Opioid Use Could Explain 20% of the Drop in American Men from Labor Force

Re:Opioid Use Could Explain 20% of the Drop in American Men ... by Clubber on Thursday September 07, 2017 @12:50PM (#15193602)

Probably because the people who got hooked, got hooked before the media storm. You know, back when Pharma said they weren't addictive because the slow release nature of the pills?

Also, probably boredom.

You have to understand what middle America looks like today. It used to be vibrant, now it's nothing but shells of ghost towns. This happened for a few reasons:

1. Walmartization killed all the independent shops. 2. Agribusiness made family farming untenable. 3. Out of country manufacturing.

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Re:Opioid Use Could Explain 20% of the Drop in American Men ... by cr0sh on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:02PM (#15194784)

I'd say all three are part of a feedback loop death spiral.

1. Walmart - always lower prices (people want cheap crap)

2. So...cheap food means scale it up really big (agrabusiness)

3. And cheap non-food mean outsourced manufacturing (because people want big salaries to buy lots of cheap crap)

...and perhaps that's where it started, that last bit:

People want big salaries (or paychecks, or pay - whatever), so they can buy more stuff (there's also the whole "easy credit" thing - but that's another discussion). They want that stuff cheaper. So businesses searched for ways to make it cheaper: Scale stuff up, have fewer employees (or pay them less), and outsource manufacturing.

Classic death spiral.

/I know I am over-simplifying things here...

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