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Free Trade Is Quantitative Easing For The Heroin Market
Featured in Zero Hedge Daniel Drew, 7/8/2015 Tweet The CDC just released a grim report about heroin abuse trends in the United States. The chart looks like the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. The report states, "During 2002-2013, heroin overdose death rates nearly quadrupled in the United States, from 0.7 deaths to 2.7 deaths per 100,000 population, with a near doubling of the rates from 2011-2013."  As with any data point, there is usually a key subset group that drives the trend. The CDC elaborates, During 2002-2011, rates of heroin initiation were reported to be highest among males, persons aged 18-25 years, non-Hispanic whites, those with an annual household income below $20,000, and those residing in the Northeast.So the growing heroin epidemic is being driven by poor white millennial men living in the northeast, an area that includes the rust belt, where a once thriving manufacturing industry was decimated by free trade policies like NAFTA.  And it's not just a manufacturing industry issue. There simply are not enough jobs to go around.  Meanwhile, Jeb Bush is making $500,000 from healthcare investments while criticizing the government policies that made those profits possible. This all seems like good investment strategy: Convince everyone that "free trade" is good, take their jobs, make them desperate enough to become heroin addicts, and then take the last bit of their money by profiting from their drug-related healthcare expenses. For some reason, the average person always seems to come out on the wrong side of quantitative easing. |