Imagine you are an editorial writer of the New York Times (a stretch to be sure, but stay with us). Your biggest problem in the Age of Obama has to be that despite all the Democrats claims to have steered us into a recovery, jobs are lacking. Supposedly the unemployment rate has been brought down to 5%. But thats because the job participation rate is at its lowest point in decades as millions of Americans are still too discouraged to look for work. How do you work around this pesky problem?

Dang, if the Times hasnt come up with its most creative angle yet  oxycontin. Its out with an editorial this morning suggesting that the reason millions of men are missing from the job market is the rampant addiction to pain killers. It has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve, or the high taxes that force companies to park their profits overseas (when the profits could be building plants here). It has nothing to do with the flight of corporations to Mexico (heaven forfend that Donald Trump has a point).

No, the Times has stumbled onto a study by an economist at Princeton University. It reckons that as of a month ago, 11.4% of men between the ages of 25 and 54 were both not employed and not seeking a job. The Times notes that this percentage, which was less than 4% in the 1950s, has been rising for decades. It also reports that recent surveys show that 40% of prime working age men who are not in the labor force report having pain that prevents them from taking jobs for which they are qualified. Nearly half take painkillers daily.

Its not our purposes here to belittle the problem of addiction to painkillers. It is a serious and bitter problem, even if, as the Times concedes, the connection between chronic joblessness and painkiller dependency is hard to quantify. It quotes the author of the study, economist Alan Krueger, and other experts as noting that they cannot say which came first: the mens health problems or their absence from the labor force. It quotes some experts as suspecting that frequent use of painkillers could in and of itself be a result of being out of work. Unemployment feeds alcoholism, too, it suggests.

It is our purpose to suggest that its a dodge to look at painkillers as being at the root of our jobs crisis. Why not take a look at our tax rate, among the highest in the world? Maybe Donald Trump is right that we should reform our tax code to permit big corporations holding $2.5 trillion overseas to bring these profits home, where they might be used to, say, build factories. Why not look at our minimum wage laws that outlaw offering work to many of our unemployed? Why not look at our regulatory regime that puts so many hurdles in the way of job-creating businesses?

Why not look at monetary reform? When, after all, was it that the percentage of men between the ages of 25 and 54 who were not in the work force stood at 4%? That, the Times blithely notes, was in the 1950s. What monetary system did we have then? It turns out to be the Bretton Woods gold exchange standard (under which unemployment averaged 4.6%). Yet the Times mocks monetary reform on all of the rare occasions when it deigns to mention it at all. Instead it blames the unemployment crisis on pain killers. At least Marie Antoinette was prepared to let them eat cake.