This blog has commented both on the effects that foreign
trade has had on job availability and of the debilitating effects opioid drugs
have had on too many citizens. In both
cases one can detect that the resulting conditions of these dysfunctional
developments have eroded the ability of many Americans to fulfill their
responsibilities as citizens and, more from their perspectives, their ability
to enjoy the benefits of that citizenship.
Each topic was treated as separate issues suitable for students to study
in civics classrooms.
Further, those postings focused on
these topics’ respective relationships to federalist values. That is, they described how these issues affect
citizens meeting their roles as partners in the grand federalist union the Constitution
establishes. But upon further
consideration, these two topics are highly related to each other.
One of them has caused the fertile conditions
that has promoted the other. Specifically,
the loss of jobs to cheaper, foreign labor not only resulted in a loss of jobs
in the US, but also, through high unemployment, “greased” the way for a deadly,
addictive drug to capture a population prone to first experiment and then
become hooked and eventually for many to overdose and die.
From California to Florida, the
parents behind Relatives Against Purdue Pharma already knew that OxyContin
stood out more in rural America’s distressed hollows and towns, where reps
could easily target the lowest-hanging fruit – the injured jobless and people
on disability, with Medicaid cards. But
OxyContin was everywhere, of course, and it had been almost since the beginning,
even if the crimes associated with it hadn’t dominated the urban news.[1]
This history has many turns and some of those turns are
global in nature, but local in effect.
This posting will briefly describe
one of those turns. It does not take
many words to describe it, but this should not mislead the reader to believe it
had limited effect. No, the consequences
have not only been extensive in its numbers, but qualitatively profound in its
social, economic, and medical consequences.
As previous postings pointed out,
after World War II, US foreign policy aimed at reestablishing the viability of
the world’s manufacturing capabilities.
That war did an effective job at destroying the manufacturing centers of
most industrial nations. The one
exception, due to the protection of two oceans, the US’ capacity was not only
not destroyed, but enhanced as this nation became “the arsenal of democracy.”
It was decided, given the experiences
after World War I, that post World War II policies should favor liberal trade
policies. The post conditions of that
earlier conflict taught policy makers in the 1940s that relying on restrictive trade
policies led to the rise of totalitarian regimes and, in turn, another global
war.
Liberal policies promised to
rehabilitate those bombed-out manufacturing centers in Britain, France,
Germany, and other nations. By so doing,
a US led effort could and did make the world’s economy viable and offset those
highly nationalistic forces that were, in part, responsible for World War
II. In addition, it promised a more
efficient world economy benefiting all.
One of the polices the Western world initiated
was the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This organization was meaningfully expanded by
extending membership to China in 2001.
The move was accomplished through the work done during the Bill Clinton
administration. That administration was
also responsible for the institution of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). Both policies exemplified the
liberal trade bias set in motion back in 1944 with the Bretton Woods
Conference.[2]
The Clinton administration touted
these moves as opening American markets to cheaper products, – produced abroad
– markets for American produced, consumer products, and the introduction of
immediate incentives to expand appropriate educational programs to train
American workers for advanced jobs that would prove to be more engaging and
satisfying for American workers.
This last element – the one involving
training – has proven essential to this plan, not in its implementation, but in
its absence.
But with ill-designed training for
displaced Americans based on a lumbering federal program created in the 1960s,
the second part of that equation very rarely came to pass. Only a third of workers who qualified for
Trade Adjustment Assistance even went back to school, and the majority of those
who did found themselves with new certifications and associate’s degrees yet
earning much less than they had in the factories, if they were working at all.[3]
Even with this training, many today hold low paying jobs at
Walmarts, rely on food stamps, and have to tend small gardens to able to feed
themselves. These results were
particularly seen in rural counties.
Globalization, in effect, killed opportunity
in many rural areas. It added to the
effects of automation and the decline in the demand for coal – a lot of the
Appalachian areas relied on coal for the bulk of their economies. For example, in one county, Henry County,
experienced soaring crime, insecurity in terms of access to food (food stamp
claims up more than 300%), an upshot of disability claims, unemployment
shooting up to 20%, and disability claims also rising to 60.4%.[4]
And many of those people suffering
from these drastic changes began consuming opioids in the ensuing years. To prove a cause and effect relationship, one
needs to look at the individual cases in which addiction took hold. But the general social environments of many
Appalachian communities were highly affected, as their financial situations
became dire.
And yes, one can reasonably believe
that such a downturn set the stage for a people to be disposed to drug
abuse. Not all newer drug takers were
affected by these economic maladies; many came/come from middle class families. Of course, there were other factors; chief
among them was the role pharmaceutical and medical players played. In total, the nation has had a significant
tragedy befall it.
This blog will continue to share
information concerning these two areas of concern in future posting as it reports
related factoids and insights over either the opioid crisis or the loss of jobs
due to foreign trade. As this posting
indicates, at times, these two issues serve up a one-two punch.
[1] Beth Macy, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that
Addicted America (New York, NY:
Riverhead Books, 2018), 131.
[2] See “Setting the Stage,” Gravitas: A Voice for Civics, a blog, August 1,
2017, accessed July 29, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2017/08/setting-stage.html .
[4] Ibid. Macy
goes on to explain how these claims were further used to extend medical
treatment to get access to more opioid drugs.
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