3 ms·

It's called poverty. Welcome to rural America. Went down the shitter when industry left and the rest of the country ignored it for decades, so now we have MAGA,

It's called poverty. Welcome to rural America. Went down the shitter when industry left and the rest of the country ignored it for decades, so now we have MAGA, drugs and crime, and a whole lotta cheap land.

sfvegandude 4y ago
“The rest of the country ignored it” Is this how local residents feel? I find this sentiment rather confusing. Rural places tend to be distrustful of central government. Meaning, they are happy to be ignored by “the rest of the country” since those outsiders don’t share their values.
- throwaway787544 4y ago
  Local residents do feel that way. They have no money, no education, no job prospects, and don't feel they get respect. The fact that their cultural values are also at odds with the "haves" (in their view) further cements the view. But in a very real policy and economic sense, they literally were abandoned when industry left. Wall Street and Tech zoomed on while their factories and mines closed with no recourse to be able to recover from the economic vacuum.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Is there not a college there, UAPB? How is it helping them?
    - throwaway787544 4y ago
      How are they gonna go to college? Nobody in their family went. Their friends didn't go. They have family they need to stay home and take care of (no child care, elderly care, limited food assistance) and work for, in whatever way that means. Even if they went, it's not like every millennial with a degree gets a job, even with record low unemployment. Transportation is also problematic, just to get to a school, or a job. Rap sheets keep people from applying or being accepted. There's usually no jobs program to help older people transition from obsolete industries. It takes a lot of outreach to get anyone to trust the system, if they have a flexible enough situation to go. Most people just don't see education being a solution, so they aren't going to jump out on a shaky limb in the hopes it might catch them. Better the devil you know.
    - m1gu3l 4y ago
      they keep them right next to the bootstraps.
  - t6jvcereio 4y ago
    They don't get respect because they have a shitty attitude. No one owes you respect
- Gollapalli 4y ago
  >distrustful of central government This hasn’t really been true for a while. Much of the quasi-libertarian stuff comes out of the conservative intellectual crowd, think tanks, lobbying groups etc. Some of it was also a holdover from the Reagan era, which was the last big right-wing populist movement, before Trump showed up. It’s the anti-immigration, pro-manufacturing stuff that really comes out of rural areas. Stuff that creates jobs and cuts down on wage-dilution. If the Trump years were about anything, they were about the right collectively deciding they wanted an industrial policy and pro-labor (not pro-union, mind you) policy, instead of warmed over economic libertarianism.
jbirer 4y ago
Plenty of poor towns without such homicide rates and robbery. You are taking the agency out of the hands of the people committing the crimes and handing it to the circumstances.
- neongodzilla 4y ago
  Homicides and crime still occur, they're just not well-documented. There has to be someone collecting that data and then reporting it. That costs money, so many places just don't. The absence of data != no activity.
  - Khelavaster 4y ago
    Very true. Lots of police departments do their best to avoid reports, which keeps crime rates lower.
honkdaddy 4y ago
The poorest towns in America don’t have the highest crime and the richest towns don’t have the lowest. Attributing violent crime to poverty alone does a disservice to the people living in places with violent crime.
ParksNet 4y ago
> 2020 census Pine Bluff racial composition[56] > White (non-Hispanic) 7,284 17.66% > Black or African American (non-Hispanic) 31,744 76.95% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bluff,_Arkansas#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bluff,_Arkansas#Demograph...

sfvegandude 4y ago

“The rest of the country ignored it” Is this how local residents feel? I find this sentiment rather confusing. Rural places tend to be distrustful of central government. Meaning, they are happy to be ignored by “the rest of the country” since those outsiders don’t share their values.

throwaway787544 4y ago
Local residents do feel that way. They have no money, no education, no job prospects, and don't feel they get respect. The fact that their cultural values are also at odds with the "haves" (in their view) further cements the view. But in a very real policy and economic sense, they literally were abandoned when industry left. Wall Street and Tech zoomed on while their factories and mines closed with no recourse to be able to recover from the economic vacuum.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Is there not a college there, UAPB? How is it helping them?
  - throwaway787544 4y ago
    How are they gonna go to college? Nobody in their family went. Their friends didn't go. They have family they need to stay home and take care of (no child care, elderly care, limited food assistance) and work for, in whatever way that means. Even if they went, it's not like every millennial with a degree gets a job, even with record low unemployment. Transportation is also problematic, just to get to a school, or a job. Rap sheets keep people from applying or being accepted. There's usually no jobs program to help older people transition from obsolete industries. It takes a lot of outreach to get anyone to trust the system, if they have a flexible enough situation to go. Most people just don't see education being a solution, so they aren't going to jump out on a shaky limb in the hopes it might catch them. Better the devil you know.
  - m1gu3l 4y ago
    they keep them right next to the bootstraps.
- t6jvcereio 4y ago
  They don't get respect because they have a shitty attitude. No one owes you respect
Gollapalli 4y ago
>distrustful of central government This hasn’t really been true for a while. Much of the quasi-libertarian stuff comes out of the conservative intellectual crowd, think tanks, lobbying groups etc. Some of it was also a holdover from the Reagan era, which was the last big right-wing populist movement, before Trump showed up. It’s the anti-immigration, pro-manufacturing stuff that really comes out of rural areas. Stuff that creates jobs and cuts down on wage-dilution. If the Trump years were about anything, they were about the right collectively deciding they wanted an industrial policy and pro-labor (not pro-union, mind you) policy, instead of warmed over economic libertarianism.

jbirer 4y ago

Plenty of poor towns without such homicide rates and robbery. You are taking the agency out of the hands of the people committing the crimes and handing it to the circumstances.

neongodzilla 4y ago
Homicides and crime still occur, they're just not well-documented. There has to be someone collecting that data and then reporting it. That costs money, so many places just don't. The absence of data != no activity.
- Khelavaster 4y ago
  Very true. Lots of police departments do their best to avoid reports, which keeps crime rates lower.

honkdaddy 4y ago

The poorest towns in America don’t have the highest crime and the richest towns don’t have the lowest. Attributing violent crime to poverty alone does a disservice to the people living in places with violent crime.

ParksNet 4y ago

> 2020 census Pine Bluff racial composition[56] > White (non-Hispanic) 7,284 17.66% > Black or African American (non-Hispanic) 31,744 76.95% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bluff,_Arkansas#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bluff,_Arkansas#Demograph...