The system is failing even for those well positioned to ride the success of (but not hold stake in) the general market. The first upper-middle class runners are coming across the line to find nothing there. How does that effect the tipping point? Is this a marker of a Late Stage?

Does anyone even subscribe to the American Dream anymore? Maybe there isn’t a big pack running behind these first place white men to find a cliff at the finish line.

Is it the last remnants of an experiment burning out, or is it just the first car to crest the rollercoaster?

Or is the suicide stat meaningless and the power structure still favors inherited white male privilege so significantly that it’s dumb to grasp at minor perceived cracks forming? If this then what’s the stat about?

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Are there certain struggling industries in the US that are majority white? I can’t speak to American capitalism, but in Australia the highest rates of suicide have been “middle aged (presumably white, the country is 75% Euro descent) men” for decades.

    I was taught that white men out in the country are massively overrepresented because of farmers, dealing with decades of on-off drought, exploitative relationships with big agribusiness, all the other pressures of being a petit-boug producer under capitalism. Men who operate the farm that their great-grandfather started 100 years ago or whatever and lose the whole thing, stuff like that. Or just the pressure in general gets to them. Plus I’m sure in these country areas there’s a lot of “ok, there’s like five cattle ranches, a pub, and a store within 100 kilometres of town”, probably not much employment going for people leaving school. Meth is huge in regional/country Australia too (our medical professionals have been a little less forthcoming than yours with the opioids).