
After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America - iamjeff
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/10/06/her-disability-check-was-gone-and-now-the-only-option-left-was-also-one-of-the-worst/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_economydisabled-702am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
======
hestipod
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
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.

~~~
hestipod
I've done it part time in the past when I attempted this sort of desperation
move that failed. It wasn't sustainable and took too much out of me being
"switched on and sociable" like that. On top of that the barrier to entry even
if I could manage is higher than people think...I dont have a bachelors degree
and am old. Schools want young, degreed and flexible. If all you have is being
a naive speaker you get private under the table lessons for cash that
constantly cancel and every other broke expat is undercutting you for.

If I am ever going to earn it has to be remote and flexible but I just dont
have the skills or stability etc to learn them so far. I've tried "DIY learn
to code various things" sort of ideas before but something always interrupts
it and I suck at it frankly. Then I read how old and inflexible people cannot
get hired for anything and I get even more down. I have not heard a new idea
that seemed workable in so long I cannot remember.

~~~
fencepost
If you go international to someplace cheaper and with any kind of tech scene
you may be able to find at least a bit of work assisting software developers
with English for apps & sites. There may be a bunch of people able to do that,
but "local and able to meet" may have a quality all its own (along with
"willing to be paid local rates in local currency").

You say you don't have skills, but at the least you write and presumably speak
good grammatically correct English. You might also have at least a little bit
of still relevant domain knowledge from your previous career - it may not get
you in the door in that industry, but it may open doors in related ones.

------
ggm
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.

~~~
curun1r
I don't disagree with you, but I think there's a lot of people see the kind of
people in the article as the opposition to progressive social issues like
#BLM, acceptance of immigrants and the very same socialist policies that they
survive off of and need to be expanded if these people are to see their lot in
life improve. Rural communities overwhelmingly voted for Trump and they form
the core of the Fox News constituency. The government they elected is now
trying to take away their health care and give a massive tax cut to the top
1%. You'd probably see a lot more compassion among big-city liberals if these
communities had embraced Bernie Sanders' agenda which would have redistributed
a lot of wealth into their communities. But with their embrace of white
nationalist policies and rhetoric, I think you see a lot of liberals feeling
like they don't have the energy to care about all of the powerless people in
this country and, instead, are focusing what limited resources they have on
trying to help other oppressed groups (minorities, undocumented immigrants,
etc.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> You'd probably see a lot more compassion among big-city liberals if these
> communities had embraced Bernie Sanders' agenda which would have
> redistributed a lot of wealth into their communities.

Blue Blood Democrats pushed Bernie off the national stage attempting to elect
Hillary Clinton, leaving the disadvantaged to only vote for the candidate who
offered to champion their cause (Donald Trump). I don't fault most Trump
voters one bit. The superior option they had was scuttled by a power hungry
candidate _who lost to the worst candidate for presidency ever_.

> But with their embrace of white nationalist policies and rhetoric, I think
> you see a lot of liberals feeling like they don't have the energy to care
> about all of the powerless people in this country and, instead, are focusing
> what limited resources they have on trying to help other oppressed groups
> (minorities, undocumented immigrants, etc.)

Which causes conservative America to double down on conservatives in office.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

EDIT: "Undocumented immigrants" are not citizens being oppressed; they are
illegally in the country and should be deported unless covered under DACA
(having arrived in the US as minors).

~~~
curun1r
> Blue Blood Democrats pushed Bernie off the national stage attempting to
> elect Hillary Clinton

What the DNC did in last year's primary was shameful, but...

> leaving the disadvantaged to only vote for the candidate who offered to
> champion their cause (Donald Trump)

Laughs...he never championed their cause. He told them all their problems were
because of minorities and that he'd return the country to a time of bigotry
and racism where things would magically be better because they were white.
He's since taken the office of The President and used it to try to screw over
poor whites in every way imaginable and tried to placate them by making it
even worse for minorities. It's hard to blame under-educated people for
falling for Fox News propaganda, but you still can't deny their complicity in
enabling their own situation. What they did in the general election to defeat
Hilary they could have done in the Primary to support Bernie. They didn't.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Laughs...he never championed their cause.

