Jedidajah Otte, Staff Writer - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
What I notice, every time I go into a grocery store are the outrageous prices. Nine dollars for a cantaloupe, $4.99 for Organic Romaine lettuce. I am so thankful for my wife Ronlyn’s master organic biodynamic gardening skills. She grows everything except citrus, so we only have to buy chicken, fish, and shrimp — we do not eat mammals — nd some spices, and things like soy sauce. It saves us thousands of dollars each year. As a result I understood the point this article is making. Because we are a society whose only social priority is greed, I don’t know how anyone living on minimum wage or social security makes it, and I think that is one of the main reasons Americans as a society are so unhappy. That and the grotesque rigging of the U.S. tax structure. We are essentially a neo-medieval country, with a small privileged population of rich and uber-rich, and a majority population of what amounts to peasants.
Experts say the US economy is the ‘envy of the world’, but Americans are not feeling it. Illustration: Marcus Peabody/Guardian Design
Experts seem to agree the US economy has been on the upswing in 2024. A wave of new jobs, robust consumer spending, lower interest rates, falling inflation, impressive levels of business investment and record Wall Street highs has made the US economy “the envy of the world”.
But many Americans appear to feel very little of that.
Jim White, 62, an aquaculture specialist from North Carolina, said he has “given up [on] going out”.
I’ll never own a home. A new car is unthinkable,” he said. “The economy is slowly making the rich richer. Everyone else is sinking.”
White is among dozens of people from all over the US who shared with the Guardian how they feel about the economy.
While some expressed general optimism about stabilizing levels of inflation and reported doing well economically, scores said inflation continued to be financially crippling, with their incomes not even remotely keeping up with soaring costs for housing, food, childcare, insurance, healthcare, fuel, subscriptions and entertainment.
Why, as I noted in the previous comment, have food prices become grotesquely elevated? Here is the explanation and, just as I said, it is al about greed. Very little is happening in the U.S. as a major trend that fosters wellbeing. Oh sure, there are local activities and organizations that try to foster wellbeing. But they are not national trends. The only national trend, and it is manifested in a wide spectrum of ways, is greed for profit. It has destroyed our social wellbeing as a country.
The price of a bag of coconut-cashew granola at Whole Foods jumped last year from $5.99 to $6.69. Why that happened defies simple explanation.
The granola maker, Wildway Foods, said the cost of making the cereal hasn’t gone up that much, and that it isn’t pocketing more profit. It jacked up the price, it said, in large part to offset fees that piled up from a little-known link in the supply chain: grocery distributors. There were charges for processing grocery promotions, others for potential spoilage and still more related to alleged shipping glitches.
George Milton, who runs a hot sauce business in Austin, Texas, said consumers are frustrated because it isn’t clear to them why many food prices are so high. “Is that price gouging or costs going up for distributors or retailers or farmers? I have no idea,” he said. “Nobody does.”
Mina Tadrous, PharmD, PhD1; Katherine Callaway Kim, MPH2,3; Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD4; et al, - Journal of the American Medical Association
Stephan:
Yet another scientific report on the inferior quality of the American illness profit system, this time in comparison with Canada. I hope that if Kamala Harris wins the Presidency tomorrow, and I strongly hope that is the case, that a citizen movement can be activated to create a universal birthright single payer healthcare system such as exists in all the other developed democracies in the world. We significantly inferior healthcare, not because of the physicians and nurses, but because the whole U.S. system is based on greed.
Key Points
Question How frequently are reports of drug-related supply chain issues associated with drug shortages in the US vs Canada?
Findings In this cross-sectional study, there were 104 reports of drug-related supply chain issues that occurred from 2017 to 2021 in both countries. Within 12 months of the reported supply chain issues, 49.0% were associated with drug shortages in the US compared with 34.0% in Canada.
Meaning Drug shortages were less frequent in Canada compared with in the US after drug-related supply chain issues were reported in both countries. These findings inform ongoing policy development and highlight the need for international cooperation between countries to curb the effects of drug shortages and improve the resiliency of the supply chain for drugs.
Abstract
Importance Drug shortages are a persistent public health issue that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the US and Canada follow similar regulatory standards and require reporting of drug-related supply chain issues that may result in shortages. However, it is unknown what proportion are associated with meaningful shortages (defined by a significant decrease in drug supply) and whether differences exist between Canada and the US.
