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

175 points by iamjeff 9y ago

logfromblammo 9y ago
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 hunting, which go into supplements, but a large fraction of the people are growing marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, collecting sassafras root bark for MDMA cooks, and reselling their prescription opioids, in addition to the older traditions of moonshining and tobacco cigarette smuggling. And everyone is on social security disability. If all you ever knew is coal mining, that's your condition that prevents you from finding gainful employment. If you need to see what happens with bare-bones basic income, that's it. The whole community barely scrapes along, and everyone has to do some niche hustle to earn their gas money a dime at a time. If you threw out the penalty for working, most of those people would be doing something productive, even if it's manufacturing ugly tchotchkes to be sold in a tourist trap, because whatever it is would give them beef in their stew instead of just barely enough gas in the tank to keep going.
- tdb7893 9y ago
  One good thing about a true basic income is that there wouldn't be conditions for receiving it so it would significantly lessen the penalty for working legitimately (obviously there would still be tax reasons to have income you don't need to report). My hope for basic income is that by simplifying how we give aid it can take out much of the ridiculous bureaucracy of it but I'm obviously no expert
  - hpcjoe 9y ago
    The concern I have with this will be inflation. People now have money, sellers can now raise prices. Which eventually gets us right back to where we were. You can give them more money, but then you are accelerating the cycle.
    - lg 9y ago
      sellers who raise prices will need to compete with ones who don't.
      - hpcjoe 9y ago
        And ... how well is that working out in markets like, say, high speed internet (from someone who is struggling to find competitive offerings in a large market near major cities). The point is that sellers may attempt to partition markets to reduce competitive pressure, allowing each to increase their pricing without worrying about being undercut.
        walshemj 9y ago
        that's because the FCC didn't deregulate the last mile LLU would promote more competition
    - ianai 9y ago
      Not quite. Inflation isn’t the outright awful thing people assume it is. Further, the concept is to give people just enough to survive. That creates demand for only the basics. The basics are largely standardized items. When was the last time there was a shortage in corn, cotton, flour? They’re all commodities. If anything modern prices for these goods and services are likely to be indifferent to the increase in demand from simple basic income. Another example is the cost of additional real estate outside the city. Building costs in rural America are essentially linear with demand. There’s no shortage of land out there and basic income would allow people to live in such areas.
      - hpcjoe 9y ago
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  This is replicated all over the rust belt. One of the saddest portrayals of this is the photo essay, The Ruins of Detroit[1]. These once mighty economic engines have been silenced: manufacturing, coal, etc. What happens next is that the people who depend upon these industries to make a living, and live ... do less well of a job of this. Some argue that unions would help (they wouldn't), or anti-globalism would stop factories/industries from moving (maybe temporarily). The sad fact remains that industries are, to a degree, tied to regions, and people grow up depending upon those industries in those regions. Once the industry finds a lower cost mechanism to come to market, those dependent people are cut free. Its the short term, profit focused mindset and all it brings that is a huge part of the problem. Note that I am a staunch capitalist, and I see this. I don't have a solution to this. I wish I did. None of the political parties have anything close to a solution for this. Giving money directly to people may help for a while, but is likely to spark inflation, which will cause this to repeat in a few years. I remember one of the political parties crowing about how they saved the auto industry in Michigan during the last major financial crisis. Funny, as I live there, and I remember one of the people who lives in my sub whose business was destroyed by this "saving" thanks to many long held overdue invoices at one of the car company's being zeroed out, coming to my front door, with his son to ask for help. Food specifically. Foolish policies that do not contemplate consequences for actions, apart from the groups that the politicos favor, help decimate regions like this. Coal is evil as I've heard. And the people who mine it? They are the ones now suffering because, you know, its evil, and coal must die. Every decision, every policy has consequences. There are never any easy solutions. (edits to correct spelling/punctuation errors) [1] http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit
  - javajosh 9y ago
    The good capitalist would say that if a firm moves out of a region, that another firm will happily pounce on all of those experienced, employable workers they left behind! Hiring is hard, so having a big pool of applicants is great! What the good capitalist ignores is the extent to which workers become specialized at the firm, become a cog not shaped correctly for any other firm. Call this lack of fungibility. (It's one reason why company loyalty used to a) be a popular feature, and b) work both ways.) The good capitalist also ignores the fact that the conditions that drove the firm away in the first place will generally drive away other firms, too. Company analysts think in herds. Consider the enormous cost to give up an employed work-force, since acquisition and maintenance cost for a large work-force is high. Why wouldn't a second firm, faced with the same inputs as the first, make the same decision as the first?
- ams6110 9y ago
  > what do you do when the fish are just gone? Move to where the fish are. The economy isn't terrible everywhere.
  - banned1 9y ago
    This is the Hacker News' equivalent comment of "Let them eat cake". I hope things are going well in The Capitol. Where do you suppose they would live? Under a bridge in San Francisco? Unless you are going to host them.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Tangentially related, I do a bit of urban/suburban exploring on paths under overpasses or railroad right of ways and nearly every where I have been in California from San Francisco to San Diego there are homeless people living wherever there is a bit of shade.
  - hpcjoe 9y ago
    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 delay eventual help.
    - iamatworknow 9y ago
      "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-upstate-New-Yorkers-should-move-leave-11437258.php http://www.timesunion.com/7day-business/article/Trump-says-u...
    - ianai 9y ago
- mmirate 9y ago
  > 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?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - fallingfrog 9y ago
    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.
    - mmirate 9y ago
      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.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > 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 other countries (even Canada). With so many of my drivers, conversations would go like this: "So, what do you do?" "I’m on disability.” "Are you disabled?" "No, but I fool the government into giving me a cheque". They had nothing better to do during the day than drive around, though I have no idea how how they could afford petrol. > If you threw out the penalty for working... Indeed, basic income might be a better solution. It would let people claim benefits and work. And people would no longer have to be lying and deceitful to get their money; the prevalence of that kind of behaviour must have some spiritual impact on the community and trust in government. On the other hand, unlike certain countries that heavily fund culture in rural areas so that perpetually unemployed people have libraries and theatres and regional chamber orchestras to spend their time at productively, people in the complete cultural vacuum described in the linked article would probably continue to act self-destructively even with basic income.
  - thehardsphere 9y ago
    > 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 very curious about how well it works.
    - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
