AN AMERICAN TURNING POINT?
“Time makes you bolder/ Even children get older/ And I’m getting older, too.”
That’s Stevie Nicks in “Landslide,” a song capably reprised by The Smashing Pumpkins (and less capably reprised by Dixie Chicks).
Just how much older are people getting, though? According to the latest data (.pdf) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, life expectancy in America clocked in at 78.8 in 2015. Men lived to be 76.3 years old, while women lived to be 81.2 years.
Interestingly, each of those figures is above the 75-year cutoff point at which one architect of U.S. president Barack Obama‘s socialized medicine law said we should all kill ourselves.
Obama’s Orwellians can take hope … his administration’s onslaught of awful quality of life outcomes has America moving toward this lofty goal.
For the first time since 1993, life expectancy in America is on the decline. And while the decreases are at the margins, the reversal is noteworthy.
After all, it is all about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” right? Societies are judged by how well they protect their citizens’ lives – and how long and fruitful those lives are.
Clearly America’s record of respecting life and liberty is horrible. And the whole pursuit of happiness thing is struggling, too.
But now even the length of our lives is beginning to move in the wrong direction … for the first time in nearly a quarter century.
“Forget fraudulent government financial statistics,” one of our regular readers noted. “Nothing screams declining quality of life under Obama et al. like this does.”
We’re inclined to agree …
Outcomes matter – and this one matters more than most. Not only is declining life expectancy another indictment of the failed policies of Obama (and former president George W. Bush), it is another reminder of the tremendous challenges facing incoming U.S. president Donald Trump.
(Banner via iStock)