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[WedgeX]

It wasn't guaranteed, if the states in which these people lived didn't setup solid health care exchanges these people probably never saw any of it. What they were guaranteed was a tax penalty at the end of the year.

The inclusion of mental healthcare is guaranteed in almost every insurance plan due to the ACA.

If states did not set up healthcare exchanges and did not expand Medicaid....the only people to blame were republican governors and Joseph Liberman.

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

If your city has no jobs then move to a city with jobs. I don't know what more there is to say. We are living in a country with full employment. If your city still has 30% unemployment then that's structural and probably not going away.

edit: my post is being interpreted as "those Trump supporters deserved it" when it's actually more of an attack on the solutions being proposed in this thread ("send more help"). That's not what I'm saying at all, I didn't mention or even care to mention Trump in my post. I don't wish suffering on anybody.

 

[Chumly]

Source please.

https://www.healthcare.gov/health-coverage-exemptions/forms-how-to-apply/

 

[theCalamity]

If your city has no jobs then move to a city with jobs. I don't know what more there is to say. We are living in a country with full employment. If your city still has 30% unemployment then that's structural and probably not going away.

Yeah, that's not difficult to do at all and is very super easy to uproot yourself and your family.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Yeah I am not the one laughing about 40% rises in suicide rates, and claiming they deserve it buddy.

Does that somehow excuse your own behavior?

 

[JonRedcorn]

I haven't even touched on the drug subject which I know very personally. These opiate based painkillers have been the absolute catalyst for the destruction of rural America. Leaving all politics aside, I believe this is the one true scapegoat. It has laid waste to rural and even suburban America. The amount of painkillers being prescribed during the last 10 years skyrocketed and pharmacy companies made fucking billions. Locking up pot dealers yet leaving these drug dealing doctors on the streets caused more damage than any war on drugs filled pipe dream could ever have.

 

[JonRedcorn]

Does that somehow excuse your own behavior?

So making fun of a lame weebo avatar and laughing at sky rocketing suicide rates are somehow equivalent. Gotcha.

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

Yeah, that's not difficult to do at all and is very super easy to uproot yourself and your family.

I didn't say it was easy.

 

[Izayoi]

If your city has no jobs then move to a city with jobs. I don't know what more there is to say. We are living in a country with full employment. If your city still has 30% unemployment then that's structural and probably not going away.

Unless wealthier counties offer to pay relocation costs, this is not a feasible option. Many of these people are poor enough that a move like that could land them on the streets.

 

[MGrant]

It's weird in the age of telecommuting that people are packing themselves back into cities.

How do you mean? Cities provide a social component that suburban and rural areas don't. A big community is healthy for us. A single-family home with a 12-acre yard you don't ever have to leave isn't.

 

[JonRedcorn]

How do you mean? Cities provide a social component that suburban and rural areas don't. A big community is healthy for us. A single-family home with a 12-acre yard you don't ever have to leave isn't.

Please do explain how you came up with this insane theory.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

How do you mean? Cities provide a social component that suburban and rural areas don't. A big community is healthy for us. A single-family home with a 12-acre yard you don't ever have to leave isn't.

Yeah I'm sure people outside of cities don't value community.

 

[Hellwarden]

I've lost quite a few friends to suicide. One just last year.

Beside them being gone, the worst part is it never makes sense.

I worry it's only gonna get worse in the future too.

 

[M0nochromatic]

Guys, hating poor people is the job of Republicans. If you consider yourself part of the left, a major part of that is working for a dignified existence for everyone, even the people who voted for Trump.

This is something worth repeating.

 

[j_k_redtail]

How do you mean? Cities provide a social component that suburban and rural areas don't. A big community is healthy for us. A single-family home with a 12-acre yard you don't ever have to leave isn't.

It's not just social. Cities are more efficient at ... just about everything.

