I didn’t even notice! Thanks for pointing that out.

> but I think the text supports your comment and not his hahah.

I re-read the section to make sure I wasn’t missing something and I agree with you.

Here’s the section:

> We don’t have to speculate about what happens when economic function disappears from communities. Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s research on “deaths of despair” tracks the rising tide of suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholic liver disease mortality concentrated in less-educated, formerly manufacturing-dependent populations. The mechanism isn’t just poverty. We lose any sense of economic purpose, and with that, social status and a perceived future. Communities organized around industries that left, where what replaced the jobs was opioids, domestic violence, and a life expectancy that dropped year over year in the richest country on earth.

If the piece was not trying to argue that loss of jobs leads to loss of meaning, I picked up on the opposite.