On 5/6/06, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps a straw in the wind: US class issues seem to be getting more media
> coverage these days, e.g.:
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/fashion/sundaystyles/07friendss.html>
>
> <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18995>
>
> The kicker is that life in the US is so vile and stress-filled now that even
> if you as an American have lots of money you can expect to have worse health
> than citizens of less backward societies:
>
> May 5, 2006
>
> Our Sick Society
>
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
> Is being an American bad for your health? That's the apparent implication of
> a study just published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
>
> It's not news that something is very wrong with the state of America's
> health. International comparisons show that the United States has achieved a
> sort of inverse miracle: we spend much more per person on health care than
> any other nation, yet we have lower life expectancy and higher infant
> mortality than Canada, Japan and most of Europe. ...
>
> The new study, "Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in
> England," doesn't resolve all of these questions. Yet it offers strong
> evidence that there's something about American society that makes us sicker
> than we should be.
>
> ... [T]he study concludes that "Americans are much sicker than the English."
> For example, middle-age Americans are twice as likely to suffer from
> diabetes as their English counterparts. That's a striking finding in itself.
>
> What's even more striking is that being American seems to damage your health
> regardless of your race and social class ... Americans are so much sicker
> that the richest third of Americans is in worse health than the poorest
> third of the English. ...
>
> [One possible explanation] ... is that Americans work too hard and
> experience too much stress. Full-time American workers work, on average,
> about 46 weeks per year; full-time British, French and German workers work
> only 41 weeks a year. ... Maybe overwork, together with the stress of living
> in an economy with a minimal social safety net, damages our health as well
> as our families....
>
> <http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/opinion/05krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman>
>
> Carl
>
>
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>
-- Jim Devine / "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." -- John Kenneth Galbraith.