4 ms·

I'm not so sure about the surgery thing. I think it's really depair: in rural places in America, the economy is devastated. It's exactly why Trump was elected

I'm not so sure about the surgery thing. I think it's really depair: in rural places in America, the economy is devastated. It's exactly why Trump was elected: he promised to bring all the jobs back (even though he won't, and can't even if he wanted to). Poorly-educated American ruralites can no longer have a decent quality of life, and frequently can't even find a job. They're not willing to move to the cities, so they get addicted to various drugs instead. You're not seeing it in Europe because you don't have a gigantic portion of your population that's unemployed like we do. (Our official unemployment numbers are complete lies.)

maxerickson 9y ago
Unemployment is higher in much of Europe than in the US.
wayn3 9y ago
Rural areas are getting wrecked by globalization everywhere. Not just the US. Spain, btw, is one of the prime examples. Yet no opioid addiction. Assuming that people kinda decide to just do drugs because despair is a bit ridiculous. Theres always a reason to do drugs. Almost noone was born an addict, and if you reason that those addictions originated at doctors appointments (prescribed medicine), it was probably not some kind of recreational turned addict thing. Or are you trying to argue that its the national sport of rural folks to go to their local doctor and check the opioid menu for the flavour of the month opioid to shoot up their vein because they're out of a job and feel despair about it? That sounds a bit far-fetched.