jpg

The next 8 weeks we will be putting up the milk products to use for the next year. He will then be big enough to use all of her milk.
Butter.jpg

Feta.jpg

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If it isn't in a stick, I can't be sure. lol I didn't think natural butter was yellow.

Interesting read on experience and wisdom, and 1955 sounds about right. The only thing this country values is money, greed, and slick. It has the attention span of a turnip, and the common sense of a slug. The light of 2015 makes the "ugly American" of the past look like Mother Teresa.

Thanks for the morning OT.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

studentofearth's picture

@dkmich Cheddar made from whole, spring milk will have an orange caste to its color. The orange color was added to make the commercial cheese appear as if the cows were producing the best milk year around.

My chickens are allowed to free range a 4 hours a day. some of the yolks are orange. Looks like I am adding food coloring.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@dkmich

Is that butter?

If it isn't in a stick, I can't be sure. lol I didn't think natural butter was yellow.

It can be yellow. If your milch critters are getting the carotinoids (i.e., vitamin B6 and related compounds) that they need, the butter will be yellow. Want naturally yellow butter? Make sure your milch critter eats carrots every day. (They're good for her, too!)

Humans make natural butter that isn't yellow into yellow butter by adding carotinoids, often from carrots themselves.

Carrots. Bugs was right!

[video:https://youtu.be/9OuFbyyt8k0 width:500 height:350]

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

dance you monster's picture

Is this saying that those born before that date are getting theirs, but that those born around 1955 or later are seeing less reward? Would that indicate that, as a broad trend, the first wave of Boomers is hoarding all gains from everyone's efforts? I mean, that wouldn't surprise me, it feels that way, and it would explain a hell of a lot that we sense is wrong in society today, but it would be interesting to know if there's substantial corroborating data.

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studentofearth's picture

@dance you monster @dance you monster White non-Hispanic without a college degree. Hispanic and African American mortality in same education group is still dropping. Mortality rate is also still dropping for the rest of the world.

The researchers looked at several issues that could be contributing. Their data does not include information on who had health insurance, the deductible or costs paid by an individual.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

enhydra lutris's picture

@dance you monster
ripped off. There was a period where companies routinely offered pensions and job stability. Those features of the economy eroded in stages. The key date isn't so much 1955 as 1975 or so, 20 years later, the approximate date that those born in 1955 began settling into careers/steady jobs. That wasn't the start but was probably a notable point in the ever increasing union busting, pension fund raiding, conversion to "independent contractors", etc. (FWIW, KK&R was incorporated in 1976).

By '55+30, 1986, even the civil service had been infected. Prior to that, rank and file civil servants generally earned lower than market wages, but had a job for life if they didn't screw up too bad, and progressively better and better benefits as their years in service grew (vacation, paid sick leave, cost-shared medical insurance plans and a good pension.) Barring substantial inflation and shifty COLA computations, they could retire with a comfortable pension. In 86/87 that changed; it was "welcome newbies, you no longer have a nasty old-timey pension, you'll get social security instead."

And, of course, the decline continues to this day. So, essentially, on average, starting in the mid seventies, the later you entered the workforce, the more fucked over you were. Hence, starting in the mid fifties, the later you entered into the world, the more fucked over you were likely to be.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Arrow's picture

From this morning from @umairh...

https://medium.com/@umairh/has-the-west-lost-its-mind-2c4922067209

I follow him for his provocative thinking.

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I want a Pony!

mhagle's picture

@Arrow

Yes, the West has lost it's mind by only doing quantitative analysis and ignoring qualitative analysis. Never asking the question, "does this make anything better?"

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

studentofearth's picture

@Arrow thanks for directing us to the article.

So: has the West lost its goddamned mind? Analysis paralysis. Overthinking it. The West is too much mind. And too little heart, eyes, hands, soul, action. It’s like a guy who keeps thinking up half-baked pickup lines…but never asks their crush out on a date.

