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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.
Because America has become a society that has only one social priority, profit, we have distorted all of our values. Here is but one of many examples. Because of this distortion college has become a profit source instead of something society wants everyone to have a chance at. For those who are able to go debt is an issue shaping their lives. Seventy-one percent who do go to college, whether they finish or not end up with a debt that alters their lives. Here is the data, and it is very sad.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Seventy-one percent of all currently enrolled college students or previously enrolled students who stopped out of their program before completing it say they have delayed at least one major life event because of their student loans.
The most commonly delayed event is purchasing a home, named by 29% of borrowers, followed closely by buying a car (28%), moving out of their parents’ home (22%) and starting their own business (20%). Fifteen percent of these borrowers also report they have delayed having children because of their student loans, and 13% have delayed marriage.
Among previously enrolled students, 35% say their student loans have kept them from reenrolling in a postsecondary program and finishing their degree, exceeding the percentage who have delayed buying a home, buying a car or other events.
The latest results are from the Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2024 State of Higher Education Study, conducted Oct. 9-Nov. 16, 2023, via a web survey with 14,032 current and prospective college students. This includes 6,015 students enrolled in a post-high school education program (certificate, associate or bachelor’s degree), 5,012 adults not currently enrolled with […]
Because of the TCP/Republican Putin supporters in the House the United States is destroying its international reputation and putting itself at grave risk by blocking the support Ukraine needs. I am ashamed of what these cretins are doing to our country, and you should be too.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Vilnius, Lithuania, on April 11. He told “PBS NewsHour” that further U.S. aid was crucial to Ukraine. Credit: Petras Malukas / Getty
Russia destroyed a thermal power plant in Kyiv because Ukraine had run out of missiles to defend it, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said as he warned that without further U.S. aid to fight Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s aggression, Ukraine would “have no chance of winning.”
Zelensky told PBS NewsHour that the destruction of the Trypilska thermal power plant on April 11—which cut out the generating capacity of Centrenergo, an energy company the capital depends on—was the result of the country having “zero missiles.”
“Eleven missiles were headed towards it. The first seven, we took down,” he said in the interview released on April 16. He added that the other four missiles destroyed the plant. “Why?” Zelensky continued. “We ran out of all missiles.”
As you have heard me say on SR many times in the past, highways that charge the vehicles that drive over them are the way to evolve out of the carbon era, not a new network of charging stations to replace gas stations. This and the project in Detroit are very good news.
Indiana highway Credit: Taidgh Barron/Zuma
Blake Dollier spoke excitedly as he watched the construction crews pulverize concrete along a quarter-mile stretch of US Highway 52 where it passes through West Lafayette, Indiana.
Soon, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), where Dollier works as the public relations director, will install a series of copper coils under the highway’s surface to test a new technology Purdue University researchers developed that can provide power to electric vehicles wirelessly as they drive past.
“Wouldn’t it really be something if we could just drive over the road and catch your charge for your vehicle as you drive across it?” Dollier said during a phone interview, watching the progress from the parking lot of one of the department’s satellite offices in West Lafayette.
The state began construction of its new pilot project this month, and officials say they believe it could spur greater adoption of EVs and redefine the way people think about them. The project, they said, which is being done in partnership with Purdue […]
Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez and McKenzie Beard, - Microsoft Start / The Washington Post
Stephan:
Working-age rural Americans (25-54) are dying at a much higher rate, particularly in Red states, than men and women their age in Blue states, and this is happening in part because Red states have not expanded Medicaid. And yet, those same people are the core voters of the TCP/Republican Party. How can these rural men and women not realize what is happening to them by just looking around their own world? Ignorance seems to be the main answer.
Rural Americans are way more likely to die young. Why? Credit: Jeff Roberson / AP
Three words are commonly repeated to describe rural America and its residents: older, sicker and poorer.
Obviously, there’s a lot more going on in the nation’s towns than that tired stereotype suggests. But a new report from the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service gives credence to the “sicker” part of the trope.
Rural Americans ages 25 to 54 — considered the prime working-age population — are dying of natural causes such as chronic diseases and cancer at wildly higher rates than their age-group peers in urban areas, according to the report.
The USDA researchers analyzed mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from two three-year periods — 1999 through 2001, and 2017 through 2019. In 1999, the natural-cause mortality rate for rural working-age adults was only 6 percent higher than that of their city-dwelling peers. By 2019, the gap had widened to 43 percent.
