
For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests - tshannon
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/08/794568118/raising-the-minimum-wage-by-1-may-prevent-thousands-of-suicides-study-shows
======
gremlinsinc
I wonder what would happen to the suicide rate with medicare for all, and
creating a max-wage that is (avg of contractors + employees * 150), or
something similar, w/ additional 'bonus' multipliers for increasing # of U.S.
hired.

UBI would also probably help. As a freelancer I've had some really slim months
and depression hits hard when money is tight.

There's a very direct correlation between income security, insecurity, stress,
depression, and suicidal thoughts.

~~~
emptybits
Re/ medicare for all ... Canada has universal health care yet a very similar
suicide rate to the USA.[1] Canada doesn't have a livable minimum wage either.
Each province sets its own. There is talk of UBI experiments.

[1] [https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-
can...](https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-vs-canada-
suicide-edition.html)

~~~
14
I really hope we do not get a UBI in any current forms. I know the second the
stores realize that every person now has 'x' amount of dollars to spend, they
will raise the prices to match the most they can extract. What I wish Canada
would do instead is establish some sort of Universal Basic Rights like every
man woman and child is entitled to 5lbs of potatoes a week, 1 gallon of milk,
1 pound of carrots, ect. I as a Canadian do not want a check every week, the
next day I can be told my cost of living has gone up. I want to know I can eat
and shelter myself at the end of the day. How we can do that I do not know and
am thankful I am in a good financial position to not have to worry about it.

~~~
dmwallin
> I know the second the stores realize that every person now has 'x' amount of
> dollars to spend, they will raise the prices to match the most they can
> extract.

That's not how economics works. The prices most stores charge is limited by
competition. The only areas you might see an effect are in ones where supply
is highly, and likely artificially, constrained.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Housing is artificially constrained due to zoning regulation, and in any given
area there is a small number of major landlords, who all know each other and
who all are politically well connected. UBI will be a conduit to funnel money
from the taxpayers to large landowners.

~~~
mrfusion
However with ubi more people might have the means to move out of the cities
sooner than they otherwise would have. This reducing demand.

~~~
mymythisisthis
I think this is why people want 'less government'. What they really mean is
there are too many governments, the basic three levels, plus other
institutions like home owners associations. Moving means dealing with a whole
different bureaucracy, and falling to the bottom of a new list.

------
0000011111
I see income inequality as a key issue here. I recently read the "Triumph of
injustice" and came away with a changed view in our tax system. After reading
the book, I now believe that any household with a net worth over $100 million
should be subject to both an income and __capital gains __tax of 99%. In short
folks with income come and or net worth at levels that surpass their ability
to buy a life of finical security for several generations only increase income
inequality.

High historically high levels of income inequality have torn countries apart.

[https://wwnorton.com/books/the-triumph-of-
injustice](https://wwnorton.com/books/the-triumph-of-injustice)

~~~
tunesmith
That's interesting because... right now we have a system that examines income
and taxes income.

The "wealth tax" is a system that examines wealth and taxes wealth (not
income). It's theorized that it's unconstitutional, and even if it isn't, the
conservative US court might cause it problems anyway.

But if instead you examine wealth and tax _income_ , maybe that gets around
the issue. Higher income tax brackets for those with more wealth?

~~~
sp332
-

~~~
cjlars
Seeing as wealth is rarely in the form of cash, and you need to pay taxes in
cash. You would need to sell the wealth, creating income, which in turn is
used to pay the taxes. So it seems right.

------
ngngngng
I was reading the other day that typically mass shootings happen during a
recession, and right now is a confusing time because the economy is supposedly
doing fantastic, yet we keep having mass shootings.

Could this have to do with the mounting inequality? It seems the standard
indicators for the health of the economy are breaking because wealth just
keeps pooling near the top. So what this study could be saying is, "make
changes so that more people get the benefits of the booming economy."

~~~
opportune
My suspicion is yes. Doesn’t much matter if mean economic indicators are
trending up while the majority of people are becoming worse-off.

I also think social media/internet is to blame for this though, because it
makes the realities of economic inequality much more real than just
tangentially hearing about celebrities in rags and trashtv.

------
mc32
Alternatively stop exporting jobs and outsourcing joining a race to the
bottom.

Stop buying cheap, disposable stuff and buy durable things affording locals a
living wage. Minimum wages are only slightly better. In my mind minimum wages
are wages to minimally support a teenager or similar who has no other
responsibilities. People with responsibilities need actually decent jobs.

Hollowing our decent paying blue collar jobs will drive some people to
despair.