Unless it can break this vicious cycle of mind over action, insight, reality, truth, the West probably is condemned to more of…this. You know: an endless cycle of daily headlines, absurd spectacles, and laughable leaders, that outrage us, each day worse than the last. Outrage is easy. Overthinking it is the natural consequence — because what outrages us also leaves us grasping, breathless, for reason. What is genuinely hard in this little life is taking the future into one’s hands and molding it with a little bit of love, a lot of courage, and a spoonful of wisdom.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

riverlover's picture

This is scary for me, but I am looking here first for a housemate. Need a living co-warrior. A queen bed, single bed floating sideways overhead, full bath adjacent. 20 acres. WiFi.

Dogs and cats may be okay. I need a human co-warrior now. Near ithaca, ny. message me.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

studentofearth's picture

@riverlover Might ask you daughter or a friend to be with you during the interviews. It is hard to be emotionally detached when you are dealing with a serious medical condition and pain.

Glad you are working on options to be able to stay safely in your home.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

@studentofearth I'd been thinking you need someone, either in occupancy or within a few minutes checking on you regularly. At our age coming back from injury is harder and takes longer than it does for those young'uns. It doesn't take much to make healing time longer or harder.

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There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.

mhagle's picture

This is an interesting concept. So you milk the cow, and the calf nurses on the cow at the same time . . . but you only milk her as long as there is extra? But it is long enough for you to make gobs of butter and cheese. That makes so much sense. Well . . . because I remember from the dairy farm that many cows milked 100 lbs a day . . . way more than a family could use. That's why I have thought that dairy goats might make more sense, but maybe not?

Thanks for this OT. My husband and I are sort of in this demographic - born in 53 and 57. Retired teachers. He retired on purpose at the earliest possible moment to play "Mr. Mom." I only retired because the jobs went away. Experience is not valued in teaching in Texas. In the 90s there was a big push to get teachers to retire, and then hire young teachers. Even though our pay scale is pretty crappy here, older teachers do earn more.

Why farm, preserve food, cook from scratch, grow fuels and create textiles? I find it interesting and provides an environment to try new ideas and skills. The skills I learn and practice keep traditions alive that humans have participated in for thousands of years.

Sort of forced into this way of life, but really it was always where I wanted to be.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

studentofearth's picture

My biggest objection to milking was it can be a lot of work. The milking needs to be done on a regular schedule and there is a lot of product to use. If cow or goat is not milked regularly they suffer. I often look at books and articles describing historical practices before industrialization of an activity or old books written in the time period I am interested in gleaning ideas. The solutions would not be as reliant on buying a lot of products to make the idea happen.

The person who wanted to milk was given this challenge before I would consider buying a milk cow (probably Guernsey). I was thinking seasonal milking. They had to buy 4 gallons of milk and 1 quart of half & half a week to process it for at least 4 months. Basically turning a fresh product into one with a longer shelf life. We have a 2 person house and our milk usage was 1-2 gallons a month primarily for dog food, 1 quart half & half for cooking, 4-5 pounds of various cheeses and 2 pounds of butter.

The cow could run with the beef cows and bull. No new fencing, watering or feeding requirements. If the calf was never weaned off milk there is no need for the extra work of bottle feeding, creating a bottle fed animal (its own set of issues) and the is aback-up plan if a milking needs to be missed. When the calf is small it can be kept with the cow 24 hours. If the milk available is less than desired separate the calf from the cow and limit the time the calf can nurse. If you are not available for a milking, simply leave the calf with the cow. I am only interested in once a day milking at max, not twice a day responsibility. I raise the calf for beef.

The shorthorn mix I already had in the herd is working out very well. I probably will not buy a dairy cow. This year we will try some new cheeses: parmesan, cheddar, swiss type and mozzarella. Simply reading the recipes made me a better consumer. The feta and yogurt we made last year is why this year I was the one most excited about milking.

I like goats but they are more work than my cows, which I have migrated back to over time. they are bright, mischievous and are always exploring their environment. Need to protect the trees, ornamental bushes and continually watch for the new ways they create to get out of fences. Cows are more predictable, fix a fence problem and they are less likely to come up with a new solution. Both animals need bred yearly and have off-spring you are responsible for selling, raising and/or using. For me cattle are easier. If one is trying to earn a living off a small acreage sheep or goat cheese is more profitable.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.