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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.
Heather Long, Editorial Writer and Ccolumnist - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here is a good assessment explaining why the young no longer have much faith in the social structure the Boomers took for granted. It has not seemed to dawn on most politicians that there has been a major transformation in the relationship between workers and employers, nor do they seem to recognize the growing dislike the young have for capitalism. I think this should be seen as yet another sign of the declining wellbeing of American society. We are a country that by almost any measure one chooses to name, from healthcare to childcare, education, eldercare or retirement, is headed downward as a culture.
Demonstrators calling for Congress to take bold actions to fight global warming are seen outside the Capitol in February 2023. Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post
I was at an event recently where several top business executives were perplexed about whyAmericans under 40 are so disillusioned with capitalism. What could they do to restore trust in our economic system?
My suggestion was simple: Treat workers better. This wasn’t the answer they wanted. Many rushed to tell me how generous their pay raises have been, how easy it is to go from an entry-level job to management at their company, and how they have diversified their workforce. These are all welcome efforts, but they miss the bigger picture. Young people in America have come of age during the Great Recession, the sluggish recovery that followed and then the coronavirus pandemic. Unemployment has been 10 percent or higher twice in the past 15 years. Young workers have seen how expendable they are to […]
I am seeing more and more signs like this report about women and alcohol of growing social stress. I think this is arising not just from immediate crises but also from a precognitive awareness of the devastation that is coming caused by climate change. There are already over 117 million climate refugees, as I noted the other day. We are also seeing an enormous increase in risiing authoritarianism. Since 1986 we have gone from 13 to 42 countries under authoritarian rule. This is a species wide crisis, and almost no one is talking about it in that context.
Credit: MedPage Today
She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.
“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.
Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent dataopens in a new tab or window from the CDC on deaths from excessive drinking […]
Even when we try to help preserve the ecosystem we don’t think it through fully and properly, as this report about Right Whales describes. We need to reorder our societies so that fostering wellbeing of all the creatures in the matrix of life are included. If our civilization is to survive there is no other way. Will we do it? I’m not even sure we can preserve our democracy in November.
A North Atlantic right whale, entangled in fishing rope, next to her newborn, on December 2, 2021, near Cumberland Island, Georgia. Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources/NOAA Permit #20556 / AP
The story of the North Atlantic right whale, an icon of the East Coast, should be one of hope — a tale of recovery.
Humanity’s strongest tools have been mobilized for their protection. For centuries, whalers hunted these graceful giants, which were once found throughout the North Atlantic, for their baleen and oily blubber. By the early 20th century, they were nearly extinct. But in 1935, alarmed by the shrinking number of right whales, international authorities banned commercial hunting of these animals. Decades later, as North Atlantic right whales were starting to recover, the US gave them another lifeline, listing them as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. That made killing or harming them a federal crime.
Another culture stressor we are not properly addressing. We are at a point in our society where we must rethink our values and the only way that is going to happen is if we each make all our daily decisions the most compassionate life-affirming and fostering of wellbeing we can. Culture is the creation of collective consciousness.
Illustration by Anna Bu Kliewer for The Washington Post; U.S. Department of Energy
If you follow the always abundant literature of What’s Wrong With Today’s Kids, then you’re already familiar with the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
A professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, he’s most widely known for his 2018 bestseller, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” in which he and co-author Greg Lukianoff excoriated the new campus culture of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” and tied the emotional fragility they believed underlay those developments to soaring rates of depression and anxiety in college students.
In the years since, Haidt has been a frequent research and sometime writing collaborator of Jean Twenge, the prolific and controversial psychologist whose Atlantic cover story in 2017, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” set the tone for their work.
Along the way, Haidt has picked up a cadre of haters (the “kids are alright” crowd, he […]
Simon Montlake , Staff Writer - Christian Science Monitor
Stephan:
I have been telling you for over 15 years that all the overpopulation commentary is nonsense. There isn’t going to be an overpopulation problem, but rather the opposite. As this article describes we are going to face a population decrease so great that it is going to cause a societal restructuring. That’s why the christofascist nonsense about immigration restriction that people like criminal Trump spew out and the right-wing media picks up is all crap.