      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.
- rgrieselhuber 9y ago
  This was indeed a depressing article. It would be interesting to see the data around this phenomenon - how many instances of this are occurring now vs. 10-20-30-40 years ago? Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living. Curious about other factors as well.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    "Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living." Globalism has had a huge, positive impact on the ability of many rural populations to find work by allowing them to no longer be rural populations. Look at how the growth of outsourced manufacturing in China led to the largest migration in human history, as dirt-poor subsistence farmers were able to find better jobs in the cities. Similarly, European integration has allowed people from miserable places in rural Romania or Bulgaria to move to Spain or Germany for better jobs. Even the people who stay in those rural places benefit, because prosperous people in the cities send money back home to their families. I get the impression that in the USA, however, people who have made a good life in the cities don’t send much money back home.
    - rgrieselhuber 9y ago
      Sure, that's great for China and the countries where globalism has positively impacted those rural populations but there isn't much accounting for those populations that are left behind at home.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        That's because rural Chinese or Cambodian makes a lot less than a rural American described in this article.
        rgrieselhuber 9y ago
        Hence one of the critiques of globalism.
- johnvanommen 9y ago
  That's a good point. I grew up poor as fuck, and there's a huge set of rules which incentivize poverty. For instance, if the family makes more than a certain amount, you lose health care. So you wind up in a situation where you're basically discouraged from working. I remember going to the dentist when I turned 18, and I was stunned to see the bill. I'd never seen a medical bill in my entire life.
oftenwrong 9y ago
Reminds me of a few articles I have bookmarked - more about suburban than rural, and how the people get by: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best-of-2016-suburban-poverty https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best-of-2016-s... https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-poverty/ https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-poverty/ https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-maui-style/ https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-mau... https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-shoppe/ https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-shoppe/
megaman22 9y ago
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 their income growing a little cash crop out in the woods - you had to be a little careful in places that you didn't blunder into a plantation when you were out deer hunting. I wonder whether the recent legalization pushes are putting a hurting on that front.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Hey, that kind of describes Washington state, Oregon, and even California.
- donavanm 9y ago
  I grew up in the california mountains. Marijuana was a notable factor in the local economy. When CA passed medical marijuana I dont recall any adverse impact on prices. My supposition is this basically used existing supply and allowed for very small scale personal production. As recently as 2010 wholesale prices were in $3000/lb range. When CO & WA legalized recreational use they followed the liquor industry producer/distributor/retailer model. This explicitely provided for large scale commercial production. By 2014-15 wholesale prices had dropped to $2000/lb or so. Today I think wholesale is down around $1000/lb on the west coast. In some shops retail prices are $1250-1500/lb. In short, yes prices have dropped precipitously in the past few years. And Id expect further decline as large commerical operations continue to grow in well regulated states. Small personal grows will still be strictly profitable. But the small "family business" black market operations are being squeezed quite hard. Caveat, numbers from memory and im not in the business myself.
cyberpunk0 9y ago
Welcome too late stage capitalism
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Just so you know, you're being downvoted not because of your views on capitalism(a critique of which was the point of this post), but rather because of the lack of substance your comment contained. In the future, your comments will be better received if you state the reasoning behind your viewpoint so that we may learn from and discuss it. Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Because I'm just trying to maintain the productive, thought-provoking culture that HN contains.
24gttghh 9y ago
> 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 to kick, but come on. If you've already had quintuple bypass surgery, maybe it's time to give up smoking?
- mrskitch 9y ago
  I can relate to this sentiment, but you've got take into account the whole story: - Failing health, already has nearly died. - No safety net. - Risks life every time this voyage is made. - Doesn't have access to many resources. Here you have someone who doesn't have (what appears to be) working plumbing. Doesn't even have a _kitchen_ (just a hot pad). No assets or finances to speak of. Likely no support network. On top of all of that you want them to tackle a nearly impossible task of giving up addiction? I'll note that many many people with all the resources in the world cannot break addiction, let alone someone with nearly no resources. Definitely not wise for her to continue with her habits as they are. But given the amount of stress and pressure, along with impending doom, some semblance of mercy should be exercised. It's not like she already doesn't have other major problems requiring her attention
  - riot504 9y ago
    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.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      > "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, then relieve the watch...our pre-watch smoke was a kind of "shoot-the-shit" before we had to be serious and formal operators.
forkandwait 9y ago
So why can't we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?
- gph 9y ago
  What makes you think these people wouldn't already have jobs as engineers and technicians if they were capable of that? It even mentions in the article that the one lady lives down the road from her nephew who has a nice house with trucks and a boat. He was pulling down 100k at a coal related job, that might mean in a labor role but there's a good chance he's the type of person you're talking about; someone capable of filling a sort of lower-level engineer/technician role. Edit: That's not to say there aren't a few capable folks that fell on rough times or came from a rough background and never quite got a good enough opportunity to make something of themselves. Certainly it would be nice to have programs to help those folks reach the full extent of their capabilities. But that's definitely not a solution for the broad majority of people in this situation.
  - forkandwait 9y ago
    I am amazed by the pervasiveness of the assumption that most of the human race is inherently just too stupid to become upper middle like us.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      Yeah, especially if you're rural or inner-city.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Well, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100. Also, if everyone tries to achieve greater education, then what's considered "upper middle" will shift. Just look at the devaluation of associates and bachelors degrees today. The sad truth is that there will always be lower and lower-middle class jobs, because not everyone is capable of joining the upper-middle class. Should those people continue to experience a declining quality of life just because they haven't been genetically or socioeconomically blessed?
leggomylibro 9y ago
>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 able to do better.
- refurb 9y ago
