11 ms·

Do we know why? I've never been there, but Charleston looks like a cosy city and there's lots of classic small american towns around and the nature looks amazin

by Thlom 3y ago

Do we know why? I've never been there, but Charleston looks like a cosy city and there's lots of classic small american towns around and the nature looks amazing. Have they just not been able to develop any new industry after coal mining collapsed?

RhysU 3y ago
As someone brought up in Appalachia with family who made good money via coal mining, I believe the phrase is "...after coal mining was killed" [1]. [1] https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/obamas-war-on-coal https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/obamas-war-on-coal which is a partisan source but the opposite side made no bones about what they were doing.
- ke88y 3y ago
  The decline of coal was hastened by public policy, but was inevitable. Also, other parts of Appalachia haven’t met West Virginia’s fate because the states successfully diversified their economies and don’t rely as heavily on extractive industries. West Virginia’s issue — as a state - is a deep seated cultural unwillingness to adapt or change. The decline of goal is the trigger, not the problem.
  - RhysU 3y ago
    If I defenestrate a frail 80-year-old that they were eventually going to die naturally is not a murder defense. If a robust 80-year-old lived next to the frail one it is also not a murder defense. If the frail one was a stubborn old mule it is likewise not a murder defense. Maybe the neighborhood is better without the dead one, but that doesn't change that they were murdered.
    - stoolpigeon 3y ago
      Getting rid of an industry that literally is killing people world wide is not the same as killing a person. It's the opposite, it is saving lives.
      - RhysU 3y ago
        I am not arguing about any greater good. Killing is killing. My favorite joke here (SMBC?) is that the robbers that killed Batman's 2 parents did not save N-2 people because Batman saved N people.
        stoolpigeon 3y ago
        You keep equating killing an industry with killing people - this is a false comparison. Ending the use of coal saves human lives and does not take any human lives. The batman comparison is irrelevant. No longer using asbestos saved lives and didn't take lives. Removing lead from consumer products saves lives and didn't take lives. I'm sure you there were people in the asbestos industry who weren't happy about the change and they would have gladly gone on giving people cancer. Just like people in the coal industry still bemoan the fact they can't keep killing as many people.
        RhysU 3y ago
        If I kill a car's engine or kill the music or kill this conversation do you understand what I mean? The executive branch killed the coal industry. It was a swift action to bring something to a close. That people in this thread can't disentangle one sense of "kill" from another is disappointing. My "murder" examples probably didn’t help but I figured people might enjoy the nuances (All of them could have been written about turning off, or killing, a bad radio station vs a good radio station and the arguments hold). Lesson learned. My point has never been about the extent to which coal usage ends the life of humans. Frankly, that doesn't matter to anything I have said.
    - ke88y 3y ago
      This sort of victim mentality is endemic to the region. WV could have taken the path of western PA. Not perfect, still some deep scars, but a flourishing new economy that can help pay for long term recovery and provided youth with some sort of future. WV chose victimhood over adaptation, for decades, and here we are. The article isn’t just about cutting humanities departments. WV is so thoroughly hollowed out that it can’t even afford to keep its flagship Computer Science department fully staffed. It’ll be left out of the great onshoring because there is not sufficient human capital or infrastructure. It’s the state government version of a private equity “strip mine the assets and wind it down” operation. Constant victimhood is a self fulfilling prophecy. Opportunities were there. WV was too busy being obstinate to take them.
      - RhysU 3y ago
        Heh, this family is in Western PA which I left in the early 2000's for greener pastures outside of PA entirely. I love the area and the people, but pretending things are economically rosy in Western PA in the extraction areas undercuts your credibility. Leave Pittsburgh once in awhile.
        morelisp 3y ago
        No one's saying things are economically fine in western PA. But, they can still easily afford to teach French.
        ke88y 3y ago
        My comment notes there are still deep scars. > Leave Pittsburgh once in awhile. 1. These sorts of presumptive comments are presumptive and serve no purpose in the conversation. Believe it or not, you aren't the only person on the internet with your background. 2. Western PA is an enormous region, and it's not just Allegheny County that is doing well relative to West Virginia. 3. Having some base of economic activity outside of coal is still better than nothing, even if resulting employment is concentrated in metro areas.
      - pirate787 3y ago
        It's not victimhood, its corruption and incompetence in a massively centralized state government system.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - jwells89 3y ago