But a city is not just a frugal elephant; biological equations can't entirely explain the growth of urban areas. While the first settlements in Mesopotamia might have helped people conserve scarce resources — irrigation networks meant more water for everyone — the concept of the city spread for an entirely different reason. ”In retrospect, I was quite stupid," West says. He was so excited by the parallels between cities and living things that he ”didn't pay enough attention to the ways in which urban areas and organisms are completely different."

What Bettencourt and West failed to appreciate, at least at first, was that the value of modern cities has little to do with energy efficiency. As West puts it, ”Nobody moves to New York to save money on their gas bill." Why, then, do we put up with the indignities of the city? Why do we accept the failing schools and overpriced apartments, the bedbugs and the traffic?

In essence, they arrive at the sensible conclusion that cities are valuable because they facilitate human interactions, as people crammed into a few square miles exchange ideas and start collaborations. ”If you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons," West says. ”They've come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That's why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure."

That's why we as a species have developed the habit of building them, and living in them, over thousands of years. It takes a huge social shock to move people out of cities - like a pandemic.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Yeah, that's the truth right there. Democrats might sneer at rural folks, think of them as a bunch of dumbass hicks, but they'll still vote for things that help them. Republicans will pat them on the back, tell them how great they are, tell them nothing needs to change, then promptly take a giant shit on them as soon as they're in office.

Thats a bingo.

Thing is, getting people to see this outside of a tribalist partisan viewpoint is incredibly hard. Its "we" are both losing in this. I just dont know how to get out of here with where the parties are right now and continued demographic, economic, and media turmoil.

 

[Pancake Mix]

How do you mean? Cities provide a social component that suburban and rural areas don't. A big community is healthy for us. A single-family home with a 12-acre yard you don't ever have to leave isn't.

Villages and towns in rural areas have community, usually very close-nit as well, but very often it's a decaying community with no prospects for the future. Many young people leave hoping for better prospects in larger towns and cities, while the once-vibrant community slowly decays.

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

Unless wealthier counties offer to pay relocation costs, this is not a feasible option. Many of these people are poor enough that a move like that could land them on the streets.

I feel like if we started some federal loan programme to encourage people to move to more productive cities, there'd be backlash from these smaller towns and accusations that the feds are trying to kill them off.

 

[LegendofJoe]

That's tragic; I bet the real number is higher too. I know 2 people who committed suicide whose family reported to authorities they were accidental.

Same here, my best friend in middle school committed suicide last summer but his family kept it quiet. It hit me really hard, because he was more or less me if I had not made it out.

 

[demon]

Holy shit the amount of blatant hate and ignorance in this thread is fucking appalling. I absolutely cannot believe a group of people that claim to be tolerant and accepting can be so fucking cold and oblivious to the plights of other Americans. If they voted for Hilary Clinton do you think anything would be different in rural America? Did Obama do anything to help that skyrocketing suicide rate? Didn't fucking think so.

If the issue is something like healthcare, then yes, voting Democrat (not just at the presidential level but congress and locally where it counts perhaps even more) would unquestionably benefit them. Republicans want to take poor people's healthcare andl social services away; Democrats don't. If these poor rural folk were just harming themselves by voting Republican then that would be one thing, but they're harming everyone else, including me and my loved ones.

I'll stop there lest my elitism causes some poor rural people to vote in more horrible Republican goons, because evidently that's what poor rural people base their votes on.

 

[How About No]

Once you go back, you don't come back.

This tho, I'd be mostly ok with the idea of moving back with my parents if my life ran into some shit, but fuuuuuuucckkk being stuck in my shitty little hometown again

 

[Chumley]

If your city has no jobs then move to a city with jobs. I don't know what more there is to say. We are living in a country with full employment. If your city still has 30% unemployment then that's structural and probably not going away.

Even if you're single, moving is expensive and difficult. If you have a family? Almost impossible. When you live in poverty everything is 10 times harder.

 

[DirtyLarry]

I hate to say it but it is what I believe. It will only continue getting worse as more and more come to the realization that the American Dream was nothing but an advertising campaign drummed up by Mad Men type executives at a time where it still seemed halfway plausible.

