As a recap:
Root Cause: The fundamental reason for the occurrence of a problem
Some news in the Washington Post Friday caught my eye with their article about suicide rates and reduction.
Researchers say there’s a simple way to reduce suicides: Increase the minimum wage
In case you don’t want to read the entire article, the meat of it is that increasing the minimum wage to $15 and increasing the earned income tax credit together decreased the suicide rate by 10% in states where it’s gone into place. Huh. Almost like poverty and despair drives folks to suicide or something….
Which should surprise no-one.
So now we’ve got even more evidence that lifting folks out of poverty isn’t just the humane thing to do, it reduces suicide rates AND homicide rates.
Seems like this would be a pretty easy plug for Sanders or one of the other presidential candidates that is focused on making the economy work for the rest of us. Reducing tragic deaths with evidence based policies rather than something that has been proven to do nothing. Toss in some universal healthcare and suddenly we’re really making some positive changes when people can get the medications and care they need.
Like we’ve been talking about for years.