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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

#181

Post by marak830 »

(edit: I finished it,as I should have the first time. Not that i change my point of view though) I couldn't finish the article, not because it was too heartbreaking, but because of the stupidity of the author.

..."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."

I have been on the poverty line, I'm damn close to being there again. You have money for dog food and beer? Also earlier noted in the article smoking.

I'm not sorry to say, fucking pull your head in.

I have had to grow my own vegetables and cut lawns to feed my family (when I was 14!), None of us had money to mnoke, drink or have pets.

Oh you spent your day digging up roots? Why not plant something then?(if you're already stealing from public land, why not at least try and utilise it somehow?)

“I worked underground until I started having anxiety and I couldn’t stand to go back underground,”, I sure hope that doesn't deserve a disability payment, there are many more deserving than that. Shit I don't like underground either, doesn't mean I'm disabled, just means that I don't like the idea of that much mass over my head. I can still do other work.

My opinion on this piece is that the author was trying to pull heart strings without actually being objective.

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

#182

Post by bzbarsky »

amigoingtodie wrote: post #130
thehardsphere wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The call center can afford an internet connection; it's cheaper than the people they'd be hiring.

Really? A T-1 around that area is almost $700/mo. A 100Mbps symmetric connection is several thousand dollars per month.

Minumum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. In West Virginia specifically it's $8.75/hr.

That means that a full-time minimum-wage employee in West Virginia costs about $1460/month (assuming they get paid for 50 weeks a year and take 2 weeks of unpaid vacation; if they get paid for 40 hours every week, that's $1517/month). That's just for their salary. Employers also have to pay half of the FICA tax (7.65%), unemployment taxes (several percent, typically; no idea what it's like in West Virginia), provide the actual space to work, etc.

So you can get 2 T-1 lines easily for the cost of a single minimum-wage employee. Assuming your "several thousand dollars" is less than $10k, that corresponds to about 5 minimum-wage employees.

And maybe, just maybe, there might be an incentive structure that involves wages above minimum wage for people who do a good job.

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

#183

Post by rbanffy »

alexanderstears wrote: post #144
rbanffy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should they just lie instead? Sometimes reality is not appealing.

Should they just lie instead? What's the objective? I think the retraining is a neoliberal dog whistle for 'these people deserve their current lives'. If the objective is to run a campaign that's consistent with (or an affirmation of) elite coastal values, then harping on retraining is exactly the right thing to do. If you want to want the most votes, you have to appeal to the most amount of people. Making coastal el…

If you want to know what I would do to make these lives better, it'd be campaigning for universal basic income.

Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds. An alternative would be to heavily subsidize housing, food, gas, healthcare, medicine and do that disguised as an attempt to bootstrap a local self-sufficient economy. It'd actually be a lot more socialist than UBI but politics is the art of the possible and not all state transitions are allowed.

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

#184

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #64
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.

"Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living."

Globalism has had a huge, positive impact on the ability of many rural populations to find work by allowing them to no longer be rural populations. Look at how the growth of outsourced manufacturing in China led to the largest migration in human history, as dirt-poor subsistence farmers were able to find better jobs in the cities. Similarly, European integration has allowed people from miserable places in rural Romania or Bulgaria to move to Spain or Germany for better jobs.

Even the people who stay in those rural places benefit, because prosperous people in the cities send money back home to their families. I get the impression that in the USA, however, people who have made a good life in the cities don’t send much money back home.

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

#185

Post by deadmetheny »

ams6110 wrote: post #85
deadmetheny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is hard for valley drones with no loyalties to comprehend, but not everyone is able or afford to move in the first place, or willing to move even if they could scrape it. Moving is expensive and when the only thing in the world you have is your family and friends, would you just up and give that up? Especially for those who are not in their 20s. And where do you live when you do move, when you have no mon…

I live nowhere near "the valley" and yes, moving to where the work is is what people did in past hard times. Sometimes moving across the ocean (immigrants to the USA in the early 20th century). Maybe we should be helping people with relocation instead of enabling their miserable existence where they are.

Yeah, things like Ellis Island and hobos riding the rails are really things we should aspire to return to. History is never wrong.

