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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

#341

Post by jjawssd »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #228
jjawssd wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that giving the poor huge amounts of money in one lump sum will help them more than giving them a smaller amount each month?

Yes. When you give someone with a terrible quality of life a lump sum they spend more of it on stuff that improves their quality of life than they would if it were distributes as small payments over time. Look at what people do with tax returns. They spend it on big items that they couldn't justify budgeting and saving for otherwise.

Is it possible that a person with a terrible quality of life lacks the discipline not to waste a large sum of money? If so, what is the likelihood that such a person will squander all of their lump sum?

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

#342

Post by nate_meurer »

thehardsphere wrote: post #340
nate_meurer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a strawman. Coal's present predicament has exactly nothing to do with political disfavor. Coal remains heavily subsidized [1], under-regulated [2], and enjoys entrenched support at all levels of government. And yet it still can't compete with newer more efficient alternatives. Note that the Trump administration is now pushing to give coal massive new subsidies in the form of forced extra payments to coal-fi…

You've missed the point I and the GP are making completely. GP is making an argument about what is happening to displaced people, not about what is happening to the coal industry. The claim in the GP is _not_ that coal "is dying to political disfavor", the claim is that political disfavor of coal exists and is not helpful _to the people who used to mine it_, for whatever reason those people were displaced. It really…

Yes, I get it, you really don't like what Hillary said. Neither does she; in her new book she calls that statement one of her biggest mistakes.

But one politician's ill-considered indulgence in the heat of a campaign does not make your case that "politicians are not doing anything" to help coal miners.

Quite clearly, the opposite is true. Coal miners are America's most fashionable symbol of blue-collar righteousness, and politicians on both sides of the aisle are tripping over each other to be seen "doing something" for them. In both state and national politics, this has given coal miners influence way out of proportion to their constituency, and far beyond that of any other jobless group such as former steel-workers or loggers or out-of-work retail store workers.

Invoking the bogeyman of coal-hating elites is nothing more than a way to keep a political football inflated.

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

#343

Post by laaph »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #230
curun1r wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blue Blood Democrats pushed Bernie off the national stage attempting to elect Hillary Clinton What the DNC did in last year's primary was shameful, but... > leaving the disadvantaged to only vote for the candidate who offered to champion their cause (Donald Trump) Laughs...he never championed their cause. He told them all their problems were because of minorities and that he'd return the country to a time of bigotr…

> Laughs...he never championed their cause. This stance is part of the problem. https://www.google.com/search?q=bring+jobs+back+trump+youtub... https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+coal+jobs+youtube https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+carrier+jobs+youtube He promised the disadvantaged he'd get their jobs back from Mexico and China, he promised to bring coal jobs back. Whether he did those things or not doesn't mat…

> I blame people who care more about illegal immigrants than the disenfranchised citizens suffering in poverty in the US.

Would you like to blame me?

But, from my perspective, I heard very little Trump say that would affect illegal immigration (his only proposal for that was to build a wall), but I heard lots of things that sounded like heavy bigotry to me. He wanted to ban muslims, ban refugees from the very places where the US instigates wars, and generally said a lot of vile stuff.

I may have taken it all a little too personally. Trump literally advocated for banning my future wife from the US. I'm too old for DACA, but when I tried to get a passport I discovered I didn't have paperwork to get a passport. Recent changes in laws mean our families literally can't visit each other, and we are discussing what to do.

On the other hand, I imagine some people would like their mother-in-law banned from the country. It would at least make a good joke for someone.

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

#344

Post by tjalfi »

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…

The other entries can be seen at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/12/04/...

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

#346

Post by bzbarsky »

reaperducer wrote: post #339
bzbarsky wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do the real estate prices compare? But yes, in general the answer may be that they wouldn't put such a thing in WV.

Three seconds of Googling shows you're oh so wrong.

Oh so wrong about what, exactly?
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