This stance is part of the problem.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bring+jobs+back+trump+youtub...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bring+jobs+back+trump+youtube)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+coal+jobs+youtube](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+coal+jobs+youtube)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+carrier+jobs+youtube](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+carrier+jobs+youtube)

He promised the disadvantaged he'd get their jobs back from Mexico and China,
he promised to bring coal jobs back. Whether he did those things or not
doesn't matter. _That 's what he promised_.

> It's hard to blame under-educated people for falling for Fox News
> propaganda, but you still can't deny their complicity in enabling their own
> situation. What they did in the general election to defeat Hilary they could
> have done in the Primary to support Bernie. They didn't.

I don't blame undereducated people. I blame people who care more about illegal
immigrants than the disenfranchised citizens suffering in poverty in the US. I
blame urban liberals who have no comprehension of the plight the poor in the
US are suffering through. I blame upper management of the Democratic Party,
who rigged the nomination (along with super delegates) against Bernie Sanders,
and I wish nothing but terrible, terrible things on those people.

EDIT: Hillary Clinton is nowhere to be found after her crushing defeat, and
Bernie Sanders is still out there every day fighting for universal healthcare
and other pro-citizen policies (alongside Elizabeth Warren). We suffered a
terrible loss because of Clinton's vanity and pride.

~~~
laaph
> I blame people who care more about illegal immigrants than the
> disenfranchised citizens suffering in poverty in the US.

Would you like to blame me?

But, from my perspective, I heard very little Trump say that would affect
illegal immigration (his only proposal for that was to build a wall), but I
heard lots of things that sounded like heavy bigotry to me. He wanted to ban
muslims, ban refugees from the very places where the US instigates wars, and
generally said a lot of vile stuff.

I may have taken it all a little too personally. Trump literally advocated for
banning my future wife from the US. I'm too old for DACA, but when I tried to
get a passport I discovered I didn't have paperwork to get a passport. Recent
changes in laws mean our families literally can't visit each other, and we are
discussing what to do.

On the other hand, I imagine some people would like their mother-in-law banned
from the country. It would at least make a good joke for someone.

------
megaman22
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.

~~~
donavanm
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.

------
reaperducer
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."

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _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.

~~~
reaperducer
This is true. Whenever I see people on TV or the internet or wherever raising
money for clean water and basic sanitation or basic electricity in other parts
of the world, I think about the THOUSANDS of homes I've seen in West Virginia,
Tennessee, and especially Texas that lack water, toilets, and electricity.

Somehow America's dirt poor aren't as exciting or trendy as the exotic
overseas dirt poor.

~~~
rbanffy
> Somehow America's dirt poor aren't as exciting or trendy as the exotic
> overseas dirt poor.

It's not that poverty is exciting. It's that abject poverty in the richest
country on Earth is shocking and goes against assumptions people had as
correct since ever.

------
oftenwrong
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-s...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/12/6/best-
of-2016-suburban-poverty)

[https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-
poverty/](https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/15/suburban-poverty/)

[https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-
mau...](https://granolashotgun.com/2015/03/30/affordable-housing-maui-style/)

[https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-
shoppe/](https://granolashotgun.com/2017/08/04/the-precariat-shoppe/)

------
logfromblammo
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.

~~~
hpcjoe
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)

~~~
nate_meurer
> "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."

That's a strawman. Coal isn't dying because it's evil. Thermal coal is dying
because it can't compete with cheaper, more efficient natural gas generation.

~~~
thehardsphere
The Democratic Party Presidential candidate in the last election openly
boasted about plans to "put the coal companies out of business" after she
would be elected, so it's not entirely a straw man to say that there are
people who would kill coal at a rate faster than what competition would
achieve.

~~~
nate_meurer
Yes, it's a strawman. Coal's present predicament has exactly _nothing_ to do
with political disfavor. Coal remains heavily subsidized [1], under-regulated
[2], and enjoys entrenched support at all levels of government. And yet it
still can't compete with newer more efficient alternatives.

Note that the Trump administration is now pushing to give coal _massive_ new
subsidies in the form of forced extra payments to coal-fired power plants.
Also note that the money will be taken directly from us, the ratepayers; they
will be charges added to our electric bills.

