 Conservative policies are correlated with a decrease in life expectancy. Therefore, if you live in a red state, your life on average will be shorter than individuals who live in blue states. This is according to a new study that was just published, and before we get into the study, I just want to make it clear that overall life expectancy in the United States across the board has decreased consistently for two years now, and on average, life expectancy in the United States is 5.1 years lower than comparable OECD countries with an average life expectancy here of 77 years compared to other countries where they at least live for about 80 years. And obviously a large reason why our life expectancy has decreased for the past two years is because of our mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but even taking that into account, we were already doing worse than comparable OECD countries. So what does the study say? Well, in a summary of the study for The Guardian, Mark Pingali explains, Americans die younger in conservative states than in those governed by liberals a new study has found. The authors wrote, simulations indicate that changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019 while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives. They added, especially strong associations were observed between certain domains and specific causes of death, between the gun safety domain and suicide mortality among men, between the labor domain and alcohol induced mortality and between both the economic tax and tobacco tax domains and CVD, cardiovascular mortality. Now let's just pause right here to clear something up. All of the policy domains that they examined are associated with working age mortality. That's the key working age mortality. So it's not like a bunch of old people live in red states and, you know, them dying earlier because of the pandemic or them dying earlier because of a specific disease that affects old people is what is decreasing life expectancy. Now we're talking about working age mortality here. So what's the solution? Well, the authors point to this study published in 2016 in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine, which found that life expectancy in the United States would increase by approximately four years if the U.S. offered social welfare programs that were comparable to other OECD countries. So this means that the United States and red states in particular can reverse this trend simply by not being as stingy by offering U.S. citizens what citizens in other countries have where the life expectancy on average is longer. This means that if you are a governor in a red state and you have an expanded Medicaid, you're part of the problem. Also in the United States, we don't have universal health care that is free at the point of service. This leads to excess deaths that are completely preventable, tens of thousands every single year. On top of that, we don't have paid time off. We don't have paid paternity leave and maternity leave and we don't have guaranteed vacation days. Many red states don't have gun safety laws. Even the blue states that have gun safety laws, well, they're affected by red states who neighbor them, and therefore that affects their gun policy. So trying to institute common sense gun laws that reduce the number of gun deaths and mass shootings, that's also going to help the situation. Programs designed to reduce poverty and hunger, increasing the minimum wage. These could all expand life expectancy by decreasing depression and suicide and other issues that come up as a result of economic woes. And so when you see that life expectancy is lower in red states and overall the U.S. has on average a lower life expectancy than other comparable OECD nations, well, it's because Republicans dominate. Republicans control 61% of the states, 61% of the legislatures to be exact. So people are supporting politicians overall that are causing them to die, quite literally. But at least the woke moralists won't have any victories, right? At least the libs will be triggered. We might die earlier, but at least, you know, the wokeists won't win. That's basically where we're at in this country. Where conservatives' policies or lack of policies to address specific crises are so bad that they are causing their residents to die sooner. And we're the richest country on the planet, there's no excuse for this, no excuse whatsoever. Countries with less wealth than us, they don't see these same problems that we see. Now there's one conservative trend that has correlated with an increase in life expectancy, which actually did surprise me. The article continues, bucking the trend, the study found that more conservative marijuana policies were associated with lower mortality rates. So to be clear, more liberal marijuana policies are correlated with a decrease in life expectancy. Now they haven't identified a causal mechanism, and we'll get to what they say about this in a moment here. But this does not mean that marijuana is lethal. Therefore, if it's legal and used for recreational purposes more commonly, then that's going to lead to more deaths. That's not what they're saying here. So what they are saying is that marijuana use is associated with higher instances of alcohol abuse, vehicular accidents, and also suicidal ideation, which suggests that if you're depressed and you already abuse alcohol, you're more likely to also use marijuana. And this is a statistically significant association, but they explained that multiple studies have already produced inconclusive evidence about the health impacts of marijuana, aside from positive benefits like reducing chronic pain and whatnot. So it kind of makes sense when you think about it that way, to where maybe if you are feeling worse off, if you're depressed, you're more likely to seek out marijuana as a treatment. So marijuana use or marijuana policies in more liberal states is an indicator perhaps of problems. But overall, that isn't as clear as the other policy domains that they examined, where it was abundantly clear that the more stingier welfare and social policies instituted by Republicans depriving their citizens of material well-being, it causes their citizens to die. Not really that surprising, honestly. So, yeah, there you have it. If you live in a red state, you should probably leave unless you're wealthy, then I'm sure you'll be okay. But on average, if you live in a red state and you're not an elite with a lot of wealth, well, that's also a problem because how do you leave if you don't have wealth? Because leaving requires wealth in the first place. But this is what happens when you vote for Republicans. Now, I don't think that Republicans are going to see this study and change their mind because they reject science and data. But at least we all know that it is the case that people in red states do worse than people in blue states. I don't find this as a victory and, you know, a reason to celebrate Democratic party policies because they're not where they should be as well. But I find this as a really depressing reality about our political system, where we have one party who is so extremist that their policies are causing excess and preventable deaths and they still continue to be electorally viable election after election after election. I find this to be really sad and depressing, honestly. So this isn't necessarily a victory for liberal blue states as it is a failure of our entire country and our entire political system. Like this is an indictment of capitalism in the United States to be clear.