Sometimes the only way to get people to notice a problem is to reframe it using new language. Yes, it's poverty all the way down, but most should be able to make that link without much help.

Reframing it abstracts away the root cause and shifts the focus to symptoms and intermediary causes rather than the root cause: money! The people that can make a difference (policy makers) will look at this and try to find a "complex multi-faceted soution" or whatever that shoves the problem under the rug and polishes it up and fixed some symptoms here and there.

This actually made me rethink of socialized health care and other social programs in europe because in tech at least the salaries are horrible there, it seems the line of thinking is that the government should take more money from everyone and support social programs to solve all kinds of issues, which until now I thought was a good idea but it seems it isn't just more taxes, the salaries there and job opportunities are not good. Even on HN you hear about companies in tech struggling because of the investor mindset there.

My new opinion is that while I support socialized programs to care for those who can't care for themselves, it does not absolve policy makers' responsibility to make that support in form of better income and opportunities as much as possible and even direct cash and tax credits, not more programs and bureaucracies but more jobs and better paying jobs and more rewarding jobs with job security.

Per the article, it's a medical shorthand, like "Normal for Norfolk". It means among other things "I know the real fix for your medical problems, but am powerless to carry it out".

No, it’s more about pervasive lack of well being induced more lack of well being, including degraded health. It discusses poverty more, because it’s maybe a more encompassing topic and easier to identify, but they also mention abuse induced disorders and unwellness in general inducing SLS.

I don’t think the wealthy or whatever are exempt from SLS, but you do tend to find more abuse and other factors in communities crushed by poverty.

But overall it reads to me as SLS is essentially “things are so bad they compound on each other, further perpetuating a downward trend in quality of life, affecting everything around them including their health.”

I don’t think there was an implication this is unique to the UK, but it is interesting to note even with the NHS there’s a sense they don’t have the resources to address the scale of the problems they’re seeing.

Basic income might help, but it also might just mean a marginal increase in life comforts to prevent the most extreme poverty but not enough to move the needle in something like this. At its core it sounds like an issue of lack of education, opportunity, hope, and mental health.

I think it's also pointing to something more than just poverty - it's when you're in a situation where potentially everyone you know is in poverty. You're not even passing someone on the street who looks middle-class, let alone rich. Even if you suddenly had millions of dollars, there would be no where to spend it. If you opened a business you would have trouble finding customers or skilled employees. The first thing you would do is just move somewhere else.

When you're somewhere that's more mixed by class, it's maybe easier to see your way back out of poverty in a way that you can't when you're never seeing anything else.

> If so then this some next level captain obvious stuff. m

What a weird take, we should avoid naming things because checks notes they’re obvious???

> Give the addicts, the hobos and and the mentally unstable cash and good information/guidance on their options.

That’s some next level captain obvious knowledge that you never give cash to hobos and addicts if you want to fix root cause of their problems, how could you not know that?

Many would assert that the lack of cash is the root problem. Sort of the thread theme here.

Sounds like a good opportunity to apply the Five Whys approach.

> That’s some next level captain obvious knowledge that you never give cash to hobos and addicts if you want to fix root cause of their problems, how could you not know that?

Because studies keep showing a no strings attached cash support is the best solution. They are not children. And you are making my point here that they are trying to do anything but solve the problem.

"You are poor" is not a medical diagnosis as much as "You are human" isn't.

The point is that it is not a single issue, but the result of many complex, interacting and interdependent issues. The stress of insecure work. The consequences of poor diets and little exercise. The cost of housing. The receding access to education. The demands of care work, both paid and unpaid.

These problems taken together are worse than the sum of their parts. In an age where help is targeted, individual, and only given when the outcomes are measurable, shit life syndrome is a reminder that social change has to happen at the level of society, in a holistic way which may be really quite hard to measure. It is a gauntlet thrown down to policymakers who are straitjacketed by SMART objectives and neoliberalism.

All thise stressed and issues boil down to money and financial security though. Your and the authors' abstractions are making the problem worse because smart people who know the problem well are saying "oh no, it's more complicated than just money" so policy makers will wait for you/them to come up with some solution instead of just solving the obvious and simple problem.

It is more than just money, though: it is about the law and how power in society is apportioned.

Law and power in society is influenced and even fueled primarily by money. Even participating in different things require you to be well off enough to have time for it. People working 16 hours on minimum wage don't vote or participate in politics much.