The Rural Poverty Megathread -- "Too Poor to Afford Guns and Religion"

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woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Main Paineframe posted:

The thing is that cities already have internet. They also have universities, large diverse populations, strong transportation infrastructure, plenty of niche businesses with uncommon offerings, and a variety of public gathering places. Even if rural America gets internet, it still won't have those other things. Internet access and telework won't save rural areas.

I never said it would, smarty pants. Only government intervention can do that.

# ? Aug 28, 2016 16:22

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 02:56

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

woke wedding drone posted:

Great OP. All I have right now is to ask, why can't rural communities be vibrant? I think a lot of people confuse the faux-bohemianism and gentrification of cities with intellectual culture or vibrancy. But in reality, there's just more money there, and that doesn't make living in a city a smarter or more enriching experience. Fix the poverty and infrastructure issues with massive government intervention and everything else will take care of itself, including the tendency of rural voters to make self-destructive political choices.

My concern with this approach is that the demographics of rural america circa 2016 are very different from the demographics of 1936, in a way that makes it hard to implement the kind of massive government intervention we did back then.

'round the time of the Depression, the population of rural america was young, manually-skilled and physically healthy. Now the population is old, sick and ill-educated. When I walk into any establishment in my hometown, I'm usually the fittest, healthiest-looking person there, and I ain't exactly Jim Thorpe.

This was one reason I was not particularly enthusiastic for many of Sanders' proposals, in their sheer unvarnished New Dealness. In many areas there just aren't enough young, adaptable people to sustain the massive centralized jobs programs of eight decades ago. I can pull a 10-hour day repairing a road or pick up a white-collar trade under the auspices of some government initiative, but these are much more daunting tasks for the folks around town.

Ultimately I think what we'd need is intervention on the same scale as the New Deal, but without the same expectation that this would be repaid through labor.

PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Aug 28, 2016

# ? Aug 28, 2016 16:47

Jerry Manderbilt: May 31, 2012; No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.

PupsOfWar posted:

My concern with this approach is that the demographics of rural america circa 2016 are very different from the demographics of 1936, in a way that makes it hard to implement the kind of massive government intervention we did back then.

'round the time of the Depression, the population of rural america was young, manually-skilled and physically healthy. Now the population is old, sick and ill-educated. When I walk into any establishment in my hometown, I'm usually the fittest, healthiest-looking person there, and I ain't exactly Jim Thorpe.

This was one reason I was not particularly enthusiastic for many of Sanders' proposals, in their sheer unvarnished New Dealness. In many areas there just aren't enough young, adaptable people to sustain the massive centralized jobs programs of eight decades ago. I can pull a 10-hour day repairing a road or pick up a white-collar trade under the auspices of some government initiative, but these are much more daunting tasks for the folks around town.

Ultimately I think what we'd need is intervention on the same scale as the New Deal, but without the same expectation that this would be repaid through labor.

can you give us some more about politics in the white rural south in general and appalachia in particular? i remember a few posts of yours from last year:

quote:

You shouldn't expect the midsouth belt of Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia to vote democratic for national-level offices within the foreseeable future, barring a pigs-flying scenario. By "the foreseeable future" I'm thinking in terms of a generation, at least.

The post-Civil-Rights realignment took longer here than in the rest of the South for various reasons, most prominently the fact that these states have less-visible minority populations and this makes it harder to win elections with race-baiting alone.

Not to say that white Kentuckians and Arkansans and Tennesseeans aren't racist, but the black populations are smaller and more concentrated than in deep Dixie, meaning that the racist whites are less likely to lie awake at night, sweating about Rapacious Negro Hordes. For many years this allowed the democrats to skate along on good-ol-boy status-quo politics, without being seen as the Party of Minorities, as they are elsewhere.

But President Obama's election irrevocably changed this. If you don't live in one of these states, it's hard to convey how bad folks hate the President and how badly they have allowed this to sour them against the national democratic party, but suffice to say that it is drastic and implaccable.

To take these states, the Democrats must avoid being seen as the party that looks out for minority interests, which is to say that they must abandon their already-fickle interest in helping minorities. Which would be bad. As a left-leaning Democrat from Kentucky, I don't want to see the national party do well here, as this would be an indication of them changing for the worse.