    As someone who was born and raised in WV, I’ll say that though the coal industry had been the state’s lifeline for over a century, the relationship was toxic at best. Appalachian coal miners are among the most used and abused groups of workers in modern history. The pay is good for the area yes, but it requires trading away your health and risking death. Coal companies are shameless when it comes to workers’ rights and that traces all the way back to their origin point. They’re part of the reason that governmental worker protections exist now. Realistically the state government should’ve started to seriously try to attract alternative industries decades ago, because the state was always going to spiral if it relied on coal… the only difference is the speed of the spiral.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Yup, things like “portal to portal” rules for Amazon warehouse workers have their origin in the subterranean portals of a mine, because coal companies didn’t want to pay their workers for the hour ride down or up the mineshaft. Which is the analogy Amazon drew to their frisk lines at the exits, even if they require it it’s not “part of the job” etc. Coal companies were the Uber of their time, “innovating” in a space and time when the law hadn’t kept up with industrial progress, and obviously one of the places you can extract value is from the welfare of your workers.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > West Virginia’s issue — as a state - is a deep seated cultural unwillingness to adapt or change As illustrated by the 2016 election. One candidate said coal had played a vital role in making the US what it is but it is in decline due to both the need to address climate change and falling demand due to advances in other forms of energy production. That candidate proposed a $30 billion dollar plan to "ensure that coal miners and their families get the benefits they’ve earned and respect they deserve, to invest in economic diversification and job creation, and to make coal communities an engine of US economic growth in the 21st century as they have been for generations" [1]. The other candidate said he would reverse the decline in coal and bring back the jobs and mines that had gone away over the previous decade. He offered no hint at how he would accomplish that, and nearly all analysts and even more coal mine owners said that because of the shale revolution and the rapidly falling prices of wind and solar coal would remain in decline no matter what the government did West Virginia overwhelmingly voted for that second candidate giving him a larger percentage of their vote (68%) than any other state. [1] https://static.politico.com/b8/90/cbbc9c59413089d87e8d6340f13d/clinton-releases-30-billion-strategy-to-help-coal-communities.pdf https://static.politico.com/b8/90/cbbc9c59413089d87e8d6340f1...
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  I wonder if those who exploited child labor talk about the times before and after child labor was "killed", or drug companies talk about the times before and after thalidomide was "killed"
  - RhysU 3y ago
    Clearly, I am morally equivalent to child labor and thalidomide by attempting to correct that coal mining didn't collapse on its own but rather it was explicitly killed by executive action. </sarcasm> Next.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      yes, coal energy is worse for the world than thalidomide was, and the chip on your shoulder is enormous here if you have any reason the analogy doesn't apply, besides acting offended that it does, feel free to cite it, otherwise it just seems like you're bitter about coal being bad for earth
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    Was child labor ever actually 'killed off'? As I understand it, its use declined before legislation hit, but even legislation never completely got rid of it. It just rebranded as "helping my family on a farm" or "helping my family shop" or "summer jobs" or similar. Eg this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labor-... The 1920s is when education was made compulsory in the south and on the federal level it took until 1938 (which still excluded agriculture).
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      was coal mining ever actually "killed off"? as far as I can tell, it, too, still exists
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  I'm curious about the mindset behind your statement. The article you linked is very clearly a political propaganda piece, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with it. Does the local population really see the coal industry as purposely killed off by government, and not an industry that's been long in decline, with the final nail in the coffin being provided by the rapid expansion of natural gas via fracking? https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/what-killing-us-coal-industry https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/what-ki...
  - RhysU 3y ago
    I am making the point that Obama's energy policies were a deliberate, concerted disaster for coal mining far in excess of any gradual market changes. Anecdata, but this was common knowledge in the region at the time. Retroactively, the broader public thinks the industry faded away. But no, it was shived.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - RhysU 3y ago
      Wow. No one remembers even the NYT coverage of this exact thing https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/us/politics/obama-coal-mining.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/us/politics/obama-coal-mi.... I am not saying anything not agreed to by both parties at the time. The only difference was whether or not a politician cheered it.
      - morelisp 3y ago
        Obama did not "cheer" it and did not kill it. The coal industry had already been dead for years. He was the first president to refuse to commit to continuing the political fiction it wasn't, and to offer an actual alternative. We could have debated the alternative - it had problems! - but instead the argument formed, and still forms, around the outright lie that coal mining could have continued. Even as it was already not employing people anymore!
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  The entire world is transitioning off of coal. Here are some charts on how England coal mining/use has also deeply fallen: https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal Pure economics are driving its demise.
torstenvl 3y ago
WV basically has two things going for it: coal and natural beauty. And the tourism industry isn't enough to support a whole state. So people are leaving quite a bit. A lot of people coming in, including myself, are not full time residents. Some of them are retirees from northern Virginia looking for a lower cost of living. Some just prefer rural life with a more live-and-let-live vibe. But almost nobody is moving out here to raise kids who will go to college here. For the small number who do raise college-bound kids here, a fair number of them will gladly take a lower ranked school to be closer to the city, e.g., University of Richmond.
