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After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

washingtonpost.com

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Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#51

Post by leggomylibro »

refurb wrote: post #43
leggomylibro wrote: post #41

>because disability payments on average amount to less than minimum wage, sometimes much less, ... Why is this? How are these people expected to survive, if they are disabled to the point that they can't hold down a job, and aren't allowed to work without the risk of losing their disability payments? Busking? I know that's been one traditional job for disabled people over the centuries, but I feel like we should be a…

Disability is often done on a percentage basis. If you're completely unable to work you get 100%. If you can't stand for a long time, but can sit and work, you might get 30% disability. Even at 100% it's not a lot of money, but I've heard it's enough to exist.

So if you're at 30% disability because you can't stand for long periods or do physical labor, are you still allowed to hold down an office or clerical job where you work 30-50 hours a week? It might mean unique difficulties with things like transportation, but the government isn't paying you a salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, they're providing you a stipend to compensate for the unique difficulties of your situation.

Or, if they are paying you a sort of salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, why is it below minimum wage when you demonstrably already have more problems than most people?

Edit: Okay, reading the article shines a bit more light on this, but it's still very confusing. I can't imagine having to navigate these systems without any resources. And even then:

>This means recipients receiving the maximum $735 check can earn up $1,555 per month and still be eligible for a disability payment.

The maximum is under $9K/year? That is not a living wage for someone without disabilities.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#52

Post by caseysoftware »

hpcjoe wrote: post #8
logfromblammo wrote: post #2

That is so depressing. No wonder suicide rates are up. You know there's a difference between "give a man a fish" and "teach a man to fish", but what do you do when the fish are just gone ? It was mentioned in the article, but not extensively discussed. I think maybe the largest distinct segment of the economy in ex-coalcountry regions is now pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal. There's the legal root and mushroom hunt…

This is replicated all over the rust belt. One of the saddest portrayals of this is the photo essay, The Ruins of Detroit[1]. These once mighty economic engines have been silenced: manufacturing, coal, etc. What happens next is that the people who depend upon these industries to make a living, and live ... do less well of a job of this. Some argue that unions would help (they wouldn't), or anti-globalism would stop f…

> I remember one of the political parties crowing about how they saved the auto industry in Michigan during the last major financial crisis. Funny, as I live there, and I remember one of the people who lives in my sub whose business was destroyed by this "saving" thanks to many long held overdue invoices at one of the car company's being zeroed out, coming to my front door, with his son to ask for help. Food specifically.

Yes, "forgiving debt" always sounds like a great idea from the debtors' perspective. Debt holds most people down for some period of their lives..

But the flip side is that for every debtor, there are lenders.

Those lenders give their money with some level of confidence that they'll get it back. When they don't, it's going to be an annoyance for the top few percent of companies and people who can take the loss.. and punish the middle who (in the best case) could have lent it for other investments or (in the worst case) destroy others won't be able to pay their employees and provide for their families.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#53

Post by forkandwait »

mbesto wrote: post #40
forkandwait wrote: post #24

So why can't we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?

Have you personally ever tried to train a low skilled laborer into something they have little to no experience in or desire to do? This is the same argument that I've heard from people (mainly young tech workers) that losing 1.5M truck drivers will just require "re-training". The reality that we can simple "turn a knob" and re-train people is extremely myopic.

I said "invest time and money", nowhere did I say it would be easy or cheap or fast. The only reason I am upper middle class is because I got an enormous amount of investment growing up, from books to nutrition to upper middle family friends/role models to just plain good adv8ce. If you took my talents and plopped them in a working class family in rural wherever, I would be driving truck and getting high until it all apart, just like the people in the article.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#54

Post by vkou »

forkandwait wrote: post #24

So why can't we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?

Re-skilling is a great solution for any one person when their coal job went away. You don't see pictures of those people in articles about American poverty.

Re-skilling the entire mid-west is impossible. Jobs are currently a game of musical chairs. There isn't room in our economy for 15 million engineers, technicians, and shopowners.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#55

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

forkandwait wrote: post #45
gph wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think these people wouldn't already have jobs as engineers and technicians if they were capable of that? It even mentions in the article that the one lady lives down the road from her nephew who has a nice house with trucks and a boat. He was pulling down 100k at a coal related job, that might mean in a labor role but there's a good chance he's the type of person you're talking about; someone capable o…

I am amazed by the pervasiveness of the assumption that most of the human race is inherently just too stupid to become upper middle like us.

