Minorities in medicine

[wolf]

If she's so destitute, how is she paying for the seedy motel room, which costs more than monthly rent in a shitty apartment?

Hope she enjoys the crack you bought her.

Originally Posted by wolf

If she's so destitute, how is she paying for the seedy motel room, which costs more than monthly rent in a shitty apartment?

Hope she enjoys the crack you bought her.

Man, remind me to never travel to Philly! Your motel room rates must be outrageous! In the off season here (which it now is) a motel room can be found for $40.00 for one night. Rent typically starts at around $400 for a one bedroom in the least expensive neighborhoods, and then throw in damage deposit and first and last month's rent before you can move in = $1200. She said she was there for the night only and was going down to see what she could find through the local charity outfits, social services, etc., the next day. I gave her $2.00. If she bought crack for $2.00, the dope dealers must all be going broke. The people around here know pretty much who the street people and pan handlers are - it's a small enough place. Neither Mike nor I had seen her before.

[Undertoad]

Mari I know this will sound like heresy but I am convinced the entire world was different in 1940s and 1950s and that applying modern concepts of safety and employment issues and such to the previous day is not really informative.

For starts the poverty rate was about 30-40% and the country was trying to quickly transition to an industrial economy where there would be far less scarcity.

The life expectancy was different. People died a lot. They smoked a lot -- because they died so much of other things that it wasn't obvious that cigarettes were bad for you.

It was a shock to me to take the Hoover dam tour and learn about the handful of guys who died building it. It wasn't that OSHA didn't exist. It was that it couldn't be done any other way at the time. Safety is a cost that we build into things routinely now, but we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Mari I know this will sound like heresy but I am convinced the entire world was different in 1940s and 1950s and that applying modern concepts of safety and employment issues and such to the previous day is not really informative.

For starts the poverty rate was about 30-40% and the country was trying to quickly transition to an industrial economy where there would be far less scarcity.

The life expectancy was different. People died a lot. They smoked a lot -- because they died so much of other things that it wasn't obvious that cigarettes were bad for you.

It was a shock to me to take the Hoover dam tour and learn about the handful of guys who died building it. It wasn't that OSHA didn't exist. It was that it couldn't be done any other way at the time. Safety is a cost that we build into things routinely now, but we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time.

In the '50's the poverty rate was around 16%:

http://www.census.gov/income/histpov/hstpov2.lst

I couldn't find statistics for the '40's doing my quick and dirty search techniques. I believe you are probably thinking about the depression era of the 30's, not the war years of the '40's or the post war boom in the US which started after WWII. I am talking about cancer related deaths from the '60's to present due to uranium exposure, not historical differences in longevity (which by the way haven't changed all that much - our current life expectancy is due mostly to changes in the infant mortality rate where children no longer die of epedemics caused by bacterial organisms).

My point is that there does need to be SOME government oversight of mega-business concerns. The little guy has his hands tied while the multi-national conglomerates do as they please.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by marichiko

My point is that there does need to be SOME government oversight of mega-business concerns. The little guy has his hands tied while the multi-national conglomerates do as they please.

This is the case sometimes, if only to save the idiots from themselves. Some will take notice while others will take on the classic Teenage Mentality "You aren't the boss of me! It's a free country, I can do what I want!" then promptly get themselves into trouble or worse.

But in terms of the littly guy vs the conglomos, it's all about money. The littley guy very...VERY rarely has the fincancial backing to stand toe to toe with a large company. Even if lots of little guys get together, the large company will more often than not still have the financial standing to keep those little guys from getting too rowdy. If the government gets involved, you can be sure that its attention will tip and sway with the passing of cash, be it for 'fines' or 'pay-outs' or 'special interests'. They have contingencies for the uncommon occasion a situation finds itself in the Court of Public Opinion too. Big companies have whole teams of people whose job it is to take blame and reallocate it, making the company seem more like a victim and largely at the whim of other factors. Shouldn't oughta be that way, but it is.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by marichiko

In the '50's the poverty rate was around 16%:

http://www.census.gov/income/histpov/hstpov2.lst

This source only goes back to 1959 where the rate was 22.4%. here are some of the stats you want. Scroll down the page and look for row "H". We start at 40-45% in 1937 at the tail of the depression, and poverty pretty much slowly drops until its low at 11.1% in 1973.

[Katkeeper]

Things were different in the '40s and '50s. I was there...

[glatt]

Hell, things were even different in the 70s when I was a kid. Our playgrounds were paved, even under the equipment. Kids wearing casts were a common sight. Now playgrounds have a foot of mulch under the swings, etc. I can't remember the last time I saw some kid with a leg or arm in a cast.

Everything has a warning label now, to the point that people routinely ignore them. When something is truely dangerous, ignorant people don't know because they assume the warning label has no meaning. For example, my father teaches electronics labs in college. Today's students see "Warning high voltage" on circuits they are working in, and they take it as seriously as a warning label on a cup of coffee. My dad's really nervous that some student will kill themselves when a big fat capacitor discharges through their hearts and it stops beating. He tells them "this is really dangerous" and they hear the "blah blah blah" of Charlie Brown's parents on TV.

The source you give appears to be someone with some sort of political agenda. I try to refer to Bureau of census statistics whenever possible because, in theory at least, such information should be somewhat less biased. The figure I got was further down on the page. It all depends on what factors you use in the definition of poverty. A government researcher states:

"The force of this American historical evidence is strengthened when one realizes that the income elasticity of the poverty line results from social processes that have continued--indeed, have perhaps even intensified--since the 1960's. These social processes can be summarized as follows: As technology progresses and the general standard of living rises, new consumption items are introduced. They may at first be purchased and used only by upper-income families; however, they gradually diffuse to middle- and lower-income levels. Things originally viewed as luxuries--for instance, indoor plumbing, telephones, and automobiles--come to be seen as conveniences and then as necessities. In addition, changes in the ways in which society is organized (sometimes in response to new "necessities") may make it more expensive for the poor to accomplish a given goal--as when widespread car ownership and increasing suburbanization lead to a deterioration in public transportation, and the poor are forced to buy cars or hire taxis in order to get to places where public transit used to take them. Finally, the general upgrading of social standards can make things more expensive for the poor--as when housing code requirements that all houses have indoor plumbing added to the cost of housing."

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/relabs.htm

It should be noted that your source places a question mark after his estimate of 40-47% for 1937. I was talking about the 40's and 50's, and poverty levels are beside the point to what I was stating. I don't care if the whole god damn country was living below the poverty level, it was still unconscionable for uranium mining outfits to knowingly expose their workers to high levels of radiation without informing them of the risks involved and then for these companies to vanish off the corporate map by some financial slight of hand, and thus escape all accountability.