- pirate787 3y ago
  Tourism is enough to support the state if it is combined with amenities that attract year-round residents -- especially remote workers. The problem with WV is a pervasive culture of corruption among its elites.
  - panzagl 3y ago
    > The problem with WV is a pervasive culture of corruption among its elites. As compared to where? Senator Byrd did a lot to bring federal programs to WV- the FBI, astronomy, interstates, various DoD, I don't think anyone has replaced his influence for the state.
  - BoxFour 3y ago
    > Tourism is enough to support the state if it is combined with amenities that attract year-round residents -- especially remote workers. Tourism and amenities for remote workers don't come across as a universal remedy for addressing the challenges of West Virginia. While certain areas are undoubtedly picturesque and the cost of living might be low, similar sentiments apply to Montana, the Carolinas, Maine, and so on. Truth be told there are many such areas in the majority of states that have similar natural beauty and low cost of living (barring a handful of distinct cases). What specific beneficial attributes does West Virginia possess that set it apart from other states?
- paulmd 3y ago
  Politically this is the classic “rotten borough/pocket borough” problem in a nutshell though. People move away, and you are left with a seat controlled by a ridiculously small number of people who nevertheless control a constitutionally-allocated location. In the UK this got down to some districts having literally single-resident or single-family districts. And it’s super easy to influence the residents when there’s a single master who controls the borough… kinda like coal in WV. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs
nonameiguess 3y ago
The nature is nice. Harper's Ferry is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. But it's not much nicer than any other Blue Ridge state all the way down to Tennessee and Georgia. Meanwhile, the town life, at least as of 20 years ago, is desolate. My best friend from college grew up in West Virginia, and I spent a week with him there before he moved to LA to become a television writer back in 2001. I don't know that I've seen a place more falling apart. Houses collapsed, abandoned. Weird paint splotches that looked like blood stains on houses that were still occupied. Every single lawn had a Camaro body with no engine and no tires propped up on cinder blocks. Other than coal mining, the only employer in this guy's town, which is where he worked, was some kind of direct mailing marketing operation that paid minimum wage. The only upside, if you're truly poor, is you could rent a reasonable sized place for $100 a month.
eitally 3y ago
I grew up in semi-rural Virginia and recently watched Peter Santenello's Appalachia[1] series on YT. The reality is that WV is nearly entirely rural (like Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas), but there's little oil or gas to backfill the coal, and it's absolutely not flat enough (and is almost entirely forested) for either meaningful factory/ranch farming or much else. It doesn't benefit from interstate commerce and there's no river running through it, either. Beyond all the topographical/geographical challenges, the cities are shells of their former selves, and since both the educational attainment and financial independence of West Virginians is low, the potential for breaking out of this death spiral seems low. All that ... and then add the fact that WV is perhaps the worst hit state by the opioid crisis. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9lSZlDJAC0&list=PLEyPgwIPkHo5If6xyrkr-s2I6yz23o0av https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9lSZlDJAC0&list=PLEyPgwIPkH... Tons of natural beauty and I think the state should continue investing in tourism along the lines of what Tennessee has done for decades with the Smokies.
- jwells89 3y ago
  My hometown is in semi-rural WV as well, and this is all true. Furthermore, because the lack of opportunity and things for young people to occupy themselves with, many young people with means (and many who don’t, via college loans) move elsewhere to build a life for themselves. I did, because if I hadn’t the path ahead of me had a ceiling I’d hit by my late 20s or early 30s. This contributes to the cycle of decay that much more. Fewer young people → shrinking working population → no interest from employers → no jobs. And the opioid cross has made it all that much worse. It’s sad. My hometown wasn’t exactly bustling when I was a kid in the 90s, but it still had some life to it. Now it’s barely hanging on.
  - xemdetia 3y ago
    This is part of what I hoped would evolve as part of the full remote pandemic stuff. I left my home area because it was obvious my salary ceiling would be about a third of what I am making now, and I still have room to grow where I am where I would otherwise be stuck. With full remote it would have been possible to at least move back home, but attitudes seem to have shifted for the worse in a lot of cases so being within an hour commute of a tech hub (US) is the only way to get the salary parity.
kalverra 3y ago
As a WVU grad who grew up there: ya, pretty much. Outside of some select towns and cities, WV is poor as shit, and it's only getting worse. Lots of abandoned towns, homelessness, and very few jobs. Even when coal mining was big, it wasn't exactly a thriving area. The movie October Sky is a great rendition of what it was like in the 50s, the coal company owned everything, and was the only source for anyone's income. Now imagine that 70 years later with all the coal companies gone, and tons of painkillers. Its a very sad state, anyone I knew with half a brain who grew up there wanted nothing but to leave. Even those in good situations were all looking to move far away after college.