At the statewide level, Democrats can remain competetive by using generic populism and not going out on a limb on social issues, as Fried Chicken describes. The Republicans might have finally broken single-party democratic rule in these states, but I don't think it is as drastic a shift.

quote:

quote:
I think you seriously overestimate the factors of race in electoral politics in these specific states and underestimate the factors of other political concerns have on them voting against democrats. Gay marriage and minority rights are of course unpopular here but the biggest perception that damages Democrats chances in these states is that they hate regulation and love business rights and hate workers rights simple as that.

I really, really don't. And you're never going to figure out much of anything about southern politics unless you allow racial hermaneutics to become your go-to means of analysis.

Why do you imagine people in the rural South - who have benefited more from and are more reliant upon government aid than anybody, while enduring more abuse at the hands of Big Business than anybody - would hate regulation and be so aggressively pro-business? It is because the federal government employs and enforces the rights of minorities.

Why do you imagine people in the rural South - who have a greater history of horrific corruption and abuse in their local politics than anybody else - would be such champions of local self-governance and sovereign local authority? It is because local strongmen have historically been dependable in repressing minorities.

The southern fixation on States Rights' and Business Rights is 100% dogwhistle talk for "we want the right to treat minorities in a backward-assed manner".

quote:
One can ignore the largest issues in the room and stay completely silent on them while pushing policies that work to get elected in said states. It's not only a good idea it is a must if we wish for Democrats to ever have a working majority in the house or senate again.

The trouble here is that Democrats in these states already do this.

They already lay low with regard to the issues they know are losers in their states (mostly matters of social liberalism and civil liberties) while hammering the issues that should be winners in their states (mostly matters of economic populism). They already emphasize preserving and improving the social safety net while pointing out that the Republicans desire to cut programs that help huge swathes of the state populace. People aren't buying it. A southern democrat running for senate can claim to be a social moderate all she wants, but people will not believe her now that the Democrats have made a black man the face of the party and finally stopped loving around w/r/t a number of hot-button social issues. This affects everyone with a "D" next to their name.

And the south is not the key to working congressional majorities. Not when the midwest/mid-atlantic are both more tractable targets. Securing the state legislatures in Pennsylvania and Ohio (where rampant gerrymandering produces vast Republican congressional majorities in these recently blue-leaning swing states) would do more good than flipping the occasional seat in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey. That's where the national democratic party needs to throw their money, not dixie or appalachia. Eradicating unnatural republican rule over blue/purple states is both easier and more useful than lobbing a bunch of money at intractable hyper-rural states where there is not even that much to gain.

quote:
It's something I see now is that Democrats have given up on said states. They've done absolute poo poo jobs at campaigning and in my opinion it is inexcusable. Like I said before they do not know how to approach post-Obama politics in the south and it shows. They simply leave the state to rot and tell the Democrats and minorities that live in the state "Lol sucks to be you you should move."

Democrats have not given up on the South. You're missing the part where the most expensive race of 2014 was in Kentucky, and where Georgia, Louisiana and North Carolina were also at the top of the big-spending list. You think that money was coming from in-state donors? Hell, they even invested a lot of time and money into trying to save Mark Pryor's doomed and useless rear end, and he lost in a blowout despite incumbency and despite a fundraising and spending advantage.

If anything, national-level donors and operators have spent too much money, time and resources trying to compete here. These are resources that could have been thrown at state races in places where they had a chance at winning.

There has just been a sea-change in the electorates in certains states, and you need to acknowledge that.

Even if the Democrats can drastically improve their campaigning ability here, nobody will see their flashy new rhetoric because the populace increasingly (over the past sixteen-to-twenty years) relies upon conservative media and information sources. You're talking about millions of voters who are inaccessible due to being newly wrapped up in the conservative bubble.

quote:
If a decision must be that you represent the less of two evils you must always make the decision to represent that lesser evil. Because. It. Is. Less. Evil.

Simply put. You are punishing Southern minorities for their own existence and waving a white flag of defeat. This is typical of Democrats though. I've seen it throughout this election cycle. It's not something I personally find conscionable or desirable.

We must find a rhetoric that wins votes in the South it is essential for the safety of our citizens. And for the continuance of this nation as a whole. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor to the union. A traitor to any gay, black, latino, or impoverished person who lived in that state. And a traitor to Democrac.

