(1) Suicide, drug use, and alcoholism (liver disease) are symptoms of a sick society overwhelmed with busywork.
(2) No one should be expected by “sociiiiety” to work 60 hours a fucking week. The ideal would be more couples that work 30 hours a week each, so both have time for family. Sweden, Denmark, and Netherlands basically have it right.
(3) Basic needs:
Public education is either terrible or has been co-opted by religious nutters in much of the US. Some people view creationism as a real alternative and birth control as evil.
Food: sugar-loaded crap in most of the US, poor controls on pesticides, GMOs, and other toxic shit in food.
Water: it’s not only Flint. It’s Newark, NJ now, probably 50 other cities with heavy metal contamination problems yet to be discovered.