A new paper written by the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton on mortality among middle-aged white Americans has been get-ting a lot of attention lately, and rightly so (read it here: bit.ly/1P7xvf4).

As a number of people have pointed out, the closest parallel to Americas rising death rates driven by poisonings, suicide and chronic liver disease is the collapse in Russian life expectancy after the fall of Communism (no, were not do-ing as badly as that, but still). What the data illustrates is a society gripped by despair, with a surge in unhealthy behaviors and an epidemic of drugs, very much including alcohol.

This picture goes along with declining labor force partici-pation and other indicators of social unraveling. Something terrible is happening to white American society, and its a uniquely American phenome-

non. You dont see anything like this in Europe, which means that its not about a demoral-izing welfare state or any of the other popular myths in our

political discourse.Theres a lot to be said, or at

any rate suggested, about the politics of this disaster. But Ill come back to that some

other time. For now, the thing to understand, to say it again, is that something terrible is hap-pening to our country and it doesnt have to do with Those People.

It has to do with the white majority.

Pyramid SchemesJust another reminder that

its even worse than it looks, even if you already know that its even worse than it looks.

Ben Carson, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, says he believes that the pyramids in Egypt which are mostly solid were built by Joseph to store grain. Meanwhile, the company run by Jonathan Johnson, the Republican candi-date for governor of Utah, has been hoarding gold and silver in anticipation of the coming eco-nomic crisis (read the article from The Salt Lake Tribune: shar.es/15knj4).

It would be interesting to see these data broken down according to congressional districts.

One has the sneaking suspicion that this scenario is more common in conservative, rural districts, where representatives are committed to ensuring that their constituents gun rights are preserved, while cutting mental health and drug treatment services.

NAME WITHHELD, FLORIDA

I struggle with the notion that something terrible is happen-ing just because there seems to

be a rising mortality rate among whites. I find this development less terrible than the skyrocketing rates of incarceration among Afri-can-Americans and other minorities over the last 40 years.

What is truly terrible about what is happening to whites is that in their apparent despair, they are driving the rest of the country down a peril-ous road that might eventually lead to some kind of fascism.

BRIAN KAMMER, GEORGIA

This data is incredibly disturb-ing but doesnt it simply imply

that middle-aged white men are approaching the condition of middle-aged black men?

DAN KERVICK, NEW HAMPSHIRE

We shouldnt be surprised when certain groups of people self-destruct in a society that values self-reliance above every other attribute.

Nevertheless, I am sure that we will soon see some enlightened arti-cle from New York Times columnists David Brooks or Ross Douthat argu-ing that if white Americans were more religious or if liberal culture

hadnt somehow severed the bonds of family and community, it wouldnt matter that our economic policies had purposely hollowed out the en-tire center of the country.

DAN M., WASHINGTON STATE

The group of Americans with money and power has basically written off everyone else. They dont care what happens to other people. They dont care if they have jobs or homes, or if their kids go to college. They dont care if other peo-ple die of treatable diseases, or drink or drug themselves into stupors.

The people with money and power in America only care about buying the cheapest labor for the cheapest price with the fewest complaints.

SIOBHAN, NEW YORK

Perhaps we should start con-necting the decline of white fami-lies to the effect of the entertain-ment industry on white culture. Whether its due to the influence of country music, evangelical religious movements or Foxs entertain-ment shows on TV, the fact is that a large portion of white America has decided to either ignore or deny science, including the medical com-munitys recommendations on diet, alcohol consumption and mental health.

JOE, NEW YORK

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed page and continues as a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2008. Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 21 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His latest book is End This Depression Now!

Wolfgang Mnchau declared recently in his Financial Times column that the euro was a mistake, and pinpointed a key illusion. Advocates knew that, to withstand the rigors of a fixed-exchange system that resembles nothing so much as the gold stan-dard, countries would have to ad-just to economic shocks through shifts in wages and prices a course, they believed, that the eu-ros members would be forced to take. (Read Mr. Mnchaus col-umn here: on.ft.com/1MAoXgF.)

That is, the euros advocates believed that reforms could cre-ate enough flexibility to mainly neutralize Milton Friedmans warning that in the face of nega-tive shocks, countries with fixed exchange rates would suffer large costs: If the external changes are deep-seated and persistent, the unemployment produces steady downward pressure on prices and wages, and the adjust-ment will not have been com-pleted until the deflation has run its sorry course, Mr. Friedman wrote in The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates.

But I never believed that this would work, and I based this skepticism on real evidence. During the run-up to the Maas-tricht Treaty, which set the whole euro project in motion in 1992, a number of studies focused on the United States a currency union that functions reasonably well. Was that because America, with its weak unions and competitive labor markets, had more wage and price flexibility than other nations?

Not according to the econo-

mists Olivier Blanchard and Law-rence Katz, who discovered back then that wages hardly played any role in regional adjustments to shocks; it was all about labor mobility. So the idea that Europe would be able to achieve a kind of flexibility found nowhere in the world not even in the brutal, markets-rule American economy was just implausible.

What none of us thought about at the time was the additional problem of the interaction of deflation and debt the way at-tempts to adjust through falling wages can worsen debt problems. But even given what we knew a quarter-century ago, the prob-lems with the euro were obvious.

