Tomgram: Rajan Menon, The Death(s) of the Working Class in the Age of Trump
Posted by Rajan Menon at June 18, 2019
In early October 2016, as the most staggering presidential election campaign of our lives was nearing its end, I wrote
this about the man whom, I suggested, heartland working-class whites
might consider dispatching to the White House as an American version of a
“suicide bomber”:
“In relation to his Republican rivals, and now Hillary Clinton, he stands alone in accepting and highlighting what increasing numbers of Americans, especially white Americans, have evidently come to feel: that this country is in decline, its greatness a thing of the past, or as pollsters like to put it, that America is no longer ‘heading in the right direction’ but is now ‘on the wrong track.’ In this way, he has mainlined into a deep, economically induced mindset, especially among white working-class men facing a situation in which so many good jobs have headed elsewhere that the world has turned sour.
“Or think of it another way (and it may be the newest way of all): a significant part of the white working class, at least, feels as if, whether economically or psychologically, its back is up against the wall and there’s nowhere left to go. Under such circumstances, many of these voters have evidently decided that they’re ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House; they’re willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them.”
And I wouldn’t take back a word of that, not in a country in which
you can indeed feel a sense of decline still growing, in which, as TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon has recently made clear, epidemics of self-disrespect, self-loathing, and self-harm are distinctly the order of the day.
And speaking, in fact, of suicide and presidents, as Menon makes
strikingly evident today, in that very same heartland, among that very
same white working class, suicide itself is rising to epidemic
proportions and the suicide bomber in the White House is giving it quite
a helping hand. Tom
America’s Suicide Epidemic
It’s Hitting Trump’s Base Hard
By Rajan Menon
We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade die by their own hand. Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That’s odd given the magnitude of the problem.
In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves. In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly seven times greater than the number of American soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.
A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes.
What’s more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted
deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been
increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim
two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides, even though the murder rate gets so much more attention.
In other words, we’re talking about a national epidemic of self-inflicted deaths.
Worrisome Numbers
Anyone who has lost a close relative or friend to suicide or has
worked on a suicide hotline (as I have) knows that statistics transform
the individual, the personal, and indeed the mysterious aspects of that
violent act -- Why this person? Why now? Why in this manner? -- into
depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how serious the suicide
epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.
According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study,
between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the
union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate. In 30
states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third.
Nationally, it increased 33%. In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).
Alas, the news only gets grimmer.
Since 2008,
suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For
Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second;
for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally, it ranks 27th.
More importantly, the trend in the United States doesn’t align with
what’s happening elsewhere in the developed world. The World Health
Organization, for instance, reports that Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the U.S., as do all but six countries in the European Union. (Japan’s is only slightly lower.)
World Bank statistics show that, worldwide, the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016. It’s been falling in China, Japan (where it has declined steadily for nearly a decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most of Europe, and even countries like South Korea and Russia
that have a significantly higher suicide rate than the United States.
In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26% from a high point of 42 per 100,000 in 1994 to 31 in 2019.
We know a fair amount about the patterns
of suicide in the United States. In 2017, the rate was highest for men
between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per 100,000) and those 75 and older
(39.7 per 100,000).
The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most
urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire,
and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher
percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country.
There are gender-based
differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was
substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times
higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half
times in the last.
Education
is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with
college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by
comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend
to be lower among people in higher-income brackets.
The Economics of Stress
This surge in the suicide rate has taken place in years during which
the working class has experienced greater economic hardship and
psychological stress. Increased competition from abroad and
outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job loss,
particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining
that had long been mainstays of employment for such workers. The jobs
still available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.
Technological change, including computerization, robotics, and the
coming of artificial intelligence, has similarly begun to displace labor
in significant ways, leaving Americans without college degrees,
especially those 50 and older, in far more difficult straits when it comes to finding new jobs that pay well. The lack of anything resembling an industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe
has made these dislocations even more painful for American workers,
while a sharp decline in private-sector union membership -- down from nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today -- has reduced their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.
Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged over the last four decades (even as CEO salaries have soared). And a decline in worker productivity doesn’t explain it: between 1973 and 2017 productivity increased by 77%, while a worker’s average hourly wage only rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it harder for working-class Americans to get by, let alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.
The gap in earnings between those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased -- a lot. Since 1979, the wages
of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by a pitiful 1.2%. Those
in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of 6%. By
contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by 34.3% and those near
the peak of the wage pyramid -- the top 1% and especially the rarefied
0.1% -- made far more substantial gains.
And mind you, we’re just talking about wages, not other forms of
income like large stock dividends, expensive homes, or eyepopping
inheritances. The share of net national wealth held by the richest 0.1%
increased
from 10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016. By contrast, the share of the
bottom 90% shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%. As for
the top 1%, by 2016 its share had increased to almost 39%.
The precise relationship between economic inequality and suicide
rates remains unclear, and suicide certainly can’t simply be reduced to
wealth disparities or financial stress. Still, strikingly, in contrast
to the United States, suicide rates are noticeably lower and have been
declining in Western European countries
where income inequalities are far less pronounced, publicly funded
healthcare is regarded as a right (not demonized as a pathway to
serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive, and apprenticeships and worker retraining programs more widespread.
