America and Survival of the Richest
A 1923 New York Times Magazine article lamented the nation's suicide rate despite economic prosperity.
A similar issue exists in 2023, with a historically low unemployment rate coupled with record "deaths of despair," including the opioid crisis and fentanyl overdoses.
As the 1923 article noted:
In fact, no fewer than 12,000 persons during one year have worried themselves to death and committed suicide, scores of them being millionaires. And yet the number of murders was only 2,000 or thereabout, while the murderers brought to justice were even fewer. It thus appears that cash is six times more destructive of human life than crime, and presumably therefore of human happiness.
What would that "six times more destructive" ratio be today?
The U.S. in 2022 experienced an estimated 49,449 suicides versus 21,156 murders. That's approximately a 2.3x ratio, less than half the 6x ratio of 1923.
What changed? Over the past century, the U.S. population increased by just more than triple. Suicides increased by about quadruple: certainly more than the population increase, but not dramatically so. Yet the number of murders increased by more than 10x.
America and Survival of the Richest
Published: Sunday, October 21, 1923