It is not, and for some reason Americans have a real hard problem accepting this fact.

I say the above as an individual who was born, raised, and will die in the deceptively scenic state of New Jersey in these wonderful and wacky United States of America.

It is just crazy to me how many people actually fell for it.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

*bankers foreclose on millions of homes after Democrats help deregulate the financial industry*
*country elects Democratic president with overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress*
*president chooses to save financial industry while letting millions of people lose their homes and lets crooks who stole their wealth go largely unpunished*
*Democrats wonder why they lost their large majorities and why dying parts of the country don't like them anymore*

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Stop coddling them. They been voting against themselves since the civil rights act. Millions of other people can look at trump and realize he is on some bullshit. Why can't they?

It's a variety of factors, but I simply think they are being played the same way lots of people get played, hustled, scammed, dubed and baited into things. Millions of people can figure out not to fall into those traps, but some people does.

I don't want to tell people who become addicts, gamblers, alcoholics, or take wrong turns in life "tough love bitch. bye!" but it's essentially the same argument. Would you or I have been better if we had grown up under the same circumstances? I don't know if I would. I don't know what person I'd have been had I been raised in that Environment. I'd like to think I'd be one of the few who'd break away, but wouldn't we all?

Millions of americans are working multiple jobs, on shit wages, that republicans want to reduce/keep low. Minimum wage isn't a livable wage anywhere. Millions of americans, move to other states for work. Millions of people don't have the option to just vote for a handout, and wait. People literally risk death, without any skills, to get to this country and work on lower wages because Americans will not do this work. Granted, everyone can't just move into a better situation. But everyone also doesn't get the choice to keep voting for a Republican Party that is against your own health and well being. That is on them, every time, its on them.

Specifically speaking, people voting against their own interests, that are too ignorant to know that they are, is still a monumental problem in america. However, these counties that voted for Donald Trump, knowingly voted for a pussy grabbing bigot conman from the television, yelling about mexican rapists and banning muslims. Yes, I can easily say oh well, and have empathy for the families left behind. These people need to take responsibility for their actions. There is this bizarre attitude that rural adults are morons, and they need to be coddled to understand that fire is hot. This is not true.

I don't disagree that responsibility needs to be put where it's due. But them learning from their mistakes have nothing to do with us stereotyping them as a monolothic whole.

We don't know how many people were played by fox news articles that succesfully convinced them that Killary had fabricated so many of the scandals against Trump, or how many that were convinced that Sharia was around the corner. For others the danger of Hillary might have outweighed it. Or maybe they believed his lies and were willing to roll with it given his clams of better health care, great jobs and so on, which all can sound convincing to someone who gets all his news from facebook and who is easily convinced by a rich man flaunting money.
I am sure that many people also had hateful motivations and lavaished in the spectacle.

But to me, being a progressive is about practicing what you preach. It's about setting an example with superior policies by doing. I don't believe you can have worth or authority if you're willing to break your principles against those you hate unless it's self defense. I know these people can be tricked into voting *for* their own interests, even if it means padding them on their prideful stubborn heads. Even if it means voting for their own selfish reasons, they can be made for policies that benefit minorities more than themselves. But the packaging of such things need to be skimmed in patriotism, in ther own self interest. That is the way you make them hand over the keys.

But that cannot be done until they begin to see the benefits of globalization. They haven't felt that in their communities. So to them, the New World Order is a scam of bankers that try to undermine their country and they have visions of them defending their country like patriots from foreign invaders. It's complete fantasy, but that's how out of touch they are and how deep fox news and the likes have gotten to them over decades.

How do you break through that bubble? You need visible help on the ground. Democratic propaganda that helps them. re-education systems; trade schools and online programs that gets these people into new professions. You need banks, the insurance industry, education and more to have massive communal efforts that get give these people a new path, and the name of these programs need to be smirred in left wing propaganda to show them that all the lies are not true.

