Part of the problem is that a lot of the people in these rural towns sadly, for whatever reason, don’t seem to be all that bright, especially about their options.
I was listening to an NPR report about some of the issues facing these coal mining areas. Believe it or not, two industries that actually are at least somewhat growing in those areas are nursing/health care and trucking. In fact, one of the local vocational schools was giving free adult classes related to getting jobs in health care and trucking and I believe these also contained at least some of the requisite training needed for these jobs.
Cut forward to an adult at the vocational school. Did he sign up for the free classes in health care and/or trucking? Nope. He paid several hundred bucks for classes on coal mining, thinking that it’ll be coming back under Trump and because he “came from a long line of coal miners.” So despite there being literally free classes in areas experiencing job growth, he still chose to spend his own money on training needed to get a job in a dying industry.
What I don’t get about the mythology surrounding coal mining is that it’s a terrible job. You’re underground all day, it’s unsafe, and there are terrible health effects caused by coal mining.
Why on earth would anyone want a job in a coal mine when there are other options available?
I’m sure the other answer also factors in a but my money is on the fact that coal mining is like a modern version of being a Navi.
It pays really well. It may be one of the highest paying jobs that are actually manual labor and can be gotten into without a formal degree. Salaries in coal mining start around 70-80k with room for growth. It pays well because it’s dangerous as fuck and a huge health risk even if you aren’t injured on the job.
I can see coal mining vs. nursing being a case of testosterone poisoning. However, truck driving isn’t exactly known to be a “feminine” line of work, for lack of a better term. You certainly don’t picture a woman when you picture the average trucker.
That said, trucking may involve long trips away from home unless you’re lucky enough to get a job that only does local routes. Sadly, I think you’re only likely to see local routes near larger metropolitan areas. Rural areas are attractive to trucking because cheap land costs mean it’s probably cheap to build large warehouses, shipping hubs, and similar facilities there. I can see the argument against trucking for someone who wants to spend time with his/her family.
Rym, you’re the republican in this clip (which I think means you played Chandler in Friends). You’re right and it doesn’t matter. Woah those pesky rural people out there doing their thing going broke and voting.
Consider also the places where these jobs are prevalent.
Typically, these are the best-paying jobs you can actually get in these locales. It’s literally the top of the heap.
I grew up adjacent to a paper mill town. While not as extreme, it’s an almost identical problem - a single large employer can effectively control the entire local economy.
We are literally playing out the scene I just linked. My line is now. “Don’t worry about it though, there’s not that many of them, oh wait no, (the actual line doesn’t make sense here) they’re our largest population by percentage.”
I supported your last plan and I support this one. They’re not bad plans. My point is that they’re not happening. Those idiots are still there and still voting.
If we had a truly representative democracy, or even just actually had proportional representation in the House alone, their votes would be largely meaningless.
We subsidize their political power as well as their towns.
There was a pretty gnarly sifi set of books that had a faction called the Demarchists. They operated with neural implants that allowed every single one of them vote on every single thing in real time. If we had a democracy like that, they’d probably not exist at all they’d be voted out so hard. Alas we’ve designed a system that doesn’t proportionally support the people. My vote is like 2 Rym votes for national stuff.
The funny thing is they want the Senate to represent states, but the house to represent the people.
YET. They are unwilling to let the House actually represent the people because the house would reflect the will of the majority. Meaning, it would be mostly Democrats.
It’s somewhat of a more complicated issue than “let’s just get rid of all the non-farmers from rural land.”
Farmers need services too, after all. Farmers need doctors, lawyers, schools for their kids (even assuming some of the kids will move out of rural areas), shops to purchase goods (not everything can be ordered off the internet), internet service providers (so that they can order some items off the internet), mail and parcel delivery, and so on. Without at least some sort of subsidization, what do you think are the odds that non-farmers would live in rural areas to provide these necessary services?
Now, that said, if your rural area isn’t agricultural but instead used for some other purpose, there may be some more of an argument, but not everything can be done in cities. Some industries just need physical space that cities cannot provide. Sure, you may be able to move some of that to suburbs so that they are still benefiting from a nearby city’s infrastructure, but this isn’t practical for all situations.
Then there is the issue that even very large cities are often separated by large rural areas. Some people will need to live in those rural areas to provide vital transport and communications services needed to connect those cities. Otherwise, you’ll have New York City being unable to do business with Chicago and Los Angeles because you need to get through the virtual wastelands of Iowa and Wyoming to get there.
And going back to agriculture use, again, you’ll need services in the rural areas between farmland and cities in order to ship food to said cities. Otherwise New York City will starve to death.
And once you have people living in an area, you’ll need to provide all the other necessary services needed to allow them to live in that area.
That said, if a rural area is purely propped up by an obsolete industry like coal mining, then yes, something should be done to either help residents transition to a newer industry that can be sustained in that area or allow those residents to move to more sustainable areas at little to no cost to them.