Actually, "pandering to the people that wish them harm" is not the best way to help minorities. Liberal america has tried that an awful lot of times with the South and it leads to regression (at worst) or perpetuation of a harmful status-quo (at best).

Bringing back the Dixiecrats will not help southern blacks. Constructing a strong, pro-minority-rights national majority in our government and improving its ability to enact and enforce policies that help minorities (despite state-and-local interference) will help southern blacks.

What is this magical new rhetoric that will allow lesser-of-two-evils southern democrats defeat their republican opponents, anyway? What are your suggestions?

Southern democrats already try social conservatism + fiscal populism and it is not working. Must they become fanatical anti-labor free marketeers as well as fanatical social conservatives? At that point how are their constituents better off than they are under Republicans?

quote:

Appalachian counties that have never voted Republican since their foundation have started voting Republican over the past ten years. Youth voters in white concentrated-poverty areas are increasingly not voting or voting Republican, thus reversing the demographic trends that make things so rosy for the Democrats elsewhere (particularly in areas where the elderfolk remember the labor struggles of the 70s and 80s and are still staunchly democratic, but declining in numbers, while the youth get swept up in right-wing rhetoric).

UMWA is dead, the Ohio River industrial towns are voting Republican, the few economic successes of the region are credited to right-to-work-driven industrial booms which further weaken once-powerful labor organizations, and the youth is too caught up in reactionary culture wars to turn things around.

The Nixon/Reagan realignment taken for granted in the deep south has caught up with the midsouth, and the region's political discourse has changed markedly over the past few years. There are districts all along the Cumberland that were +20D ten years ago and are +10R now.

It's silly to think that change on this magnitude can be overcome by mere savvy campaigning, being the product of titanic socio-political and economic forces that have been in motion for decades.

tl;dr: The South is Lost until such a time as demographic changes produce victory in the culture-wars, and I don't blame democrats for not targeting the region with particular vigor, electorally speaking. I support any efforts w/r/t public-policy advocacy which can direct aid toward dirt poor counties (like mine, for instance), but would not expect any such efforts to be reciprocated in the polls.

Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Aug 28, 2016

# ? Aug 28, 2016 17:12

PupsOfWar: Dec 6, 2013

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

can you give us some more about politics in the white rural south in general and appalachia in particular? i remember a few posts of yours from last year:

Well, I don't particularly want to relive anything I said last year

At that point, "Matt Bevin probably can't win the governorship" was a thing I believed, so clearly I was pretty wrong about the immediate political realities in my own state, much less the broader region

But since this thread intersects with my interests and I've had academic contact with a lot of regional topics, I'll try doing up an effortpost tonight.

# ? Aug 28, 2016 17:54

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Dzhay posted:

How small can something be in the US and still get called a "town"? Because I don't hear the term "village" used much over there.

unlike in europe, there are no national standards for planning in the us, which also means there's no standard nomenclature for terms. the tenth amendment precludes national control over local matters so every state has its own definitions of terms and way of controlling the usual county-city hierarchy. town is often used to describe a CDP, or census designated place, of any size, potentially as small as 1 person. most commonly states either ignore the designation of village or permit any locality to call itself a town, a city, or a village with no real meaning behind any particular term. iirc in new york villages are particular clusters of towns, which themselves are distinct from cities

# ? Aug 28, 2016 18:08

Jack B Nimble: Dec 25, 2007; Soiled Meat

Yeah, just from how people talk in the US there's cities, and then there's towns, and aside from one being bigger than the other they're relative and have lots of overlap. I only think of villages being in Europe. I've never heard of anyone not obviously using the word for effect talk about an American hamlet.

# ? Aug 28, 2016 21:20

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

woke wedding drone posted:

I never said it would, smarty pants. Only government intervention can do that.

Ok but how do you put a university in Bumfuck, Iowa (population 50 people 2000 cattle) without having it be either ludicrously overkill for the town or ludicrously substandard as a university?

# ? Aug 29, 2016 00:28

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

blowfish posted:

Ok but how do you put a university in Bumfuck, Iowa (population 50 people 2000 cattle) without having it be either ludicrously overkill for the town or ludicrously substandard as a university?

Why do we need to put a university there?