  Disability is often done on a percentage basis. If you're completely unable to work you get 100%. If you can't stand for a long time, but can sit and work, you might get 30% disability. Even at 100% it's not a lot of money, but I've heard it's enough to exist.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    So if you're at 30% disability because you can't stand for long periods or do physical labor, are you still allowed to hold down an office or clerical job where you work 30-50 hours a week? It might mean unique difficulties with things like transportation, but the government isn't paying you a salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, they're providing you a stipend to compensate for the unique difficulties of your situation. Or, if they are paying you a sort of salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, why is it below minimum wage when you demonstrably already have more problems than most people? Edit: Okay, reading the article shines a bit more light on this, but it's still very confusing. I can't imagine having to navigate these systems without any resources. And even then: >This means recipients receiving the maximum $735 check can earn up $1,555 per month and still be eligible for a disability payment. The maximum is under $9K/year? That is not a living wage for someone without disabilities.
    - deadmetheny 9y ago
      My sister is physically disabled and works a clerical job part-time. She continually has to watch her hours at her job because if she makes too much money, she is required to pay back the difference in her SSI disability cheque. Please note that her combined income from work and disability benefits is peanuts - it's enough to live on in a rural Midwestern town where things haven't gone up shit creek as badly as the Rust Belt and Appalachia, but it's no glamourous lifestyle and the requirement to stay underneath certain income lest you lose your SSI benefits is a perverse incentive not to try and find better work.
vmarshall23 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
reaperducer 9y ago
Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona. When I lived in West Virginia, I did note that the Washington Post had a weird fascination with the place. Whenever things got slow, you could expect some big exposé about what a bunch of uneducated, dirty bumpkins we were. WaPo even once held a contest to come up with a new slogan for West Virginia when it didn't like seeing "Almost Heaven" on the license plates. The winner was "Almost Haiti."
- acdanger 9y ago
  I'm guessing it's an article because a lot of WaPo readers aren't aware that this is normal life in many parts of rural America. * edit: removed comma
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  What part of WV?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > 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.
  - irrational 9y ago
    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.
    - iamatworknow 9y ago
      I currently live in rural upstate New York. When a longtime friend of mine found out that I would soon be leaving to live in a big city in the south he yelled at me, called me an idiot, and said I would get raped and murdered there. This is a guy in his mid-30's who has only ever visited a place with more than 10,000 people once, so his entire perception of what it's like in urban America is based off of the salacious news stories he reads online.
hestipod 9y ago
I'm not as bad off as this woman but the difference is irrelevant in the big picture as I won't survive either. I am in my 40s with no skills, a dead CV and the expectation that if I really wanted it I would just pull on my non existent bootstraps. Over a decade ago my life was ruined by medical mistakes. It cost me my career and everything I had worked for. It started a long road of being denied assistance from disability and other programs as I fell in every crack or got unfair adjudicators. I was not able to navigate the legal system for recompense as it was loaded on the side of the doctors despite common belief. I survived this long on a partial pension from my job, a large savings since I lived frugally, and occasional assistance from others. My health has worsened, problems and needs have piled up, the occasional assistance has tricked off mostly, and I have no hope. Most people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes. In the end it comes back to victim blaming and me not trying hard enough. People who have health, security, and lives and cannot imagine what it's like to live in so much pain and have no real options love to judge. I have tried and considered all the usual advice like "learn to code" or "just do content writing" that comes along to disabled and isolated people. At my age and with the stability issues I have it's not realistic. People don't seem to get that. I should be getting assistance but this country doesn't do it like the rest of the first world so I am expected to suffer more just to stay alive in pain. I am moving abroad to a cheaper country to try and stretch my pension but I won't survive there either without earning and I cannot find any feasible way to earn that doesn't make things worse. Seeing people talk about people like me here in terms of "usefulness to society" enrages me. I served society...I did good in the world...that life was stolen and society rejected me. We are legion.
- dougk16 9y ago
  I don't give this advice often since for most people it's the "moving abroad" part that's the deal breaker, but since you mentioned you're doing it already, I'll throw out teaching english as a foreign language. Depending on the country/school you might need a small certificate from a month-long-type training course, or training from the school itself, but for the most part you just need to be able to speak English and have a heartbeat. When I did it I met other teachers from every conceivable walk of life, some with a situation that sounds similar enough to yours. It's the most realistic way that someone down on their luck can "start fresh" in this day and age (IMO). Good luck.
ggm 9y ago
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 tried to survive on minimum wage, I am very unsure your critique of their behaviour, which is essentially poverty shaming: you are only poor because [lazy | stupid] forms of logic, adds anything. If you walk over a begger muttering "get a job" you deserve contempt. If you hate America, vote capitalist, randean individualism.
- hestipod 9y ago
  This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life. In the end people care about themselves and if you challenge their just-world view by suffering in front of them, or make them feel bad or guilty, they attack. The sad part is for those people nothing will change it but being forced into despair themselves and then it's too late for both of us. 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.
  - occultist_throw 9y ago
    > This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life. I used to be a republican. Or Libertarian. Blame my parents, as I do. They're dyed-in-the-wool republicans/christians, where if you have bad happen, you must have deserved it. So they dont help because you should be able to rescue yourself. One of their most shameful moments was how horrible they talked of welfare. They qualified for it years ago, and made a big point of pride that they never took it. It to them was this huge badge of shame. So when I had really bad times, I did take it. And instead of hiding, I said so on Facebook. Boy, my parents hated that. Pity, cause I didnt care. And that it did help me get back up. > In the end people care about themselves and if you challenge their just-world view by suffering in front of them, or make them feel bad or guilty, they attack. The sad part is for those people nothing will change it but being forced into despair themselves and then it's too late for both of us. Indeed. Most in this country will never see that. Or they are that, and they'll never be here to say so. Hell, even the "richies" here in HN have had many discussions about it. And one idea that is mentioned is to sell services to them - and its summarily shot down. Why? "There's no money in helping poor people. They don't have money." > 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. We're around. We aren't popular, especially around here. People who focus on empathy simply cannot become capitalists. Because they have to make decisions that preserve human-ness over money, which is completely antithetical to the idea of Venture Capitalism, Capitalists, Big Business, Disruption, and on and on. There are, of course, token projects that try to show that this class of people care, but in all seriousness, when I stop seeing a fistfull of dollars to X project for "UBI" and briefcases of dollars to lobbying, I'll know that equation has changed.
thaumaturgy 9y ago
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 thing for these people, but at least they mentioned them. [1]: http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/west-virginia/ http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/...