The conservatives are not going away. It's best to lead by example.It's best to make them want to change themselves because their own life is unsustainable.

We have to be better than them for more reasons than we have the morale high ground. Because that means nothing to people who don't understand. If we go down this path, we leave them open to the "whataboutisms" that will make things a lot worse. We are not in the wrong here. We are not on the wrong side of the issues. History will reflect that. We just have keep sane and not do something that will make our words ring hollow ten years from now when youtube compilations will play of our politicians giving warning signs being right. That is a powerful tool, but it's hard. It's hard because a lot of people are going to be hurt now. It's hard to tell people to endure and even reconcile or endure people whose ignorance has hurt them, but it is needed for the long term strategy.


the ideas of deregulating everything- Reagans dream. Now we are going to feel the miracles of trickle down economies. But seeing it in practice might be what it takes to make this 40 year old false relic finally die. Democrats have always been there to stop it. Conservatives ahve always fantasized abut dems going away.

Nobody wants government until the need it. nobody wants to pay for health care or insurance until they need it. Now a lot of people are going to feel it in their own shoes. There is a opportunity that these people will realize that trickle-down economics was not the way. There is a possibility that some republicans will put the pieces together.

If Democrats went away tomorrow, the republican party would eventually split into two, and they would figure out this all of its own. It would happen over time, as every free society have a liberal and republican flank. The trick; the canary in the coalmine is to convince them; help realize that this strategy doesn't work. Their selfish motivations and fears as seeing poor minorities as freeloaders need to be warped. The first thing that can be done is for the poor working class in rural America to understand the struggles of being at the bottom.

If the Democratic allies can help them when they need it the most and make sure, these people understand that its democrats who help them, it can really help.

America has been here before. The republicans almost collapsed after the great depression while the Democrats surged. The New Deal. It's about all of this. People don't want it until they need it. And right now they're refusing to take the medicine because they're stubborn. But they need it. So we should offer it to them and make sure they know its from the progressive side.

That's my thinking. And I think it starts with innovative solution to undo the chokehold of conservative media. America becomes 1000x as crazy after Fox News. It was a given that one day after decades of introdocination that it would have more and more subliminal toxic effects on citizens. We have that in Europe to. Decades of muslims = terror fearmongering have completely broken many people. They cannot think of muslims without thinking terror. the connotation has been reinforced every night for the last 15+ years. every new terror attacks become anecdotal selection bias.

They live in a different reality and mirage. So lets make them take down their guard and make them want to vote for something self serving that benefits the interests we want.

 

[FStubbs]

*bankers foreclose on millions of homes after Democrats help deregulate the financial industry*
*country elects Democratic president with overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress*
*president chooses to save financial industry while letting millions of people lose their homes and lets crooks who stole their wealth go largely unpunished*
*Democrats wonder why they lost their large majorities and why dying parts of the country don't like them anymore*

This is silly though.

* Republicans believe in no regulations whatsoever on the financial industry and this has been their position for years now and is a well known position and one Trump embraced
* Democrats had majorities but not overwhelming. Republicans went into blind obstruction mode, and with some blue dog Democrats, were able to block a lot of things. This doesn't count the state and local levels which were,and are, entrenched Republican and where he faced massive resistance.
* This has some truth, but again, the GOP was going to block a lot of this. His other choice was to let it all crash and burn and plunge the country into a depression.
* A lot of their large majority was due to Blue Dogs. Those guys were doomed from the get go. The Tea Party also formed immediately as a racist response to Obama, the culmination of which was the election of Trump.

Let's not forget what made Trump surge to the top of the polls. It was building a wall and banning Muslims.

the ideas of deregulating everything- Reagans dream. Now we are going to feel the miracles of trickle down economies. But seeing it in practice might be what it takes to make this 40 year old false relic finally die. Democrats have always been there to stop it. Conservatives ahve always fantasized abut dems going away.

Republicans have already seen it fail hard in Kansas and yet they went back and voted Brownback right back in. Because it's not about economics.