~~~
linuxftw
You mean domestic policies have been negatively impacting the labor force for
decades now? Get outta town! It's almost like low-to-no tariffs and importing
literal slave-produced goods has created economic incentives to produce things
overseas.

~~~
mc32
I agree with Bernie and Trump on protecting American workers. Everyone else
just goes along with the siren song of more better value add jobs that never
materialized for the affected population.

No one listened to the crazy Texan when he warned us.

Now their supposed to be happy having access to $5 T-shirts which last a week
and should be mad that tariffs could push that up but could make s better
paying job viable for an employer who no longer gets undersold.

~~~
Consultant32452
It worked out great for the rich, which is exactly who was telling us about
the Siren song. So in a very toxic way they weren't lying, they just weren't
talking about (the metaphorical) you.

If you haven't seen it, you might appreciate this article by Eric Weinstein.
It details explicitly how the NSF went about betraying us.
[https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-
gove...](https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-
universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-
workers)

------
crooked-v
As the old saying goes: Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a jet ski.
And you never see an unhappy person riding a jet ski.

~~~
blowski
That's rubbish. A lot of rich people suffer from depression, to the point of
suicide.

~~~
crooked-v
Beyond the surface-level pithiness of the joke, the point is that having money
may not guarantee happiness, but it makes it a lot easier to distract oneself
with viscerally pleasant experiences and engage in new hobbies that may in
fact lead to genuine happiness.

~~~
mc32
Hmmm. Bourdain, Robin Williams. I don’t think you can distract yourself from
depression.

~~~
dunstad
Robin Williams actually had a degenerative brain disease. I know a lot of the
news didn't wait long enough for that information about his situation to come
out, but it's on Wikipedia.

------
xupybd
New Zealand has a high minimum wage
[https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW](https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW)

New Zealand also has a terrible youth suicide rate.
[http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/health/suicide.html](http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/health/suicide.html)
"New Zealand’s youth (15–24 years) suicide rate was the highest among the 34
OECD countries, ahead of Finland for males and Korea for females."

------
earlINmeyerkeg
Aren't there studies that show the suicide rate among married men is
drastically lower than unmarried men? I really don't think it has anything to
do with income (or at least to a significant degree) than it does with
loneliness. Men's self worth is tied to his friends and wealth. It's hard to
share your wealth if everybody else makes the same as you. So making more poor
people "less poor" still wouldn't solve the problem among men not acquiring
prestige or status that attracts people to them. It makes it incredibly easy
to feel like a loser and ponder "whats the point?"

------
droithomme
[https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-
wage/2018/home.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-
wage/2018/home.htm)

In the US, 434,000 make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Another
1.3 million make wages _below_ the federal minimum.

The article mentions raising the minimum wage by 10%, or 73 cents an hour,
which would save 1230 lives per year (plus a 10% increase in federal EITC as
well). Assuming a 2000 hr work year, this increase in minimum wage would cost
$633.64 million nationally for those making exactly minimum wage, and some
larger value at least 3x that, if we also bring those 1.3 million making below
minimum wage up to minimum wage + 10%. (It's unclear who is making below
minimum wage, it might be family farmworkers? $2.13/hr service employees who
aren't getting tips? Students exempt from the minimum wage? All of the above?)
In any case the cost per life saved using this method at a minimum comes to
$1,745,921, but probably around twice that. That might be a good value. Or it
might be that there are other methods of saving those lives that would be more
effective at lower cost, allowing even more lives to be saved.

------
4AoZqrH2fsk5UB
Something I think gets lost in discussions about mental health is that
sometimes people’s lives are just really really shitty.

It doesn’t take a genetic predisposition to get to a dark place when your life
is falling apart.

------
MuffinFlavored
What would increased minimum wage due to small business (<$50m/yr in revenue)?
Wouldn't it force them to cut shifts/hours/consolidate positions?

~~~
Pfhreak
Or raise prices, or accept less pay at the top.

~~~
earlINmeyerkeg
>accept less pay at the top.

For a second there I thought you we're being serious!

