Posted on 01/11/2003 11:20:13 AM PST by Willie Green
No jobs where you are? MOVE.
One wonders how we got along without them in the years before our helpful government opened the floodgates and chose to avert it's eyes to this invasion.
So, with all this "help", it is a wonder these people in this article need help themselves! Why there's got to be plenty of money and jobs out there. Just ask your local hordes of illegal aliens!
Looks like Greene and Fayette counties, like their neighbors in the Northern Panhandle of W.Va., have reacted much too slowly to changes in their economic base. When coal mining, steelmaking or other such industries began their decline several years ago, county officials and their constituents should have started to think of alternatives. Instead, they sat around watching the economy shrink, and then stuck their hands out to the federal government (read, taxpayers) for help. Unfortunately, they got some of the handouts they demanded, even though the money did little actual good. Now that the gravy train has reached the end of the track (pardon my metaphors), they're whining about the bad situations they're in, ignoring the fact that they've done little to help themselves. Welfare money only enslaves and makes dependent its recipients.
And your suggested alternatives are...???
High-tech like Silicon Valley???
Casino gambling and tourism like Las Vegas???
The problem is that the Rove/Bush Administration's globalization policies encourage offshore (not domestic) economic development. This region is being forced into dependencey no matter what they do.
Those illegal immigrants are cleaning office buildings in large cities and mowing lawns in posh suburbs. If these people had any ambition, they'd go to where the jobs are.
After all, this country was built by people who moved great distances in search of prosperity, and it was a lot harder than just hopping on a bus.
My farm (pulp & timber) is in Webster County, Miss and the area is blighted, clear cut (owned mostly by large pulp companies), just damn depressing to drive through. When my father grew up on the farm there was fourteen large family farms on the road from the main road and railroad to ours, today there is only my cousin's new house and two trailers in the area.
I hadn't been there in ten years (my cousin manages my land for me) and was shocked at the change, all the woods and fields, I grew up hunting in are gone, replaced by some desolate, forsaken, pulp pine operations that looked like they had been fought over instead of harvested.
I once planned to retire there, building a log cabin by the pond, but it is too damn depressing now.
You want them to move to China? Just where are all these jobs you guys are talking about?
Richard W.
The unemployment rate in this country is still about 6%. I remember days(Carter years) when no one thought it could ever get lower than that. So, there are jobs.
And I happen to live in an area where the movie theaters all advertise the jobs before the feature, the supermarkets have job kiosks installed, and the construction sites all have some kind of help wanted banner.
I'm sure almost all growing areas have the same. And it's not hard to find a list of growing cities.
Or, start a state lottery and use the proceeds to improve local two year tech schools, and promote these improvements to industries, as Georgia has done with the hope grant.
For a working class person to be able to increase their income and hireability, increased skills and knowledge are required. Skills such as electronics, Heating and Air, CNC manufacturing, modern auto repair, medical assistant and RN, wiring, etc. available at no cost to working class people is a benefit to them and helps to attract industry.
Yes, it is possible to make more money elsewhere. But it also COSTS a lot more money to live elsewhere.
City folk sneer at the stereotypical shanties and old mobile homes. But the fact is, that much of the housing available in the mountains could not be built anywhere close to major cities, with all of their zoning laws, etc. One can find some pretty inexpensive places to live in the mountains if they need to, and if they can swallow whatever pride they might have.
Food? An old fishing rod and a shotgun will still put a fair amount of meat on the table, and one can always raise a few chickens or maybe even a hog or two, thanks to no zoning. A garden plot will take care of much of the vegetables. You might even be able to forage a fair amount of nuts, berries, mushrooms, etc. in the woods if you really have plenty of time on your hands, know what you are doing and where to look, and are really that hard up. It is quite feasible for someone living in the backwoods parts of the mountains to make the amount spent on a single meal at a city McDonalds stretch to feed their whole family for several days. We won't even go into the tax-free production of distilled spirits. . .
City jobs pay more, true. But you also need more expensive clothes. A couple pairs of blue jeans, a couple flanel shirts, a couple of tee shirts, a pair of boots, and a jacket, and a lot of these folks are pretty well set for the year. And, of course, the womenfolk can always sew some dresses and stuff.
City jobs pay more, but you need transportation to get to them, you usually can't live anywhere close to where you work. Lots of "self-employed" folks in the mountains don't even need to go anywhere on a daily basis, just a couple of trips into the nearest town each week in an old beat-up pickup truck will do. And if you don't have a truck that's running, chances are your friend or cousin down the road does.
City jobs pay more, but to live in the city you need to heat and cool your home. Energy isn't cheap. However, the mountain folks can head into the woods with their pickup truck, an axe, and a chain saw, and set themselves up with all the energy they'll need to keep their homes warm in the winter. As for summer cooling, that's what porches are for!
It is true that there are not many jobs that pay better than minimum wage in the mountains, and even those jobs are few and far between. But almost nothing in the mountains can be stretched a whole lot farther than a full-time minimum wage job in any city.
So what's the solution?
Maybe it begins by changing our thinking. Is it REALLY a PROBLEM for folks to be living this way? Or is it that the "problem" of "Appalachian poverty" is really just a problem of urban elites not feeling comfortable seeing other folks live this way?
Now there are a few truly legitimate issues. Medical care is (or at least was) substandard in many Appalachian areas, and much neeeded care was too expensive for many folks. Since we seem to feel that everyone in this country should be able to get the same urban standard of medical care, the only way that this could happen for poor mountain folks is with some outside help. That doesn't mean that the government should give everyone in Appalachia free medical care, just that there are a few very targeted, and mostly low cost, interventions that could make a huge difference at least in narrowing the gap, if not closing it completely.
Ditto with education, and maybe with transportation and infrastructure.
Instead of LBJ's over-reaching and counter-productive "war" on the poor folks of a huge swath of America, all they ever really needed was a very modest helping hand with a very few things to make their lives a little better. That's all they ever really wanted, either, but nobody among the Washington elites apparently were ever much interested in bothering to listen to the folks that they were trying to "help."
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