- It turns out that what's happening in Lincoln is happening in so many towns and communities across the country: As we recover from the Great Recession, jobs are coming back. But they are not middle-wage jobs — they are either high-wage jobs or low-wage jobs. The middle class is in serious decline. And that has all kinds of repercussions.
The title of this piece is a little misleading. I assumed it would be an analysis of how to get out of the growing wealth and wage inequality that we've been experiencing for the last few decades. Instead it's about kids doing drugs in small towns, with the revolutionary vision of a gun nut thrown in for good measure. Not a bad article, but not really a topical title. It's really a shame how strongly heroin has come back in the last decade. I've read that it's a result of crazy poppy production in Afghanistan (an unintended negative of the Afghan war). I'm not sure if that's true, but what I can say is that I hung out with all the druggies and degenerates in high school, and I wouldn't have been able to get heroin at any price at that time. It just wasn't a thing in my area. Now, I know (knew?) two young people from my home town who died of overdoses. It's unbelievable really. Hopefully we won't see a resurgence of HIV because of this, but I guess that should be expected, too.
You know, I've been around a lot of parties and drugs throughout my life and I've never seen anyone doing heroine. It just wasn't what you did where I grew up. Pot, LSD, coke and X were what you did. Heroine was that scary drug from Trainspotting.