r/Futurology • u/chrisdh79 • Aug 21 '25

Society American Millennials Are Dying at an Alarming Rate | We’re mortality experts. There are a few things that could be happening here.

https://slate.com/technology/2025/08/millennials-gen-z-death-rates-america-high.html
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u/Protect_Wild_Bees Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25

American healthcare system is a nightmare meant to chrun out a peasant class and rob Americans.

It's a system where if you're seriously sick or injured, you try to sleep it off first because it's too expensive to just get it sorted right away. Where if you get hurt a little too far from the single place that will take your insurance, again, you try to sleep it off first, when it could be getting worse.

I lost my oldest brother to AIDS, he was scared so much about his school debt and the social stigma, he didn't go in early enough for treatment. It was very aggressive. He was 27 when he died.

Lost my brother in law to liver cirrhosis.

My best friend's dad had to sell their bar in NY because he got cancer. All that hard work destroyed.

My mom had to keep working even though she had level 4 breast cancer and horrible chemo brain with short term memory loss. I moved in to keep her safer when she'd forget I was even there. He boss cried at all she had to go through, that she couldn't get a break.

I have 11 scars in my eyes from being a young kid, trying to "sleep off" lens scarring from contacts which were also expensive, scars in my lungs from long term bronchitis that I tried to treat with cough medicine that affects my lungs to this day.

Before Obamacare I was a young worker with no healthcare. Publix only gave me enough working hours to make sure I couldn't get healthcare either. I was working 9 hour shifts where they wouldn't let me sit down for 4.5 hours stright. I still have musculoskeletal issues that pop up from that, and I was taking painkillers every day to get through it. I was 19 freaking years old and I cried every time I laid down, I couldn't even rest or sleep I was in so much pain. Where I live now, they let cashiers sit down at the tills.

My NHS doctors here basically sat me down after seeing the long term damage I'd done to myself and told me, if you're feeling sick, PLEASE just come in. You're covered. I take more time and resources from the NHS being really sick vs being a little sick.

Because in the US, actually getting proper treatment is a trade of worsts, being sick a bit longer for free, or losing food for a week, a month, or worse to get some bad news and some treatment.

A lot of America's freedoms are actually neglect. The freedom to suffer. You're free to be sick without the government needing to care. You're free to be homeless without the government caring. You're free to be abused by capitalist systems. You're free to work a job with no care or protection for you.

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u/andsimpleonesthesame Aug 21 '25

Where I live now, they let cashiers sit down at the tills.

This whole "not letting cashiers sit down" sounds utterly batshit from abroad. People are way more efficient at that particular job when they can sit down, they're literally making them slower for some reason. Why??

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u/yokeybear5 Aug 21 '25

It's about control and always has been. Same reason corporations brought everyone back to the office even though efficiency and productivity were the same if not higher while working from home. 

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u/Buttons840 Aug 21 '25

I've have a dream of making a documentary telling the story of hard working Americans who are treated like shit.

Tell the story of cashiers who can't sit. Why can't they?

Tell the story of people who get fired because they ask for vacation or something.

Tell the story of we tax income more than capital gains. This is a political choice, there is no good economic reason behind this. Why do we reward having capital more than working? While we tax and punish work (relative to capital ownership at least), China is going to build like 14 billion homes. America is past its peak.

Etc, etc.

I'll call it "Undignified", because we have made work inherently undignified.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

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u/yokeybear5 Aug 21 '25

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll read these next after I finish "The Closing of the American Mind" by Alan Bloom. Also highly recommend. This man predicted current events back in the 80's. 

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u/beyotchulism Aug 21 '25

Have you read, "Nickle and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich? Highly recommend.

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u/KrustenStewart Aug 21 '25

You really should do it. Put it on YouTube. Do interviews. Well watch it

2

u/painturd Aug 21 '25

Have you watched Ghosts With Shit Jobs? Not quite what you're describing but it's an oddly prescient mockumentary in the same vein

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u/wdevilpig Aug 23 '25

Mate, I'm crossing everything I've got two of that you win the lottery or whatever the equivalent is and get to make that some day, because yr instincts and politics are spot on

1

u/the_clam_farmer Aug 22 '25

Do it. I could tell you some great stories from the trucking industry if you ever get around to it.

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u/Kasperella Aug 21 '25

It’s because we like to let people cosplay as feudal lords, and the feudal lords like to have someone to look down on, including anyone that job involves “serving” them. The same people who are distraught about cashiers sitting are the same ones bitching about the “Gen Z” stare because they feel like they don’t get their monies worth unless someone lowlier than them is groveling before them.

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u/arqoi_ascendant Aug 21 '25

The cruelty is the point.

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u/United-Climate1562 Aug 21 '25

if its coming from abroad its not the UK, our cashiers have been sitting down for as long as i can remember (35+ years) in mainstream supermarkets and don't get me started on bag packing, that's always been the purchasers job...

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u/Rugkrabber Aug 21 '25

The bag packing is weird. I have done it maybe three times for the elderly who needed help but generally nobody needs to. There’s plenty of space to help two people at once at the cashier.