by Thlom 3y ago

RhysU 3y ago

As someone brought up in Appalachia with family who made good money via coal mining, I believe the phrase is "...after coal mining was killed" [1]. [1] https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/obamas-war-on-coal https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/obamas-war-on-coal which is a partisan source but the opposite side made no bones about what they were doing.

ke88y 3y ago
The decline of coal was hastened by public policy, but was inevitable. Also, other parts of Appalachia haven’t met West Virginia’s fate because the states successfully diversified their economies and don’t rely as heavily on extractive industries. West Virginia’s issue — as a state - is a deep seated cultural unwillingness to adapt or change. The decline of goal is the trigger, not the problem.
- RhysU 3y ago
  If I defenestrate a frail 80-year-old that they were eventually going to die naturally is not a murder defense. If a robust 80-year-old lived next to the frail one it is also not a murder defense. If the frail one was a stubborn old mule it is likewise not a murder defense. Maybe the neighborhood is better without the dead one, but that doesn't change that they were murdered.
  - stoolpigeon 3y ago
    Getting rid of an industry that literally is killing people world wide is not the same as killing a person. It's the opposite, it is saving lives.
    - RhysU 3y ago
      I am not arguing about any greater good. Killing is killing. My favorite joke here (SMBC?) is that the robbers that killed Batman's 2 parents did not save N-2 people because Batman saved N people.
      - stoolpigeon 3y ago
        You keep equating killing an industry with killing people - this is a false comparison. Ending the use of coal saves human lives and does not take any human lives. The batman comparison is irrelevant. No longer using asbestos saved lives and didn't take lives. Removing lead from consumer products saves lives and didn't take lives. I'm sure you there were people in the asbestos industry who weren't happy about the change and they would have gladly gone on giving people cancer. Just like people in the coal industry still bemoan the fact they can't keep killing as many people.
        RhysU 3y ago
        If I kill a car's engine or kill the music or kill this conversation do you understand what I mean? The executive branch killed the coal industry. It was a swift action to bring something to a close. That people in this thread can't disentangle one sense of "kill" from another is disappointing. My "murder" examples probably didn’t help but I figured people might enjoy the nuances (All of them could have been written about turning off, or killing, a bad radio station vs a good radio station and the arguments hold). Lesson learned. My point has never been about the extent to which coal usage ends the life of humans. Frankly, that doesn't matter to anything I have said.
  - ke88y 3y ago
    This sort of victim mentality is endemic to the region. WV could have taken the path of western PA. Not perfect, still some deep scars, but a flourishing new economy that can help pay for long term recovery and provided youth with some sort of future. WV chose victimhood over adaptation, for decades, and here we are. The article isn’t just about cutting humanities departments. WV is so thoroughly hollowed out that it can’t even afford to keep its flagship Computer Science department fully staffed. It’ll be left out of the great onshoring because there is not sufficient human capital or infrastructure. It’s the state government version of a private equity “strip mine the assets and wind it down” operation. Constant victimhood is a self fulfilling prophecy. Opportunities were there. WV was too busy being obstinate to take them.
    - RhysU 3y ago
      Heh, this family is in Western PA which I left in the early 2000's for greener pastures outside of PA entirely. I love the area and the people, but pretending things are economically rosy in Western PA in the extraction areas undercuts your credibility. Leave Pittsburgh once in awhile.
      - morelisp 3y ago
        No one's saying things are economically fine in western PA. But, they can still easily afford to teach French.
      - ke88y 3y ago
        My comment notes there are still deep scars. > Leave Pittsburgh once in awhile. 1. These sorts of presumptive comments are presumptive and serve no purpose in the conversation. Believe it or not, you aren't the only person on the internet with your background. 2. Western PA is an enormous region, and it's not just Allegheny County that is doing well relative to West Virginia. 3. Having some base of economic activity outside of coal is still better than nothing, even if resulting employment is concentrated in metro areas.
    - pirate787 3y ago
      It's not victimhood, its corruption and incompetence in a massively centralized state government system.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jwells89 3y ago
  As someone who was born and raised in WV, I’ll say that though the coal industry had been the state’s lifeline for over a century, the relationship was toxic at best. Appalachian coal miners are among the most used and abused groups of workers in modern history. The pay is good for the area yes, but it requires trading away your health and risking death. Coal companies are shameless when it comes to workers’ rights and that traces all the way back to their origin point. They’re part of the reason that governmental worker protections exist now. Realistically the state government should’ve started to seriously try to attract alternative industries decades ago, because the state was always going to spiral if it relied on coal… the only difference is the speed of the spiral.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    Yup, things like “portal to portal” rules for Amazon warehouse workers have their origin in the subterranean portals of a mine, because coal companies didn’t want to pay their workers for the hour ride down or up the mineshaft. Which is the analogy Amazon drew to their frisk lines at the exits, even if they require it it’s not “part of the job” etc. Coal companies were the Uber of their time, “innovating” in a space and time when the law hadn’t kept up with industrial progress, and obviously one of the places you can extract value is from the welfare of your workers.