The disparity was significantly worse for women — and for Native American women, in particular. The gap highlights how persistent difficulties accessing health […]
As this important research study reveals: “For the first time in the report’s 12-year history, the U.S. didn’t earn a spot among the top 20 happiest countries in the world. It’s No. 23 — down from a 15th-place finish the previous year.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The latest World Happiness Report has some unhappy news for Americans.
For the first time in the report’s 12-year history, the U.S. didn’t earn a spot among the top 20 happiest countries in the world. It’s No. 23 — down from a 15th-place finish the previous year.
The report, which ranks countries by age group for the first time, shows the U.S. decline is at least partly attributable to Americans under age 30 feeling worse about their lives. The U.S. still ranks in the top 10 countries for those 60 and older, with a score of 7.258 out of 10. But for those under 30, it ranks 62nd, with a score of 6.392.
While the U.S. lost ground, Finland retained its crown as the happiest country in the world for the seventh straight year. But it wasn’t No. 1 for those under 30 or over 60. Lithuania and Denmark, respectively, took those honors.
The differences in the rankings by age illustrate how people’s life satisfaction ratings — which determine the rankings — vary a lot between […]
American culture is in turmoil. This is an article on “tradwives” as they are called, women who seek and prefer a 1950s lifestyle where their husbands work and they stay at home, and they are happily submissive to their husband’s will. This article describes the movement but does not really focus on what I think is the real reason this trend is occurring. As a society we are being consumed by materialism and greed. We have become a society in which wellbeing is hardly a factor in our planning or social order, and it is making Americans miserable.
The return of “tradwives” and stay-at-home girlfriends, as an aesthetic and an idea, suggests that some young women are wondering whether liberation is overrated. Credit: Getty
It’s always inspiring when citizens of the vast and disparate internet find something to unite them, and in late March, the unifying force was hatred for an essay, published in the Cut, called “The Case for Marrying an Older Man.” It was written by a woman who had done just that: Grazie Sophia Christie spent her undergraduate years at Harvard sneaking into receptions for MBA candidates where she hoped to bag a more established male before her “fiercest advantage” — her youth — disappeared and rendered her common. After some trial and error, at the age of 20, she made off with a 30-year-old whose defining characteristics seemed to be that he was French and rich.
The essay’s alleged offenses ranged from the kind that would irritate Greta Thunberg — the casual way Christie’s […]
With increasing frequency, I am seeing reports of what climate change is going to cause, and am struck by how many things no one considered are going to be impacted. Here is an example of what I am finding when I research climate change, and what I mean by the surprising effects it is having.
San Andres Tomatlan metro station on Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro Collective Transportation System, July 2023. Credit: Gerardo Vieyra / ZUMA
With its expanse of buildings and concrete, Mexico City may not look squishy—but it is. Ever since the Spanish conquistadors drained Lake Texcoco to make way for more urbanization, the land has been gradually compacting under the weight. It’s a phenomenon known as subsidence, and the result is grim: Mexico City is sinking up to 20 inches a year, unleashing havoc on its infrastructure.
That includes the city’s Metro system, the second-largest in North America after New York City’s. Now, satellites have allowed scientists to meticulously measure the rate of sinking across Mexico City, mapping where subsidence has the potential to damage railways. “When you’re here in the city, you get used to buildings being tilted a little,” says Darío Solano‐Rojas, a remote-sensing scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “You can feel how the rails are wobbly. Riding the Metro in Mexico City […]
I have published and commented on several studies on the effect of spending hours each day focused on social media on the mental health of users, particularly young people. Personally, I don’t use social media, so I am not really knowledgeable about what it is like to do that. What I do see happening is that kids are spending much less time playing together outdoors, and I don’t think that is a positive trend, and I do think more consistent rigorous research needs to be done on the effects this trend is producing. There is no question that social media and the weaponization of lies is producing negative changes in our culture but that is a different issue than leading the young to commit suicide. Here is a good article on both sides of the argument about the effect on the young.
The Zoomer tween in their natural habitat. Credit: Leon Neal/Getty
The kids are not all right — and the device you are probably reading this on is to blame.
By Haidt’s account, smartphones and the addicting social media apps we download onto them have lured the world’s youths away from those activities that are indispensable to healthy child development — such as outdoor play, face-to-face conversation with friends, and sleep — and trapped them in a digital realm that saps their self-esteem, drains their attention spans, and forces them to put on a perpetual, high-stakes performance of their own personalities.
Smartphones have even hurt kids who don’t use them much, according to Haidt, because they’ve restructured communal […]