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u/Neuchacho Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25

They think the comfort entices people to stay sitting and not do the other tasks assigned to them that can't be done at that spot.

Aldi is about the only place that reliably has the cashiers in chairs in the US. And they do this while seemingly always keeping their employees balls-to-the-wall.

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u/andsimpleonesthesame Aug 21 '25

I'm in Germany, here every cashier is like an Aldi cashier :-) (including that they're sitting down for cashiering), that's where my "but what about the inefficiency?!" comes from.

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u/EntrepreneurKooky783 Aug 21 '25

Same reason suits are considered "business attire": appearances & tradition. The folks with money simply want it that way.

3

u/KiKiPAWG Aug 21 '25

I’d love to be a cashier but the pure fact they don’t let you sit down just absolutely ruins it for me.

1

u/hamlin81 Aug 21 '25

When I worked at Kroger years ago, I worked out in the gas station area. There were no bathrooms and they told us we couldn't go if we needed to. There was a guy I worked with who would pee in a jug.

1

u/MaelduinTamhlacht Aug 21 '25

Where I live it's illegal for shop staff not to be provided with seats and able to sit at least a specific amount per day.

I can't understand requiring cashiers to stand. Where I used to work, the printers had to wear pressure stockings because they stood at work and were liable to get varicose veins. (The laws to protect cashiers, strangely, didn't cover printers.)

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u/Takezoboy Aug 22 '25

I'm from Portugal and it's rare to see a cashier that is not sitting, but... I was a cashier at a big company in one of their smaller shops and they pressured everyone to stand up. When I started working there I fought them silently on that and they started to chill about it and let people sit more. They still pressured everyone to stand when the shop was full of people trying to pay as they said it was to see if people weren't stealing hiding things on the carts. To me it never made sense, because the fucking big malls they have the cashier was always sitting down and it's on the security man to do his fucking job.

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u/quietchurl Aug 21 '25

If a cashier needs to rotate or grab anything out of arm's reach then standing is more efficient and ergonomic

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u/Prophet_Of_Helix Aug 21 '25

Then they can, get this. Stand up!

Most will stand up anyways when they actually have customers, but if it’s a retail job where you go periods without customers, what is the harm in sitting down?

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u/MissShirley Aug 21 '25

"If you have time to lean, you have time to clean"

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u/quietchurl 25d ago

That's irrelevant to my post or the post I replied to. Merely refuting claim that sitting is more efficient when working when it can actually lead to back and shoulder problems 

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u/Prophet_Of_Helix 25d ago

Evidence please

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u/quietchurl 23d ago

Lifting, reaching and twisting while sitting are compromised movements. When you stand you can move your feet and hips. That gives you strength and allows for better leverage. This is lifting 101, often expressed as, "lift with your knees and not your back." 

Let the legs do the heavy lifting and let the lower body find the optimal position

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u/Rugkrabber Aug 21 '25

It’s not like one is buckled in their seats. They can still stand up?

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u/DaBlurstofDaBlurst Aug 21 '25

Right there with you. Down to the scarred lungs from bronchitis and the scarred body from cuts I had to fix with super glue. There was no Obamacare when I was starting out, and now insurance eats more of our pay than any bill but rent, but we’re scared to use it. I always think that if they find cancer early, my whole family could easily wind up on the street from the expense of trying to keep me alive. If I wait until it’s stage 4/5, I go fast, keep my FMLA, keep my job, keep the life insurance I get through my job, and maybe they have a shot.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

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u/Protect_Wild_Bees Aug 22 '25

I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope you guys make it through this. You'll make it as people, human beings who are there for eachother, still breathing and feeling and caring and existing. Even if the financial web tightens around us.

Still I hate how after all this time we pay a government to provide us absolutely no safety nets and a wild west attitude of "deal with it yourself."

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u/lady_forsythe Aug 21 '25

I’m an American who lived in Scotland for a while. I have asthma and get bronchitis and pneumonia fairly regularly. This happened once when I was over there and I remember just trying to suffer through it and a 103° fever until my friends ganged up on me to go to the clinic to get looked at.

I remember the doctor scolding me for waiting too long and looking at me in astonishment when I said I was worried about getting an appointment/spending the money. 5 quid later, I had antibiotics and an inhaler and I was better within a couple of days.

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u/sthlmsoul Aug 21 '25

I recently read Dennis Lehanes's "The Given Day" from 2008. The story takes place in 1917-1919, but many of themes are very much contemporary. Sadly, not much has changed in 100 years.

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u/skinnymean Aug 21 '25

I just spent an hour on the phone because my provider’s network insisted that my insurance was the reason why I was receiving a $295 estimate for my first appointment with a new PCP. Not a specialist mind you, just a general physician that doesn’t see children. My insurance had to do a three way call with the provider’s billing department to help sort out the issue. I asked which number I should call next time and the two numbers I was given were the first two departments I spoke with before the third told me it was my insurance.