- tzs 3y ago
  > West Virginia’s issue — as a state - is a deep seated cultural unwillingness to adapt or change As illustrated by the 2016 election. One candidate said coal had played a vital role in making the US what it is but it is in decline due to both the need to address climate change and falling demand due to advances in other forms of energy production. That candidate proposed a $30 billion dollar plan to "ensure that coal miners and their families get the benefits they’ve earned and respect they deserve, to invest in economic diversification and job creation, and to make coal communities an engine of US economic growth in the 21st century as they have been for generations" [1]. The other candidate said he would reverse the decline in coal and bring back the jobs and mines that had gone away over the previous decade. He offered no hint at how he would accomplish that, and nearly all analysts and even more coal mine owners said that because of the shale revolution and the rapidly falling prices of wind and solar coal would remain in decline no matter what the government did West Virginia overwhelmingly voted for that second candidate giving him a larger percentage of their vote (68%) than any other state. [1] https://static.politico.com/b8/90/cbbc9c59413089d87e8d6340f13d/clinton-releases-30-billion-strategy-to-help-coal-communities.pdf https://static.politico.com/b8/90/cbbc9c59413089d87e8d6340f1...
ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
I wonder if those who exploited child labor talk about the times before and after child labor was "killed", or drug companies talk about the times before and after thalidomide was "killed"
- RhysU 3y ago
  Clearly, I am morally equivalent to child labor and thalidomide by attempting to correct that coal mining didn't collapse on its own but rather it was explicitly killed by executive action. </sarcasm> Next.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    yes, coal energy is worse for the world than thalidomide was, and the chip on your shoulder is enormous here if you have any reason the analogy doesn't apply, besides acting offended that it does, feel free to cite it, otherwise it just seems like you're bitter about coal being bad for earth
- Aerroon 3y ago
  Was child labor ever actually 'killed off'? As I understand it, its use declined before legislation hit, but even legislation never completely got rid of it. It just rebranded as "helping my family on a farm" or "helping my family shop" or "summer jobs" or similar. Eg this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labor-... The 1920s is when education was made compulsory in the south and on the federal level it took until 1938 (which still excluded agriculture).
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    was coal mining ever actually "killed off"? as far as I can tell, it, too, still exists
digdugdirk 3y ago
I'm curious about the mindset behind your statement. The article you linked is very clearly a political propaganda piece, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with it. Does the local population really see the coal industry as purposely killed off by government, and not an industry that's been long in decline, with the final nail in the coffin being provided by the rapid expansion of natural gas via fracking? https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/what-killing-us-coal-industry https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/what-ki...
- RhysU 3y ago
  I am making the point that Obama's energy policies were a deliberate, concerted disaster for coal mining far in excess of any gradual market changes. Anecdata, but this was common knowledge in the region at the time. Retroactively, the broader public thinks the industry faded away. But no, it was shived.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - RhysU 3y ago
    Wow. No one remembers even the NYT coverage of this exact thing https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/us/politics/obama-coal-mining.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/us/politics/obama-coal-mi.... I am not saying anything not agreed to by both parties at the time. The only difference was whether or not a politician cheered it.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      Obama did not "cheer" it and did not kill it. The coal industry had already been dead for years. He was the first president to refuse to commit to continuing the political fiction it wasn't, and to offer an actual alternative. We could have debated the alternative - it had problems! - but instead the argument formed, and still forms, around the outright lie that coal mining could have continued. Even as it was already not employing people anymore!
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
The entire world is transitioning off of coal. Here are some charts on how England coal mining/use has also deeply fallen: https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal Pure economics are driving its demise.