# ? Aug 29, 2016 00:38

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

woke wedding drone posted:

Why do we need to put a university there?

woke wedding drone posted:

Main Paineframe posted:
The thing is that cities already have internet. They also have universities, large diverse populations, strong transportation infrastructure, plenty of niche businesses with uncommon offerings, and a variety of public gathering places. Even if rural America gets internet, it still won't have those other things. Internet access and telework won't save rural areas.
I never said it would, smarty pants. Only government intervention can do that.

Note that the same thing is true for niche businesses, public gathering places and various other infrastructure.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 00:40

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

I was saying only government intervention can save rural areas, I didn't say give every town a university. Even a rural school could have taught you to read that well.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 00:43

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

woke wedding drone posted:

I was saying only government intervention can save rural areas, I didn't say give every town a university. Even a rural school could have taught you to read that well.

I was saying government intervention cannot save rural areas (at best it can slow the decline slightly) unless you have city-grade infrastructure and community life. Even a rural school could have taught you to read that well.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 00:44

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

blowfish posted:

I was saying government intervention cannot save rural areas (at best it can slow the decline slightly) unless you have city-grade infrastructure and community life. Even a rural school could have taught you to read that well.

Yes, you are rubber and I am glue. Cosmopolitan living has clearly showered your intellect with benefit

# ? Aug 29, 2016 00:47

Soviet Commubot: Oct 22, 2008

Jack B Nimble posted:

Yeah, just from how people talk in the US there's cities, and then there's towns, and aside from one being bigger than the other they're relative and have lots of overlap. I only think of villages being in Europe. I've never heard of anyone not obviously using the word for effect talk about an American hamlet.

My "hometown" of 400 people (I grew up on a farm well outside it's limits, but it's the closest polity) had "village of X" on the signs entering town, so I presume it's a legal distinction in some states.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 01:09

Grondoth: Feb 18, 2011

woke wedding drone posted:

Great OP. All I have right now is to ask, why can't rural communities be vibrant? I think a lot of people confuse the faux-bohemianism and gentrification of cities with intellectual culture or vibrancy. But in reality, there's just more money there, and that doesn't make living in a city a smarter or more enriching experience. Fix the poverty and infrastructure issues with massive government intervention and everything else will take care of itself, including the tendency of rural voters to make self-destructive political choices.

People gotta get out and meet each other to create a sense of place and others. The person who said the cupcake shop was next to a cobbler was next to a thai place was next to a bar was on the right track, most rural areas and small towns had their main street get demolished by some wal-mart within 20 miles and whatever made that town grow going away. If there's no reason for people to meet each other, they won't. Not cause they're assholes, but cause they just won't run into each other.

Grondoth fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Aug 29, 2016

# ? Aug 29, 2016 01:20

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

It's really something, I never expected so many people to come out and admit that they think living in a city is objectively superior, even with economic issues not taken into consideration. I guess the gulf in understanding can't be spanned, urbanites will continue to heap contempt on people who don't live like they do, and the people held in contempt will continue to react to it.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Aug 29, 2016 01:31

Doccers: Aug 15, 2000; Patron Saint of Chickencheese

woke wedding drone posted:

It's really something, I never expected so many people to come out and admit that they think living in a city is objectively superior, even with economic issues not taken into consideration. I guess the gulf in understanding can't be spanned, urbanites will continue to heap contempt on people who don't live like they do, and the people held in contempt will continue to react to it.

"But the cities have the really good bars".

# ? Aug 29, 2016 02:22

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Animal-Mother posted:

The poor and uneducated it's still socially acceptable to openly hate. My best friend grew up in one of these towns. She escaped to college and clawed her way up into grad school. Now she listens to her suburban and urban classmates and professors talk poo poo about these "toothless racist white trash" all day. And she can't really disagree. She had a horrible time growing up in that environment and is glad to have gotten out of there alive.

poo poo, I'm a dude who grew up in a town of 300 people and 5 last names, and can confirm that to be true in my experience. I suspect your friend and I could swap stories that would sound really familiar.

woke wedding drone posted:

It's really something, I never expected so many people to come out and admit that they think living in a city is objectively superior, even with economic issues not taken into consideration. I guess the gulf in understanding can't be spanned, urbanites will continue to heap contempt on people who don't live like they do, and the people held in contempt will continue to react to it.

