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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

#91

Post by pavel_lishin »

reaperducer wrote: post #70

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…

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

Plenty of people have no idea that there are people living like this in America.

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

#92

Post by jccalhoun »

reaperducer wrote: post #70

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…

I'm always kind of amazed that stories about how much it sucks to be poor are "news" and not common knowledge.

I remember when Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed came out and it got all this press. I was dumbfounded. People needed a book to let them know that it is hard to survive on a minimum wage job?

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

#93

Post by amigoingtodie »

knz wrote: post #79
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.

> but I've heard it's enough to exist. How does health insurance/care work for these people? Do you automatically qualify for the government programs (MA?) if you are even partially disabled?

Medicaid, funded by the state.

Some food subsidies via EBT or WIC.

The more 'entrepreneurial' folks can also sell their prescriptions, subsidize other's food purchases w/ the EBT card (in exchange for cash), and make/sell moonshine.

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

#94

Post by mythrwy »

ams6110 wrote: post #9
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…

> what do you do when the fish are just gone? Move to where the fish are. The economy isn't terrible everywhere.

It seems more practical to move the fish to where the people are.

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

#95

Post by caseysoftware »

vkou wrote: post #59
caseysoftware wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is always an opportunity cost.

That's why many contractors and SaaS platforms give a discount for paying up front. They'd rather have a smaller amount now than a larger amount over time.

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

#96

Post by pavel_lishin »

jccalhoun wrote: post #92
reaperducer wrote: post #70

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…

I'm always kind of amazed that stories about how much it sucks to be poor are "news" and not common knowledge. I remember when Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed came out and it got all this press. I was dumbfounded. People needed a book to let them know that it is hard to survive on a minimum wage job?

I forget the name of the book, but after reading Ehrenreich's book, I read one by a college-aged kid who went from literally having no money to having some sort of relatively good job.

It wasn't particularly well written, but it got a fair amount of press - because it reaffirmed people's "gumption and bootstraps" American philosophy, where hard work is the solution to everything, regardless of context or circumstance.

Of course a white 20 year old can get hired. Of course he has the time to walk an hour to his job and work there for 12 hours since he has no children or elderly relatives to take care of. Of course he can move furniture, since he's young and healthy. Of course he can get a job without a criminal record.

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

#97

Post by reaperducer »

javajosh wrote: post #19
24gttghh wrote: post #6

> She lit a home-rolled cigarette and, getting to work with a mattock, tried to ignore the weather. She had lately been telling herself that she had to stop taking these risks. They were more than an hour from the nearest hospital, and what if she had another heart attack? Yeah...she seems to be ignoring the heart-attack risk she is pumping into her lungs while she says that. I get that it's an addiction that is hard…

This article makes plain that she, and everyone she knows are, economically speaking, dead-men walking. And there is a certain dignity offering someone a smoke before they accept their doom. The question that plagues me is: can I give her a job? What could this woman do, online or off, that would be valuable to society? Is Mechanical Turk, marketed to the rural poor, a solution?

This is why West Virginia, North Dakota, Nevada, and other low-education states are magnets for call centers coming back onshore.

They may be dumb as a brick in American terms, but they're able to function at a higher level than the average Indian call center employee, at a comparable salary, and they have the right accents.

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

#98

Post by lloyd-christmas »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #86
24gttghh wrote: post #6

> She lit a home-rolled cigarette and, getting to work with a mattock, tried to ignore the weather. She had lately been telling herself that she had to stop taking these risks. They were more than an hour from the nearest hospital, and what if she had another heart attack? Yeah...she seems to be ignoring the heart-attack risk she is pumping into her lungs while she says that. I get that it's an addiction that is hard…

This kind of sentiment is exactly why more liberals need to read more articles like this one. If you've never lived that life, it's easy to sit back and proclaim for someone else how much better things might be for them if only they didn't do things the way they do. It makes it easy to dismiss their problems as entirely their own fault while we get to feel good about giving out some solid advice. Those cigarettes and…

I hate to be the bearer of reality, but...

This kind of sentiment is exactly why more [conservatives] need to read more articles like [some other expose about being poor, but in the city instead]. If you've never lived that life, it's easy to sit back and proclaim for someone else how much better things might be for them if only they didn't do things the way they do. It makes it easy to dismiss their problems as entirely their own fault while we get to feel good about giving out some solid advice.

Those cigarettes and that beer is what keeps her going every month. They are likely her only real source of meager happiness.

She doesn't have Netflix. Internet. Literally, a toilet to piss into. She doesn't smoke them because she's addicted, she smokes them because they make her life, for a short term, a little tiny bit better.

Y'ever notice how, the poorer people are, the worse their habits are? How they tend to eat more junk food, exercise less, spend more money on trivial things? Yeah, that's why. Healthy living is a luxury and an awful lot of folks have forgotten about that.

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

#99

Post by thaumaturgy »

Logan County, West Virginia, where this article is set, voted 80% in favor of Trump, giving him 10,000 additional votes. [1] The entire state of West Virginia went to Trump.

If Democrats want to change the current political landscape in this country, they might start by addressing some of these peoples' problems while they're campaigning on everyone else's problems too.

Trump (and conservatives) aren't going to do a thing for these people, but at least they mentioned them.

[1]: http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/...

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

#100

Post by noworld »

"...went to the already-crowded Dollar Store and Dollar General and bought dog food, dog treats, Slim Jims, three six-packs of Milwaukee’s Best, pruners for digging roots and a backpack to carry it all.

What was the point in saving when, even if she could scrape together every free dollar, it would never be enough to change her life? So she bought the beer she had looked forward to, enjoyed its release and, as she did now, carried it over to Bobby’s."

She gets paid a tiny bit of money and she buys dog food, dog treats, cigarettes, and beer? Then gives the beer to her brother? Sounds like she's resolved to living this way instead of interested getting out of it, and for that you don't need a check cut from everyone else's tax payments.

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