
Who Killed the Knapp Family (Poverty in America) - jgon
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/sunday/deaths-despair-poverty.html
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NPMaxwell
Summary: 1970's small town rural Oregon. Father, pipe fitter, bought home &
cars. Five kids. Jobs left in '90's. 4 kids now dead (before age 70), as are
25% of the kids they rode the bus with. Causes: suicide, accidents, OD, renal
failure. "... in Yamhill [OR], Clayton Green, a brilliant mechanic ... died
last January, leaving five grandchildren — and all have been removed from
their parents by the state for their protection."

"several counties in the United States have life expectancies shorter than
those in Cambodia or Bangladesh ... when you can predict wretched outcomes
based on the ZIP code where a child is born, the problem is not bad choices
the infant is making."

Why? "First, well-paying jobs disappeared, partly because of technology and
globalization but also because of political pressure on unions ... Second,
there was an explosion of drugs ... aggravated by ... marketing of
prescription painkillers by pharmaceutical companies. Third, the war on drugs
sent fathers and mothers to jail ..."

Hope: "Job training and retraining give people dignity as well as an economic
lifeline ... For instance, autoworkers were laid off during the 2008-9
economic crisis both in Detroit and ... Windsor, Ontario. ... The United
States ... extended unemployment benefits. Canada emphasized job retraining
... and Canadian workers also did not have to worry about losing health
insurance. Canada’s approach succeeded." Resumed-ed education & addictions
treatment may help too

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NPMaxwell
It is an important data science philosophy claim that, if a person's outcome
can be predicted without accounting for the person's actions (e.g., before the
person is born), then causation appears to exist somewhere other than in the
person's actions.

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woodandsteel
Yes, but it might be that the external causality is influencing the person's
behavior which in turn effects the outcome.

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bsanr2
Upvoting because I'm interested, but I can't see the article due to the
paywall.