------
djohnston
money won't make you happy, but being poor will make you miserable, especially
in the US

~~~
criddell
It seems like you need to be pretty damned sure before you try this. If they
were to raise the minimum wage and suicides don't drop, do you put the minimum
wage back where it was?

------
jessant
What about people who lose their jobs or don't get hired in the first place?

------
m0zg
Doesn't seem plausible, _especially_ when unemployment is high.

Retail is the land of the minimum wage jobs, and margins are fairly thin there
as it is. Raising the minimum wage simply means some employees become former
employees. If the unemployment is at historic lows as it is today, there's a
good chance those former employees will be able to find another job, so I see
how the conclusion of the paper could be plausible, although loss of a job is
still a very stressful event regardless.

When the unemployment rate is high (as it was in the studied date range),
however, the effective wage becomes whatever unemployment pays, which isn't
very much, and then it goes away entirely at some point. I don't see how this
would reduce suicide.

Seems to me like another study crafted to produce the outcome the author
wanted. The hypothesis isn't really testable anyway.

------
rkho
I'd also like to see the inclusion of compulsory personal finance and
budgeting education in our education system, both during high school and
college/university years. A lot of the stress that encompassed my life back
when I was working in a retail environment came from worrying over bills which
ballooned because of my own lack of budgeting. It's an important skill that
everyone should be exposed to early on.

------
jotm
> Kaufman is planning future work to see whether depression, a risk factor for
> suicide, also decreases with wage hikes

It doesn't. A good working environment does. £1/hr more is nothing if you're
on minimum wage working for Amazon Fulfillment or Facebook Moderation, being
treated like a slave.

Source: totally unscientific experience with factory work and workers.

------
987831973fkeji
Eh, I might kill myself in a year or two - more money would not change
anything. The recent realization that I will never find a romantic partner
despite being (relatively) rich, tall, good looking, sociable and sane has
been crushing. At least if I had money problems I'd have something else to
blame than myself.

------
clSTophEjUdRanu
Isn't it obvious that most of America's problems stem from life being shitty
for very many people?

~~~
Clubber
Yes, but the specifics are important. It's different for different people.
Perverted justice system, news hysteria, jobs that are either awful or great,
bad medical system, seems like every institution trying to rob you, war
culture, political corruption from all sides, corporate dominance, civil
forfeiture, bad public schools, expensive college, government encroachment on
basic liberties, mob mentality laws, decades of the above; that's just off the
top of my head. It's amazing we aren't worse off.

------
notadoc
Not too surprising. Suicide is a death of despair, which are closely linked to
job loss, income loss, love loss, family loss, pain, etc. Easing any of those
scenarios should help reduce suicide.

------
burmer
Obligatory Mitchell and Webb:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg)

------
ctdonath
Minimum wage: if you can't produce $X/hr in value, you're prohibited from
producing at all.

I suspect raising that cutoff would _increase_ suicides.

~~~
sir_kin
Real world data disagrees with your suspicion. Might want to rethink your
reasoning.

~~~
ctdonath
Point me to the data. Those who get higher wages may be happier, but those
unemployed due to their work being ended for want of value would
understandably despair. Seems like data easily shifted for sociopolitical
benefit.

------
totaldude87
wow, how about..

1) NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family 2) Free healthcare 3) Not so crazy
tution fees

all these are doable.. just like raising minimum wage..

~~~
earlINmeyerkeg
>NO taxes till $40k-50k for a family

You're talking about quite literally like 80% of the entire tax revenue
generated by the government. Income taxes we're devised because an industrial
nation cannot collect property taxes on non land owning tax payers. As the
cities grew, governments realized that they could only tax the wealthy and
prominent land owners so much before they had to generate it in another way.

~~~
harryh
_You 're talking about quite literally like 80% of the entire tax revenue
generated by the government. _

This is wrong.

$50k/yr is below median household income so we're talking about eliminating
income taxes for the bottom half of taxpayers (less than that actually, but
whatever). The bottom half pays roughly 3% of income taxes.

Now, that number gets somewhat bigger when you take into account payroll taxes
but it's nowhere close to 80%.

------
LatteLazy
Correlation isn't causation.

Its actively harmful to pretend it is because it diverts from real research
and actual solutions and

------
HomeDeLaPot
Does the effect last, or is it a short-term windfall effect?