torstenvl 3y ago

WV basically has two things going for it: coal and natural beauty. And the tourism industry isn't enough to support a whole state. So people are leaving quite a bit. A lot of people coming in, including myself, are not full time residents. Some of them are retirees from northern Virginia looking for a lower cost of living. Some just prefer rural life with a more live-and-let-live vibe. But almost nobody is moving out here to raise kids who will go to college here. For the small number who do raise college-bound kids here, a fair number of them will gladly take a lower ranked school to be closer to the city, e.g., University of Richmond.

pirate787 3y ago
Tourism is enough to support the state if it is combined with amenities that attract year-round residents -- especially remote workers. The problem with WV is a pervasive culture of corruption among its elites.
- panzagl 3y ago
  > The problem with WV is a pervasive culture of corruption among its elites. As compared to where? Senator Byrd did a lot to bring federal programs to WV- the FBI, astronomy, interstates, various DoD, I don't think anyone has replaced his influence for the state.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  > Tourism is enough to support the state if it is combined with amenities that attract year-round residents -- especially remote workers. Tourism and amenities for remote workers don't come across as a universal remedy for addressing the challenges of West Virginia. While certain areas are undoubtedly picturesque and the cost of living might be low, similar sentiments apply to Montana, the Carolinas, Maine, and so on. Truth be told there are many such areas in the majority of states that have similar natural beauty and low cost of living (barring a handful of distinct cases). What specific beneficial attributes does West Virginia possess that set it apart from other states?
paulmd 3y ago
Politically this is the classic “rotten borough/pocket borough” problem in a nutshell though. People move away, and you are left with a seat controlled by a ridiculously small number of people who nevertheless control a constitutionally-allocated location. In the UK this got down to some districts having literally single-resident or single-family districts. And it’s super easy to influence the residents when there’s a single master who controls the borough… kinda like coal in WV. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs

