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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

#151

Post by Diederich »

bittercynic wrote: post #149
Diederich wrote: post #124

Once again, I'm probably breaking the rules. Consider this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod > I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long time but it's surely just another pointless action because it's the same story over and over. Empathy is not common. Three (at this time) comments that seem to be very relevant to this topic and discussion, yet all [dead]. > Most…

hestipod's comments all being dead seems to prove his/her point. I thought all three were well-written and illuminating.

I completely agree.

At the moment, two of the three are no longer dead.

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

#152

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

thehardsphere wrote: post #119
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And everyone is on social security disability. I spent several years during and after university hitchhiking all around the world. After seeing most of Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, I had a general idea of what kind of people are driving around during the day. And then I traveled across the USA . It turns out that benefits cheats are a very distinct category there in a way they aren’t a thing in most oth…

> unlike certain countries that heavily fund culture in rural areas so that perpetually unemployed people have [places] to spend their time at productively Could you cite examples of what countries these are who pursue these policies for the stated objective of giving poor people things to do while not working? I've never heard of this as a policy objective before for subsidizing libraries and "culture", and I am ver…

The Nordic countries are good example; look at how many regional orchestras Finland has, for instance. The "stated objective" isn't expressly to give the unemployed something to do; rather, the general idea is that people in the provinces have the right to culture just as much as people in the big cities. But the consequence is that in backwaters where a substantial percentage of people are unemployed, they still have access to healthy activities, and to community gathering places that are non-profit and not centered around drinking.

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

#153

Post by Diederich »

kbaker wrote: post #150
Diederich wrote: post #124

Once again, I'm probably breaking the rules. Consider this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod > I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long time but it's surely just another pointless action because it's the same story over and over. Empathy is not common. Three (at this time) comments that seem to be very relevant to this topic and discussion, yet all [dead]. > Most…

(Offtopic) If you click on the comment, there is a [vouch] link to bring certain comments back from the dead. I find that this is a good balance to keep the well-written comments that add to the discussion and deserve a second chance.

Sure...but my question remains: why were the comments flagged in the first place?

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

#154

Post by [deleted] »

whipoodle wrote: post #75
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…

We spent the last few decades dismantling whatever shambles of a social safety net we had, and we don't give a shit about people who can't afford to live. We say "get a job", and we just don't care.

[deleted]

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

#155

Post by sulam »

noworld wrote: post #100

"...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 di…

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you've never been truly poor. Speaking as someone who was raised extremely poor and took a while to get out of it even as an adult, you really have to have been there to understand the mindset.

There are many factors that go into it, some of which are structural (when you're 51 yrs old earning https://newrepublic.com/article/89377/poverty-escape-psychol... )

As far as the dog goes, did you pay any attention to the woman's social interactions while you were judging her? This dog is probably the only unconditional affection she experiences in her life.

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

#156

Post by dragonwriter »

549362-30499 wrote: post #111
thaumaturgy wrote: post #99

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…

Clinton did campaign on a jobs and retraining program specifically for these people. But how can you compete with someone saying they'll hand-wave away your problems and return your old way of life?

> Clinton did campaign on a jobs and retraining program specifically for these people.

To the extent that's true, she did an incredibly poor job of communicating it, and it was certainly not a visible, central theme of her campaign.

And, it probably didn't help politically (whether or not the association is warranted) that her husband also, in living memory of many voters, made similar promises tied to NAFTA, with little substantuve result in that area (and then cut pre-existing long-term safety net programs to rub salt in the wound.)

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

#157

Post by hestipod »

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…

I will explain if you care to listen. Imagine you have no energy and are in pain all the time. A cup of coffee or a cigarette gives you a TINY respite. A few hours of feeling LESS worse. Then like all addictions you need more or you feel even worse. Suddenly it takes 5 cups of coffee a day just to not feel sicker and nobody wants to feel sicker when everything else about their life is horrible.

Now extrapolate that to pain pills, sleeping pills, risky behavior of any sort. When you live day to day and have no safety any pleasure or escape has an immense draw. There is also an element to "who cares I am screwed anyway" that we face every single day. In the end you are judging people on some sterile, elevated point of view and it's not real life.

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

#158

Post by jdietrich »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #20
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…

> And everyone is on social security disability. I spent several years during and after university hitchhiking all around the world. After seeing most of Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, I had a general idea of what kind of people are driving around during the day. And then I traveled across the USA . It turns out that benefits cheats are a very distinct category there in a way they aren’t a thing in most oth…

Sham disability is an integral part of the US welfare system, because it's politically expedient. It allows the government to pay poor people just enough to avoid a violent revolution, while sidestepping the issue of the "deserving poor". It also conveniently conceals the real rate of unemployment - you can pretend that your unemployment rate is 4.2% if you've recategorised most of your long-term unemployed citizens as disabled. The claimants aren't cheating the system, they're using it as it was designed to be used.

Britain did much the same thing after the decline of heavy industry. The number of disability benefit claimants trebled in 20 years, concentrated almost entirely in towns that used to have a mine, a steel mill or a shipyard. In some parts of the UK, over 20% of the working-age population are claiming disability benefits. Staff at welfare offices were effectively coaching people on how to claim disability benefits, because it helped them meet their performance targets.

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

#159

Post by grzm »

Diederich wrote: post #124

Once again, I'm probably breaking the rules. Consider this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod > I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long time but it's surely just another pointless action because it's the same story over and over. Empathy is not common. Three (at this time) comments that seem to be very relevant to this topic and discussion, yet all [dead]. > Most…

If the comments are [dead] but not [flagged][dead], the account is banned. If a past commenter has been egregious enough, the mods will ban not only the main account but also put in some checks to prevent a user from creating new accounts to otherwise circumvent the ban--comments from such new accounts are also marked [dead]. As others have pointed out, if the comments are worthwhile, they can be vouched. There are differing opinions on this method of banning, but it does allow comments to be vouched for.

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

#160

Post by reaperducer »

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.

A call center will spend $700/month on toilet paper. It's no big deal.
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