------
cartercole
The minimum wage should be 0 \- sincerely any good economist

~~~
tombert
That's a common trope, but there have been studies indicating that minimum
wage doesn't have a significant effect on unemployment. [0] [1]

Assuming that's accurate, then shouldn't we mandate that these corporations
pay their workers a livable wage? If they _don 't_ pay the workers a livable
wage, guess who does? The taxpayers, in the form of food stamps, welfare, and
increased prison population. I really don't see why the American public should
be forced to subsidize Walmart (or any large megacorporation) just because
they won't pay their employees enough.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#cite_note-104](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#cite_note-104)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#cite_note-105](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#cite_note-105)

EDIT: Before anyone says it, I know forcing Walmart to pay more to their
workers would increase the prices of their goods; that's still almost
certainly cheaper than increasing welfare.

~~~
kangnkodos
Economists can't run experiments like other scientists. In a way, they are
more like historians.

In my opinion, almost all of the actual past raises to minimum wage have been
on the small side, and have not significantly affected unemployment. You're
right about that.

But if my opinion is true, then there's a huge leap with no scientific basis
to saying "therefore this specific large increase in minimum wage will not
raise unemployment."

Unfortunately, there aren't any scientific studies of increasing the US
minimum wage by 100% because it has not been done multiple times in the past.
So no one really knows what would happen if we did it now.

~~~
kick
Economists _aren 't_ scientists, which is important to remember. "Artists" is
a better term, especially for the fellows at GMU.

------
vmchale
infinite minimum wage = zero suicide

------
theredbox
I always thought about more of a hybrid model for the US. Something like a
market socialism a la Singapore.

I would try to commoditize housing,healthcare and food. It would be essential
to make sure that these fundamental needs of people working for minimum wage
are take care of.

------
aaron695
This is dumb.

We know sucides and death goes down the more money you get up to at least
$120,000.

They don't seem to have quantified anything?

What's the cost per life saved here?

------
alecco
Raising minimum wage will push automation even further, making currently
productive people switch to be welfare-dependent. Financed by taxes on the
tech industry. This is a recipe for dystopia.

~~~
dlp211
You have provided, and I'm not aware of any empirical evidence that this is
true. There is also plenty of evidence to the contrary, see min wage increases
in individual states, Australia, and NZ.

------
degenerate
Does anyone have access to the paper? Raising the minimum wage means less jobs
will be available, as employers cut costs and perform layoffs. My assumption
is the paper neglects to factors this into their analysis, but if they do, I'd
love to read it.

edit: paper shared below!

~~~
tempsy
please read any study on cities that have substantially raised min wage in
recent years (like Seattle) and understand how wrong you are about there being
"fewer jobs" as a result before making such ridiculous statements

~~~
inanutshellus
Seattle's raising of the minimum wage was arguably symbolic.

Seattle--a world-class tech nexus point--raising its minimum wage affected a
relatively small percent of businesses compared to a "normal" city, as
businesses in Seattle would have long since needed to offer higher wages in
order to keep employees.

I'd be much more interested in seeing the effects of a $15 wage in
Nowheresville, USA than in Seattle.

~~~
wyre
Symbolic for maybe people that are making above minimum wage but an increase
in minimum wage to $15 made so many people lives easier.

~~~
inanutshellus
Well, that's both the point and missing the point. Seattle's higher minimum
wage represented an already-existing reality in Seattle: their top-heavy
economy.

"Normal" towns' leaders would recognize it as virtue-signaling rather than
transformative change, because it would've affected proportionally few people.

------
theredbox
Well America has a difficult problem to solve. And that is its workforce is
insanely expensive. Or lets say the rest of the world is insanely poor
compared to the americans.

We often joked here in Eastern Europe that we would be better off leaving our
current IT jobs and just go to the US to work at McDonalds.

------
ComputerGuru
I’m all for fair pay, even if it means things (products or services) become
more expensive. But therein is the problem: If the minimum wage is ten dollars
an hour and you’re making twelve dollars an hour, that’s very different from
minimum wage being twelve dollars and you’re making twelve dollars. Raising
the minimum doesn’t just give minimum wage earners more money, it
simultaneously devalues the money they receive. Does it devalue it at a rate
proportionate to how much more they now make (on paper)? I don’t know. We
almost certainly have to increase it (x+n)% to realize a benefit that on paper
would come from an x% increase alone.

