Nobel Laureate 'Discovers' Cause Of Opioid Crisis: Complete Economic Destruction Of The "White Working Class"

For several decades now the American Midwest has suffered from unprecedented economic decay courtesy of a persistent outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in the automotive and steel industries, among others. As we've noted frequently, that economic decay has resulted in a devastating surge in opioid overdoses that claim the lives of 100s of people each year.

Of course, many attribute Trump's staggering victories in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania to his efforts to tap into the frustration of the dispossessed Midwest masses by promising a rebirth of the manufacturing economy that once provided them a solid middle-class lifestyle.

That said, no economic crisis is truly "discovered" until an Ivy League, Nobel-prize-winning economist says it is. As such, we present to you the intriguing findings of Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton who said he was "looking for something else" when he noticed a staggering increase in white mortality rates for people aged 50-54. Per Market Watch:

That was the case with landmark research undertaken by Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton. The Princeton economist, working with his wife Anne Case, stumbled on the fact that mortality rates were rising for working-age white Americans since 1999.

We were really looking for something else and then we discovered that, at least among people between 45-54, and even more between 50-54, a decline in mortality, particularly white mortality that had been established for about 100 years had actually stopped or even reversed itself. Whether it has reversed itself or not depends on a bit on your starting point and end point, but the century-long decline in mortality rates that had gone on since the beginning of the 20th century had just stopped and was starting to rise.

For mortality rates to rise instead of fall is extremely rare. It typically takes a war or epidemic for death rates to jump.

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