Evidence from the United States, Brazil, Japan, and Sweden
does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide
rate. If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies --
should Democrats ever retake the White House and the Senate -- could
make a positive difference. A study
based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply
boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10%
appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college
degrees.
The Race Enigma
One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have
fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African
Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher.
It increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in
2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per
100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000. Black men are 10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.
The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with
only a high school diploma highlights suicide’s disproportionate effect
on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts
for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus
Deaton have labeled “deaths of despair” -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses
and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it’s hard to offer a
complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects
do appear to matter.
According to a study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve,
the white working class accounted for 45% of all income earned in the
United States in 1990, but only 27% in 2016. In those same years, its
share of national wealth plummeted, from 45% to 22%. And as
inflation-adjusted wages have decreased for men without college degrees, many white workers seem to have lost hope
of success of any sort. Paradoxically, the sense of failure and the
accompanying stress may be greater for white workers precisely because
they traditionally were much better off economically than their African American and Hispanic counterparts.
In addition, the fraying of communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has increased social isolation among them, and the evidence that it -- along with opioid addiction and alcohol abuse -- increases the risk of suicide is strong. On top of that, a significantly higher proportion of whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun ownership is more widespread.
Trump’s Faux Populism
The large increase in suicide within the white working class began a
couple of decades before Donald Trump’s election. Still, it’s reasonable
to ask what he’s tried to do about it, particularly since votes from
these Americans helped propel him to the White House. In 2016, he
received 64% of the votes of whites without college degrees; Hillary Clinton, only 28%. Nationwide, he beat Clinton in counties where deaths of despair rose significantly between 2000 and 2015.
White workers will remain crucial to Trump’s chances of winning in
2020. Yet while he has spoken about, and initiated steps aimed at
reducing, the high suicide rate among veterans,
his speeches and tweets have never highlighted the national suicide
epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers. More importantly, to
the extent that economic despair contributes to their high suicide
rate, his policies will only make matters worse.
The real benefits from the December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
championed by the president and congressional Republicans flowed to
those on the top steps of the economic ladder. By 2027, when the Act’s
provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans are expected to have
captured 81.8%
of the gains. And that’s not counting the windfall they received from
recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and the GOP doubled
the annual amount exempt from estate taxes -- wealth bequeathed to
heirs -- through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual to $11.2 million
(or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this act of
generosity? Not workers, that’s for sure, but every household with an
estate worth $22 million or more will.
As for job retraining provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president proposed
cutting that program by 40% in his 2019 budget, later settling for
keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the cards as long as
Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget Office projects that his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget deficits in the years to come. (The shortfall last year was $779 billion
and it is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2020.) Inevitably, the
president and congressional Republicans will then demand additional
reductions in spending for social programs.
This is all the more likely because Trump and those Republicans also slashed corporate taxes from 35% to 21% -- an estimated $1.4 trillion in savings for corporations over the next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has no end date.
The president assured his base that the big bucks those companies had
stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce a wave of job
creation -- all without adding to the deficit. As it happens, however,
most of that repatriated cash has been used for corporate stock
buy-backs, which totaled more than $800 billion
last year. That, in turn, boosted share prices, but didn’t exactly
rain money down on workers. No surprise, of course, since the wealthiest
10% of Americans own at least 84% of all stocks and the bottom 60% have less than 2% of them.
And the president’s corporate tax cut hasn’t produced the tsunami of
job-generating investments he predicted either. Indeed, in its
aftermath, more than 80%
of American companies stated that their plans for investment and hiring
hadn’t changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs has proven unremarkable
compared to President Obama’s second term, when the economic recovery
that Trump largely inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018 (though not 3.1%
as the president claimed). There wasn’t, however, any “unprecedented
economic boom -- a boom that has rarely been seen before” as he insisted
in this year’s State of the Union Address.
Anyway, what matters for workers struggling to get by is growth in
real wages, and there’s nothing to celebrate on that front: between 2017
and mid-2018 they actually declined
by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for African Americans, while they
rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%. And though Trump insists that his
beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers, they will actually
raise the prices of goods, hurting the working class and other
low-income Americans the most.
Then there are the obstacles those susceptible to suicide face in
receiving insurance-provided mental-health care. If you’re a white
worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a deductible and
co-payments that are high and your income, while low, is too high to
qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven’t done anything for you.
Never mind the president’s tweet proclaiming that “the Republican Party Will Become ‘The Party of Healthcare!’”
Let me amend that: actually, they have done something. It’s just not what you’d call helpful. The percentage of uninsured adults, which fell from 18% in 2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to Obamacare, had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.
The bottom line? On a problem that literally has life-and-death
significance for a pivotal portion of his base, Trump has been AWOL. In
fact, to the extent that economic strain contributes to the alarming
suicide rate among white workers, his policies are only likely to
exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic proportions.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
