Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism Quotes

“As Bertrand Russell once noted, among the strongest advocates that the poor should work more are the idle rich, who have never done any.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“The increase in deaths of despair was almost all among those without a bachelor’s degree. Those with a four-year degree are mostly exempt; it is those without the degree who are at risk. This was particularly surprising for suicide; for more than a century, suicides were generally more common among the educated,1 but that is not true in the current epidemic of deaths of despair. The four-year college degree is increasingly dividing America, and the extraordinarily beneficial effects of the degree are a constant theme running through the book. The widening gap between those with and without a bachelor’s degree is not only in death but also in quality of life; those without a degree are seeing increases in their levels of pain, ill health, and serious mental distress, and declines in their ability to work and to socialize. The gap is also widening in earnings, in family stability, and in community.2 A four-year degree has become the key marker of social status, as if there were a requirement for nongraduates to wear a circular scarlet badge bearing the letters BA crossed through by a diagonal red line.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“We do not think that taxation is the solution to rent-seeking; the right way to stop thieves is to stop them from stealing, not to raise their taxes.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“systematic oppression and underprivilege lead individuals to be adjusted to the misery and tragedy of human existence which”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“Every cent we spend on healthcare shows up as someone’s income, and those someones will fight to preserve the status quo.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“America currently has the worst of both worlds, where government interference, instead of controlling costs, creates opportunities for rent-seeking that inflate costs. It is not possible for an unregulated market to provide a socially acceptable degree of coverage; as Kenneth Arrow noted long ago, “The laissez-faire solution for medicine is intolerable.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“No one likes compulsion, perhaps especially Americans, who hate the idea that healthcare should be rationed, although apparently not when the rationing is done by money, excluding those who cannot pay.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“At a time when the American military was bombing the opium supply in Helmand province in Af­ghan­i­stan, Johnson & Johnson was legally growing the raw material for the nation’s opioid supply in Tasmania.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“We would like to see a world in which everyone who can benefit from going to college, and wants to go to college, is able to do so. But we do not accept the basic premise that people are useless to the economy unless they have a bachelor's degree. And we certainly do not think that those who do not get one should be somehow disrespected or treated as second-class citizens.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“Stigma often removes the cause of death from obituaries when suicide, overdose, or alcoholism is involved. Addiction is seen as a moral weakness, not a disease, and it is believed that its effects are best covered up.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“Victor R. Fuchs, 1976, “From Bismarck to Woodcock: The ‘irrational’ pursuit of national health insurance,” Journal of Law and Economics, 19(2), 347–59.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“Most seriously, and this is what concerned Young, the loss of the smartest children from the less educated group deprives them of talent that is useful to the group itself. Young writes that “the bargaining over the distribution of national expenditure is a battle of wits, and that defeat was bound to go to those who lost their clever children to the enemy.” He notes that the real reason the elites have been so relatively successful is that “the humble no longer have anyone—except themselves—to speak for them.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“Inequality is much cited for its baleful impacts. In this book, we see inequality as a consequence as much as a cause; if the rich are allowed to enrich themselves through unfair processes that hold down wages, and raise prices, then inequality will certainly rise. But not everyone gets rich that way. Some people invent new tools, drugs, or gadgets, or new ways of doing things, and benefit many, not just themselves. They profit from improving and extending other people’s lives. It is good for great innovators to get rich. Making is not the same as taking. It is not inequality itself that is unfair but rather the process that generates it.”
― Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“As is often noted, and only partially in jest, economists seek to explain why people choose to commit suicide, while sociologists explain why they have no such choice. On suicide, the sociologists have been rather more successful than the economists. For their part, economists have proposed a “rational” theory of suicide that posits that people kill themselves in order to “maximize utility.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“They also want mutually contradictory outcomes, such as having coverage for”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“We need to correct the process, not try to fix the outcomes.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“Our account echoes the account of suicide by Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, of how suicide happens when society fails to provide some of its members with the framework within which they can live dignified and meaningful lives.16”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

“It would be a tragedy if the profits of the drug trade ­were allowed to corrupt Amer­i­ca and were ­later seen, as was the case in China a century and a half ago, as the beginning of a hundred years of humiliation and decline.”
― Anne Case, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism