“In fact, a 1994 study concluded that, over the course of the 20th century, the average lifespan of someone born and living in the United States lengthened by more than 30 years, and that approximately 25 years of those gains were due to advances in public health. In addition to vaccination and water fluoridation, those advances also included:

* improvements in motor vehicle safety, including the use of seat belts, child safety seats, motorcycle helmets, decreased drinking and driving, and improved engineering designs in vehicles as well as the designs of highways,
* workplace safety, particularly in the reduction of injuries and deaths in mining, manufacturing, construction, and transportation,
* better control of infectious diseases from clean, safe drinking water and improved sanitation practices,
* decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke, which is due to the recognitions of the harms of tobacco, as well as a medical focus on identifying and controlling high blood pressure,
* decline in maternal and infant mortality primarily due to improved hygiene, better nutrition, better access to health care, and access to family planning and contraceptive services,
* and safer, healthier foods as a result of the reduction in microbial contamination and improved nutritional content of food, with food-fortification all but eliminating nutritional deficiency diseases such as rickets, goiter, and pellagra.

Many of these programs and services, here in 2025 in the USA, have already been gutted, reduced, or revoked entirely.”

@geekysteven

it is a shame the rich get us to kill each other while they profit.

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

brb, buying shares in Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), and Northrop Grumman.