Well, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100. Also, if everyone tries to achieve greater education, then what's considered "upper middle" will shift. Just look at the devaluation of associates and bachelors degrees today.

The sad truth is that there will always be lower and lower-middle class jobs, because not everyone is capable of joining the upper-middle class. Should those people continue to experience a declining quality of life just because they haven't been genetically or socioeconomically blessed?

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#57

Post by forkandwait »

smt88 wrote: post #28
forkandwait wrote: post #24

So why can't we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?

You should look into our extensive federal retraining programs, which have this goal. Oftentimes, the problem is age. Older people just finishing training still won't get a job. Other times, the problem is that they refuse to relocate to another part of the country to get the job they trained for. It sounds great in theory, but it requires a lot of flexibility that not everyone can have.

If you are getting TANF, they generally kick you off after a year of training, and disallow getting an AA much less going to college. It takes a lot more than that to make up for a semi literate, etc., growing up.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#58

Post by deadmetheny »

leggomylibro wrote: post #51
refurb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disability is often done on a percentage basis. If you're completely unable to work you get 100%. If you can't stand for a long time, but can sit and work, you might get 30% disability. Even at 100% it's not a lot of money, but I've heard it's enough to exist.

So if you're at 30% disability because you can't stand for long periods or do physical labor, are you still allowed to hold down an office or clerical job where you work 30-50 hours a week? It might mean unique difficulties with things like transportation, but the government isn't paying you a salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, they're providing you a stipend to compensate for the unique diff…

My sister is physically disabled and works a clerical job part-time. She continually has to watch her hours at her job because if she makes too much money, she is required to pay back the difference in her SSI disability cheque. Please note that her combined income from work and disability benefits is peanuts - it's enough to live on in a rural Midwestern town where things haven't gone up shit creek as badly as the Rust Belt and Appalachia, but it's no glamourous lifestyle and the requirement to stay underneath certain income lest you lose your SSI benefits is a perverse incentive not to try and find better work.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#59

Post by vkou »

caseysoftware wrote: post #52
hpcjoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is replicated all over the rust belt. One of the saddest portrayals of this is the photo essay, The Ruins of Detroit[1]. These once mighty economic engines have been silenced: manufacturing, coal, etc. What happens next is that the people who depend upon these industries to make a living, and live ... do less well of a job of this. Some argue that unions would help (they wouldn't), or anti-globalism would stop f…

> I remember one of the political parties crowing about how they saved the auto industry in Michigan during the last major financial crisis. Funny, as I live there, and I remember one of the people who lives in my sub whose business was destroyed by this "saving" thanks to many long held overdue invoices at one of the car company's being zeroed out, coming to my front door, with his son to ask for help. Food specific…

If debts would never be forgiven/default, then lenders would not be able to charge interest.

Likewise, while they don't charge interest, contractors factor not getting paid for 90 days after work completion into their rates.

Re: After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

#60

Post by SirRhosis »

hpcjoe wrote: post #21
ianai wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. Inflation isn’t the outright awful thing people assume it is. Further, the concept is to give people just enough to survive. That creates demand for only the basics. The basics are largely standardized items. When was the last time there was a shortage in corn, cotton, flour? They’re all commodities. If anything modern prices for these goods and services are likely to be indifferent to the increase in dema…

Its not awful over a short term. Over a longer term, it will price commodities out of reach. I've watched milk prices rise dramatically over the last 5 years or so. This is in part due to the costs of production rising, not necessarily the farm margins. These costs of production rise for any number of reasons, but mostly its because rising costs tend to spread out through the economy. [1] My point is that prices will…

Milk inflation is not that significant. Five dollars of milk in 2000 will cost you 6.51 USD today[0]. It's actually lower this year than it was in 2014[1].

[0] - http://www.in2013dollars.com/Milk/price-inflation [1] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/milk_price

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