nonameiguess 3y ago

The nature is nice. Harper's Ferry is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. But it's not much nicer than any other Blue Ridge state all the way down to Tennessee and Georgia. Meanwhile, the town life, at least as of 20 years ago, is desolate. My best friend from college grew up in West Virginia, and I spent a week with him there before he moved to LA to become a television writer back in 2001. I don't know that I've seen a place more falling apart. Houses collapsed, abandoned. Weird paint splotches that looked like blood stains on houses that were still occupied. Every single lawn had a Camaro body with no engine and no tires propped up on cinder blocks. Other than coal mining, the only employer in this guy's town, which is where he worked, was some kind of direct mailing marketing operation that paid minimum wage. The only upside, if you're truly poor, is you could rent a reasonable sized place for $100 a month.

eitally 3y ago

I grew up in semi-rural Virginia and recently watched Peter Santenello's Appalachia[1] series on YT. The reality is that WV is nearly entirely rural (like Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas), but there's little oil or gas to backfill the coal, and it's absolutely not flat enough (and is almost entirely forested) for either meaningful factory/ranch farming or much else. It doesn't benefit from interstate commerce and there's no river running through it, either. Beyond all the topographical/geographical challenges, the cities are shells of their former selves, and since both the educational attainment and financial independence of West Virginians is low, the potential for breaking out of this death spiral seems low. All that ... and then add the fact that WV is perhaps the worst hit state by the opioid crisis. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9lSZlDJAC0&list=PLEyPgwIPkHo5If6xyrkr-s2I6yz23o0av https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9lSZlDJAC0&list=PLEyPgwIPkH... Tons of natural beauty and I think the state should continue investing in tourism along the lines of what Tennessee has done for decades with the Smokies.

jwells89 3y ago
My hometown is in semi-rural WV as well, and this is all true. Furthermore, because the lack of opportunity and things for young people to occupy themselves with, many young people with means (and many who don’t, via college loans) move elsewhere to build a life for themselves. I did, because if I hadn’t the path ahead of me had a ceiling I’d hit by my late 20s or early 30s. This contributes to the cycle of decay that much more. Fewer young people → shrinking working population → no interest from employers → no jobs. And the opioid cross has made it all that much worse. It’s sad. My hometown wasn’t exactly bustling when I was a kid in the 90s, but it still had some life to it. Now it’s barely hanging on.
- xemdetia 3y ago
  This is part of what I hoped would evolve as part of the full remote pandemic stuff. I left my home area because it was obvious my salary ceiling would be about a third of what I am making now, and I still have room to grow where I am where I would otherwise be stuck. With full remote it would have been possible to at least move back home, but attitudes seem to have shifted for the worse in a lot of cases so being within an hour commute of a tech hub (US) is the only way to get the salary parity.

kalverra 3y ago

As a WVU grad who grew up there: ya, pretty much. Outside of some select towns and cities, WV is poor as shit, and it's only getting worse. Lots of abandoned towns, homelessness, and very few jobs. Even when coal mining was big, it wasn't exactly a thriving area. The movie October Sky is a great rendition of what it was like in the 50s, the coal company owned everything, and was the only source for anyone's income. Now imagine that 70 years later with all the coal companies gone, and tons of painkillers. Its a very sad state, anyone I knew with half a brain who grew up there wanted nothing but to leave. Even those in good situations were all looking to move far away after college.