Credit: LM Otero / AP
After a century in which the global population grew almost fourfold to 6.2 billion people, stoking fears of overpopulation, conflict, and ecological collapse, a turning point awaits.
At some point in the 2060s, 2070s, or 2080s, the world population, currently 8 billion, will peak around 10 billion, according to forecasts, and then start to decline. An end to humanity’s relentless expansion is in sight.
When it comes, debates about population growth, which have been driven by beliefs that humanity is too fecund for the Earth’s carrying capacity, will acquire a different character. What goes up fast can come down just as fast, measured in decades and centuries, setting the stage for an era of population shrinkage that seems both inexorable and unfathomable.
Shrinkage is the logical result of tumbling birthrates today, not just in rich democracies like Germany and South Korea but also in most corners of the planet. “No future currently looks more likely than a long span of global depopulation,” says Dean Spears, an economist […]
America’s horrible illness profit system has gotten worse, and you may have been affected. Read this, and if you are part of the ACA (Obamacare) system check to make sure you haven’t been made an unwitting victim. You would think there would be a huge outcry to establish universal birthright single-payer wellbeing healthcare, but Americans, particularly in Red states where they have given control over to the TCP, either don’t seem to understand or don’t care. I don’t see any national. movement for a wellbeing oriented healthcare system emerging.
Insurance brokers say rogue agents are switching batches of customers to new plans without the customers’ knowledge. The agents then collect monthly commissions on the Affordable Care Act plans. Credit: Ralf Hahn / Getty
Some consumers covered by Affordable Care Act insurance plans are being switched from one plan to another without their express permission, potentially leaving them unable to see their doctors or fill prescriptions. Some face large IRS bills for back taxes.
Unauthorized enrollment or plan-switching is emerging as a serious challenge for the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Brokers say the ease with which rogue agents can get into policyholder accounts in the 32 states served by the federal marketplace plays a major role in the problem, according to an investigation by KFF Health News.
Indeed, armed with only a person’s name, date of birth, and state, a licensed agent can access a policyholder’s coverage through the federal exchange or its direct enrollment platforms. It’s harder to do through state ACA markets, because they often require additional information.
Lauren Kaori Gurley, Labor Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan:
As this article reports, “At least 16 states have one or more bills to weaken their child labor laws and at least 13 are seeking to strengthen them, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.” By any social outcome measure I can find and research overall as a country we are a society whose wellbeing is in decline. Child labor. Who could have imagined that in the second decade of the 21st century we would be talking about whether it was legal for 14-year-olds back in the labor force?
As child labor violations soar across the country, dozens of states are ramping up efforts to update child labor laws — with widespread efforts to weaken laws, but some to bolster them as well.
Labor experts attribute the spike in child labor violations, which have tripled over the past 10 years according to a Post analysis, to a tight labor market that has prompted employers to hire more teens, as well as migrant children arriving from Latin America. In 2023, teens aged 16 to 19 were working or looking for work at the highest annual rate since 2009, according to Labor Department data.
That’s led to the largest effort in years to change the patchwork of state laws that regulate […]
Here is an excellent assessment of how AI is changing our culture and our economy. I agree with the analysis, but the thing that is missing in the description of the solution, in my opinion is that the key to dealing with AI is that the highest social priority must be the compassionate life-affirming fostering of wellbeing of the entirety of Earth’s matrix of consciousness. The reason the United States is in such serious decline socially is because we have failed to recognize this.
Credit: Ayo Walker / truthout
In recent months, a number of novelists, artists and newspapers have sued generative artificial intelligence (AI) companies for taking a “free ride” on their content. These suits allege that the companies, which use that content to train their machine learning models, may be breaking copyright laws.
From the tech industry’s perspective, this content mining is necessary in order to build the AI tools that tech companies say will supposedly benefit all of us. In a recent statement to legislative bodies, OpenAI claimed that “it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.” It remains to be seen if courts will agree, but it’s not looking good for content creators. In February, a California court dismissed large portions of a case brought by Sarah Silverman and other authors.
Some of these cases may reveal ongoing negotiations, as some companies figure out how to pressure others into sharing a piece of the AI pie. Publisher Axel Springer and the social media platform