1\. For example, the federal government has long arranged the bidding and
royalty system in a way that ensures the lowest possible lease rates for coal
mining, and coal companies are allowed to self-bond, so that when they go
bankrupt, the public has to pick up the bills for cleanup and remediation.

2\. See the TVA's recent coal ash disasters for a prime example of an under-
regulated industry. Other examples abound.

~~~
thehardsphere
You've missed the point I and the GP are making completely. GP is making an
argument about what is happening to displaced people, not about what is
happening to the coal industry.

The claim in the GP is _not_ that coal "is dying to political disfavor", the
claim is that political disfavor of coal exists and is not helpful _to the
people who used to mine it_, for whatever reason those people were displaced.

It really doesn't matter if coal is dying because alternatives are better or
if it's the Illuminati doing it, because that doesn't change the fact that
politicians are not doing anything to address the effects of it and in some
cases are being explicitly callous towards people who used to be employed
mining coal.

~~~
nate_meurer
Yes, I get it, you really don't like what Hillary said. Neither does she; in
her new book she calls that statement one of her biggest mistakes.

But one politician's ill-considered indulgence in the heat of a campaign does
not make your case that "politicians are not doing anything" to help coal
miners.

Quite clearly, the opposite is true. Coal miners are America's most
fashionable symbol of blue-collar righteousness, and politicians on both sides
of the aisle are tripping over each other to be seen "doing something" for
them. In both state and national politics, this has given coal miners
influence way out of proportion to their constituency, and far beyond that of
any other jobless group such as former steel-workers or loggers or out-of-work
retail store workers.

Invoking the bogeyman of coal-hating elites is nothing more than a way to keep
a political football inflated.

------
occultist_throw
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
>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
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.

------
leggomylibro
>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
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.

~~~
knz
> but I've heard it's enough to exist.

How does health insurance/care work for these people? Do you automatically
qualify for the government programs (MA?) if you are even partially disabled?

~~~
amigoingtodie
Medicaid, funded by the state.

Some food subsidies via EBT or WIC.

The more 'entrepreneurial' folks can also sell their prescriptions, subsidize
other's food purchases w/ the EBT card (in exchange for cash), and make/sell
moonshine.

------
patrickg_zill
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?

------
Diederich
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.

~~~
grzm
If the comments are [dead] but not [flagged][dead], the account is banned. If
a past commenter has been egregious enough, the mods will ban not only the
main account but also put in some checks to prevent a user from creating new
accounts to otherwise circumvent the ban--comments from such new accounts are
also marked [dead]. As others have pointed out, if the comments are
worthwhile, they can be vouched. There are differing opinions on this method
of banning, but it does allow comments to be vouched for.

~~~
sctb
> _If the comments are [dead] but not [flagged][dead], the account is banned._

That's not quite right. These comments were killed by anti-spam software. When
this happens to legitimate accounts we rely on the community to vouch for them
or email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

~~~
grzm
Cheers. Thanks for filling in the blanks!

------
marak830
(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
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.

~~~
hestipod
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
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)

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

------
thaumaturgy
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/...](http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/west-
virginia/)

~~~
549362-30499
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
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.

~~~
rbanffy
Should they just lie instead?

Sometimes reality is not appealing.

~~~
alexanderstears
_Should they just lie instead?_

What's the objective?

I think the retraining is a neoliberal dog whistle for 'these people deserve
their current lives'. If the objective is to run a campaign that's consistent
with (or an affirmation of) elite coastal values, then harping on retraining
is exactly the right thing to do.

If you want to want the most votes, you have to appeal to the most amount of
people. Making coastal elites the outgroup is smart because there aren't that
many of them and they probably support one of their own anyway.

~~~
rbanffy
If you want to know what I would do to make these lives better, it'd be
campaigning for universal basic income.

Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in
seconds. An alternative would be to heavily subsidize housing, food, gas,
healthcare, medicine and do that disguised as an attempt to bootstrap a local
self-sufficient economy. It'd actually be a lot more socialist than UBI but
politics is the art of the possible and not all state transitions are allowed.

~~~
alexanderstears
_Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide
in seconds._

If you think that's true then it is, right?

I have dissident rightist view points. I hang out with dissident rightists.
I've never once heard them say that UBI is worse than the status quo, and I
think pairing UBI with reduced low-skill immigration is something 95% of them
could get behind.

Sure, the Paul Ryans and Pelosis of the world might gnash their teeth over UBI
but it's something that nearly everyone outside the status quo supports.

