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Opioid addiction is keeping a high percentage of people out of the workforce

Captain.Heroin

Captain.Heroin

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https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/17/opi...high-percentage-of-people-out-of-the-wor.html

America's opioid epidemic is exacting a massive human toll that also is impacting the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday.

One of the Fed's primary goals is achieving maximum employment, or making sure every potential worker who wants a job has one. Lost somewhere in that mix, though, is the portion of the working-age population that can't work because of their addictions.

Speaking to the issue during an appearance before a Senate committee, Powell called the crisis "a terrible human tragedy" that is having a direct impact on how labor progress is measured.

"From an economic standpoint, some high percentage of prime-age people who are not in the labor force, particularly prime-age males who are not in the labor force, are taking painkillers of some kind," he said.

Powell cited research from Princeton economist Alan Krueger, who conducted a survey and found that 44 percent of men reported that they had taken some form of pain medication the previous day.

"It's a big number," Powell said. "It's having a terrible human toll on our communities and also it matters a lot for the labor force participation rate and economic activity in our country."

The labor force participation rate plays a significant role in calculating the government's headline unemployment rate. Those not considered in the workforce are not counted in the jobless rate, holding the number down and potentially presenting a skewed picture of the employment situation.

Over the past decade, the LFP rate has declined from 66.1 percent in June 2008 to 62.9 percent in June 2018. During the same period, those counted as not in the labor force swelled from 79.3 million to 95.5 million, a more than 20 percent increase.

Deaths over the decade also swelled, rising from about 6 deaths per 100,000 in 2006 to more than 13 in 2016, the most recent year for which data were available, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
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The second paragraph is hilarious.
 
Opioids are keeping about a thousand times more people IN the work force than they are keeping people that wouldn't have jobs anyways out of the workforce.

I would have lost my job so many times without opioids
 
I thought it was Mexicans and Chinas fault not opiates?

Anything to deflect from American greed at the top being the ONLY reason ppl are unemployed doing heroin all day
 
One of my biggest media pet-peeves is when stories have such a huge disconnect between the headline and the actual content. It is straight-up dishonesty to get clicks.
 
You're right CapHer it's fucking halarious.

Teflon don't you see the cognitive disconnect between saying you want to help people and also putting them in prison for nonviolent crimes?
 
teflon320 said:
How so?

Here is the cited study https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueger.pdf
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Because the goal of getting everyone who wants a job one is something the Trump admin. and many other presidents have fumbled on.

Instead, what they do is lie about the unemployment rate. It's a number that's deceptive because it only includes people who were recently laid off, etc.

The number also doesn't include under-employed people who are struggling to get by month to month, and people who need more hours, greater pay to account for the high cost of living, etc.

If you look at how many people live below the poverty level, you'll see how fucked we are. The Trump admin. does nothing to help these people. Nothing.

falsifiedhypothesi said:
You're right CapHer it's fucking halarious.

Teflon don't you see the cognitive disconnect between saying you want to help people and also putting them in prison for nonviolent crimes?
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Well, that too. When we give drug users a record, they'll never get a job that pays better than minimum wage again, unless they go into drug dealing or own their own business or were already born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

The gov't could be doing more to get people off drugs, their records expunged so they can re-enter the real workforce, but of course we know this will never happen. Legalization is a long ways off thanks to the R's and D's being dumb asses.

LucidSDreamr said:
Opioids are keeping about a thousand times more people IN the work force than they are keeping people that wouldn't have jobs anyways out of the workforce.

I would have lost my job so many times without opioids
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This is also true; what about the pain patients? Without meds they'd effectively be in too much pain to work.

There's this stupid perfect world R's believe in where no one has drugs, and there's no poor people (because they all died of disease, or climbed the social ladder to escape poverty through hard work, or got deported by ICE). There's another stupid perfect world D's believe in where there's no poor people, because we effectively redistributed wealth / help to them until they climb the social ladder, and most drugs are gone (but they like pot, or whatever).

Both dreams are stupid. Poverty and drugs are going nowhere. Socialism only works when there's a low-enough population of poor people that it is no longer infeasible to financially help out the people worst off; this is why free college education works for countries like Norway, or why universal health care works for Canada. For the most part, these ideas would bankrupt the nation, which is why even D's are speaking out against Cortez and some of her lofty ideas.
 
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∆ corporate welfare, and corruption to divert taxes (think defense budget) are bigger issues that giving poor people some basic survival help. ..yet neither side is focused on where the money and resources are really going.

They are either crying about racists or blaming Mexicans for themselves being failures...."and I say that very strongly"
 
You would think so, but look how long it took Obama to pass the ACA. Hillary admitted it needed some tweaking.

Poverty and drugs aren’t something you can ban.
 
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