The Class War

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 20 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I’ve written since 1997. Enjoy.

Look carefully at the chart above. It represents the biggest scandal of the last two decades.

Bigger than Iraq.  Bigger than Abu Ghraib. Bigger than the housing bubble.

It is nothing less than class war, the slow extermination of the uneducated by the educated.

These government statistics, compiled by government researchers, show trends in premature death rates from 8 causes — everything from diabetes and heart attack to cancer and accidents. That’s the rate per 100,000 people in 8 subgroups, college educated on the right, high school educated on the left.

I have already heard the excuses. The poor deserve their fate. They choose to get fat and die young. Most causes of death before 65 are preventable, and if you don’t take care of yourself it’s your own fault.

Bunk.

Not only are the rates higher for those without education, but those with just high school they rise steadily, for both races and both sexes. Does anyone doubt that those trends have accelerated in this decade? Does anyone think that the less educated are becoming more shiftless with time?

I would love to see a similar regression done for, say, Canada or England. Perhaps the comparison to Europe is unfair, given that college here is an option which can be purchased while there entry into it is won through competition.

But the conclusion is inescapable. We have two main classes of people in the U.S., those with education and those without. For the last 16 years those with are learning to live longer, those without are dieing younger.

This explains a lot about our politics:

• 
  Barack Obama looks educated, his thin frame a sign of wealth. Never mind that he’s one of those people (like me) who can’t eat when he gets nervous and tired. Must be arugula.
• John Edwards failed to attract the votes he sought because he was obviously educated, with a big house and straight teeth.
• Bill Clinton sounds like a hillbilly. His rhetoric always supported the less well-educated, even if his record didn’t. So his wife got the benefit of many doubts. Her 1993 attempt to bring about universal health care, while it failed, also works in her favor. It is at least on-point.
• Most less-educated just don’t have these facts, just a hint of them in their daily lives, and take a "pox on both their houses" approach. They can be manipulated by a search for scapegoats just like the poor of any other nation. But not forever.

This study explains a lot of trends which previously had no rational explanation. The desperation parents feel today about getting their kids into "good" colleges. The political move to the right by black folks with education, especially on social issues.

When I moved to my home on Winter Avenue 25 years ago, I was among the few on the street with a college degree. I did not feel different from my neighbors, but gradually those differences have magnified. The reason is simple — access to health care.

Over the last 15 years the uneducated have been systematically stripped of their health care coverage, while most of those with college degrees have kept theirs. That’s the real explanation for those numbers. I see a doctor regularly, I get good advice and good medicine. Barring an accident I will outlive my father by several years.

Had I not gotten an education, as my father did not, this would not be the case. My father would have died at the age I am now, maybe sooner, without affordable health care. He had the same high cholesterol, the same high blood pressure I suffer from. These long-term conditions, which must be managed carefully, are the primary cause of premature death in this country. It takes self-discipline, medicine and support to keep alive.

If those without high school educations continue to be deprived of health care, and continue to die at high rates, their only recourse (and I think many have already taken this) is to reproduce. The median age in a poor black community is much lower than that of a middle-class white community. This disparity will start appearing in the white world as well — it’s already appearing.

So far Democrats have been unable to make any "class warfare" argument work for two reasons. First (and most important) most Americans do have a college education. The growing "underclass" is a minority. Second, Democrats have been making this argument through candidates who have education — it’s a noblesse oblige argument. And poor people don’t like being talked down to.

But…

Someday, perhaps someday soon, an uneducated politician is going to rise out of this growing swamp and demand, not change, but revolution. And those with nothing left to lose will follow.

Unless we lance the boil now, and bring quality health care to every American.