This is misleading when you dig into the data. For starters every state and nation does not record deaths and causes of death consistently, so there's a lot of apples and oranges comparisons going on. Second, in the US depending on the state, any death within 90 days of giving birth is labeled as a pregnancy-related death. The person could be hit by a car, or die of a drug-overdose, and it would be still be identified as a pregnancy related death.
> any death within 90 days of giving birth is labeled as a pregnancy-related death. The person could be hit by a car, or die of a drug-overdose, and it would be still be identified as a pregnancy related death.
Citation needed.
*The CDC directly refutes this claim.
> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducts national surveillance to better understand the causes of pregnancy-related deaths. The Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System (PMSS) defines a pregnancy-related death as a death during or within 1 year of the end of pregnancy from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy. Medical epidemiologists review and analyze applicable vital records, and additional available data from all 50 states, New York City, and Washington, DC. Beginning in 2020, data from Puerto Rico are included, and in 2021, data from Northern Mariana Islands are included in PMSS.
All private companies do that. Ever heard of Virgin? It's Branson's MO. Create a company with a high public profile that's private. Hype it up and sell it based on the value of it's perception. Watch it go out of business years later or be sold to someone else buying it for the name/market share to pad their own numbers for their own reports. At the very least it ends up being good for a a tax write off by the new owner. This is how business works.
I'll do you one better. The Market Makers are Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street which are majority shareholders of 80% of the SP500. They control the price using swarms of HFT bots, most likely running Blackrock's Aladdin algo which they license. The largest shareholder of Blackrock, is Vanguard.
US debt to GDP ratio is >120%. By IMF definition that's an economic death spiral. The death spiral becomes irreversible by 2028 because by then the interest on the loans for all that money we've been printing for decades to prop up the fake economy will only cover the interest, no longer the principal, which will continue to accrue interest, meaning it can never be paid down and the US will be insolvent (cease to exist) by 2042. That road we've been kicking the can down for decades -- this is the end of it. Social Security will be insolvent in a decade. Medicare -- don't ask. Historically about this time 1 or all of 3 things happen: 1) Global Depression/Massive Austerity 2) World War 3) A new monetary system and all the things that go with that, most notably a new world order and loss of civil liberties and rights in exchange for security, housing, food (indentured servitude). The economy is quantifiably worse than it has ever been. Money in the economy is contracting (disappearing) at the highest rate in history (look up the M2 Real.) It just takes a while for the trickle of trickle down economics to make it all the way back to the spout. All those jobs they keep revising down after the fact turned out to be government jobs, so the only thing growing is actually the government, and the only economic growth is coming from fiscal (government) spending that has been slowly making it's way into the economy after years. It's pretty nuts. We're literally borrowing money from China to send to Ukraine and Gaza. Those illegal immigrants--I mean "refugees" are costing each taxpayer over $9,000 a year. Kids are born today owing the government over $100,000. Their kids, right now it'll be $250,000. Dark Age onset type stuff we're witnessing if you've ever read a book about how the Dark Ages (Bronze age, Fall of the Roman Empire) happened. You know that "This is Fine" meme. Yeah, that. Even Apple's growth rate is the slowest it's been in 5 years. Wall Street and Big Tech have been hoarding money and are pouring it all into the AI revolution so the robots can take over and restore order when the Technological Singularity happens by 2028 thanks to the billionaires Accelerationism plans. Good times if you like dystopian sci-fi movies. Next 20 years are going be a real hoot. I've always wanted a battle van. And thank Elon we'll finally have one that can be solar powered. Eat your heart out Mad Max. See you in the wasteland, cowboys.
Let's take it one sub-section at a time, starting with Part D:
The most insane "free give away" of younger tax-payer money, which the first decade of beneficiaries effectively contributed <10% of received benefit (prescription drug subsidization, but only if you're retired/disabled).
I am ALL FOR SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE SOLUTION — I dropped out of a US medical school over a decade ago (realizing the system then was broken, most-obvious-then with the passage of medical student / resident ~80hr/week MAX scheduling (ha ha ha)). Obamacare was doomed before it even passed, and I personally paid the IRS "fine" for the few years required.
Your wall of text is absolutely spot-on, breath-taking!, and yet I recommend to many to embellish their lives in facts, starting with the greatest book [1] on Modern US Retireeism's Upper Crust [certainly there are numerous more impoverished Boomers]; those that did from the "I got Mine!" Generation absolutely are detached from the reality of modern US Decline [opportunies aren't there, folks, for massive segments of population].
Some common examples I see in my part-time philanthropy work (medical focused, for underserved populations within US):
Rich, Well.Meaning Donor: "Yes, but I'd rather donate mother `internationally` because there is SO MUCH OPPORTUNITY FOR US CITIZENs to work and they `just aren't` working."