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  West Virginia only has 5 electoral college votes.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Right, but they have a great votes/population ratio. Giving small states a voice is precisely why we have the current distribution of electoral votes.
    - amigoingtodie 9y ago
      '...great votes/population ratio' Can you elaborate on that?
- 549362-30499 9y ago
  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?
  - alexanderstears 9y ago
    How appealing is a retaining program when you're dirty, tired, old, and not able to get to a class room? She didn't campaign on a jobs program, or at least not one that would matter like a jobs guarantee.
noworld 9y ago
"...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 did now, carried it over to Bobby’s." She gets paid a tiny bit of money and she buys dog food, dog treats, cigarettes, and beer? Then gives the beer to her brother? Sounds like she's resolved to living this way instead of interested getting out of it, and for that you don't need a check cut from everyone else's tax payments.
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  So, if she kept the beer, she could 'get out of it'?
  - noworld 9y ago
    Is that what you got out of my post? Really?
    - amigoingtodie 9y ago
      Not sure what I was supposed to get out of it. I assume you have advanced degrees in rhetoric?
- calt 9y ago
  Who the fuck are you? Imagine having nothing and then being told you can't have the companionship of a dog or even cheap beer because that means you aren't interested in changing your situation.
  - noworld 9y ago
    I'm the person that would rather have clean clothes and a shower, then get a job, washer, dryer, and bed, and THEN worry about the dog and cheap beer later. This is an article about people that can't suppress an urge right now for long term gains and it holds them in perpetual poverty. That's who the fuck I am.
Diederich 9y ago
Once again, I'm probably breaking the rules. Consider this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod 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 people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes. Indeed.
- bittercynic 9y ago
  hestipod's comments all being dead seems to prove his/her point. I thought all three were well-written and illuminating.
  - Diederich 9y ago
    I completely agree. At the moment, two of the three are no longer dead.
- kbaker 9y ago
  (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.
  - Diederich 9y ago
    Sure...but my question remains: why were the comments flagged in the first place?
    - hestipod 9y ago
      It might be because my account is new...some antispam feature? But I have experienced enough avoidance and disdain irl and online simply for being in this position I wouldn't be surprised if someone flagged me for insulting their political view or something else. If it's the former then no big deal. If it's the latter it's beyond me to affect and my words are just venting for myself rather than changing anything.
spitfire 9y ago
Is there a non-paywalled link available? I'm not finding anything via the web link.
marak830 9y ago
(edit: I finished it,as I should have the first time. Not that i change my point of view though) <s>I couldn't finish the article, not because it was too heartbreaking, but because of the stupidity of the author.</s> ..."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 been on the poverty line, I'm damn close to being there again. You have money for dog food and beer? Also earlier noted in the article smoking. I'm not sorry to say, fucking pull your head in. I have had to grow my own vegetables and cut lawns to feed my family (when I was 14!), None of us had money to mnoke, drink or have pets. Oh you spent your day digging up roots? Why not plant something then?(if you're already stealing from public land, why not at least try and utilise it somehow?) “I worked underground until I started having anxiety and I couldn’t stand to go back underground,”, I sure hope that doesn't deserve a disability payment, there are many more deserving than that. Shit I don't like underground either, doesn't mean I'm disabled, just means that I don't like the idea of that much mass over my head. I can still do other work. My opinion on this piece is that the author was trying to pull heart strings without actually being objective.
- marak830 9y ago
  So to the downvoters, do you actually have a logical response, or just a knee jerk reaction? I have been there, I grew up not knowing where each meal was coming from. I have lived next to and interacted with people who can't make logical decisions about what to do. I have seen people pull themselves from there, to actually attain something worthwhile, (I'd like to believe I am one of those people), and I have seen and interacted with those who will use any excuse to avoid actually working, or bettering themselves. So again, would you like to have a discussion about it? I'm more than willing. I am disappointed about the downvotes without a good reason though, this is why we come to hn after all.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - hestipod 9y ago
    So what about those of us, who are despite common belief the majority, who are in between? Those too old or broken or indebted to work like a 14yo and hope for a future? Those who lost everything after doing what you did and building a life. Those of us who WANT to better ourselves and be independent but cannot get the support to do so? What do you expect US to do? You are falling victim to survivorship bias and victim blaming when you say "I did it and know others who have therefore anyone can". Do you really think I would CHOOSE to live like this if I had an alternative? You need to believe it's all bored, lazy people so you can hold on to your point of view and feel safe yourself. You are afraid and you take it out on those suffering. I have seen this over and over. Any "discussion" people with such views ever have is full of blame and assumption.
retromario 9y ago
It reminds me of this incredible HBO documentary from 2009 chronicling the daily life of a (pretty crazy) rural family called "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA
occultist_throw 9y ago
Ive been there. Years ago. Back in '07 got laid off. Company shut down. Lots of us tried to scramble to get jobs, and all the quick low paying jobs filled up. I got into unemployment and started collecting the $207/week. And this, obviously, wasn't enough. It certainly didn't equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for "unemployment insurance". 2 weeks turned into a month. Which turned into months, then into a year. Then the '08 recession hit. I saw people with graduate science degrees working at McDonalds. There was no fucking way I could get a job, even with blanketing my resumes and filling out webforms that are never responded (Thank you for submitting your application. You will never hear from us). And im still struggling with the $207/week. So I start hustling on craigslist, doing odd jobs. Of course I'm supposed to report this. Well, guess what.... I used this money to relocate myself to a better location, and got a job. Ideally, if you make 1$ on unemployment, you are supposed to report it, and you get $1 less. And if you do work a low paying job, then you get worked to the bone for 30 hours, and get minimum wage which is $187 after taxes. And minus gas, minus lunch, and too tired to look elsewhere. So you hold out for a better one that can get you out of the hole. Yeah, it's just a bad situation all around. And it turns everyone into criminals.
- m777z 9y ago
  >It certainly didn't equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for "unemployment insurance". You were getting more than $207/week taken out of your paycheck for unemployment insurance? That's highway robbery!
  - occultist_throw 9y ago
    When you work for 5 years at a place, and unemployment law only recognizes the last 2 years as history, yes, I am getting cheated. The point of unemployment insurance is to cover things like this. And when the govt's law intentionaly blinds them to your previous payments, there definitely is something wrong. Did I calculate exactly how much I paid in? No. But do 5 years of being paid reasonably well; I paid in plenty.
patrickg_zill 9y ago
The real shame in the article is that rent of $300 per month is being charged on an unimproved 10x20 shed, which you can buy for under $5k almost anywhere in rural and suburban areas. Who set up that deal? How did they get a certificate of occupancy without a toilet?