And environmentally superior as well. Let's not forget that in the face of global warming. I grew up in a place about as rural as it can get, outside of Wyoming or the like, and I am perfectly fine supporting those notions having been on both sides of this gulf you speak of. If somebody wants to live in a deeply rural place, then more power to them and all that, but there is a social, environmental, and economic cost that I'm not sure we should subsidize with any other intent than as a way to perform humane downsizing of the whole enterprise.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 02:46

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

It's environmentally destructive for Native Americans to live modern lifestyles on Indian reservations. I'm sure they'll take kindly to relocating to urban areas and being just as invisible as they are now.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 04:02

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Star Man posted:

It's environmentally destructive for Native Americans to live modern lifestyles on Indian reservations. I'm sure they'll take kindly to relocating to urban areas and being just as invisible as they are now.

This sounds like a job for Bizarro Andrew Jackson!

And if he can't do he job I'm sure Bizarro Pol Pot will step up

# ? Aug 29, 2016 04:04

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; Out here, everything hurts.

woke wedding drone posted:

Why do we need to put a university there?

Iowa's already pretty heavy on universities. U of Iowa, Iowa State, U of Northern Iowa as the majors, then dozens of private schools.

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

# ? Aug 29, 2016 04:16

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

there's really nothing to be done with rural areas. they're economically cut off and irrelevant, the best you can do is salve the pain with limited government interference. but people who choose to live in rural areas tend to want to have little to do with government. at least they'll wither relatively quietly, better to focus our attention elsewhere

# ? Aug 29, 2016 04:26

computer parts: Nov 18, 2010; PLEASE CLAP

blowfish posted:

Ok but how do you put a university in Bumfuck, Iowa (population 50 people 2000 cattle) without having it be either ludicrously overkill for the town or ludicrously substandard as a university?

Have you ever heard of college towns? That's actually fairly common.

The town usually grows to accommodate the university.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 05:11

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

computer parts posted:

Have you ever heard of college towns? That's actually fairly common.

The town usually grows to accommodate the university.

And those towns rely on those universities to the point that when school's out for summer, the whole place dies for four months.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 05:15

Grondoth: Feb 18, 2011

Wow lots of you guys don't give a poo poo about rural poverty, huh. A real eye-opener on this forum.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 05:34

Yoshifan823: Feb 19, 2007; by FactsAreUseless

Grondoth posted:

Wow lots of you guys don't give a poo poo about rural poverty, huh. A real eye-opener on this forum.

Yes, the United States will be objectively better when there is one city per state, and in between them vast miles of nothingness, dotted with wind farms, regular farms, and other boring, useless, objectively harmful things.

Like, I could never imagine living in a small town (my grandparents are farmers who live in a small town in Western Iowa), but with the level of transportation and communications that are available to us, the answer is not "we need to relocate everyone", it's "we need to increase access to more places, both virtually and physically". If we had trains crisscrossing states like they do in Europe, people living in small towns wouldn't be so far away from important things, and it would allow people to live in more varied locations.

And I am aware that there's a huge difference in size between the US and Europe, but we can still have a shitload of trains. Trains are cool and we need more of them.

edit: also good luck getting elected on the platform of "cities are objectively better and we need to destroy small towns as soon as feasible"

# ? Aug 29, 2016 05:44

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Yoshifan823 posted:

Like, I could never imagine living in a small town (my grandparents are farmers who live in a small town in Western Iowa), but with the level of transportation and communications that are available to us, the answer is not "we need to relocate everyone", it's "we need to increase access to more places, both virtually and physically". If we had trains crisscrossing states like they do in Europe, people living in small towns wouldn't be so far away from important things, and it would allow people to live in more varied locations.

there has never been better access, virtually or physically, to small towns. they're still dying, because there's less reason for small towns to exist every day. increasing their access short of teleportation isn't going to fix anything because there's still going to be the same set of reasons to live in a small town: tradition, family, desire for solitude, or a lifestyle that requires immeidate access to the outdoors or large tracts of land

where small towns were broadly economically viable earlier in the 20th century, there are very few that are economically viable today, which leads to economic stagnation which is a death sentence in our capitalist economy

# ? Aug 29, 2016 05:55

Zachack: Jun 1, 2000

Yoshifan823 posted:

Yes, the United States will be objectively better when there is one city per state, and in between them vast miles of nothingness, dotted with wind farms, regular farms, and other boring, useless, objectively harmful things.