Donor coordinator (not wealhty; work is matching tax-writeoffs with approved local charities): "That is JUST NOT THE CASE, Friend [2]. I am happy to discuss the complexities of any of a variety of hindrances which keep the majority of Americans impoverished, renting, and unable to develop their own Generational Wealth — pick any topic"
Rich Phil./Legal Tax Avoider: "Why doesn't anybody want to be a non-traveling nurse anymore?!" [==contract nurses that rotate positions and are very. well. paid |VS| full-time staff nurse]
D.C: "Because working staff at a hospital doesn't pay very well, for all the emotional and physical BS that nurses have to deal with -- and the hospital gets gutted by some MBA/JD that works quickly to make each Fiscal Quarter more profitable, to the ultimate doom of the healthcare of patients and well-being of employees. By being short-term traveling contract, only, the MBA/JDs [at first] appear to be saving money [i.e. more shareholder value!] until ultimately the cost of mismanagement/lawsuits from overworked staff and misunderstood wards ends up destroying the entire healthcare system."
Rich Donor, less gratuitously: "???" "But USA has `best healthcare in the world!` ... `wait times` ... `yada` ..."
Me: "...if you can AFFORD IT."
----
[1] book "A Generation of Sociopaths" A+
[2] e.g: RAM (Rural Access Medical?) started out as an international charity started by a US Physician... who then realized that underserved/uninsured US Citizens oftentimes face 3rd-world-like health crisis, particularly in rural Appalachia (for just one 5M+ example!).
It's incredible the extent to which Gen X/Y/Millenials are not fighting back over being fleeced by Boomers. We’ve paid 12.4 percent of our earnings to Social Security the whole time we've worked — half taken through the “FICA” tax on our paycheck and half through the payroll tax. What is more, the Medicare tax at 3.1%.
In contrast, the Boomers entered the workforce in the late 1960s, paid only 6.5 percent of their earnings to Social Security and nothing to Medicare. For about half of their working years, the Boomers paid 10 percent or less to Social Security and less than 1.25 percent to Medicare. Only from 1990 on, when the Boomers had earned paychecks for a quarter‐ century, did they start paying 12.4 percent to Social Security and 2.9 percent to Medicare — the same percentage we Gen‑X/ Yers have paid our whole lives. Yet, Boomers are reaping the full rewards, rewards we will likely never see.
It's an absolute fucking joke and the final trick played by a generation that took solid foundation built on sweat and sacrifice, partied on them for 30 years, left their trash behind and sold what remained for parts. Every-time my conservative, gubmnt hating father lauds the wonders of Medicare and how wonderful his free healthcare is I want to kick him squarely in the balls.
Power has been consolidated. The things that could be done - protest (OWS), mild insurrection (Floyd protests), actual insurrection (Jan 6th), primary (AOC) - have been tried. It turns out that it's difficult to get anything done when the top 20% of us in terms of wealth are somewhere on the scale between "Zero backbone" and "Actively running interference for Boomers".
On the note of "selling": after certain Boomer family members were complaining about the cousin in NYC who won't renovate and get that sweet ABnBux cashflow from her brownstone, I pointed out that our family had let go of 8 figures worth of property in my lifetime (for about 6 figures in cash), and that they had no right to pin our landed gentry hopes on her. Like water off a duck's back; I don't even think they understood what I was trying to say, repeatedly misinterpreting, "It shouldn't be all on her," to mean, "We could swoop in and finance it if only she'd let us." No, I meant, "You squandered your portions of the pie Boomering around in the 90s and early 2000s; leave her be."
Both of my best local friends are Boomers [technically; I am literally half the elder's age]. One of them literally says to me, fairly recently "there is no scientific evidence of global climate change being caused by humans." [1] He allows no further discussion/exploration [guilt much?].
My other older friend at least will read technical information on specific subjects; but his wife poopoos and moral inquisition on "fairness" (a bad word in Her house).
[1] youtube.com/watch?v=mK5TbGvvluk - a 4:49s clip by ClimateTown (Rollie Williams) citing every oil, insurance, and national agency which refutes this (spoiler alert: it's ALL OF THEM accepting global warming).
I go through this every time I have to ask for a refund and tell a business I just want a refund so we can part ways instead of filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and with the FTC.
This. Salesforce, is a great example of this. I can't tell you the number of companies that exist just building a simple application that does the one thing customers bought these bloated app suites to do that they liked and became burdened with the developers ecosystem or constant enhancements they make just to justify their dev teams existence. Adobe and Microsoft are also notorious for this, as well as just about every cloud company.
Been dealing with this since my 40s. And good luck hiding it on your resume, most application forms these days require dates and even addresses. I am also discriminated against based on location. Some companies won't even interview you unless you are local, even for remote jobs, even if you're willing to relocate.
Yes, but be careful. If you have an interview and the offer comes too easily, due to internal referral or whatever, it should raise a red flag. You may be stepping into a big pile of crap (based on personal experience where this happened a couple of times.)
I don’t remember filling in an allocation for google, where I have my current job. Maybe it came after the offer? I don’t think applications are very common in tech anymore, you just get an interview set up with a recruiter and the paper work only comes if they want to hire you.
On this note, the invention of the printing press led to The Reformation with the first printing of the Bible, which up until that point had been duplicated by monks by hand, and The Word controlled and interpreted by the Church, who wielded their power like modern governments and institutions deciding what is or is not mis- or disinformation.