 

[Aytumious]

It is fascinating how many of you think rural Democrats don't even exist.

 

[UraMallas]

This thread has been eye-opening. Emotions running understandably high on both sides of the argument. In my view, if you're going to say empathy is a key tenet of your personal moral compass and that it helps to inform your political opinions, then you have to go all the way on that. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you pride yourself on being rational and empathetic, you have to want to help those who can't and/or won't help themselves.

That's not even mentioning the many many people in those communities who did vote for Hillary and Bernie. What do you say to those people? It's also interesting to see ideologies being applied by people claiming liberalism such as the feasibility of economic mobility via relocation as a solution for people.

If your city has no jobs then move to a city with jobs. I don't know what more there is to say. We are living in a country with full employment. If your city still has 30% unemployment then that's structural and probably not going away.

Here's a perfect example. Are you ignorant of the reality of rural poverty or are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance with this line of thinking? Assuming you hold to progressivism and liberalism. It's so weird for me to see some perverted version of Horatio Alger coming out in this thread. Or, maybe more Grapes of Wrath.

 

[TenCentCoast]

I'm going to say this as someone who almost contributed to this statistic multiple times: if you actually think that these people deserve to die just based on where they live, go fuck yourself. Like, actually just fuck off. I'm not defending racists, or sexists, or any bigots. Fuck them. I'm a trans person living in the middle of fucking Arkansas for Christ's sake, I know what bigotry looks like. That doesn't change the fact that I have an ounce of empathy for these people who have been denied proper education, sold lies over and over again, are increasingly likely to become addicted to opiates, and actually DO live in a part of the country that is going through hell economically, "economic anxiety" jokes aside. I'm not going to sit here and tell you to like them, or even understand them. Not their views, and sure as shit not why they vote against their own interests time and time again.

But they do not deserve to die.

I'm a Democrat because I believe in a better life for all. That includes the rural Americans who some of you so vehemently hate. And again, I get it. I feel the same way sometimes. But I've also been at that ledge, living in a place that doesn't accept me. I understand that feeling. I empathize with it so goddamn much. Regardless of your political beliefs, you deserve life. I'd like to think that's a more common thing to think that it seems.

 

[Thelonelykoopa]

It is fascinating how many of you think rural Democrats don't even exist.

Their really isn't enough of us. Looking at 2016 election map for Ohio is depressing. The closest county that voted Democrat was Athens right above us which is a college town (Though it's also the poorest county in all of Ohio which is amazing coming from Meigs right below it as I always assumed we was poorer as it always had so much things we lacked when it came to businesses and entertainment. )

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

Here's a perfect example. Are you ignorant of the reality of rural poverty or are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance with this line of thinking? Assuming you hold to progressivism and liberalism. It's so weird for me to see some perverted version of Horatio Alger coming out in this thread. Or, maybe more Grapes of Wrath.

I'm not really a socialist. You should probably quote and guilt trip someone else. Democrats haven't helped these cities much either tbh, you can't support these communities. They're unsustainable.

 

[Angelus Errare]

I haven't even touched on the drug subject which I know very personally. These opiate based painkillers have been the absolute catalyst for the destruction of rural America. Leaving all politics aside, I believe this is the one true scapegoat. It has laid waste to rural and even suburban America. The amount of painkillers being prescribed during the last 10 years skyrocketed and pharmacy companies made fucking billions. Locking up pot dealers yet leaving these drug dealing doctors on the streets caused more damage than any war on drugs filled pipe dream could ever have.

"We tried to tell ya'll" - Ancient African-American Proverb

 

[LegendofJoe]

New Deal 2.0 - Invest in America

Infrastructure, job retraining, aggressive student loan forgiveness, and using the power of the government to bargain for fair drug prices. The first and the 2nd in particular are the shots in the arm that rural America desperately needs.

 

[UraMallas]

I'm not really a socialist. You should probably quote and guilt trip someone else. Democrats haven't helped these cities much either tbh, you can't support these communities. They're unsustainable.

