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DECEMBER 22, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

Come to America and Live a Shorter Life!

As is not the case in other advanced economies, life expectancy in the
USA continues to fall.

Welcome, dear readers, to another great year for American
exceptionalism! While life expectancy continued its upward climb among
our peers-the nations with advanced economies-it fell
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in 2021 to its lowest level since 1996 in these United States according
to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. COVID
and fentanyl each took a terrible toll, adding to the well-documented
deaths of despair from suicide, alcoholism, and the other plagues
statistically associated with the lives of working-class Americans.

An American child born last year had a life expectancy of 76.4
years-down from 77 years in 2020. The earlier year, of course, was the
year of COVID with no vaccines, while 2021 was the year of COVID

**with** vaccines, which only highlights the role that vaccine
resistance played in dooming some hundreds of thousands of our fellow
citizens who might otherwise still be among us. Lest anyone doubt that
the MAGA mishegas

****about the satanic vaccines was key to the continuation of COVID
deaths well beyond the date when the vaccines became widely available,
it's notable that the death rate from COVID among whites surpassed
that among Blacks and other racial groups in mid-2021.

Indeed, as a late-October study
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in

**The**

**Lancet Regional Health-Americas** documented, there was a direct
correlation between the conservatism of a congressmember's voting
record and the death rate from COVID of their constituents, across all
age groups and taking into account such factors as race, education, and
income. Those death rates were 11 percent higher in states with
Republican governors. This wasn't just a function of state policy
(like, e.g., Ron DeSantis's war on vaccines), of course, but also of
the beliefs of our MAGA-istic compatriots.

Another late-October study
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this one published in the academic journal

**PLOS One**, demonstrated that the perils of living in red-state
America aren't limited to greater COVID mortality rates. As the policy
polarization between red states and blue has grown steadily wider, the
failure of red states to expand Medicaid and their opposition to other
policies of income support and greater educational and health care
availability, as well as their refusal to tax dangerous substances like
tobacco, has led to their having higher death rates, particularly among
residents between the ages of 25 and 64, than their blue-state
counterparts.

Even before COVID, then, MAGA America, as well as our comparatively high
rates of poverty, was hastening us to the grave. In 2019, according to a
study from the World Health Organization, a child born in the U.S. had a
life expectancy of 78.5 years, while for one born in Sweden, it was 82.4
years, and in Japan, 84.5.

Does that mean that a steady diet of Tucker Carlson can lead to an
untimely demise? These numbers don't lie.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

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Wells Fargo Wants to Buy Its Way Out of Trouble
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CFPB director Rohit Chopra has other ideas. BY DAVID DAYEN

Government Spending Bill Waives Aircraft Safety Deadline
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Boeing gets its way, again. BY JAROD FACUNDO

Wall Street Wins Again on Retirement Savings
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A perk for the asset management industry found its way into the omnibus
spending bill. Meanwhile, the savings of disabled Americans living in
extreme poverty will continue to be strictly means-tested. BY LEE
HARRIS

Baker at the Barricades
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Outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker takes the helm at the NCAA
just in time for the college athletes' revolution. BY GABRIELLE
GURLEY

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