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

#186

Post by alexanderstears »

rbanffy wrote: post #183
alexanderstears wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should they just lie instead? What's the objective? I think the retraining is a neoliberal dog whistle for 'these people deserve their current lives'. If the objective is to run a campaign that's consistent with (or an affirmation of) elite coastal values, then harping on retraining is exactly the right thing to do. If you want to want the most votes, you have to appeal to the most amount of people. Making coastal el…

If you want to know what I would do to make these lives better, it'd be campaigning for universal basic income. Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds. An alternative would be to heavily subsidize housing, food, gas, healthcare, medicine and do that disguised as an attempt to bootstrap a local self-sufficient economy. It'd actually be a lot more socialist than UBI but p…

Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds.

If you think that's true then it is, right?

I have dissident rightist view points. I hang out with dissident rightists. I've never once heard them say that UBI is worse than the status quo, and I think pairing UBI with reduced low-skill immigration is something 95% of them could get behind.

Sure, the Paul Ryans and Pelosis of the world might gnash their teeth over UBI but it's something that nearly everyone outside the status quo supports.

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

#187

Post by alexanderstears »

hpcjoe wrote: post #167
alexanderstears wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is - imagine how much better off these people would be if they spent less on fuel - $50 in gas on a $750 monthly budget is proportionally near what I spend on RENT with my (pre-tax) salary. I'm not sure coal can compete with fracking so the coal jobs are moot.

Coal was viable as a fuel until a few years ago. Then the environmental regulations hit full force, and forced many of these companies under. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but worth repeating. Decisions have consequences. Deciding that you will enforce a particular tax/regulation policy based upon perceived (real or otherwise) environmental harm means that the people who depend upon those industries for their…

I'm not well enough versed in coal to compare pre-Obama coal with current levels of fracking.

There are some Obama era regulations I support, there are many more that I don't support. You have to concede that coal ash is a big issue and mountain top clearing mining is a disaster on a small scale though we can argue about its merits.

My personal opinion is that we should plow all energy subsidies into nuclear fission power, fusion research, and basic science for batteries / capacitors. Build massive nuclear plants for each power grid and let the states bid on who wants the plant investment. People who want it can buy their own renewables.

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

#188

Post by sctb »

24gttghh wrote: post #139
thaumaturgy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Smoking makes you feel better in the short term because your body is jonesing for that nicotine, and dopamine gets released when you give your body the nicotine. Then you don't smoke, and you feel shitty until the next nicotine hit. You give a poor justification for an addiction, and the happiness is merely a result of the feedback loop of nicotine > dopamine > no nicotine > dopamine crash > nicotine > dopamine > etc…

Can you please stop? The problem with this line of commenting is that it's predictable, reductionist, and uncivil—not a good combination for Hacker News.

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

#189

Post by toomuchtodo »

curun1r wrote: post #129
ggm wrote: post #80

I cannot find it in my heart to admire the people who comment here proscriptively, without any attempt to signal empathy. Its understood few of us (myself included) will be doing anything to ameliorate this situation, and that empathy signalling is at best chest beating, but I still find the lack of compassion in the responses chilling. Yes, not smoking would reduce health risks and spend. so what? If you haven't tri…

I don't disagree with you, but I think there's a lot of people see the kind of people in the article as the opposition to progressive social issues like #BLM, acceptance of immigrants and the very same socialist policies that they survive off of and need to be expanded if these people are to see their lot in life improve. Rural communities overwhelmingly voted for Trump and they form the core of the Fox News constitu…

> You'd probably see a lot more compassion among big-city liberals if these communities had embraced Bernie Sanders' agenda which would have redistributed a lot of wealth into their communities.

Blue Blood Democrats pushed Bernie off the national stage attempting to elect Hillary Clinton, leaving the disadvantaged to only vote for the candidate who offered to champion their cause (Donald Trump). I don't fault most Trump voters one bit. The superior option they had was scuttled by a power hungry candidate who lost to the worst candidate for presidency ever.

> But with their embrace of white nationalist policies and rhetoric, I think you see a lot of liberals feeling like they don't have the energy to care about all of the powerless people in this country and, instead, are focusing what limited resources they have on trying to help other oppressed groups (minorities, undocumented immigrants, etc.)

Which causes conservative America to double down on conservatives in office. Wash, rinse, repeat.

EDIT: "Undocumented immigrants" are not citizens being oppressed; they are illegally in the country and should be deported unless covered under DACA (having arrived in the US as minors).

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