‘Reaganomics to be blamed for rise of suicides in US’

‘Reaganomics to be blamed for rise of suicides in US’

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/341546-suicide-us-reaganomics-economy/

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When you hear the Reaganomics folks talk about things such as ‘economic freedom’, what they are really saying is the freedom to die like a dog in the street, Thom Hartmann, host of The Big Picture, told RT America’s Manila Chan.

A new study from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that deaths from suicide have increased 24 percent over the last decade and a half. The rise in suicides took place in all racial groups. Suicide rates have also increased steadily for both males and females. Experts say that part of the problem is that our society fails to deal with mental illness with empathy and compassion. Instead, the social stigma around depression and mental health issues is an obstacle to getting necessary and sometimes life-saving treatment, which means that those who need help the most suffer in silence, while suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US. Researchers also said: “Suicide is not just a mental health issue, it is a public health issue and it is preventable”.


RT: You recently wrote an article specifically about this. And in that article you said that Reaganomics is killing people. Please, explain that.

Thom Hartmann: Yes, absolutely. We've seen from the George Washington administration till the Reagan administration as productivity went up, including productivity from things like steam engines and industrial revolution, wages went up. Reagan stopped that. Reaganomics flipped that cycle. It was really radical, this whole supply side stuff, people laughed at that time… It really is just a fancy device for shoving as much money as possible up to the top one percent and cutting off everybody else. And so, for the last 35 years roughly wages have been stagnant. In fact, in many cases they've gone down. Yet prices have gone up. First, people try to fill in the blanks by maxing out their credit cards. Then they tried to fill in the blanks by getting more loans on their homes. Then they tried to fill in the blanks by working two and three jobs. And now they are giving up and committing suicide.




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