Pretty much where all my ancestors came from except one branch that came from Ireland during the potato famine. My ancestors (and Mr. Mercat’s) looked around about the time of the Civil War and decided nope, not marrying any of these cousins, and moved west.
Yes this is where I read about how cans of cola have become the transfer medium from EBT into cash at 50 cents on the dollar.
Transferring cases and cases of beverages from one store to another.
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
It's a good look at the subcultural of West Virgina.
There is a huge difference between a ghetto and impoverished sections of the country. Of course all sections are screaming towards poverty these days. keynes... what a guy!
The discussion of the low crime rate was interesting
Lots of White Ghettos in America these days.
The article doesn't mention the diners I go to, but it does tell me that the author of the article is an elitist idiot.
"We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices."
Not even close. This hack has turned hard working not necessarily ‘rich’ folks who love their independence into a trite stereotypical joke. I venture to say he has spent NO time in the Appalachia that I live in and certainly has not gotten to know any of the fine folks who reside there. He has decided to find drunks and dopers…. gosh what a concept cause I sure can’t find those in the big city.
This a%$ wipe couldn’t last ten minutes trying to keep up with the folks he sneers at
“The draw,” the monthly welfare checks that supplement dependents’ earnings in the black-market Pepsi economy, is poison. It’s a potent enough poison to catch the attention even of such people as those who write for the New York Times. Nicholas Kristof, visiting nearby Jackson, Ky., last year, was shocked by parents who were taking their children out of literacy classes because the possibility of improved academic performance would threaten $700-a-month Social Security disability benefits, which increasingly are paid out for nebulous afflictions such as loosely defined learning disorders. “This is painful for a liberal to admit,” Kristof wrote, “but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency.”
These people have had their livelihoods and dreams snatched from them by Obama and the other Democratic Party elitists who only value the urban educated liberals and the Welfare Queens of the big cities.
They were once a proud people mining coal and maybe even making moonshine, but now are left to trading their public assistance for smokes, crank and the Oxycontin.
Forgotten by America and denied the American Dream.
Dang, that first sentence glazed my poor eyeballs.
100 words.
WTH is a “wonder bread hued town”...oh, wait, he means “WHITE”
he hasn’t been to small towns in Appalchia these days, Some of that Wonder Bread is whole wheat.
Thirty or forty years ago the Southern Tier/Appalachian part of NYS where my wife grew up, was doing well. Now it's decaying or decayed like all the rest of our formerly great country.
It's called Maine.
“the vast moribund matrix of Wonder Bread–hued Appalachian towns and villages stretching from northern Mississippi to southern New York”
I didn’t know the Appalachians extended to Mississippi.
Placemarker
P4L
The death of "King Coal" is a big problem, and that's unlikely to be reversed. But what do you replace coal with as an economic driver?
Parts of Appalachia are at high enough elevations, and scenic enough, and have highway access good enough to encourage resort development -- golf clubs, ski resorts, spas, second home communities, and the like. I'm not suggesting that the locals are financially able to join Linville Golf Club or High Hampton Country Club, but such places do provide jobs, and do add to county tax revenues.
The real problem areas are those parts of the mountains whose terrain is too rough for large-scale agriculture, but not high enough to encourage the development of resorts. Much of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia fall into this category. As the article so graphically describes, there is literally nothing to do in such locales.
Some new highways might help stimulate the economy, by improving connectivity between new manufacturing plants in Appalachia with markets in the Midwest and Southeast. I-73, through extreme western WV, is on the drawing boards, but is years away. Extending I-26 from its current terminus near Johnson City, TN north across the western tip of VA to Lexington, KY would be a boost, as well.