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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Key quote: "As the gap between rich and poor increases, the cost of screwing up increases. The fear is they’ll end up on the other side of the divide."

In 1970, failure was a job on the assembly line at Ford in Detroit. Until 1974, the auto companies didn't require a high school diploma. Union job, good pay. Now it's homelessness and drug addiction.

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I'm relatively young and have to say that awareness of that increasing gap has significantly influenced some of my life's decision-making. By the time I was coming up, the trend was clear and so factored in goals and plans. I think I've made it to the side of the divide where I'm not at great risk of falling over, but it's unfortunate to see some of my peers who were less informed or less cynical finding themselves on the other side with progressively less opportunity.

So there were no homeless or drug addicts before the 90s?

There were significantly less before the 80s.

I believe Animats meant academic failure.

Overdose deaths have quadrupled since the '90s alone, suicide rates have increased by about 30%, as have alcohol related deaths.

I was interested in this statistic and how it compares to say the 1960's and 70's. If you look without adjusting for population you just get an exponential increase that overwhelms the signal. But the statistics adjusting for population still back up your claim here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184603/deaths-by-uninten...

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