I didn't call you a socialist. I'm not a socialist either. I'm trying to appeal to your empathy and decency. Nothing more.

 

[Obliterator]

I shudder to think what full scale automation is going to do to the world in the next 20-30 years. We are gonna see the situation we are seeing in rural America on steroids and it's going to spread to the cities as well.

The country really needs to start thinking about what we are going to do when millions of jobs vanish and how we feed and keep our people happy.

 

[Foffy]

It's situations like this that make it a very hard sell for me to accept the notion this country has gotten "better" in a massive, majority-thinking sense. It hasn't. We'll smirk and twerk about a stock market and abstract numbers, but the qualitative experience for many people has only gotten worse.

Rural America is ground zero for what happens when neoliberalism meets technological and economical games: a hollowing out and dejection of populations, which, of course, politicians don't dare bring attention to regarding any policy to care for these people, for in neoliberal idealogy, this systemic cultivation is one of a free will character choice. All of these people just have to be doing something wrong in life, some would proclaim. "T-they're lazy! They need to move to where the jobs are! Retrain!"

Bullshit.

Who can genuinely, sincerely be surprised that this bedrock of precarity has only felt an orange con man talks to them, especially when he promises the cultish things this very society says you need for survival value? That's how off we are culturally; their hope for a future is from a renowned liar promising a job's restoration campaign, because nobody else really has anything substantial to propose. Literal lying is more impactful to these people, because they've been ignored. How many post-election really wish these people struggling and suffering to just die like the apparent dinosaurs they are because they fell in love with a con artist? How about we do something to prevent literal carny from taking advantage of precarious people like the sociopath in the White House has done?

I am not shocked by this information, but am more perplexed at those who may be uncovering this as if this is new, surprising information. The precariat class is forming in many first world countries, and all of them have a place of origin: the more rural locations of a nation. It of course spreads, so don't think it's localized to just the "yeehaw fucking hicks."

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

I didn't call you a socialist. I'm not a socialist either. I'm trying to appeal to your empathy and decency. Nothing more.

Sorry, I thought that's what you implied when you said "progressive and liberal".

Like I said later in this thread, I'd be okay with giving to incentives to make better decisions (like a loan program that encourages them to move to places where they can live sustainably). Sending cash to rural areas with no hope (which is usually the Democratic/socialist solution) is wasted money though. We shouldn't subsidize inefficient living. Rural America is fading away for a reason.

edit: I'm guessing my post was interpreted as "those Trump supporters deserved it" when it was actually more of an attack on the solutions being proposed in this thread ("send more help"). That's not at all what I was saying. I don't wish suffering on anybody.

 

[demon]

*bankers foreclose on millions of homes after Democrats help deregulate the financial industry*
*country elects Democratic president with overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress*
*president chooses to save financial industry while letting millions of people lose their homes and lets crooks who stole their wealth go largely unpunished*
*Democrats wonder why they lost their large majorities and why dying parts of the country don't like them anymore*

Ahh yes, the party of deregulation......The Democrats.

And the Dems never had an overwhelming majority. That is a myth. They had an active supermajority in the senate for a matter of weeks. The Republicans obstructed all they could, controlled congress for most of Obama's presidency, and have swept up local and state elections over the past several years. Let's not pretend like the democrats have had free reign over this country in any capacity. This country needs expanded healthcare coverage social services, higher taxes on the super rich, and spending on actual useful things like infrastructure building instead of military bullshit, all of which would help these poor rural towns. The Republicans have made it crystal clear they want to do the exact opposite, yet rural areas by and large continue to vote for them.

 

[Obliterator]

Rural America is fading away for a reason.

I don't necessarily disagree. But the mistake many in the cities are making is its a problem of what's happening to OTHER people. It's just rural people right? Cities are safe.

But in reality the beast of automation is coming quickly and cities won't be safe from it either. If we are smart we look at rural economies as ground zero right now and learn as much as we can with how to help huge amounts of displaced people losing jobs. Because a whole hell of a lot more on the way over the next few decades.

