(4) Two huge costs.

*Healthcare insurance more than four times what it cost in 2000.

A brutally expensive category that cries out for systemic policy changes.

*Apartment rents in the past 20 years up 135% compared with personal income up 77%.

*Number of rental units under $600/month: 7.2 million compared with 9.4 million in 2022.

*Median age of a first time home buyer is 36; in 1981, it was 29.

More corporate ownership of apartments and more higher income renters add to upward pressure on rents.

(5) The USA has leadership in many of the ways a person can die.

*Gun-related homicides are 22x those of European Union countries.

*Car crashes are 4x those of Germany.

*With 330 million population, it has 70,000 overdose deaths; European Union, with 440 million, has 5,800.

*An American is 2x as likely to die from a fire.

*The USA has 2x the deaths of those under 15 years of age.

There is something seriously wrong with American society and, inter alia, the total triumph of individualism over community, despite people giving loud lip service to the latter as a desired societal characteristic.

(6) People are more anxious.

*27% have relevant symptoms, more than triple that of five years ago.

An upward trend existed before the pandemic; there is also more recognition of symptoms.

*Adding to anxiety: sales of AR-15 guns exceeded 1.8 million in 2023; in 2006, the number was 400,000.

On average, every American has a gun; mass shootings continue. Legislative reform, and judicial support thereof, is needed. The majority, but the mere mention of NRA opposition makes cowards of politicians.

*Below a Bachelor’s degree, the impact of AI could be 50%; with a Bachelor’s, 30%.

AI is a relatively new addition to the list of anxiety producers. Estimates vary widely, but the anticipated job loss in certain categories from the impact of AI could be 25-50%.

*Gen Z is 28% in favor of either a democracy or a dictatorship. The Silent Generation is 98% pro-democracy.

*90% of young people are unlikely to join the military.

A transition toward wanting a strong leader (left or right) who will dictate to us seems evident.

*Coupled with anxiety is a “who cares” attitude. Only 70% of people respond to the conventional population survey, compared with 90% in 2014.

*In 1994, 6% had distaste for both political parties; the number is 27%.

Closely connected to the absence of any belief in control is stopping out of the political process.

*The health impact of loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and greater than the impact of six alcoholic drinks per day.

I failed to note how the researchers figured these data points out, but there is intuitive directional logic to their conclusions. Next they must calibrate the distinction between living alone and loneliness.

 

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(1) It starts with the family.

*1980: 77% of children lived with married parents; today, it is less than 60%. Some 25% of children live in a one-parent home; this is a higher percentage than any country with relevant data.

It is difficult to detect anything positive from these data.

*62% of white children living in poverty areas have fathers mostly present; 4% of black children are in a similar situation.

It is easy to claim racism and end the discussion; the broader view would talk about drug laws, housing regulations, highway construction, childcare and family formation.

(2) How do young people spend their time and the results thereof.

*54 minutes per day on TikTok, 49 on YouTube, 33 on Instagram, 31 on Facebook.

This seemingly ties to anxiety, to low readership, to disappointing educational outcomes.

*If not proficient in reading by grade three, six times less likely to finish high school. Approximately one-third of students up to and including high schoolers are proficient.

*In 2010, 37% of 6-17 year-olds read for pleasure; today the number is 28% (46% for 6-8 year-olds, 18% for 12-17 year-olds).

*White adults spend 0.29 hours per day reading, more than double that of blacks and Hispanics. 38% of white teenagers are constantly on-line; 54% of blacks, 55% of HIspanics.

It is hard to discern anything positive in these trends. (Ironically, a recent uptick in digital reading is attributed to TikTok.)

*ACT scores in 2022 were 19.5 out of 36, with declines in every section; this is a 30-year low.

All standardized tests produce a similar conclusion. P.S. K-12 attendance currently is down, test scores are as noted, yet GPAs are up. Coddling anyone?

*Of 100 college enrollees, 60 will graduate; 20 will be chronically underemployed.

*42% say college is worth it, 56% say no; a reversal from the 2017 response.

The data connect to a series of factors, beginning with the absurd cost of college and the attendant debt.

(3) Where do people get their news.

*TikTok is around 30% for those 18-29; 3% for those over 65.

*The number of newsroom employees, all categories, was down 57% in 2020 (versus 2004), probably worse today..

