
Anatomists of Melancholy in the Age of Coronavirus - andrewl
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Anatomists-of-Melancholy-in/248552?key=wD5N8zUKkQDLHNwlH_yTVh0iZ18krfexzHaeuagJjlbndHY3jJvE_ndn--urEF4iVTZMMjFsMWc1SFBtNGtpYzBFM2JlUDFmQlNRcnBISG1BRGFoaXFWWnluTQ
======
hhs
Finished reading the book recently: it cites a range of economic research, if
interested. They make the point that a weakening of labor unions over the
years also contributed to this, referencing a paper called “Unions and
Inequality Over the Twentieth Century” [0].

[0]: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w24587](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24587)

~~~
spamizbad
There was a belief between the 70s and early 90s that less economic security
among workers would not only make them less likely to strike but would also
shape them behaviorally so they’d be more likely to get (And stay) married and
attend church while being less likely to have children out of wedlock, gamble,
and participate in anti-social risky behavior. The thinking at the time was
the American worker was soft and decadent - thanks in part by the unions - and
that was the ultimate cause of the social changes, unrest and malaise from the
previous and current decade.

It was a massive social engineering experiment that backfired spectacularly.

~~~
jacobolus
> _There was a belief_ [...]

 _Who_ had this belief? I have never in my life heard someone claim that
economic insecurity leads to more marriages, more stable families, and less
other risk taking.

Who exactly was doing this “social engineering experiment”?

My impression is rather that various corporate interests with influence in one
major political party tried to cut down unions, labor laws, consumer
protections, antitrust law, etc. as a way to save money and avoid legal
liability, not really caring too much about the broader societal implications.

Alongside that, there was also a “tough on crime” movement, and lots of
racist/nativist agitation, because fear is an effective way to drive votes.

~~~
spamizbad
Who? A certain strain of Reagan/Bush conservative intellectuals of that era.
David Frum’s 1994 book “Dead Right” talks about it briefly (he mostly lambasts
it from the right). It should be mentioned this view fell into the memory hole
of politics after Clinton’s victories in the 90s. For obvious reasons for
being both wrong and politically toxic for supply-siders.

~~~
mistermann
The documentary Century of Self (re: Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward
Bernays) gets into _this type of thing_ , and many, many others.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self)

Full:

[https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s](https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s)

10 minute trailer/summary:

[https://youtu.be/D_0g1RUQMVQ](https://youtu.be/D_0g1RUQMVQ)

If someone wants to check out the above political aspect, fast forward to the
3 hour mark or so.

Fair warning, this would be typically filed under conspiracy theories /
propaganda by most people, but even so, it is by far one of the most
compelling ones I've seen. It very much advocates for the common man, and I
believe makes a decent case. It certainly has had a major effect on the way I
view how the world works, but YMMV.

------
weeksie
Most of the surge in "deaths of despair" can be chalked up to opioids being
far more powerful. Fentanyl and OxyContin are your bogeymen, the rest of the
causal speculation is window dressing. Not that we shouldn't want a more
equitable society, but closing the coal mine didn't kill those hillbillies,
Purdue Pharma did.

~~~
skillpass
This is explicitly refuted in the article.

> In an early 2018 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic
> Research, Christopher J. Ruhm, a professor of economics and public policy at
> the University of Virginia, suggested that "the ‘deaths of despair’ framing,
> while provocative, is unlikely to explain the main sources of the fatal drug
> epidemic." He continued: "The fatal overdose epidemic is likely to primarily
> reflect drug problems rather than deaths of despair." Case and Deaton
> responded that they had explicitly tested and rejected his hypothesis, and
> that in their work "despair" was meant to be "a label, not an explanation."

~~~
weeksie
I know they're claiming to refute that hypothesis but I do not agree with
them.

------
insideBig3
(assuming Maslow's)

Is the issue that (white) people are getting past love and belonging, and
getting stuck at Esteem?

