re: #111 Obdicut

Here’s something sad to think about.

I’ve just been reading some more Sapolsky, and he makes a very good case that improving access to health care for the poor will not matter, because their number one health problem is that they’re poor— and that they’re made to feel poor, and made to feel that being poor is shameful, bad, and dangerous.

Here’s a good bit on it.

[Link: books.google.com…]

That doesn’t square with some of the data. Hispanics have better health prospects than whites, though less money. [Recent census data—-lower infant mortality, longer life expectancy.]

Correlation between poverty and health is not perfect, and the causation can be nonexistent or it can run both ways. Bad health can be a cause of poverty, directly. Poverty can be a cause of bad health if you can’t afford safe drinking water or enough food. It can also be a cause of bad health if you can’t afford to move away from a neighborhood where there’s too much gunplay, knife work, and vicious dogs running around.

But drinking to excess, indulging in gunplay and/or knife work, and so on, can bring on both poverty and bad health. Not all the poor are blameless. Some of them are a curse to their neighbors and a cause of ill health in others.

Wealth can be a cause of bad health. Drinking to excess, indulging in very expensive recreational drugs, and playing with risky toys most people cannot afford, such as airplanes, can ruin your health. Eating way too much requires some spare income. Not all the rich are blameless for their own health problems. Some of them, too, are a curse to their neighbors and a cause of ill health in others. [Not my boss, but DilbertBosses of the world, you know who you are.]

And so it goes.