Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
Wall Street Journal Bestseller
From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class
Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they're still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today's America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.
This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism’s excesses and make it work for everyone.
Customer Reviews
Correct diagnosis, but not really any cure
This book does a wonderful job of documenting the decline in life expectancy for white people without a college degree. The research is neither overly left or right leaning and the case is fairly overwhelming.
A few things that may help a prospective reader:
1. This is really a study of everything that changed in white working class life from after WW2 until the present. While it shows what’s gone wrong since then, it makes me wonder if some of what we’re seeing is just the natural changes that will happen to developed countries anyway - we just have a front row seat in America. For example, the notions around marriage and unionization are right out of the 1950’s and seem old fashioned and silly to me (someone in his 50s) - they would seem absurd to a young person. Basically, things have changed and we’re not about to return to a world where everyone in the working class is married, has one provider (a man of course), goes to church, has an active social life in his union, which protects his wages, etc.
2. This is not a book that condemns capitalism, it’s more of a statement that we’re doing it wrong in America. I appreciate that the authors do not have a political ideology that they’re pushing. Again, this book does a great job of identifying what has changed for the worse (at least what is correlated if not a root cause) since WW2. However, there really don’t seem to be may practical solutions here. Yes, the US healthcare system is a major problem, but there is no will from the right or left to fix it.
In the end, there are parts of this book that I resonate with on a personal level. I grew up in a blue collar household and neighborhood. I’m one of a select few who got out (through scholarships, hard work and a bit of luck). I’m still connected to several people who didn’t go to college, have had substance abuse issues, etc., all like those detailed in this book. While some succumbed to their difficulties, most have found ways to rebound. The system may have been against them (maybe even me to some degree at the beginning), but they worked hard and got through it with varying degrees of success. For those who didn’t, I can’t help but wonder what made them unable to persevere. In other words, isn’t there a personal component to this?
While I would like for no one to suffer, and I can agree with the general idea that capitalism in the USA is less than fair, we live in the world that we live in, and that reality is unlikely to change. America has no safety net, so if you don’t make it, then you don’t make it - you’re screwed. Maybe this is just inevitable. If people can’t adapt, then deaths of despair are probably just the natural outcome. Maybe we went from a less educated agrarian working class to a manufacturing one, to a service one, ultimately to an obsolete one?
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