Where people with degrees can work past this point? A restaurant worker will
not be able to create a reputation/make a difference on the scale of a well
paid or educated worker. Even if it's not the education that makes the
difference, confidence is huge.

~~~
cultus
There's plenty of educated and well paid workers doing useless, "bullshit"
jobs [0]. Look in the admin buildings of any university, or any sclerotic
military contractor. In comparison, a friendly waiter whom people like seeing
could make a far greater real-world difference.

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-
jo...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-job-boom)

~~~
throwanem
Meanwhile, the bullshit job earns six figures, while the waiter's barely
scraping by.

------
philshem
Another review by Atul Gawande in the March 23, 2020 issue of the New Yorker

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-
americans-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-americans-
are-dying-from-despair)

------
Nasrudith
I think there isn't enough emphasis on culture as a factor of deaths of
despair. The fact it is restricted to being higher among whites as opposed to
those even worse off. Not to victim blame but that the difference might be
useful for uncovering the root cause. There likely dysfunctional elements
enshrined that are individually found within - take anti-intellectualism which
is not exclusive to them may arise more in fatal combinations. There are
likely many in reality but a simple "fatal combination" may also suffice.

Anti-intelletualism has always lead to bad outcomes really as a whole. There
may even be toxic movements /within/ a given college culture but crucially
there is always an element of self improvement there as a motivation. Even in
the most degenerate stereotypical case of "learn nothing in four years to get
the diploma for connections" they still have a goal even if they have latter
regrets from doing things wrong.

The crab-bucket mentality often found within looks down upon those who do
anything to try to make more of themselves as it makes them feel bad to see
others try when they do not.

A third obvious ingredient is "lack of opportunity" which has synnergy with
the first two - if they see opportunity but wind up in learned helplessness
leaving it out of reach or fundamentally betraying who they are or degrading
themselves. Combine the three and well it starts to become understandable how
it becomes a fatal trap.

But minority groups show it isn't so simple. Given the evidence has throughly
shown people are people the difference is likely that they tend to more often
have or develop some sort of support network because they feel the world or
authorities are aligned against them. Even the long cast out from born family
LGBT members who were (and sadly often still are) societally strongly
encouraged to keep it secret.

Sadly one outlier I am aware of are Native Americans who tend to have less
than ideal situations with reservations to put it mildly. It might be a matter
of magnitudes as well.

Of course even if the hypothesis is correct there is still a matter of how to
address each variable of the systems.

~~~
hhs
> Anti-intelletualism has always lead to bad outcomes really as a whole

There’s a book called “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” by Richard
Hofstadter, which explores the history of this [0]. Useful talk on HN too [1].

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
intellectualism_in_Americ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
intellectualism_in_American_Life)

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20989342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20989342)

------
drpgq
I would be curious to see death statistics for people with a college degree
across majors.

~~~
insideBig3
This was my first thought. But I can imagine that even having an art degree
would give you confidence.

~~~
patcon
my assumption is that any degree is a marker of perseverance to people hiring.
If you're hiring for an admin role, would you rather the person with the HS
diploma or with the arts degree?

I'm reluctant to admit I'd probably be pretty biased myself without great care
(and most people are busy with their own concerns and prob don't care)

------
k__
Opioids, prisons, elections, healthcare, education...

Man, what's happening over there?

~~~
WilliamEdward
Unregulated capitalism, their research suggests.

Opioids have few regulations on how much are prescribed. This ties in directly
to the healthcare issue.

Private Prisons are run by using prisoners as workers for less than a dollar
an hour. This is constitutionally legal. This means there is a financial
incentive to imprison people.

Elections are influenced by corporate lobbying. The state works for businesses
at least as much as it works for the people, but guess who gets first
preference.

Healthcare is based on profit and not on saving lives. Self explanatory and
this has been talked about countless times throughout the past 4 years.