Instant news gratification is predominantly, shallow, non-nuanced.

 

 

In the January to June 2024 timeframe, I collected a series of data points from articles and op ed pieces published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Facts. Being in somewhat of a negative frame of mind these days, it is not surprising that the resulting observations matched my mood. The format for what will be a string of blogs is as follows: an overall heading pertinent to the connected data points, the data points, and an observation.

I would welcome an analogous set of data points that could be lumped under the heading of positive trends; sorry, the stock market rise does not count unless you are willing to deeply analyze its positives and negatives.

Not here, but in the ensuing blogs, there is an implicit (and unanswered) on-going question: which factors are foundational, which are consequences; how do you separate causation and correlation. You may properly ask how often is the country’s racial history embedded in the data point. If you eventually believe that change is necessary for any of the data point factors, you may ask where does the necessary motivation come from.

 

 

For a really long period, Green has looked down on Orange, kicking it out of town whenever it needed somebody to blame for whatever was troubling Green. Orange would move to wherever, only to find the seemingly nice Green neighbor down the road required little provocation, none actually, to become un-nice.

But time passed and it seemed that maybe things would be almost okay. Unfortunately, when Orange and Green thought they were about to collaborate on progress toward real peace, someone would intervene, aggressively, and Orange and Green would be forced to return to their respective tribes without any resolution.

Eventually, Orange had this idea that maybe it would be good to have a place that was basically all Orange in terms of governance structure. They got in the ear of some Green personnel who had experience in drawing lines on maps for different countries, all of them a great distance away from where the decision-makers were having tea.

It’s true of course, for Orange to have its own abode, the land would have to be removed from ownership by Green. Whatever. Orange’s long and deep sense of its own history identified the appropriate spot, and with the support of enough Greens to do the transaction, it was done.

Unsurprisingly, those within the overall Green universe who were similar in their taste for tea but otherwise unmoved by the case for an independent Orange, were somewhat irritated.

Over the years since the creation of a home for Orange, there have been a bunch of attempts to hold hands and sing “We are the World,” but history has repeated itself: somebody would fire away and then it was back to the “us vs. them” dilemma which has plagued civilization, especially Green and Orange. The latter had the better of it when it came to physical interaction, even adding to the geographical scope of Orange, ticking off Green even more.

It has not helped matters that some in the Green community have been open, even in their textbooks, in advocating for the complete elimination of Orange, a strategy previously attempted elsewhere at great cost and with mixed results.

So it is fair to describe the Green-Orange relationship as somewhat on the tense side.

Finally it happened: some extreme Greens decided to act out, in rather obscene fashion I might add, with Orange of course being the target. In response, Orange’s leadership flipped, figuratively repeating the famous movie line: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any longer.”

Orange went after Green big-time. In the eyes of some, ultimately they did not appear overly concerned with collateral damage if Green persisted in putting its bad guys, women and children in the same location that Orange wanted to erase.

Alas, it would appear that the wounds are now so deep, the identification of moral high ground so tenuous, the ability to remember atrocities so ingrained that it will be a very long time, if ever, before Green and Orange will be able to sit and have a conversation steeped in mutual trust and good tea.

P.S. At various points in the saga of Green and Orange, but not recently (she has passed away), a certain Ms. Henrietta Szold was involved.

She was an interesting blend: bright; multilingual; a traditionalist –in her mind, but not in actuality –as to the role of a woman; a pragmatist: able to size up situations as to what needed to be done and how to make it happen; a poor public speaker yet able to speak effectively to an audience of those interested in the direction she was proposing; a disappointed non-Mother: her one chance at marriage and abiding love, in her mind anyway, thwarted by a professor who in retrospect regarded her as only an intelligent friend, finding his happiness in the arms of a much younger female.

Szold’s adherence to one branch of Orange, albeit an extremely important one, led her to believe that the language unique to Orange should be required of all those in leadership positions. She was fearful of a slippery slope, that those who differed with her philosophy would ultimately lose the sense of what made them Orange.

If she were alive to comment on the current horror show between Green and Orange, she might say, with tears falling down her cheek, that her early dream of bi-nationalism was no longer even worth mentioning. And she would be rallying nurses, doctors, and anybody else who could provide help for those injured in the latest chapter of the Green-Orange relationship.