Milwaukee Journal Sentinel economics writer John Schmid spent a year exploring the real reasons for Milwaukee's stalled economy - and it's not just poverty and unemployment. It has a lot to do with generational trauma.

I did a cursory look at the costs a while back, based on a quote in Bessel van der Kolk's book, that was from co-founder of the ACE test, Dr. Anda. He referenced how much we could reduce certain things like alcoholism, and depression, and domestic violence and so on, so I just asked Google the cost of those things to society in a years time. I took only three, and the results were over a trillion dollars in 5 years. In 2014 the CDC put the cost of "excessive drinking" alone at $235b. That...