175 points by iamjeff 9y ago

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 hunting, which go into supplements, but a large fraction of the people are growing marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, collecting sassafras root bark for MDMA cooks, and reselling their prescription opioids, in addition to the older traditions of moonshining and tobacco cigarette smuggling. And everyone is on social security disability. If all you ever knew is coal mining, that's your condition that prevents you from finding gainful employment. If you need to see what happens with bare-bones basic income, that's it. The whole community barely scrapes along, and everyone has to do some niche hustle to earn their gas money a dime at a time. If you threw out the penalty for working, most of those people would be doing something productive, even if it's manufacturing ugly tchotchkes to be sold in a tourist trap, because whatever it is would give them beef in their stew instead of just barely enough gas in the tank to keep going.

tdb7893 9y ago
One good thing about a true basic income is that there wouldn't be conditions for receiving it so it would significantly lessen the penalty for working legitimately (obviously there would still be tax reasons to have income you don't need to report). My hope for basic income is that by simplifying how we give aid it can take out much of the ridiculous bureaucracy of it but I'm obviously no expert
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  The concern I have with this will be inflation. People now have money, sellers can now raise prices. Which eventually gets us right back to where we were. You can give them more money, but then you are accelerating the cycle.
  - lg 9y ago
    sellers who raise prices will need to compete with ones who don't.
    - hpcjoe 9y ago
      And ... how well is that working out in markets like, say, high speed internet (from someone who is struggling to find competitive offerings in a large market near major cities). The point is that sellers may attempt to partition markets to reduce competitive pressure, allowing each to increase their pricing without worrying about being undercut.
      - walshemj 9y ago
        that's because the FCC didn't deregulate the last mile LLU would promote more competition
  - ianai 9y ago
    Not quite. Inflation isn’t the outright awful thing people assume it is. Further, the concept is to give people just enough to survive. That creates demand for only the basics. The basics are largely standardized items. When was the last time there was a shortage in corn, cotton, flour? They’re all commodities. If anything modern prices for these goods and services are likely to be indifferent to the increase in demand from simple basic income. Another example is the cost of additional real estate outside the city. Building costs in rural America are essentially linear with demand. There’s no shortage of land out there and basic income would allow people to live in such areas.
    - hpcjoe 9y ago
hpcjoe 9y ago
This is replicated all over the rust belt. One of the saddest portrayals of this is the photo essay, The Ruins of Detroit[1]. These once mighty economic engines have been silenced: manufacturing, coal, etc. What happens next is that the people who depend upon these industries to make a living, and live ... do less well of a job of this. Some argue that unions would help (they wouldn't), or anti-globalism would stop factories/industries from moving (maybe temporarily). The sad fact remains that industries are, to a degree, tied to regions, and people grow up depending upon those industries in those regions. Once the industry finds a lower cost mechanism to come to market, those dependent people are cut free. Its the short term, profit focused mindset and all it brings that is a huge part of the problem. Note that I am a staunch capitalist, and I see this. I don't have a solution to this. I wish I did. None of the political parties have anything close to a solution for this. Giving money directly to people may help for a while, but is likely to spark inflation, which will cause this to repeat in a few years. I remember one of the political parties crowing about how they saved the auto industry in Michigan during the last major financial crisis. Funny, as I live there, and I remember one of the people who lives in my sub whose business was destroyed by this "saving" thanks to many long held overdue invoices at one of the car company's being zeroed out, coming to my front door, with his son to ask for help. Food specifically. Foolish policies that do not contemplate consequences for actions, apart from the groups that the politicos favor, help decimate regions like this. Coal is evil as I've heard. And the people who mine it? They are the ones now suffering because, you know, its evil, and coal must die. Every decision, every policy has consequences. There are never any easy solutions. (edits to correct spelling/punctuation errors) [1] http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit
- javajosh 9y ago
  The good capitalist would say that if a firm moves out of a region, that another firm will happily pounce on all of those experienced, employable workers they left behind! Hiring is hard, so having a big pool of applicants is great! What the good capitalist ignores is the extent to which workers become specialized at the firm, become a cog not shaped correctly for any other firm. Call this lack of fungibility. (It's one reason why company loyalty used to a) be a popular feature, and b) work both ways.) The good capitalist also ignores the fact that the conditions that drove the firm away in the first place will generally drive away other firms, too. Company analysts think in herds. Consider the enormous cost to give up an employed work-force, since acquisition and maintenance cost for a large work-force is high. Why wouldn't a second firm, faced with the same inputs as the first, make the same decision as the first?
ams6110 9y ago
> what do you do when the fish are just gone? Move to where the fish are. The economy isn't terrible everywhere.
- banned1 9y ago
  This is the Hacker News' equivalent comment of "Let them eat cake". I hope things are going well in The Capitol. Where do you suppose they would live? Under a bridge in San Francisco? Unless you are going to host them.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    Tangentially related, I do a bit of urban/suburban exploring on paths under overpasses or railroad right of ways and nearly every where I have been in California from San Francisco to San Diego there are homeless people living wherever there is a bit of shade.
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  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 delay eventual help.
  - iamatworknow 9y ago
    "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-upstate-New-Yorkers-should-move-leave-11437258.php http://www.timesunion.com/7day-business/article/Trump-says-u...
  - ianai 9y ago
mmirate 9y ago
> 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?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- fallingfrog 9y ago
  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.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    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.
Mediterraneo10 9y ago
> 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 other countries (even Canada). With so many of my drivers, conversations would go like this: "So, what do you do?" "I’m on disability.” "Are you disabled?" "No, but I fool the government into giving me a cheque". They had nothing better to do during the day than drive around, though I have no idea how how they could afford petrol. > If you threw out the penalty for working... Indeed, basic income might be a better solution. It would let people claim benefits and work. And people would no longer have to be lying and deceitful to get their money; the prevalence of that kind of behaviour must have some spiritual impact on the community and trust in government. On the other hand, unlike certain countries that heavily fund culture in rural areas so that perpetually unemployed people have libraries and theatres and regional chamber orchestras to spend their time at productively, people in the complete cultural vacuum described in the linked article would probably continue to act self-destructively even with basic income.
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  > 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 very curious about how well it works.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    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.
rgrieselhuber 9y ago
This was indeed a depressing article. It would be interesting to see the data around this phenomenon - how many instances of this are occurring now vs. 10-20-30-40 years ago? Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living. Curious about other factors as well.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  "Surely globalism is having some measurable impact on the capability of rural populations to find work and make a living." Globalism has had a huge, positive impact on the ability of many rural populations to find work by allowing them to no longer be rural populations. Look at how the growth of outsourced manufacturing in China led to the largest migration in human history, as dirt-poor subsistence farmers were able to find better jobs in the cities. Similarly, European integration has allowed people from miserable places in rural Romania or Bulgaria to move to Spain or Germany for better jobs. Even the people who stay in those rural places benefit, because prosperous people in the cities send money back home to their families. I get the impression that in the USA, however, people who have made a good life in the cities don’t send much money back home.
  - rgrieselhuber 9y ago
    Sure, that's great for China and the countries where globalism has positively impacted those rural populations but there isn't much accounting for those populations that are left behind at home.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      That's because rural Chinese or Cambodian makes a lot less than a rural American described in this article.
      - rgrieselhuber 9y ago
        Hence one of the critiques of globalism.
johnvanommen 9y ago
That's a good point. I grew up poor as fuck, and there's a huge set of rules which incentivize poverty. For instance, if the family makes more than a certain amount, you lose health care. So you wind up in a situation where you're basically discouraged from working. I remember going to the dentist when I turned 18, and I was stunned to see the bill. I'd never seen a medical bill in my entire life.

