After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by mmirate » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:19 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #33

mmirate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all you ever knew is coal mining, that's your condition that prevents you from finding gainful employment. Why can they not expand their knowledge? And if they truly cannot, then ... What productive purpose can we possibly expect them to have? Or in other words: why should we evaluate them as non-negligible?

You know, you should really think about your usage of that word "evaluate". These are people, but you're talking about them in the language that a master might use to discuss the value of a slave- as in, how many dollars do they bring in. What's the value of a bedtime story read to a child? We are all going to die man, life is not about money and profit. Go outside and breathe the fresh air and rethink your life.

The world is indifferent to people's existence. People will only ever mean something if they accomplish something, not because they're people.

Why should I, or anyone, see differently?

> What's the value of 1 bedtime story read to a child?

Well, if we could perform a large study, starting during the participants' childhood, with half the children read X bedtime stories and the other half read X-1, and could somehow control for every possible source of confounding influence across the participants' entire lifetime, then we could see whether there is a statistically-significant difference in the two groups' distributions of net worth at retirement ... then we could begin to answer that question. (In order to get a complete answer, we would need to repeat that experiment for many different values of X and fit a curve to all the results.)

Needless to say, neither you nor I will be alive when that study is published, even if we are alive when that study becomes less-than-impossible to perform.

So today we can at 2nd-best say "not enough information", and at best make a slightly-educated guess of "it's likely negligible among all other influences on children".

> We are all going to die man, life is not about money and profit.

Even if I assume so, my experience is that life utterly sucks without the freedom imbued by money (which, incidentally, is obtained via profit).

Yet I also dispute your assertion to the core. Life is most definitely all about money and profit. Because (a) whatever you think life is about ... you will invariably need money to pursue that goal, and (b) unless you're a farmer or hunter or etc., you literally cannot live without it, unless you steal, which is unethical and criminal. (Under some governments, I'll grant, it is possible to not earn one's money; so the "and profit" portion is not as applicable. Still, even in such cases, someone earned it before having it stol- uhh, taxed from them.)

Oh, and because you're making this assertion, I can also tell that you have at least some modicum of money and profits; otherwise, you would not find this assertion so easy to make.

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

#202

Post by aphextron » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #141

riot504 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view smoking as a kind of break from life. It has a calming effect. Many people smoked during my deployments to Iraq for the same reason - it calms you and allows a simple break otherwise not found. I don't smoke as the smell gives me a terrible headache but I understand the reasoning - particularly when life is hard.

> "I view smoking as a kind of break from life. It has a calming effect. Many people smoked during my deployments to Iraq for the same reason - it calms you and allows a simple break otherwise not found. .." I found this to be the same reason why many of my fellow shipmates smoked during my time in the Navy. It was a kind of pre-watch "bonding" session of sorts...We'd smoke our cigs, grab a quick bite from the galley…

Smokin' and Jokin'. About the only part of the service I miss.

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

#203

Post by javajosh » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:22 PM UTC

emperorcezar wrote: post #82

javajosh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You assume they have the resources to do online work, like an internet connection capable of doing so and the capital to get that connection before doing the work. Also a computer or phone capable of doing the work.

Not sure why you got a downvote, because those are excellent points. However, I'm assuming the hopeful case where we can think of something valuable, in which case the capital cost of equipment and operational cost of connectivity would be an easy sell.

For example, would you accept this woman as a remote personal digital assistance, willing to pay for her phone, internet, and an extra $100/mo to do stuff for you? What is the quality of the work you might expect? What sorts of work would she do? Answer the phone? Argue with your credit card company? Keep an eye on your projects? Are people that capable really hiding in the countryside?

