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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

#61

Post by zrail »

maxerickson wrote: post #38
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…

Oakland county just to the north of Detroit is one of the wealthiest (93/3100 by per capital income), most educated counties (44% have bachelors or higher; San Francisco is 54%) in the country. Washtenaw County, just to the west, is also high on both of those measures. Wayne County (where Detroit is located) is middle of the pack on those measures, not at the bottom.

This is because all the wealthy, educated, white people left Detroit proper in the late 1960s. Some moved north to Oakland County but Wayne County covers a lot of area other than Detroit itself.

Washtenaw County is likely up there because of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The biggest hospital by gross revenue, third biggest by bed count is here, as are a whole bunch of research parks related to the automotive industry.

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

#62

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

cyberpunk0 wrote: post #5

Welcome too late stage capitalism

Just so you know, you're being downvoted not because of your views on capitalism(a critique of which was the point of this post), but rather because of the lack of substance your comment contained. In the future, your comments will be better received if you state the reasoning behind your viewpoint so that we may learn from and discuss it.

Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Because I'm just trying to maintain the productive, thought-provoking culture that HN contains.

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

#63

Post by nate_meurer »

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…

> "Coal is evil as I've heard. And the people who mine it? They are the ones now suffering because, you know, its evil, and coal must die."

That's a strawman. Coal isn't dying because it's evil. Thermal coal is dying because it can't compete with cheaper, more efficient natural gas generation.

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

#64

Post by rgrieselhuber »

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 was indeed a depressing article. It would be interesting to see the data around this phenomenon - how many instances of this are occurring now vs. 10-20-30-40 years ago? Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living. Curious about other factors as well.

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

#65

Post by megaman22 »

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.

It's tough not to have that feeling, if you exist outside of bubbles of well-educated, high-IQ people. Shit, half the kids I grew up with were so LD they struggled mightily to learn how to read and do basic arithmetic, and another quarter were so low that they were labeled as MR. They don't have the capacity, no matter how much training and money and lamentations you spend on them.

It's sad that people like that can't have a little dignity and make a living doing what they're capable of, but that's where we're headed.

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

#67

Post by blunte »

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?

The article indicates that at least some of the people doing this are well below any normal education level; and in fact, some are below functional mental health levels.

This would need to be an education process beginning with encouraging birth control + providing quality education for the children who are born in these regions... and providing enough family financial support so the children didn't have to quit school early just to help their parents survive.

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

#68

Post by mbesto »

forkandwait wrote: post #53
mbesto wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, I think you've just answered your own question then. The reason no one has invested time and money is because it isn't cheap/fast and there is no economic motivation (by anyone, government or otherwise) to do so.

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

#69

Post by wan23 »

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.

It's not stupidity, it's a combination of factors.

1) Lack of knowledge of options. Let's say you wanted to get into the oil business. Without Googling anything, what job would you want? What skills and credentials would you need to acquire to get that job? How would you go about getting those?

2) Lack of education - Imagine trying to learn how to program without knowing what variables are. And then let's say you struggle and become capable of doing junior web dev work. What happens when you encounter even an easy interview question like "Write a program to find the first n prime numbers"

3) Lack of time - Most adults don't have time to focus full time on training, even if they aren't working. Children and elderly family members can suck up a lot of time.

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

#70

Post by reaperducer »

Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona.

When I lived in West Virginia, I did note that the Washington Post had a weird fascination with the place. Whenever things got slow, you could expect some big exposé about what a bunch of uneducated, dirty bumpkins we were.

WaPo even once held a contest to come up with a new slogan for West Virginia when it didn't like seeing "Almost Heaven" on the license plates. The winner was "Almost Haiti."

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