https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#Poverty_in_Appalachia There's a fun read. I'm having a hard time looking shit up on my phone at the moment, but if memory serves me right post-civil war economy in The South was utter shit for decades and the scars of resentment from that run deep as fuxk too. Yet here you are criticizing farmers and ranchers for taking subsidies when not doing so could repeat past economic mistakes in our history. Droughts, floods, and plagues if insects ruined agricultural economies in the late 1800s and early 1900s and with global warming, we might see that repeat again. It's cool though. Rednecks in Appalachia, the deep south, and the flyover states all backed the wrong ponies. Their come uppance is obviously well deserved, like hat one guy who got hooked on heroine because his doctor told him percocet is totally safe to take long term. Obviously people that make grevious mistakes, not matter the circumstances and motivation behind them, are beyond deserving of help.
Man, I wish there were some sort of magic wand solution we could wave over these areas and just make shit better for the people there... Appalachia, specifically, but also Detroit, and Arkansas, and ... yeah. There are a lot of places the modern world has just left behind. In the West, when the gold/silver/gypsum mine stopped producing, everybody in the town just left and went somewhere else. They followed the work. But when the need for coal dropped dramatically - and will only continue dropping - what is a coal miner to do? Move to Philadelphia and open a sandwich shop? I mean... shit... generations of families have worked in these industries that are drying up. Family members are buried in the back yard, in some cases. Do we really expect these people to just up and move somewhere else? No ... but ... the US doesn't have a guaranteed base income, like some countries, so these people need jobs. But the only job in town has left, and taken all the paychecks with it, so the other jobs in town collapse as well. And then you have Appalachia... a stunningly beautiful bit of the country with no way for people living there to support themselves. It's a problem that requires a long term effort, across multiple disciplines, and the collaborative effort of communities, government, and people from all over the country, not just the rurally dispossessed. My friend Annie Ford is a fiddle player from Appalachia. Grew up in a clapboard house with an outhouse out back, and they had to carry water from the stream. Serious 1880's lifestyle. Now she has her own touring band, lives in Seattle, and has a modern house. We talk about the juxtaposition sometimes, but it is just such a hard life for me to even conceive of... there's not a lot of common ground or experience. Then there's my friend Brett who had parents that got tired of the rat race, and moved out into the backwoods of Idaho, and lived off the land and what they could build with their hands. He and I have talked a lot about that life - and the first time he saw a computer, etc - and how different things are now for him... he's does telephone tech support for a high tech company, has two motorcycles, an apartment in the middle of town, and is a big time gamer. So ... what then? ... we de-populate the rural areas and move people to the cities so they can get office jobs? This is not a simple problem, and there are not simple solutions to it. (But, back to my original point, that's what the Republicans sell: simple (idiotic) solutions that don't actually solve anything for the people they pretend to be speaking for. Oh wait! I know! All the poor in Appalachia can be a part of a new WPA program, like Hoover Dam, and build Donald's wall! Yeah, right...) There are no easy solutions to these problems, and it will take collaboration of people, government parties, and a seriously long-term vision of 20-50 years, to see any changes... IF anyone can get people together on a plan, instead of worrying about who is marrying who, or whether the Confederate flag should be taken down...