Playing Chicken with the Global Elite

The powers that be have determined the shutdown hurts you (evil white middle class America) more than it hurts them. Thus the increasingly partisan debate over shutdowns.

I wanted to argue there's a cost in mortality to such as the depression we're foisting on ourselves. But apparently it isn't that clear-cut. In 2009 researchers went looking for presumed increased mortality during the Great Depression (as I just did in finding them), but instead found that

 Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites. For most age groups, mortality tended to peak during years of strong economic expansion (such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936–1937). In contrast, the recessions of 1921, 1930–1933, and 1938 coincided with declines in mortality and gains in life expectancy. The only exception was suicide mortality which increased during the Great Depression, but accounted for less than 2% of deaths. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed a significant negative effect of economic expansions on health gains. The evolution of population health during the years 1920–1940 confirms the counterintuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions.

The last twenty years of economic expansion have been awful for white Americans generally and good for every one else. The White Death and declining white life expectancy alongside the growth in population (and malice) of non-whites have been its hallmarks.

Diversity's economic component is akin to a financialization scam, where clever bankers find some previously unmolested source of wealth--in this case the white middle class--and rationalize into existence some vehicle by which it is looted. Diversity and inclusion are as mortgage backed securities and junk bonds. They're also bubbles.

I still think it's probably naive to think a prolonged economic depression will be good for white America, considering the condition we're in approaching it and the fact we have no advocates, still. The increased mortality of the economic "good times" may simply be a result of so much more activity taking place; for one instance, there will be many more fatal accidents. Of course, there are certainly many more people working, and partying, themselves to death.

Nonetheless, while we should resist whatever "new normal" any bastard using the phrase intends for us, we should remember always--old normal was bad for us. And getting worse.

Hope rises.