oftenwrong 9y ago

Reminds me of a few articles I have bookmarked - more about suburban than rural, and how the people get by: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best-of-2016-suburban-poverty https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best-of-2016-s... https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-poverty/ https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-poverty/ https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-maui-style/ https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-mau... https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-shoppe/ https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-shoppe/

megaman22 9y ago

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 their income growing a little cash crop out in the woods - you had to be a little careful in places that you didn't blunder into a plantation when you were out deer hunting. I wonder whether the recent legalization pushes are putting a hurting on that front.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Hey, that kind of describes Washington state, Oregon, and even California.
donavanm 9y ago
I grew up in the california mountains. Marijuana was a notable factor in the local economy. When CA passed medical marijuana I dont recall any adverse impact on prices. My supposition is this basically used existing supply and allowed for very small scale personal production. As recently as 2010 wholesale prices were in $3000/lb range. When CO & WA legalized recreational use they followed the liquor industry producer/distributor/retailer model. This explicitely provided for large scale commercial production. By 2014-15 wholesale prices had dropped to $2000/lb or so. Today I think wholesale is down around $1000/lb on the west coast. In some shops retail prices are $1250-1500/lb. In short, yes prices have dropped precipitously in the past few years. And Id expect further decline as large commerical operations continue to grow in well regulated states. Small personal grows will still be strictly profitable. But the small "family business" black market operations are being squeezed quite hard. Caveat, numbers from memory and im not in the business myself.

cyberpunk0 9y ago

Welcome too late stage capitalism

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
Just so you know, you're being downvoted not because of your views on capitalism(a critique of which was the point of this post), but rather because of the lack of substance your comment contained. In the future, your comments will be better received if you state the reasoning behind your viewpoint so that we may learn from and discuss it. Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Because I'm just trying to maintain the productive, thought-provoking culture that HN contains.

24gttghh 9y ago

> 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 to kick, but come on. If you've already had quintuple bypass surgery, maybe it's time to give up smoking?

mrskitch 9y ago
I can relate to this sentiment, but you've got take into account the whole story: - Failing health, already has nearly died. - No safety net. - Risks life every time this voyage is made. - Doesn't have access to many resources. Here you have someone who doesn't have (what appears to be) working plumbing. Doesn't even have a _kitchen_ (just a hot pad). No assets or finances to speak of. Likely no support network. On top of all of that you want them to tackle a nearly impossible task of giving up addiction? I'll note that many many people with all the resources in the world cannot break addiction, let alone someone with nearly no resources. Definitely not wise for her to continue with her habits as they are. But given the amount of stress and pressure, along with impending doom, some semblance of mercy should be exercised. It's not like she already doesn't have other major problems requiring her attention
- riot504 9y ago
  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.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > "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, then relieve the watch...our pre-watch smoke was a kind of "shoot-the-shit" before we had to be serious and formal operators.

forkandwait 9y ago

So why can't we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?

gph 9y ago
What makes you think these people wouldn't already have jobs as engineers and technicians if they were capable of that? It even mentions in the article that the one lady lives down the road from her nephew who has a nice house with trucks and a boat. He was pulling down 100k at a coal related job, that might mean in a labor role but there's a good chance he's the type of person you're talking about; someone capable of filling a sort of lower-level engineer/technician role. Edit: That's not to say there aren't a few capable folks that fell on rough times or came from a rough background and never quite got a good enough opportunity to make something of themselves. Certainly it would be nice to have programs to help those folks reach the full extent of their capabilities. But that's definitely not a solution for the broad majority of people in this situation.
- forkandwait 9y ago
  I am amazed by the pervasiveness of the assumption that most of the human race is inherently just too stupid to become upper middle like us.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Yeah, especially if you're rural or inner-city.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Well, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100. Also, if everyone tries to achieve greater education, then what's considered "upper middle" will shift. Just look at the devaluation of associates and bachelors degrees today. The sad truth is that there will always be lower and lower-middle class jobs, because not everyone is capable of joining the upper-middle class. Should those people continue to experience a declining quality of life just because they haven't been genetically or socioeconomically blessed?

leggomylibro 9y ago

>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 able to do better.

refurb 9y ago
Disability is often done on a percentage basis. If you're completely unable to work you get 100%. If you can't stand for a long time, but can sit and work, you might get 30% disability. Even at 100% it's not a lot of money, but I've heard it's enough to exist.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  So if you're at 30% disability because you can't stand for long periods or do physical labor, are you still allowed to hold down an office or clerical job where you work 30-50 hours a week? It might mean unique difficulties with things like transportation, but the government isn't paying you a salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, they're providing you a stipend to compensate for the unique difficulties of your situation. Or, if they are paying you a sort of salary under the understanding that you aren't fit to work, why is it below minimum wage when you demonstrably already have more problems than most people? Edit: Okay, reading the article shines a bit more light on this, but it's still very confusing. I can't imagine having to navigate these systems without any resources. And even then: >This means recipients receiving the maximum $735 check can earn up $1,555 per month and still be eligible for a disability payment. The maximum is under $9K/year? That is not a living wage for someone without disabilities.
  - deadmetheny 9y ago
    My sister is physically disabled and works a clerical job part-time. She continually has to watch her hours at her job because if she makes too much money, she is required to pay back the difference in her SSI disability cheque. Please note that her combined income from work and disability benefits is peanuts - it's enough to live on in a rural Midwestern town where things haven't gone up shit creek as badly as the Rust Belt and Appalachia, but it's no glamourous lifestyle and the requirement to stay underneath certain income lest you lose your SSI benefits is a perverse incentive not to try and find better work.