Education I don't know much about.

~~~
Nasrudith
Aside from the role of unethical opiod producers and marketers (which to be
fair does fall under the umbrella of unregulated capitalism) weren't there
plenty of preceding examples in Russia and even the USSR with first deaths by
alcoholism and then later infamous krokodil deaths? The latter is more small
scale addict enterprise even if it is again not exactly regulated capitalism.
The point being that the system isn't the direct cause even if it allows it.

~~~
WilliamEdward
I don't argue for that system, I argue for whatever the rest of the world on
average seems to be doing since opioids are much less of a problem in
countries comparable to the US. The US must be doing something wrong with a
lack of regulations in this industry, and the only common factor is unhinged
profit-seeking.

------
nickthemagicman
I would like to see a control group of rich kids without college degrees to
find out if it's actually the college degree or the money.

I suspect it's not the college degree at all but money and people with college
degrees make more money and have better opportunities on average.

~~~
zamfi
They explicitly look at poverty. It doesn’t explain why these deaths happen
among whites but not among non-whites, who have higher poverty rates.

~~~
pretendscholar
Maybe a difference in perceived career expectations

------
pragmatic
No mention of NAFTA and the elites of both parties selling out the working
class? I was all for NAFTA at the time but then I saw the consequences. People
forced to train their replacements for a chance at another month of pay.
Plants going to Mexico, etc.

The people of the Boomer, Xer generation were told to work hard and everything
would work out.

When you find your body wrecked from 12 hour shifts, your employment
opportunities limited and as a cherry on top labelled "deplorable" in the
popular media, is it hard to see why older white Americans with less education
might be depressed?

You don't need a PhD and a bowtie to figure this out.

------
black_13
so many jobs do not need college degree ... its not degree is a pay. all jobs
should pay more if you brought the pay up the question of having a degree
would be less important. i know this will be argued that it will cause
inflation or why should someone without a degree make as much as me.

------
JKCalhoun
> "We don’t think [American capitalism] is working for people without a four-
> year college degree — and that’s two-thirds of Americans between the ages of
> 25 and 64." The coronavirus outbreak, the dire economic forecast, the
> millions of newly unemployed — all of these recent events raise the stakes
> of their research.

These are sobering thoughts. To oversimplify, I feel we have sold off the
blue-collar jobs to the lowest bidder nations and left nothing for, as the
authors point out, "two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64."

There will be continued and perhaps a heightened social reckoning.

------
robomartin
Interesting work. I’ll accept their conclusion without looking at the
underlying data.

That said, conclusions are only as good as the data and methods used to
produce them. If we looked our physical world and universe and neglected to
include the influence of gravity we would reach conclusions that could be
valid in that context yet not so if gravity is considered. It is important to
understand this for any study, not just this one.

So, what’s the “gravity” missing from this study?

The erosion (or disappearance really) of the industrial base in the US (and
other parts of the world).

The industrial base is where the people at the center of this study found
employment, careers and the basis for a fulfilling family life. With that gone
we have the reality rightly exposed by this study.

Yet, the solution isn’t more college degrees.

This virus has exposed a sad reality: That the industrial base in the west has
been eroded down to the point where we can’t locally manufacture simple
products like masks and gowns at scale. We can’t even manufacture the plastic
vials, swabs, reagents and packaging for vital test kits at scale (just try to
find somewhere where you can order a billion of these in the US or Europe).

That, as the world know now, is a formula for disaster. And that is where the
solution to the problem exposed by this paper lies.

Put simply, the US and Europe need to invest heavily in taking back massive
segments of the industrial base. This won’t be cheap, simple or fast, and yet
I think everyone understands this must be done.

We don’t need more degrees, we need to recover a portion of the economy that
has evaporated over the last fifty years.

The other missing elements in the study are: Europe and the rest of the world.

Europe is an obvious place to ask: Does the same demographic have the same
problems?