 

[theepicoftyler]

Murder/suicide and opioid abuse/overdoses have risen dramatically in my lifetime for sure. Rural Illinois, small to mid-size towns.

Driving through or living in the rural country makes it easy to understand that economic anxiety is a REAL factor that is weighing on people's minds. However, a lot of those people are being sold scapegoats rather than facing the reality that it's an unsustainable setup. Agriculture jobs are fewer and fewer all the time, and manufacturing is gone, and it's not likely ever going to come back in a way that will sustain these small communities.

Most of my immediate and extended family worked in manufacturing or farming when I grew up. If you worked in a factory, you had to drive 40 mins to an hour every day to go to work because the small factories in small towns were already disappearing. None of those people are working in factories anymore because they're all closed. A lot of them have "retired" early, or are working minimum wage jobs in retail or the service industry. Most of the kids of the farmers didn't take up farming. They left. Their parents are still doing it into their 70s and 80s. When they stop, their neighbors will take up their acreage.

I worked in a factory for a about 5 years starting in high school and I was one of the last people not hired through a temp agency. I was making $16/hr when I quit, which was really good money for the area, and people getting hired to do the same job at that time where getting a little over minimum wage. I can't imagine that place will be around much longer.

It's a hard problem to solve. People don't want to leave home, and it's very hard to leave a rural area when you're impoverished. You're dirt poor in the area of the country with the absolute lowest cost of living. How do you manage to move somewhere more populated where the cost of living jumps up considerably?

 

[LegendofJoe]

Sorry, I thought that's what you implied when you said "progressive and liberal".

Like I said later in this thread, I'd be okay with giving to incentives to make better decisions (like a loan program that encourages them to move to places where they can live sustainably). Sending cash to rural areas with no hope (which is usually the Democratic/socialist solution) is wasted money though. We shouldn't subsidize inefficient living. Rural America is fading away for a reason.

Rural America provides the food and energy cities need to sustain themselves. The people who work to provide these necessities are hardly engaging in inefficient living. Hell, our electrical grid needs to be completely remade to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. That effort would be 100 percent all about efficiency and it needs to be done as soon as possible.

 

[UraMallas]

I don't necessarily disagree. But the mistake many in the cities are making is its a problem of what's happening to OTHER people. It's just rural people right? Cities are safe.

But in reality the beast of automation is coming quickly and cities won't be safe from it either. If we are smart we look at rural economies as ground zero right now and learn as much as we can with how to help huge amounts of displaced people losing jobs. Because a whole hell of a lot more on the way over the next few decades.

This is exactly right. Preach. This is a truly progressive stance on the subject, imo.

 

[TenCentCoast]

It's a hard problem to solve. People don't want to leave home, and it's very hard to leave a rural area when you're impoverished. You're dirt poor in the area of the country with the absolute lowest cost of living. How do you manage to move somewhere more populated where the cost of living jumps up considerably?

Uh, you just do it, obviously. Based on this thread it's incredibly fucking simple.

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

Ahh yes, the party of deregulation......The Democrats.

And the Dems never had an overwhelming majority. That is a myth. They had an active supermajority in the senate for a matter of weeks. The Republicans obstructed all they could, controlled congress for most of Obama's presidency, and have swept up local and state elections over the past several years. Let's not pretend like the democrats have had free reign over this country in any capacity. This country needs expanded healthcare coverage social services, higher taxes on the super rich, and spending on actual useful things like infrastructure building instead of military bullshit, all of which would help these poor rural towns. The Republicans have made it crystal clear they want to do the exact opposite, yet rural areas by and large continue to vote for them.