vmarshall23 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

reaperducer 9y ago

Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona. When I lived in West Virginia, I did note that the Washington Post had a weird fascination with the place. Whenever things got slow, you could expect some big exposé about what a bunch of uneducated, dirty bumpkins we were. WaPo even once held a contest to come up with a new slogan for West Virginia when it didn't like seeing "Almost Heaven" on the license plates. The winner was "Almost Haiti."

acdanger 9y ago
I'm guessing it's an article because a lot of WaPo readers aren't aware that this is normal life in many parts of rural America. * edit: removed comma
amigoingtodie 9y ago
What part of WV?
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> 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.
- irrational 9y ago
  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.
  - iamatworknow 9y ago
    I currently live in rural upstate New York. When a longtime friend of mine found out that I would soon be leaving to live in a big city in the south he yelled at me, called me an idiot, and said I would get raped and murdered there. This is a guy in his mid-30's who has only ever visited a place with more than 10,000 people once, so his entire perception of what it's like in urban America is based off of the salacious news stories he reads online.

hestipod 9y ago

I'm not as bad off as this woman but the difference is irrelevant in the big picture as I won't survive either. I am in my 40s with no skills, a dead CV and the expectation that if I really wanted it I would just pull on my non existent bootstraps. Over a decade ago my life was ruined by medical mistakes. It cost me my career and everything I had worked for. It started a long road of being denied assistance from disability and other programs as I fell in every crack or got unfair adjudicators. I was not able to navigate the legal system for recompense as it was loaded on the side of the doctors despite common belief. I survived this long on a partial pension from my job, a large savings since I lived frugally, and occasional assistance from others. My health has worsened, problems and needs have piled up, the occasional assistance has tricked off mostly, and I have no hope. Most people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes. In the end it comes back to victim blaming and me not trying hard enough. People who have health, security, and lives and cannot imagine what it's like to live in so much pain and have no real options love to judge. I have tried and considered all the usual advice like "learn to code" or "just do content writing" that comes along to disabled and isolated people. At my age and with the stability issues I have it's not realistic. People don't seem to get that. I should be getting assistance but this country doesn't do it like the rest of the first world so I am expected to suffer more just to stay alive in pain. I am moving abroad to a cheaper country to try and stretch my pension but I won't survive there either without earning and I cannot find any feasible way to earn that doesn't make things worse. Seeing people talk about people like me here in terms of "usefulness to society" enrages me. I served society...I did good in the world...that life was stolen and society rejected me. We are legion.

dougk16 9y ago
I don't give this advice often since for most people it's the "moving abroad" part that's the deal breaker, but since you mentioned you're doing it already, I'll throw out teaching english as a foreign language. Depending on the country/school you might need a small certificate from a month-long-type training course, or training from the school itself, but for the most part you just need to be able to speak English and have a heartbeat. When I did it I met other teachers from every conceivable walk of life, some with a situation that sounds similar enough to yours. It's the most realistic way that someone down on their luck can "start fresh" in this day and age (IMO). Good luck.

ggm 9y ago

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 tried to survive on minimum wage, I am very unsure your critique of their behaviour, which is essentially poverty shaming: you are only poor because [lazy | stupid] forms of logic, adds anything. If you walk over a begger muttering "get a job" you deserve contempt. If you hate America, vote capitalist, randean individualism.

hestipod 9y ago
This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life. In the end people care about themselves and if you challenge their just-world view by suffering in front of them, or make them feel bad or guilty, they attack. The sad part is for those people nothing will change it but being forced into despair themselves and then it's too late for both of us. 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.
- occultist_throw 9y ago
  > This is how 99% of people are. I wouldn't have believed it until I became a victim. Even people who claim to love you and you have known for life. I used to be a republican. Or Libertarian. Blame my parents, as I do. They're dyed-in-the-wool republicans/christians, where if you have bad happen, you must have deserved it. So they dont help because you should be able to rescue yourself. One of their most shameful moments was how horrible they talked of welfare. They qualified for it years ago, and made a big point of pride that they never took it. It to them was this huge badge of shame. So when I had really bad times, I did take it. And instead of hiding, I said so on Facebook. Boy, my parents hated that. Pity, cause I didnt care. And that it did help me get back up. > In the end people care about themselves and if you challenge their just-world view by suffering in front of them, or make them feel bad or guilty, they attack. The sad part is for those people nothing will change it but being forced into despair themselves and then it's too late for both of us. Indeed. Most in this country will never see that. Or they are that, and they'll never be here to say so. Hell, even the "richies" here in HN have had many discussions about it. And one idea that is mentioned is to sell services to them - and its summarily shot down. Why? "There's no money in helping poor people. They don't have money." > 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. We're around. We aren't popular, especially around here. People who focus on empathy simply cannot become capitalists. Because they have to make decisions that preserve human-ness over money, which is completely antithetical to the idea of Venture Capitalism, Capitalists, Big Business, Disruption, and on and on. There are, of course, token projects that try to show that this class of people care, but in all seriousness, when I stop seeing a fistfull of dollars to X project for "UBI" and briefcases of dollars to lobbying, I'll know that equation has changed.

thaumaturgy 9y ago

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 thing for these people, but at least they mentioned them. [1]: http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/west-virginia/ http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/...

amigoingtodie 9y ago
West Virginia only has 5 electoral college votes.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Right, but they have a great votes/population ratio. Giving small states a voice is precisely why we have the current distribution of electoral votes.
  - amigoingtodie 9y ago
    '...great votes/population ratio' Can you elaborate on that?
549362-30499 9y ago
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?
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  How appealing is a retaining program when you're dirty, tired, old, and not able to get to a class room? She didn't campaign on a jobs program, or at least not one that would matter like a jobs guarantee.