Like, I could never imagine living in a small town (my grandparents are farmers who live in a small town in Western Iowa), but with the level of transportation and communications that are available to us, the answer is not "we need to relocate everyone", it's "we need to increase access to more places, both virtually and physically". If we had trains crisscrossing states like they do in Europe, people living in small towns wouldn't be so far away from important things, and it would allow people to live in more varied locations.

And I am aware that there's a huge difference in size between the US and Europe, but we can still have a shitload of trains. Trains are cool and we need more of them.

edit: also good luck getting elected on the platform of "cities are objectively better and we need to destroy small towns as soon as feasible"

How would trains get someone in rural areas closer to important things when they presumably already have roads? Commuting may be a bit more tolerable but that requires the origin and destination being fairly close to the train stations. You might get moderate life improvements around the stations themselves but that requires a lot more people moving there and in the process you'll create "winner" towns where the stations are and that probably means all the "loser" towns will accelerate their decay.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:07

computer parts: Nov 18, 2010; PLEASE CLAP

Yoshifan823 posted:

Yes, the United States will be objectively better when there is one city per state, and in between them vast miles of nothingness, dotted with wind farms, regular farms, and other boring, useless, objectively harmful things.

Interested to learn where California's city would be.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:14

Axetrain: Sep 14, 2007

computer parts posted:

Interested to learn where California's city would be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-City_Two

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:21

ComradeCosmobot: Dec 4, 2004; USPOL July

computer parts posted:

Interested to learn where California's city would be.

Trick question: California separates into two states.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:23

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Zachack posted:

How would trains get someone in rural areas closer to important things when they presumably already have roads? Commuting may be a bit more tolerable but that requires the origin and destination being fairly close to the train stations. You might get moderate life improvements around the stations themselves but that requires a lot more people moving there and in the process you'll create "winner" towns where the stations are and that probably means all the "loser" towns will accelerate their decay.

ironically, a lot of prosperous small rural towns - county seats and such - had their original reason to be as a railway stop. towns would compete viciously for a railroad to be built through their town, because this meant regular trade and access to goods

i live in decatur, georgia which is a suburb of atlanta. decatur is the county seat and a pretty solid place in its own right, and is about five miles east of atlanta - well within the atlanta metroplex nowadays, to the point that decatur is pretty much just a neighborhood of the atlanta metro core. decatur actually predates atlanta by about fifteen years, and was originally a railroad stop along the east-west railroad that runs through the area. when the north-south railroad was being built, the original plan was to run it through decatur - a plan the town rejected, as at that time railroad towns were also prosperous for the wrong reasons, being hotbeds of vice for the men who worked the rails. think gambling, drinking, prostitution, etc. decatur was a nice church town, so they rejected the bid for the north south road which was instead a few miles west, where at the lines' crossing a little community called terminus (being the new origin of the rail network) sprang up. anyway two hundred years later that's why atlanta is a world famous city and decatur is not, excepting some rappers touting their hometown (like outkast). atlanta's central position made it a natural location to build factories for the confederacy (and a natural military target), as atlanta continued to grow it became a government hub and a regional transportation hub - one of the largest buildings in the us at this time was the sears warehouse in atlanta, an intensely massive brick structure which was only recently renovated into a new hipster hive. the interstates came through atlanta because it was there and big, atlanta's airport expanded massively, and now atlanta dominates the south in terms of media, finance, corporate hqs, transportation, etc. etc. so on - all of these things built on each other because there was growth and activity here

all of this has to do with basically the economic gravity, or economic watershed, of any given locality. every single city has a reason to exist. cities like new york have multiple layered reasons - at first for an advantageous geographic position, then the efforts of local boosters and governmental preference, and eventually the sheer mass of people living there creates its own gravity and its own homegrown industries. today, new york city is many things - a finance hub, a culture hub, a transportation hub (less so nowadays), and to a large extent exists simply to meet the daily needs of millions of new yorkers

but yeah basically building trains won't do much. trains to where - urban centers? cars fill that role just fine. trains for freight? modern trains travel for hundreds of miles without stopping, they don't bring much economic growth unless there's a trainyard in town. trains don't create reasons to be anymore, and for many small towns each individual who dies or moves away is just another missing person that the local cafe, the local gas station, the local post office, the local barber shop can't count on to keep them afloat