The rest of the world is, in some way, the “placebo” for a study like this.
The study says that non-US whites and other races in the US don’t seem to have
this problem. The obvious question is: How do they do at their countries of
origin?

The answers to these basic questions would help frame the results and perhaps
reveal some of the issues in the US.

One of the questions I would ask is: What is the effect of the $15/hr minimum
wage on this segment of society?

I visited a friend’s factory in Los Angeles yesterday. Massive place. Imagine
a Home Depot full of every type of manufacturing equipment you can imagine.

We talked about why he can’t manufacture consumer goods in this factory. It
came down to high minimum wage, high taxes and onerous regulatory burden. He
could literally hire hundreds of people and make consumer goods at scale were
it not for this framework that simple makes manufacturing of consumer goods at
scale (include masks, gowns and test kits in that) in the US impossible.

I am not n necessarily talking about simple products here. Phones, computers,
graphics cards, displays, computer mice, tablets, watches, printers, tv’s,
microwave ovens, refrigerators, clothes washers, grass mowers, etc. I could go
on forever. Walk into a Home Depot or Best Buy. We can’t make anything sold in
those stores (except for some of the construction materials at Home Depot).

The problem isn’t the lack of college degrees. The problem isn’t even
capitalism. The problem is a combination of failed international and domestic
policies that allowed for the loss of a massive portion of the industrial base
that employed tens of millions of people for decades.

We can fix this.

------
oDot
They wrongly call the current economy in the US "capitalist". The US is less
capitalist than ever.

~~~
Torwald
what is your definition of a capitalist economy then?

~~~
oDot
An economy that is void of coercion (in the sense of violence or threat of it)

Clarification edit: Coercion in response to coercion is self-defense. If
someone physically forced their way to your property, you have a right to
defend yourself, and this should be enforced. We need some way make sure
there's no coercion in the market.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
What would happen in such non-coercive society if a poor, homeless person
occupies an empty house?

~~~
oDot
Depends what the owner of that house wants to do. It will be within their
right to evacuate that person.

Otherwise if you want a house all you have to do is go bankrupt then pick an
empty mansion.

~~~
krapp
>It will be within their right to evacuate that person.

But that would require coercion, since that person doesn't want to leave.

~~~
oDot
I have clarified my original definition, that would be self defense, in the
same way that if someone tries to coerce a knife into your throat, you can
coerce their face to the pavement.

~~~
krapp
You can redefine terms any way you like, but coercion in response to coercion
is still coercion. That's not an "economy void of coercion", just one where
the monopoly on violence has been replaced by a free market of violence.

After all, if the person squatting on what you consider to be your property
doesn't recognize your claim of ownership, it would seem that you pose a
greater threat to them than they do to you, especially if you're trying to
remove them from the property when they're not presenting an immediate threat
of physical harm.

------
generalpass
Title is wrong. Should be:

Anatomists of Melancholy in the Age of Coronavirus

------
tgafpc2
"deadly despair that arises from the lack of a college degree" This is a joke
right?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I downvoted this comment, but I'll take the time to explain why I despise
comments like this, and why I think HN should remain an oasis without these
types of comments.

I see this everywhere on places like FB, Twitter and Reddit where people take
a single sentence or two and blatantly disregard its most obvious intended
meaning, instead focusing on the words alone, with no context. I'm assuming
you're imagining faces from the "first world problems" meme, crying that they
don't have a college degree. Where a simpler and more generous explanation
would be that people without a college degree have little hope of advancement
in much of the US, and are stuck in dead-end jobs just at the time these jobs
are becoming more precarious and lower paying, with a small health crisis all
that is needed to drive one into bankruptcy.

So I think we should interpret the most obvious intended meaning, "deadly
despair that arises from the lack of opportunity and stability from not having
a college degree", instead of making a lame non-joke joke.

~~~
WilliamEdward
Thanks for explaining and not just downvoting them. This is a serious
socioeconomic issue.

