IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
All my life, beginning when I was five, I have valued and cherished public libraries. I understood even as a young boy how important they were. Libraries were the place you could go to learn about anything that interested you or that could entertain you when you were alone, or before you went to bed. I walked away from my career in government because after Watergate, having known most of the people involved, I realized I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, but I stayed in Washington another year because I didn’t want to lose access to the Library of Congress. Now the MAGAts, who realize libraries educate people to different points of view, are attacking public and school libraries to stop that. MAGAts want indoctrination not education; they want a semi-literate population easily manipulated by their misinformation.
Andrew Carnegie, a childhood immigrant, realized the importance of public libraries like this one in Pittsburgh and left most of his money to be used to build such libraries across the United States. Credit: Wikipedia
On the first of July 1731 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin and members of the Junto Club, an organization of civic minded Philadelphians that Franklin had founded and organized, carried out what they considered one of their most important actions to foster civic wellbeing. They founded a library. To quote the Benjamin Franklin Historical Society, “The idea to create a lending library started during Junto Club gatherings where each member would bring books toshare with others and consult during debates, but bringing books back and forth became cumbersome. It was agreed by the members to keep the books in the meeting room so that all members would benefit from them. It was also of great benefit to borrow a book and bring it home to read, therefore the idea of starting a public subscription […]
DAN WITTERS and SANGEETA AGRAWAL, Research Director | Research Staff - The Gallup Organization
Stephan:
This is why Americans hold their government is such low esteem. The entire system in this country has been rigged to produce profit for the few at the cost of the wellbeing of the many. This has arisen because of the Republican Party, and its creating the passage of Citizens United that legalized the bribery of public officials and the restructuring of American society to benefit the rich. The rise of social media has given the rich the ability to maneuver the peasants through their fears, resentments, and racism.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Lower wellbeing linked to 159 extra new conditions per 1,000 people
Analysis tracks 3,654 working adults over three-year period
$101.5 billion in new annual healthcare costs linked to extra conditions
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. adult workers who have poor wellbeing across most or all of the five essential elements of wellbeing are about twice as likely to report a major new chronic condition over a 36-month period of successive surveys than are their counterparts who have high wellbeing in no more than one element. Overall:
Those workers with poor wellbeing (defined as having high wellbeing in one or none of the five elements) developed 450 new chronic conditions per 1,000 persons three years after being initially interviewed.
Those workers with inconsistent wellbeing (i.e., high wellbeing in two to four of the elements) added 330 new chronic conditions per 1,000 persons over the three-year period.
Those workers with holistic wellbeing (i.e., high wellbeing in all five elements) added 230 new chronic conditions per 1,000 persons over three years.
As such, out of every 1,000 full-time working adults with either […]
Here is some solid international data on the linkage between food and having a sense of wellbeing. Note: this is not about having enough food, it is about your feelings about what you are eating.
Nearly nine in 10 people worldwide (87%) say they mostly enjoyed the food they recently ate, according to a new report investigating the relationship between people’s feelings about food and their wellbeing. However, slightly fewer people (82%) describe the food they recently ate as “mostly healthy,” and a significantly smaller share (63%) say they felt they had a lot of choices in the types of food they ate in the past seven days.
These results come from the inaugural Ando Foundation/Nissin Food Products Satisfaction With Food Enjoyment and Variety Survey, which was fielded as part of the 2022 Gallup World Poll. The survey asked people to evaluate three key aspects of the food they ate in the seven days before the interview: whether they “mostly enjoyed” their food, thought it was mostly healthy and felt like they had lots of choices in the types of food they had to eat.
A new report, Recipes for Wellbeing, reviews the major findings from these three survey questions and investigates how people’s feelings about the food they eat are related to their […]
Stephan: I wrote this research paper because day after day as I read articles and viewed the news it became clearer and clearer to me that the United States in a desperate trouble, and a nation that will soon be unrecognizable from what it was as recently as the Obama administration, although the process creating this change traces back to Richard Nixon's administration, and has been engineered by the Republican Party and their corporate masters. But I do not want to talk about ideology and politics, I want to focus on objectively verifiable social outcome data. and here it is.
It is a near-universal article of faith amongst Americans that the United States is the best country in the world at nearly everything. It isn’t true, and the reason it isn’t can be clearly defined. We, as a culture, have made something other than fostering wellbeing our number one priority. Instead, everything is geared to profit and the power it bestows, Did that offend you? Let me be clear, I am not interested in partisan politics except anthropologically. Do not misread me. What I care about and have talked about for the 16 years I have been writing in Explore is wellbeing as measured by objectively verifiable data, social outcome data. Decades of social outcome research has proven to me that if you always choose the option that best fosters wellbeing at every level of earth’s matrix of life, you will always get the best outcome. Every other option places something else first and ends up diminishing wellbeing; it does not foster it.
So, let’s start with some social outcome data that defines us today. […]
Stephan: Republican governance on the basis of social outcome facts is always inferior. Here are the facts.
Red State/Blue State map
For the past 15 years I have published in Explore I have tried to make the point that social values determine social outcomes, based on objective quantifiable social outcome data. And that on the basis of that data, it is clear that when forming social policy the best option is always the one that is the most compassionate, life-affirming and fostering of wellbeing. That option proves always easier to implement than the alternatives: more productive, more efficient, nicer to live under, longer enduring, and much much cheaper.1
I know this is going to be controversial, but I want to talk about a second point this data teaches, a trend that is shaping the United States in many ways. It’s components are frequently discussed, but the over-arching trend is rarely mentioned. I am speaking here of the objectively verified failure of conservative social policies to foster wellbeing. Where conservative social policies prevail, Americans, men, women, children, regardless of race or gender, are less healthy and have shorter more miserable lives […]