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Aug 29, 2016

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:24

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

i could make a giant stupid effortpost about this topic but really that's the core of it, why rural areas in particular are experiencing poverty - because the very definition of rural in the 21st century economy means to be an economic backwater, which is a fairly recent development

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:31

Eifert Posting: Apr 1, 2007; Most of the time he catches it every time.; Grimey Drawer

A friend of mine chose one of the half dozen or so schools he got a full ride to because it was the only one he could afford the gas to get to. There was some sort of settlement allowance or something but his mom swiped it to put new tires on the family car. There's a bunch of stories he told that really pound home the nature of living with nothing in the country, but that's the one that stuck with me.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:31

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

woke wedding drone posted:

Why "limited government"? Have we finally found a population you're willing to treat like Bill Clinton treated black people on welfare?

if you can find a small town which is all about distant government control of the local economy then i dunno call me or something because i've never seen anything like that

typically though people don't continue to live in small towns because they actually like the idea of a distant bureaucrat making decisions about their future

pragmatically also there's not a lot you can do to boost up a small town via government interference, because of the way in which local/state/federal government is structured in the united states - read the tenth amendment for more details

like really all you can do is continue to fund disability and food stamps until people get the hint and move away or die

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Aug 29, 2016

# ? Aug 29, 2016 06:37

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

computer parts posted:

Have you ever heard of college towns? That's actually fairly common.

The town usually grows to accommodate the university.

Yeah, but you can't turn every small town (or even a large proportion of small towns) into College towns because then you again move into units of College professors per inhabitant rather than inhabitants per College professor.

Yoshifan823 posted:

edit: also good luck getting elected on the platform of "cities are objectively better and we need to destroy small towns as soon as feasible"

The platform doesn't need to be "small town America delenda est", it merely needs to be *shuffles nervously when asked about rural America in interview* "uh I'm generally in favour of putting new government subsidies where they can do the most good (which only includes few small towns)".

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Aug 29, 2016

# ? Aug 29, 2016 08:26

Random Asshole: Nov 8, 2010

woke wedding drone posted:

Why "limited government"? Have we finally found a population you're willing to treat like Bill Clinton treated black people on welfare?

Because the typical populations of small towns emphatically do not want the kind of assistance the government can realistically provide. They'll accept welfare and food stamps as an alternative to homelessness and starvation, but what they want is jobs, which outside of a New Deal Mk2 the government cannot provide as long as the Republican Party continues to exist.

Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Aug 29, 2016

# ? Aug 29, 2016 10:09

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

woke wedding drone posted:

It's really something, I never expected so many people to come out and admit that they think living in a city is objectively superior, even with economic issues not taken into consideration. I guess the gulf in understanding can't be spanned, urbanites will continue to heap contempt on people who don't live like they do, and the people held in contempt will continue to react to it.

It's not really a gulf in understanding. It is that there are some rural communities out there that lost the economic driver that kept them viable, and there is nothing to replace it. They're sinking ships, and they're taking on more water all the time. I have great compassion for them, not contempt. But they're beyond patching up so that they can be kept afloat. I think we should send out lifeboats and rescue teams to save those we can, but there is nothing to be done about the few who refuse and want to go down with the ship.

And there are still rural areas that are doing fine. They're not all dying. But it is foolish to think that none of them are, and that the country as a whole should spend considerable resources trying to patch up holes on ships that are going to go down regardless.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 11:55

RC and Moon Pie: May 5, 2011

blowfish posted:

Yeah, but you can't turn every small town (or even a large proportion of small towns) into College towns because then you again move into units of College professors per inhabitant rather than inhabitants per College professor.

My hometown of 4,700 (county of 19,000) is within an hour of three colleges - two junior, one senior - a technical college, an offshoot of a junior college and the offshoot of another technical college.

Colleges only mean so much. What are the kids coming home to do with their degrees?

# ? Aug 29, 2016 13:49

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 02:56

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

RC and Moon Pie posted:

My hometown of 4,700 (county of 19,000) is within an hour of three colleges - two junior, one senior - a technical college, an offshoot of a junior college and the offshoot of another technical college.

Colleges only mean so much. What are the kids coming home to do with their degrees?

Yes, obviously, but I posted in response to the suggestion of making more college towns.

# ? Aug 29, 2016 14:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Rural Poverty Megathread -- "Too Poor to Afford Guns and Religion"

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