• Lauchs@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      What? Wait… So when parents were burying most of their children back in the day and now don’t, that is somehow despite capitalism giving us the goods, services, hospitals, nurses, doctors, ample nutritional supplements etc?

      • _cnt0@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I remember a talk show where some Christian minister or priest thought he could attribute western advancement (political, social, science) to Christianity. Because, look at all those Muslim countries and how backwards they are. Which, of course, is complete nonsense. All social, political, and scientific progress in Europe (and by extension the world) was achieved against church resistance. If it was for the church, we would still live in monarchies, without electricity, and only pray for health. You’re making the same fallacy: here (west) good and we have capitalism, there bad and %something_else. So it must be thanks to capitalism. No. Capitalism is happy to exploit you in a dictatorship, theocracy, oligarchy, … Capitalism loves slavery. Capitalism loves monopolies to extract even more money (and by extension undervalued labor) from you. Capitalism loves poverty because it means cheap workforce. Capitalism doesn’t give a fuck if you are killed or maimed at a job if replacing you is cheaper than preventing accidents. Capitalism only serves the people with the capital. Everybody else gets fobbed off with peanuts and will happily be sacrificed to the machine if it makes a profit. Are we better off in a capitalist system than our ancestors three or four generations prior? Yes. Is that thanks to capitalism? No. It is despite capitalism and thanks to the restrictions we put on it. Restrictions which get continuously eroded.

      • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Hmmm…

        Life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped sharply in the last two years, to the point that now the average Cuban will live nearly three years more than the average American.

            • Sirsirsalot@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Covid was a global pandemic, but the USA was hit particularly hard by it due to a number of issues, most of them preventable.

              • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Seems to be people dying before age 50

                “Two years difference in life expectancy probably comes from the fact that firearms are so available in the United States,” Crimmins says. “There’s the opioid epidemic, which is clearly ours – that was our drug companies and other countries didn’t have that because those drugs were more controlled. Some of the difference comes from the fact that we are more likely to drive more miles. We have more cars,” and ultimately, more fatal crashes.