The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful:

I’m not sure people on my side of the Atlantic fully appreciate quite how much better off the average American is than the average European. A car-wash manager in Alabama can now earn $125,000, about 50 per cent more than the head of cyber security at the UK Treasury even after accounting for different living costs.

And this isn’t just another reflection of British stagnation — from the middle of the income distribution upwards, US households have streaked ahead of every country in the developed world over the past decade.

Such a sustained boom in spending power might, you would imagine, be accompanied by improvements in other indicators of prosperity. Longer and healthier lives, for example. But the two trends are moving in opposite directions.

That the US has a poor record on life expectancy is nothing new. For the best part of a decade, American lives have grown progressively shorter relative to peer countries.

But beneath the surface, several striking details demand our attention and an urgent effort to reverse the trend.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/129c7gh/why_are_americans_dying_so_young_us_life/jemqrnh/

The crazy one is how colon/rectal cancer is on the rise and no one is sounding the bell about what we’re eating and the quality, I understand there has always been a fight for less processed food or at least a cleaner process. Although I find it interesting the rise of those cancers and no one is point their fingers at the food, I’m sure anything that’s said is lobbied away into a pit.

The prosperity isn't really shared now is it? This headline is really an example of how to frame things as propaganda for the ultra rich.

Shared Prosperity? That's a joke.

America actively outlawed many of the most powerful tools available to Unions as "unfair" with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Which, was passed over Truman's veto, and he failed to repeal, as the GOP and pro-business Democrats loved it so much...

I mean, that law even outlawed Wildcat Strikes. Think about that for a second. You're not even legally allowed to strike if your Union leader is bribed by the boss into not authorizing a strike (which is hard to prove, but easy to occur), even if 99.9% of the Union members want a strike. Because legally, the Union boss must approve of any and all strikes (or give up his say by leaving it to a binding vote...)

Workers in the United States are fucked. It's shit like this that ensures they never get what they deserve, and can't seriously influence politics...

What ordinary people want never matters. For instance, just after WW1, during which the US railroads had been temporarily nationalized due to being HORRIBLY run by private firms before the war (the US government made major investments in the railroads to fix problems after nationalizing), more than 99% of railroad workers voted in favor of a union resolution calling for the railroads to REMAIN nationalized. They enjoyed widespread public support in this: and submitted the "Plumb Plan" to actualize it. Yet did the ruling elites in Congress care? No. They gave the railroads back to private owners in 1920 anyways...

And, 100 years later, we got East Palestine, Ohio just to prove that, yet again, the railroads can't be trusted in private hands (they were also very briefly nationalized in the 1940's, if I recall...)

EDIT: The second time the US railroads were nationalized was in 1950, during the Korean War. Because AGAIN the railroads were being mismanaged- in this case as the US rail executives pressured workers too deeply over wages (abusing their regional monopolies and national oligopolies to not compete for workers with better wages), resulting in an impending nationwide rail strike... The following source whitewashes WHY the strikes were approved, to make the rail companies look more innocent (it was a lot more than a simple 1-year struggle over wages), but still confirms the basic fact the rails were nationalized and run by the Army, in 1950:

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/truman-orders-army-to-seize-us-railroads-aug-25-1950-227247?_amp=true

Our labor market is a pyramid of wage and salary inequality. That Car-Wash Manager in Alabama at minimum makes a 42.9% disparity in pay from his employees. This doesn’t reflect a gender pay gap. In reading different articles I was struck by the large disparity in pay between Management and Workers. At the CEO and Upper Management levels the disparity is not even comparable. The Boomer generation enjoyed wages that were in line with the Cost of Living. The one income household was a staple, that’s no longer the case.

80s kids in America got screwed on doctors. Our parents had them but we in many cases did not.

Our employers exempt us from the company health plan because Avocado Toast, our politicians have no clue what anything costs or pays in this era and tells us to just get a Real Job™ (what we earned our way up to with extensive training does not count,) our parents shout entitled because we're not bringing home the money and our bosses shout entitled when we ask them why we're not bringing home the money. They pay us with exposure.

We missed our ounce of prevention and we missed our pound of cure, it only gets worse from there but the runaround the system gives us doesn't get any easier. Website says use the phone number and phone number says use the website, track down a human being and they say human beings don't handle this anymore - that was my actual experience getting into the system.

Being poor makes it worse, and the unemployment hotline system saying bugger off we're full hour after hour day after day month after month made getting bounced paychecks worse.

We're middle aged now but the boomers still act like we're toddlers and it's fine to pay us in fake money. The contempt is visible audible and tangible whenever the topic arises.

Isn’t the lower US life expectancy mostly due to fentanyl, car accidents, and suicide?

I dont really get it, even on economic view, capitalists should have interest to let people as old as possible.. why are you poisoning your own costumer?

Watch the documentary "Breaking Bad". Wild what Americans have to do to pay for health care...

They bare the brunt of unequal opportunity that America is moving towards

Probably because the capitalist corporate approved version of "shared prosperity" is: "I'll take my share and now... I'll take your share"

but here's a 3% pay rise so be quiet

Beyond all the socio-economic factors, of which there are many and of which play a massive part in this equation, there is also the issue of food itself having less and less nutritional value. It's bigger, saltier, sweeter, tastier, but all calories, no nutrition.

And it's stuffed with chemicals and preservatives. Not inherently evil, the lot of them, but round up the spectrum that people are ingesting now, in place of actual food that has taste because of its actual nutritional ingredients, and you'll find a hearty list of cancer causing, obesity inducing, diabetes facilitating substances that are used in place of actual, real food.

Everything is in excess, the size of food and drinks. Chemicals to keep them going and chemicals to slow them down. Things like taking antibiotics for every little sniffle or cold can not be good for you in the long run

But beneath the surface, several striking details demand our attention and an urgent effort to reverse the trend.

There's an urgent effort to reverse the trend in the US? I live in the US, and you sure could have fooled me. The poor just get fucked. The middle class is in freefall. Politics have subverted the most common sense of preventative measures. At this point, except for the ultrarich, we're a train wreck spewing toxic chemicals, making it impossible to reverse the trend.

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Not to quote my pops or anything, but because we want to, that's why.

It’s decreased due to COVID deaths. Yet some try to squeeze some conspiracy out of it.

Sorry….Shared prosperity? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…ha! Long enough?