Objective To compare how frequently reports of drug-related supply chain issues in […]
Craig D. Newgard, MD, MPH1; Amber Lin, MS1; Jeremy D. Goldhaber-Fiebert, PhD2; et al, - Journal of the American Medical Association
Stephan:
Yet another fact-based assessment of the inferior quality of America’s illness profit system. As this research paper in JAMA report, “Our results suggest that more than one quarter of deaths among children receiving emergency care in the US may be preventable through ED pediatric readiness. The magnitude of benefit is explained in part by the time to death among children who die after presenting for emergency care. Among children presenting to EDs who died within 1 year, death most commonly occurred at the initial ED and often within hours of arrival.” What very few Americans know is that a large percentage (between 20%-40%) of ERs are not owned by the hospitals in which they are located. Instead, they are owned and operated by private equity financial corporations Note also that for less than $12 per child these private equity ERs could be upgraded to care properly for children, but the equity firms, caring only about profit, aren’t spending that money.
An emergency room awaits patients. (Getty/monkeybusinessimages)
Key Points
Question What are the state and national costs of raising all emergency departments (EDs) to high pediatric readiness and the potential number of lives saved?
Findings In this cohort study of 4840 EDs across the US, 842 (17.4%) had high pediatric readiness and the annual cost to reach high pediatric readiness was $207 335 302, ranging from $0 to $11.84 per child by state. An estimated 2143 pediatric lives may be saved each year through universal high ED pediatric readiness.
Meaning These results suggest that raising all EDs to high pediatric readiness would potentially save thousands of pediatric lives each year, with modest financial investment.
Abstract
Importance High emergency department (ED) pediatric readiness is associated with improved survival among children receiving emergency care, but state and national costs to reach high ED readiness and the resulting number of lives that may be saved are unknown.
Objective To estimate the state and national annual costs of raising all EDs to high pediatric readiness and the resulting number of pediatric lives that may be saved each year.
Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study used data from EDs in 50 US states and the District […]
As I watched off and on throughout the day, it became clear to me that a large percentage of Americans are perfectly comfortable electing a President who is a multiple felon, a convicted rapist, pro-control of women advocate, multiple bankrupt racist, openly stating he intends to end democracy in the United States and become an authoritarian leader like Viktor Orbán of Hungary. Many of these men and women don’t seem to cherish democracy as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did. We are going to see how many voters think this way on Tuesday, and are willing to submit to authoritarian government. I am particularly struck by the number of young men who hold these views.
Trump speaks at the Ellipse outside the White House on January 6, 2021. Credit: AFP / Getty
In the game Jenga, players take turns removing wooden blocks from a rickety tower and then stacking them back on the top. Each removed piece makes the base more wobbly; each block put back on top makes it more unbalanced until it eventually topples.
This, I’d argue, is basically how we should be thinking about the stakes of the 2024 election for American democracy: an already-rickety tower of state would be at risk of falling in on itself entirely, with catastrophic results for those who live under its shelter.
We live in an era where democracies once considered “consolidated” — meaning so secure that that they couldn’t collapse into authoritarianism — have started to buckle and even collapse. As recently as 2010, Hungary was considered one of the post-Communist world’s great democratic success stories; today, it is now understood to be the European Union’s only autocracy.
Hungarian democracy did not die of natural causes. It was murdered by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who seized control of nearly every […]
I am astonished that the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland finds nothing illegal about Elon Musk pouring $100 million dollars into fascist Trump’s election campaign while, at the same time, getting billions of dollars in federal money (your money) for his corporations, using X to spread disinformation against the Democrats and Kamala Harris, and concurrently maintaining a secret ongoing relationship with America’s major adversary Vladimir Putin. I think Garland is the worst Attorney General in U.;S. history, worse even than Nixon’s AG, John Mitchell. Please stop using X as one of your social media links.
Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk Credit: Moscow Times
KEY POINTS
Elon Musk has engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
Musk has become a major Republican donor this election cycle, and is among the most influential supporters of former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
The conversations reportedly occurred as Musk was in the midst of a leveraged buyout and takeover of Twitter, now X.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to reporting published Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
Citing “several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials,” the Journal reported that conversations between Putin and Musk, a Republican megadonor and Pentagon contractor, took place while Russia was waging a brutal war on Ukraine, a top U.S. ally. Topics ranged from business to personal and geopolitical issues.
