This title is whack. Here's the quote from the article:<p><i>"...In earlier research presented at the Boston Fed in 2016, Krueger found that nearly half of prime age men who are not in the labor force take pain medication on a daily basis, and that two-thirds of those men—or about 2 million—take prescription pain medication on a daily basis..."</i><p>I take a baby aspirin every morning, so I would qualify as somebody taking pain medication daily.<p>I believe the opiod problem in the U.S. is an extremely serious thing, therefore we need to be very careful about what kinds of information we stick in our heads regarding it.<p>There's a ton of correlation here, things like "Over the last 15 years, LFP fell more in counties where more opioids were prescribed"<p>Well, okay. If more people are being injured and are in pain, they would get medication, right? And therefore there would be less people in the workforce. Because people are on pain meds doesn't mean that's keeping them from work. It might mean that things that keep you from work significantly involve pain.<p>I have no intention of trashing the article. It's worth reading. I would simply advise caution in jumping to conclusions.<p>My opinion is that mankind is finally creating the perfect world (relatively speaking compared to all of history): plenty of food and shelter. The internet and gaming means you'll never be bored. Throw in a little pharmacological assistance for any pain, boredom, ennui, depression, or loneliness you're feeling, and what more could you want?<p>But that's rampant speculation, which I readily admit. I worry about articles that encourage reader speculation without explicitly calling it out.