Globalization and protectionism also play a role here, and are a critical
factor in the answer (think global minimum wage vs local minimum wage).

~~~
LeifCarrotson
It does not devalue it if they're sharing demand for those products with
people who make $50 an hour and a select few who make $1000 an hour - assuming
those incomes don't go up proportional to the increase in minimum wage.

~~~
ComputerGuru
No, it definitely does. I’m not talking about the old “everyone’s income will
just go up” defense. There is a “time added” cost that is a part of the price
of any good or service (which may comprise only a part of the value added
measure). Imagine a product that is created from raw materials so abundant as
to be in and of themselves worthless. Its cost is purely the cost of the time
(and effort, which is actually convertible into time) that went into it
(amortizing the cost of tools and equipment, overhead, utilities, etc). This
“time cost” is a component of any product or service for sale. If the wheel on
your car used the same exact materials and the same exact manufacturing
process but took ten times longer (just stretch every step out) it would cost
more, and not only because they can make less of them.

This time cost cannot be less than a factor directly proportionate to minimum
wage (local minimum wage or global minimum wage depending on economic policy).

In a sense, minimum wage is the cost of (human) time itself. You’re saying
“regardless of the labor involved or otherwise, the skill involved or
otherwise, the care involved or otherwise, the social skills involved or
otherwise, the know-how involved or otherwise, this is the lowest you can pay
someone to do something on an hourly basis (with many caveats, such as
allowing employers to deduct the cost of services they provide their employees
from said wage, etc). You can’t raise that cost without the cost of everything
else shifting upwards _by some extent_ with it. No one that understand
economics debates that. The question is just how big this shift is.

~~~
lsiebert
I think that ignores, in a holistic sense, the effect of increased consumer
spending, health benefits/better health outcomes, tax revenue etc.

If people are buying more because of wage increases, what is the macroeconomic
effect? If people have better health care and take less sick days, what is the
effect? If the government has more revenue to spend on programs to benefit
people like public transit, job training, drug treatment, what is the effect?

Also worth it to a look at this paper, that shows that there aren't less jobs
when you raise minimum wage.

[https://www.sole-jole.org/17722.pdf](https://www.sole-jole.org/17722.pdf)

Also CEO income (an exec compensation in general) has risen dramatically over
the past 20 years while regular wage growth has been anemic. Are CEOs
dramatically more productive, and workers barely so? That seems illogical,
much more likely that the executives are capturing the value of their workers
increased productivity. A company doesn't have to raise costs to consumers, it
can always cut executive compensation.

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/8/16/17693198/c...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/8/16/17693198/ceo-pay-gap-income-inequality)

~~~
syockit
If people are buying more then it means more demand, leading to increased
price, unless there was an excess in supply (production capacity) in the first
place.

------
codingslave
Really doubt this. Instead I would look into the connection between anti
depressants/anti psychotics and suicide. There's research of strong
connections, but immunity is claimed by the drug companies, "because they were
already depressed/mentally unhealthy when put on the drugs". Mental health
professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail
for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs.

The next big culprit is other drug addiction, like fentanyl and heroin.
Stemming the flow of cheap fentanyl dumped into the United States by China and
throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for
people.

~~~
seibelj
SSRIs saved my life, I don't like such wild claims. Don't be afraid of
psychiatric drugs if you are hurting.

~~~
samatman
These things are not mutually exclusive:

> _studies showed that children and adolescents taking antidepressants were
> almost twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts or to attempt suicide,
> compared to patients taking a sugar pill._

[http://www.center4research.org/antidepressants-increase-
suic...](http://www.center4research.org/antidepressants-increase-suicide-
attempts-risks/)

~~~
filoleg
Not arguing either way, as I don't think I am knowledgeable enough on the
subject to do so, but I feel like there is a lot of potential to confuse
correlation and causation. It simply could just be that "children and
adolescents taking antidepressants" are already in a high risk group that is 3
times as likely "to have suicidal thoughts or to attempt suicide", and
antidepressants reduce that number to "twice as likely".

~~~
codingslave
Right and this is where plausible deniability comes in from the point of view
of the pharmaceutical companies. Drug studies are problematic because nothing
happens in a vacuum.