noworld 9y ago

"...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 did now, carried it over to Bobby’s." She gets paid a tiny bit of money and she buys dog food, dog treats, cigarettes, and beer? Then gives the beer to her brother? Sounds like she's resolved to living this way instead of interested getting out of it, and for that you don't need a check cut from everyone else's tax payments.

amigoingtodie 9y ago
So, if she kept the beer, she could 'get out of it'?
- noworld 9y ago
  Is that what you got out of my post? Really?
  - amigoingtodie 9y ago
    Not sure what I was supposed to get out of it. I assume you have advanced degrees in rhetoric?
calt 9y ago
Who the fuck are you? Imagine having nothing and then being told you can't have the companionship of a dog or even cheap beer because that means you aren't interested in changing your situation.
- noworld 9y ago
  I'm the person that would rather have clean clothes and a shower, then get a job, washer, dryer, and bed, and THEN worry about the dog and cheap beer later. This is an article about people that can't suppress an urge right now for long term gains and it holds them in perpetual poverty. That's who the fuck I am.

Diederich 9y ago

Once again, I'm probably breaking the rules. Consider this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hestipod 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 people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes. Indeed.

bittercynic 9y ago
hestipod's comments all being dead seems to prove his/her point. I thought all three were well-written and illuminating.
- Diederich 9y ago
  I completely agree. At the moment, two of the three are no longer dead.
kbaker 9y ago
(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.
- Diederich 9y ago
  Sure...but my question remains: why were the comments flagged in the first place?
  - hestipod 9y ago
    It might be because my account is new...some antispam feature? But I have experienced enough avoidance and disdain irl and online simply for being in this position I wouldn't be surprised if someone flagged me for insulting their political view or something else. If it's the former then no big deal. If it's the latter it's beyond me to affect and my words are just venting for myself rather than changing anything.

spitfire 9y ago

Is there a non-paywalled link available? I'm not finding anything via the web link.

marak830 9y ago

(edit: I finished it,as I should have the first time. Not that i change my point of view though) <s>I couldn't finish the article, not because it was too heartbreaking, but because of the stupidity of the author.</s> ..."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 been on the poverty line, I'm damn close to being there again. You have money for dog food and beer? Also earlier noted in the article smoking. I'm not sorry to say, fucking pull your head in. I have had to grow my own vegetables and cut lawns to feed my family (when I was 14!), None of us had money to mnoke, drink or have pets. Oh you spent your day digging up roots? Why not plant something then?(if you're already stealing from public land, why not at least try and utilise it somehow?) “I worked underground until I started having anxiety and I couldn’t stand to go back underground,”, I sure hope that doesn't deserve a disability payment, there are many more deserving than that. Shit I don't like underground either, doesn't mean I'm disabled, just means that I don't like the idea of that much mass over my head. I can still do other work. My opinion on this piece is that the author was trying to pull heart strings without actually being objective.

marak830 9y ago
So to the downvoters, do you actually have a logical response, or just a knee jerk reaction? I have been there, I grew up not knowing where each meal was coming from. I have lived next to and interacted with people who can't make logical decisions about what to do. I have seen people pull themselves from there, to actually attain something worthwhile, (I'd like to believe I am one of those people), and I have seen and interacted with those who will use any excuse to avoid actually working, or bettering themselves. So again, would you like to have a discussion about it? I'm more than willing. I am disappointed about the downvotes without a good reason though, this is why we come to hn after all.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hestipod 9y ago
  So what about those of us, who are despite common belief the majority, who are in between? Those too old or broken or indebted to work like a 14yo and hope for a future? Those who lost everything after doing what you did and building a life. Those of us who WANT to better ourselves and be independent but cannot get the support to do so? What do you expect US to do? You are falling victim to survivorship bias and victim blaming when you say "I did it and know others who have therefore anyone can". Do you really think I would CHOOSE to live like this if I had an alternative? You need to believe it's all bored, lazy people so you can hold on to your point of view and feel safe yourself. You are afraid and you take it out on those suffering. I have seen this over and over. Any "discussion" people with such views ever have is full of blame and assumption.

retromario 9y ago

It reminds me of this incredible HBO documentary from 2009 chronicling the daily life of a (pretty crazy) rural family called "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA

occultist_throw 9y ago

Ive been there. Years ago. Back in '07 got laid off. Company shut down. Lots of us tried to scramble to get jobs, and all the quick low paying jobs filled up. I got into unemployment and started collecting the $207/week. And this, obviously, wasn't enough. It certainly didn't equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for "unemployment insurance". 2 weeks turned into a month. Which turned into months, then into a year. Then the '08 recession hit. I saw people with graduate science degrees working at McDonalds. There was no fucking way I could get a job, even with blanketing my resumes and filling out webforms that are never responded (Thank you for submitting your application. You will never hear from us). And im still struggling with the $207/week. So I start hustling on craigslist, doing odd jobs. Of course I'm supposed to report this. Well, guess what.... I used this money to relocate myself to a better location, and got a job. Ideally, if you make 1$ on unemployment, you are supposed to report it, and you get $1 less. And if you do work a low paying job, then you get worked to the bone for 30 hours, and get minimum wage which is $187 after taxes. And minus gas, minus lunch, and too tired to look elsewhere. So you hold out for a better one that can get you out of the hole. Yeah, it's just a bad situation all around. And it turns everyone into criminals.

m777z 9y ago
>It certainly didn't equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for "unemployment insurance". You were getting more than $207/week taken out of your paycheck for unemployment insurance? That's highway robbery!
- occultist_throw 9y ago
  When you work for 5 years at a place, and unemployment law only recognizes the last 2 years as history, yes, I am getting cheated. The point of unemployment insurance is to cover things like this. And when the govt's law intentionaly blinds them to your previous payments, there definitely is something wrong. Did I calculate exactly how much I paid in? No. But do 5 years of being paid reasonably well; I paid in plenty.

patrickg_zill 9y ago

The real shame in the article is that rent of $300 per month is being charged on an unimproved 10x20 shed, which you can buy for under $5k almost anywhere in rural and suburban areas. Who set up that deal? How did they get a certificate of occupancy without a toilet?