(CNN) An automotive assembly plant closing in a US county has been associated with 85% higher opioid overdose death rates among working-age adults in that county after five years, according to a study published in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday.

"Relative to the trends in manufacturing counties where an automotive plant did not close, having a plant closure meant that your opioid overdose death rate was 85% higher after five years than it otherwise would have been -- and that was a large number to us," said Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, who was first author of the study.

"The study is important because it shows that when economic opportunities collapse, it not only has consequences for people's economic wellbeing but it might adversely affect their health too," Venkataramani said. "Economic opportunity matters for our health, and as the forces that are shifting economic opportunities for people are continuing to evolve, we have to think about how policies can both make people resilient -- from a health sense -- to the negative changes that might happen, and we also have to think about what types of policies on the economic side may actually give people opportunities, which may also bolster their health."
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https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/health/opioid-overdose-deaths-automotive-plant-closures-study/index.html

The ‘robot apocalypse’ is generating support for a once-in-a-generation rewriting of the basic contract of the labor market, writes chief economics commentator Greg Ip

As artificial intelligence and automation multiply, so do dystopian predictions that millions of employees will become redundant, their tasks performed more reliably and cheaply by a machine.

But must the “robot apocalypse” be quite so apocalyptic? It may provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rewrite the basic contract of the labor market: Your paycheck reflects your contribution. In this alternative future, robots will take over much of the routine drudgery, freeing millions of us to do what we truly love or society truly needs, from raising children to writing poetry to befriending the lonely.

The key to making this happen is “universal basic income,” or UBI, a lump sum every adult gets regardless of job status, income or ability. UBI proposals date back centuries but interest has surged in recent years. Advocates on the left see it as the solution to intensifying income inequality as automation displaces middle-skill jobs such as assembly line workers and secretaries...
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/lets-rethink-what-counts-as-paid-work-11578488558

The Democratic primary field may be narrowing, but Andrew Yang still can’t get the media’s attention. According to the New York Times (12/19/19), which breaks down the debates by speaking minutes, Yang, polling at fifth of the seven participating candidates, with an average of 3.5%, came in last in the December debate at 10 minutes, 56 seconds; that’s nearly a minute less than Tom Steyer (polling at 1.5%), and far below centrism poster child Amy Klobuchar, who is neck-and-neck with Yang in polls but clocked a whopping 19 minutes and 53 seconds.

It’s part of a pattern for Yang. In the November debate, he also came in dead last on speaking minutes, at 6:48, despite polling higher than fellow debaters Klobuchar, Steyer, Tulsi Gabbard and Cory Booker. He also had the fewest minutes in the September and June debates. Business Insider (11/23/19) found that Yang has consistently received less speaking time at the debates than one would expect, given his polling numbers.

By FAIR’s count, he’s been given 37 prompts across the six debates; Klobuchar—who has consistently polled below Yang for months, though her numbers have risen slightly to match his in recent weeks—has gotten 54. Booker and Beto O’Rourke, who didn’t even appear in all six debates and have polled at or below Yang’s levels since September, received 43 and 36, respectively.

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Cillizza’s arguments seem to depict journalists as quite an intellectually challenged crew. In reality, it’s not that they can’t work to get a sense of a new candidate, or to cover “radical” political ideas; it’s that the news organizations they work for give them no incentive to—no conspiracy necessary, just an unhealthy bias toward the political establishment. Witness: A search of all CNN transcripts after Cillizza’s September 4 mea culpa found not a single instance of Cillizza mentioning Yang’s name on the air.

Echoing Cillizza’s third point, New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore (9/3/19) suggested journalists may be ignoring Yang because he has “no plausible path to the Democratic nomination,” given that his support mainly lies among millennials and Asian-Americans, and that if he had a breakout debate performance “his media coverage will skyrocket.” How Yang might be expected to have a breakout debate when the moderators keep him on the sidelines isn’t clear.

But the idea of a candidate having “no plausible path” to victory is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Journalists decide a candidate can’t win, so they don’t give the candidate coverage, which means the candidate can’t reach voters, influence the political discussion and rise in the polls. The whole point of the primaries is to let voters get to know the candidates and decide for themselves who is electable—the last thing people need is journalists narrowing the field for them.
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https://fair.org/home/media-leave-yang-out-of-candidate-conversations/