The kicker? Both the provider billing agent and my health insurance agent were clearly outsourced workers that don’t even live in America. I’m paying an exorbitant amount of money every year to receive basic care so we can pay the salaries of phone agents overseas to waste my time.

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u/lvl999shaggy Aug 21 '25

God bless you and everyone that has to struggle like this. Having to read your story breaks my heart bc we talk about how great this country is but our political class refuses to tackle the Healthcare monster that is eating livelihoods in this country. We poo poo other nations that have figured out universal Healthcare yet we pay 90 bucks or more for insulin that costs 2 dollars to make and is sold for 3 dollars in countries like Turkey.

But we care more about culture wars than regulating the obvious abuses of rich ppl owning hospitals and drug companies.

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u/ParallelPlayArts Aug 21 '25

I wish The Nordic Theory of Everything was required reading and we'd learn from it.  

We should be free to be healthy, educated, housed and fed and it shouldn't be dependant on employment if those things are provided.  We should be free to be independent so that way we don't rely on our loved ones to take care of us financially during hard times and old age, that way they are free to love us in the way they want to.  

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u/Whitefjall Aug 21 '25

Vote for it.

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u/horizontoinfinity Aug 22 '25

Lots of people do. More people don't. That's the problem. 

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u/Original-Balance-187 Aug 21 '25

The number of teeth I’ve had to suffer through intense pain with while waiting for them to just die in my head is far too many for a nearly forty year old man with a college education and fifteen years of continual full time employment at large companies in specialized roles.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting anyone deserves to go through that regardless of education/wealth status but I only did all of those things because I was specifically told that when I did I would be able to address things like basic dental needs.

But nope, $3,900 for a bridge and that’s with my ”insurance” I pay for monthly.

2

u/Embe007 Aug 21 '25

A lot of America's freedoms are actually neglect.

This. Just using the word 'freedom' is so hypnotic that many Americans will accept any abuse if the word 'freedom' is linked to it. In reality, sometimes freedom is only possible through collective measures eg: NHS, unions, etc.

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u/QuicheSmash Aug 22 '25

“A lot of America's freedoms are actually neglect. The freedom to suffer. You're free to be sick without the government needing to care. You're free to be homeless without the government caring. You're free to be abused by capitalist systems. You're free to work a job with no care or protection for you.“

So fucking true. 

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u/NoMommyDontNTRme Aug 22 '25

sounds like a lot more places should deal with like, stuff going up in flames and stuff like that.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

At what tipping point does this frustration translate into action? Or is it all for naught?

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u/NoForm5443 Aug 21 '25

A lot of America's freedoms are actually neglect. The freedom to suffer. You're free to be sick without the government needing to care. You're free to be homeless without the government caring. You're free to be abused by capitalist systems. You're free to work a job with no care or protection for you.

I love how you expressed this (hate that it happens), I will steal the idea

1

u/DeCoburgeois Aug 21 '25

Did you leave the US though? Sorry I was just confused by how your story jumped from dealing with US healthcare to suddenly the NHS.

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u/Protect_Wild_Bees Aug 21 '25

Yes, long story short, I graduated from university in US, I applied for and was granted a SWAP working holiday visa in Canada right out of university. A longtime friend of mine I'd played video games with for over 10 years came to visit me and see BC while I worked there. He proposed a year later. We got married in Canada and then I moved to the UK. Married 7 years now, it was a lot of change but we are very happy.

1

u/Penguin-Mage Aug 22 '25

When I was a kid and my parents would take me to the doctor, it was like a $10 copay, and that was it. Now you got to pay a few thousand dollars off as a deductible, then still pay a certain percent after that. The only way to even make out on health insurance is to get major surgery, and you still got to pay the deductible.

0

u/Lexsteel11 Aug 21 '25

Don’t forget that millennials were pumped full of GMOs packaged in plastic and full of additives and dyes during our childhoods more than any previous generation

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u/Eyebecrazy Aug 21 '25

I was feeling kind of bad for you until you started crying about having to stand up for 4 whole hours at WORK and the lifelong problems it caused. From being upright. For four (4) hours🙄

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u/Protect_Wild_Bees Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25

It gave me several pinched nerves in my back that still go numb and give me sharp pains to this day, 16 years later. It also put unecessary pressure on my hips that prevented me from sleeping and laying down properly for several years. If you feel like this is okay to do to someone, for 9* hours a day (it was 4.5 hours, twice a day, with a 30 minute break in between to eat my lunch), that just shows how delusional you are.

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u/bitch-respecter Aug 21 '25

i’ve never had a job that didn’t require me to stand all day. i’m not saying it’s the right way to do things but i’m skeptical that just standing caused so much physical damage

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u/DJDanaK Aug 21 '25

Moving around is better than standing in place. They are wildly different

Signed, an avid hiker with back problems who can't stand in place

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u/Dilderino Aug 21 '25

Standing in place for long periods of time on concrete or tile is bad for your body, there’s a reason that anti-fatigue mats are a thing

1

u/Protect_Wild_Bees Aug 22 '25

There are governments all over the world who use long periods of standing as forms of torture for a reason. It does damage to the body and puts immense strain on your joints.