Currency Wars Ricardo Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi and Pierre-Olivier Gou-rinchas recently published a new theoretical paper (here: bit.ly/1MmMMmE) on how to think about a worldwide liquidity trap. Im still working through the ana-lytics, but its clearly consistent with what Ive been saying for years.

In particular, when the econo-mists write about how liquidity traps in some countries tend to get exported everywhere else, thats very much what Ive been worrying about.

And they point out that own-ing a reserve currency, so that people want to buy your assets, is actually a bad thing in a liquidity-trapped world an argument Ive been making for many years, with lamentably little impact on the what-if-China-stops-buying-our-bonds panic.

PAUL KRUGMAN

Decades Later, Same Euro, Same Problems

I believe that countries that were not ready to use the euro were allowed into the currency union too early.

As a result, the European Union grew too quickly.

With all the problems facing the Continent these days, I wonder how the euro manages to keep up with the dollar at all.

MARIE, LUXEMBOURG

Wolfgang Mnchau is only now coming to understand arguments

that were explained to him more than 10 years ago. Why does it often take pundits so long to accept what laymen understand very early on?

NAME WITHHELD, GERMANY

First, backtracking from the euro is impossible. Europes politi-cal leadership created an inherently unstable common currency area, and now everyone has to live with the consequences.

Second, a common currency area

that lacks fiscal and political inte-gration as the eurozone does will always be subject to instability.

U., SOUTH CAROLINA

Labor mobility in Europe mostly consists of Europeans trying to get to Britain, where jobs are available.

Yes, they are low-paying jobs, but theyre better than no jobs at all. And many Europeans speak English, which is an added benefit.

CHRIS PARKINSON, BRITAIN

Mr. Krugman, you are, of course, correct in arguing that when it comes to common currency zones, the main difference between the United States and Europe is labor mobility.

But its worth considering why this is true. In Europe, the variation in languages from country to country is a major obstacle. A worker from Poland, for example, cannot get a job as a cashier in a French supermar-ket because he doesnt understand the language. And how would his Polish children fare in the French school system? Couple the language issue with other cultural differences, and labor mobility is certainly im-peded.

For the eurozone to operate effec-tively, Europeans would have to give up what makes Europe worth visit-ing: cultural diversity.

So on one level, at least, you are correct: The euro was partially doomed from the start. And officials can continue to try and work around the Continents problems, but they havent been very successful.

BLAISE ADAMS, CALIFORNIA

The European Union is the en-emy of Europe and its people. Its an enormous, shabbily constructed building that could collapse at any minute, and must be dismantled carefully.

NAME WITHHELD, BRITAIN

How long will economists keep moaning and groaning about the eurozone being a mistake before they come up with solutions for its current woes?

P., GERMANY

As long as the E.U. is controlled by appointed technocrats, it will never work effectively. People will always feel that they are being treat-ed like cattle instead of citizens.

LARRY L., TEXAS

READER COMMENTS FROM NYTIMES.COM

The Currency Union Grew Too Quickly

DEBATING POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND OTHER TIMELY TOPICS WITH PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2015

ONLINE: COMMENTS Comments have been edited for clarity and length. For Paul Krugmans latest thoughts and to join the debate online, visit his blog at krugman.blogs.nytimes.com.

SAMUEL ARANDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Angel Puyalon, a former interior designer, and his wife, Maria Jesus Judez, at their home in Zaragoza, Spain. The couple can no longer afford to pay their mortgage. While Spain has been heralded as an economic success amid Europes troubles, many Spaniards are still struggling.

READER COMMENTS FROM NYTIMES.COM

Americas Alarming Tendency to Self-Destruct

PAUL KRUGMAN

A Society Gripped by DespairFor much of the modern era, mortality

rates have consistently declined in coun-tries across the developed world. But a re-cent study in the Proceedings of the Na-tional Academy of Sciences found that starting in 1999, middle-aged white Amer-icans have actually seen their mortality rate steadily increase.

According to the research, white adults between the ages of 45 and 54 are experi-encing significantly more illnesses and dy-ing more frequently than prior generations. Alarmingly, much of the increase is due to a spike in suicides, drug and alcohol over-doses, and liver diseases associated with alcoholism.

In response to the findings, The Atlan-tic announced in a Nov. 4 headline: Mid-dle-Aged White Americans Are Dying of Despair.

The study, compiled by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the winner of this years Nobel in economic science, found that the surge was uniquely limited to whites in the United States. The mortality rates among middle-aged black and Hispanic residents have continued to decline in line with his-

torical precedent. Additionally, the trend is unique on an international scale, as no oth-er advanced nation has experienced a simi-lar rise among the same age group.

While the increase was registered across the entire 45-54 demographic, the rise is especially concentrated among people who only hold a high school degree or less, and who have faced severe financial hardship since much of the American manufacturing sector was relocated abroad.

Those are the people who have really been hammered by the long-term econom-ic malaise, Mr. Deaton said recently in an interview with NPR. Their wages in real terms have been going down. So they get into middle age having their expectations just not met at all.

The authors also note that while citizens of other countries have also experienced fi-nancial hardship, particularly during re-cent economic crises, none have registered a corresponding mortality increase. Mr. Deaton and Ms. Case attribute this dispar-ity to Europes vastly more generous wel-fare states, which include guaranteed re-tirement benefits.

BACKSTORY

An Increase in Mortality Rates

BEN SOLOMON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Angus Deaton, left, with his wife, Anne Case, at a news conference earlier this year in Princeton, N.J.