Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hodwik 3643 days ago
Uh oh, this doesn't fit the class-war narrative so no one is going to touch it.
4 comments

The article does say:

"Overall, these findings show that even in times of great economic inequality, inequality in health outcomes is not inevitable but is strongly mediated by policy."

Acknowledging income inequality as a problem, even if it isn't have a negative effect on whether you die earlier or not.

How does that sentence acknowledge income inequality as a problem? It just acknowledges it exists, it doesn't make any claim about whether or not it is a problem.
The snippet:

"...in times of great economic inequality..."

^Is intentionally sensationalized, the notion being that economic inequality in our society is generally viewed as a negative. Consider the following:

"...in times of great famine..."

Now you could try to make the argument that someone is merely stating a fact and picked an adjatiave which helps the reader picture what's going on, but I don't think anyone would assume the author considered famine to be a "neutral fact". Similarly, the end snippet is clearly addressing the elephant in the room given the title of the article, which was certainly chosen due to the subject matter, but also due the phrase which we are debating (income inequality), which is essentially another way or saying that a class of people are losing wealth to another class.

It acknowledges that some people think it is a problem, but it does not itself make any statement about whether or not it's a problem.

For those of us who believe economic inequality is both good and natural, this is a great rhetorical device for undermining the left -- "in this time of great economic inequality, life is better than it has ever been for the general populace."

A person on the left may use the opposite rhetorical device, "in this time of great economic freedom, people are increasingly poor."

As this is written, there is no way to know which rhetorical device they were using.

It's a centre-left policy think tank article advocating government health care initiatives. Just saying cause I don't think you read the article, yourself.
No, this work was done by the London based CEPR -- which is a bipartisan bank-funded research group for economists, not the leftist CEPR out of Washington, DC. They are completely unrelated.

And the research drew this back to Government health initiatives which would be described as "victim blaming" by American Progressives -- healthy eating education and anti-smoking initiatives.

Debt isn't possible without a counterparty.
Nah, it just needs some fresh spin.

"Mortality inequality remains, even in 2016"

Then prescribe universal healthcare.