~~~
rbanffy
Most of my right wing friends are the Ayn Rand kind and are deeply offended by
the idea of paying other people to live.

~~~
alexanderstears
Ask them whether they'd prefer UBI or the current system assuming both cost
the same.

~~~
rbanffy
I did. It's a principle thing. That odd notion that if you can't feed yourself
you don't deserve to be fed.

~~~
alexanderstears
They might have fooled you with that answer but that doesn't address the
question.

------
24gttghh
> 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?

~~~
javajosh
This article makes plain that she, and everyone she knows are, economically
speaking, dead-men walking. And there is a certain dignity offering someone a
smoke before they accept their doom.

The question that plagues me is: can _I_ give her a job? What could this woman
do, online or off, that would be valuable to society? Is Mechanical Turk,
marketed to the rural poor, a solution?

~~~
reaperducer
This is why West Virginia, North Dakota, Nevada, and other low-education
states are magnets for call centers coming back onshore.

They may be dumb as a brick in American terms, but they're able to function at
a higher level than the average Indian call center employee, at a comparable
salary, and they have the right accents.

~~~
amigoingtodie
Need AFFORDABLE internet connections first.

~~~
thehardsphere
The call center can afford an internet connection; it's cheaper than the
people they'd be hiring.

~~~
amigoingtodie
Really?

A T-1 around that area is almost $700/mo.

A 100Mbps symmetric connection is several thousand dollars per month.

~~~
bzbarsky
Minumum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. In West Virginia specifically it's
$8.75/hr.

That means that a full-time minimum-wage employee in West Virginia costs about
$1460/month (assuming they get paid for 50 weeks a year and take 2 weeks of
unpaid vacation; if they get paid for 40 hours every week, that's
$1517/month). That's just for their salary. Employers also have to pay half of
the FICA tax (7.65%), unemployment taxes (several percent, typically; no idea
what it's like in West Virginia), provide the actual space to work, etc.

So you can get 2 T-1 lines easily for the cost of a single minimum-wage
employee. Assuming your "several thousand dollars" is less than $10k, that
corresponds to about 5 minimum-wage employees.

And maybe, just maybe, there might be an incentive structure that involves
wages above minimum wage for people who do a good job.

~~~
amigoingtodie
So, why would anybody want a call center in WV if bandwidth and minimum wage
are more expensive than Florida, for instance?

...and all employees would pay state income tax

~~~
bzbarsky
How do the real estate prices compare?

But yes, in general the answer may be that they wouldn't put such a thing in
WV.

~~~
reaperducer
Three seconds of Googling shows you're oh so wrong.

~~~
bzbarsky
Oh so wrong about what, exactly?

------
cyberpunk0
Welcome too late stage capitalism

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
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.

------
vmarshall23
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

------
forkandwait
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
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
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.

~~~
wan23
It's not stupidity, it's a combination of factors.

1) Lack of knowledge of options. Let's say you wanted to get into the oil
business. Without Googling anything, what job would you want? What skills and
credentials would you need to acquire to get that job? How would you go about
getting those?

2) Lack of education - Imagine trying to learn how to program without knowing
what variables are. And then let's say you struggle and become capable of
doing junior web dev work. What happens when you encounter even an easy
interview question like "Write a program to find the first n prime numbers"

3) Lack of time - Most adults don't have time to focus full time on training,
even if they aren't working. Children and elderly family members can suck up a
lot of time.

~~~
noworld
1) Without googling anything, I'd need... presentable clothes, good hygiene,
and to be able to make sense when I talk and respond sensibly to questions.
Get into the oil business? Everyone's got a mail room, janitorial staff, etc.
Get a job doing that and show them that you can show up for work on time and
do a good job at the mundane stuff with a friendly attitude, no complaining,
and not causing drama. That goes a LONG way. The other items follow this one.