Uh Carter deregulated the transportation industry, notably by destroying the Civil Aeronautics Board, which has had a huge fallout on cities and areas outside of major airport hubs, especially those places you now laugh at as flyover. Bill Clinton deregulated both the financial and telecom industries, causing one to accumulate massive power and the other to consolidate into a few giant monopolies and leave these areas without proper telecom infrastructure. Republicans certainly didn't have a monopoly (lol) on this matter, especially when you remember that Reagan and HW Bush never had a Republican house!

 

[BassForever]

In my rural town I know a boy who just killed himself, his dad killed himself a few years ago. Another boy died of an od last spring.

 

[TenCentCoast]

In my rural town I know a boy who just killed himself, his dad killed himself a few years ago. Another boy died of an od last spring.

Remember: according to some people on GAF, they deserve it.
I'm sorry to hear about that.

 

[Slayven]

It's a variety of factors, but I simply think they are being played the same way lots of people get played, hustled, scammed, dubed and baited into things. Millions of people can figure out not to fall into those traps, but some people does.

I don't want to tell people who become addicts, gamblers, alcoholics, or take wrong turns in life "tough love bitch. bye!" but it's essentially the same argument. Would you or I have been better if we had grown up under the same circumstances? I don't know if I would. I don't know what person I'd have been had I been raised in that Environment. I'd like to think I'd be one of the few who'd break away, but wouldn't we all?

.

Born and raised in rural Georgia, grandson of tobacco sharecropers. I think i turned out alright. Don't vote against myself interests.

 

[Carpe Libertatem]

Uh Carter deregulated the transportation industry, notably by destroying the Civil Aeronautics Board, which has had a huge fallout on cities and areas outside of major airport hubs, especially those places you now laugh at as flyover. Bill Clinton deregulated both the financial and telecom industries, causing one to accumulate massive power and the other to consolidate into a few giant monopolies and leave these areas without proper telecom infrastructure. Republicans certainly didn't have a monopoly (lol) on this matter, especially when you remember that Reagan and HW Bush never had a Republican house!

Not a Republican House does not mean it wasn't a Conservative House

Southern/Conservative Democrats + Republicans dictated policy for decades.

 

[Foffy]

I don't necessarily disagree. But the mistake many in the cities are making is its a problem of what's happening to OTHER people. It's just rural people right? Cities are safe.

But in reality the beast of automation is coming quickly and cities won't be safe from it either. If we are smart we look at rural economies as ground zero right now and learn as much as we can with how to help huge amounts of displaced people losing jobs. Because a whole hell of a lot more on the way over the next few decades.

Indeed. People think the issue of automation and displacement is a Jetson's scenario, something to worry about with sentient AI, or massive deep learning efforts.

People thinking this have to be thinking of the more traditional work in the cities, because automation is here and hitting rural America like a driverless truck.

Take heed to Barack Obama's words back in January: automation is a middle class jobs killer. Of course, very few Democrats and next to no Republicans want to admit this: it breaks the cultural norms of society. Instead we have people like Rick Santorum that pivot to pixie dust when brought up with displacement facts in manufacturing.

How many people still think the biggest killer in manufacturing is offshoring to the "unworthy" Mexican or Chinese? That's not even where the hollowing out is happening anymore...

 

[Bonen no Max'd]

Not a Republican House does not mean it wasn't a Conservative House

Southern/Conservative Democrats + Republicans dictated policy for decades.

I mean I don't know the exact makeup of the congresses in the 1980s but wouldn't this also include the existence of liberal Republicans of the time then as a sort of counterweight here? Are you going to act like there was no ideological shift among Democrats then even outside of the south? I mean taking even a quick look at Wikipedia shows that the Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 passed the House 272-91, more Republicans voted against it than did Democrats.

I mean Jimmy Carter started to repeal Glass-Steagal in 1980!

edit: lol I use the phrase "I mean" with an exclamation at the end way too much, I should try and diversify my language some here.

edit again: actually it looks like that Reagan deregulation bill I just used as an example has even more hilarious results when you look at the geography of who voted for/against it. Two Louisiana Democrats voted against it, but every California Democrat voted for it. Good thing we never had any issues from deregulating savings and loans right?