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

#204

Post by iamatworknow » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:24 PM UTC

hpcjoe wrote: post #17

ams6110 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Assume, as the story implies, that they haven't the money to move. Moving costs money. Exactly what should they do? Channeling Marie Antoinette is obviously not the right answer (e.g. moving to the jobs) as they are functionally immobile, and as the article notes, they are disabled. Note: the above question is somewhat rhetorical. There is no real answer, or rather no easy answer. Basic income may help, or it may del…

"I'm going to start explaining to people, when you have an area that just isn't working like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt, and then you'll have another area 500 miles away where you can't get people, I'm going to explain, you can leave. It's OK. Don't worry about your house."

http://www.timesunion.com/7day-business/article/Trump-says-u...

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

#205

Post by jrs95 » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:24 PM UTC

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…

Is "acceptance of immigrants" really a progressive social issue, or is it a pro-business economic issue with excellent marketing? In my opinion it's sort of ironic to promote that and socialism in the same sentence. Bernie Sanders in particular has been opposed to increased immigration in the past. I imagine he's not as vocal about that anymore because it's no longer politically viable.

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

#206

Post by michaelchisari » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:25 PM UTC

lazerpants wrote: post #104

jccalhoun wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Income mobility in the United States is not that high. Most people stay in the income class that they are born into, so most people who are not impoverished do not know what poverty is like. Also, the level of poverty covered in the article is pretty extreme. I grew up in a low income area but it was not difficult to find some way to make 15-20k a year. My neighbors were no where near as poor as the woman highlighted…

For some stats to back this up, the Brookings Institute report shows that mobility is much higher in Canada and the Scandinavian social democracies than it is in the U.S. or the U.K.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

Many other reports corroborate these findings.

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

#207

Post by scruple » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #105

pavel_lishin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And plenty of people in these areas have not idea what life is like outside of their rural areas. My brother recently told me a story of talking to two 20 somethings in rural Pennsylvania (not Amish). They had never traveled anywhere outside of their town and had no concept of what it was like to live anywhere else.

But this isn't unique to country bumpkins. I could rattle off dozens of people I know personally in Los Angeles county that think that LA is what life looks like elsewhere.

edit/ My point is simply that being sheltered isn't a unique experience based on where you live or the population center you're living in.

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

#208

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #4

No shit. The tricky thing with this kind of work is it has to be all cash-only, under the table. Best if nobody sees you doing it, which rules out a lot of the more legitimate kinds of side work - if you're supposed to be 80% disabled, it looks a little fishy when you're out cutting lawns or splitting firewood or caretaking... I grew up on the northern end of Appalachia, and huge numbers of people there supplement th…

Hey, that kind of describes Washington state, Oregon, and even California.

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

#209

Post by marak830 » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

bcook wrote: post #197

marak830 wrote: post #181

(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…

>Oh you spent your day digging up roots? Why not lant something then? I'm just guessing but the author may be referring to ginseng roots, which my low-income friends occasionally collect here in Appalachia. They could make hundreds of dollars in a single day. Planted ginseng takes 2+ years until you can harvest it. I asked them about planting/cultivating, which they said wasn't really viable but they did try to harve…

Yet, from the articles writing, that isn't what they were aquiring, Bor was there a mention of that.

I argue that the author of the piece is either being dishonest(if they were regularly digging up ginseng or similar), not performing enough research or just plain not actually researching for his article.

(Although there was a part about how much the root purchaser had spent that day, and it does seem as if they had either purchased massively under market value(for ginseng), or the roots were all low value.

Also planting for sale is different than planting for consumption, a few dozen fast growing consumption based plants would have a much better outcome if you were concerned about health and saving money. It does take effort and planning though.

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

#210

Post by thebooktocome » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

hpcjoe wrote: post #171

SirRhosis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milk inflation is not that significant. Five dollars of milk in 2000 will cost you 6.51 USD today[0]. It's actually lower this year than it was in 2014[1]. [0] - http://www.in2013dollars.com/Milk/price-inflation [1] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/milk_price

Hmm ... not 3 years ago, the milk I currently pay $4/gallon for was selling for ~$3/gallon. Maybe outside of Michigan it is different.

Heh, in Ohio milk is currently 1$/gal.