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Vast Stretches Of Impoverished Appalachia Look Like They Have Been Through A War
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
If you want to get an idea of where the rest of America is heading, just take a trip through the western half of West Virginia and the eastern half of Kentucky some time. Once you leave the main highways, you will rapidly encounter poverty on a level that is absolutely staggering. Overall, about 15 percent of the entire nation is under the poverty line, but in some areas of eastern Kentucky, more than 40 percent of the population is living in poverty. Most of the people would work if they could. Over the past couple of decades, locals have witnessed businesses and industries leave the region at a steady pace. When another factory or business shuts down, many of the unemployed do not even realize that their jobs have been shipped overseas. Coal mining still produces jobs that pay a decent wage, but Barack Obama is doing his very best to kill off that entire industry. After decades of decline, vast stretches of impoverished Appalachia look like they have been through a war. Those living in the area know that things are not good, but they just try to do the best that they can with what they have.
In previous articles about areas of the country that are economically depressed, I have typically focused on large cities such as Detroit or Camden, New Jersey. But the economic suffering that is taking place in rural communities in the heartland of America is just as tragic. We just don't hear about it as much.
Most of those that live in the heart of Appalachia are really good "salt of the earth" people that just want to work hard and do what is right for their families. But after decades of increasing poverty, the entire region has been transformed into an economic nightmare that never seems to end. The following is a description of what life is like in Appalachia today that comes from a recent article by Kevin D. Williamson...
Thinking about the future here and its bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meetings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occasional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking of teenaged mothers, and death: Life expectancies are short — the typical man here dies well over a decade earlier than does a man in Fairfax County, Va. — and they are getting shorter, women’s life expectancy having declined by nearly 1.1 percent from 1987 to 2007.
In these kinds of conditions, people do whatever they have to do just to survive. With so much poverty around, serving those on food stamps has become an important part of the local economy. In fact, cases of soda purchased with food stamps have become a form of "alternative currency" in the region. In his article, Williamson described how this works...
It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.
I would encourage everyone to read the rest of Williamson's excellent article. You can find the entire article right here.
In Appalachia, the abuse of alcohol, meth and other legal and illegal drugs is significantly higher than in the U.S. population as a whole. In a desperate attempt to deal with the pain of their lives, many people living in the region are looking for anything that will allow them to "escape" for a little while. The following is an excerpt from an excellent article by Chris Hedges which describes what life is like in the little town of Gary, West Virginia at this point...
Joe and I are sitting in the Tug River Health Clinic in Gary with a registered nurse who does not want her name used. The clinic handles federal and state black lung applications. It runs a program for those addicted to prescription pills. It also handles what in the local vernacular is known as “the crazy check” -- payments obtained for mental illness from Medicaid or SSI -- a vital source of income for those whose five years of welfare payments have run out. Doctors willing to diagnose a patient as mentally ill are important to economic survival.
“They come in and want to be diagnosed as soon as they can for the crazy check,” the nurse says. “They will insist to us they are crazy. They will tell us, ‘I know I’m not right.’ People here are very resigned. They will avoid working by being diagnosed as crazy.”
The reliance on government checks, and a vast array of painkillers and opiates, has turned towns like Gary into modern opium dens. The painkillers OxyContin, fentanyl -- 80 times stronger than morphine -- Lortab, as well as a wide variety of anti-anxiety medications such as Xanax, are widely abused. Many top off their daily cocktail of painkillers at night with sleeping pills and muscle relaxants. And for fun, addicts, especially the young, hold “pharm parties,” in which they combine their pills in a bowl, scoop out handfuls of medication, swallow them, and wait to feel the result.
Of course this kind of thing is not just happening in the heart of Appalachia. All over the country there are rural communities that are economically depressed. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, economic activity in about half of the counties in the entire nation is still below pre-recession levels...
About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.
So what are our "leaders" doing to fix this?
Well, they plan to ship millions more of our good jobs overseas.
Unfortunately, I am not kidding.
Republicans in the House of Representatives are introducing "fast track" trade promotion authority legislation that will pave the way for rapid approval of the secret trade treaty that Barack Obama has been negotiating. The following is how I described this insidious treaty in a previous article...
Did you know that the Obama administration is negotiating a super secret "trade agreement" that is so sensitive that he isn't even allowing members of Congress to see it? The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called the "NAFTA of the Pacific" and "NAFTA on steroids", but the truth is that it is so much more than just a trade agreement. This treaty has 29 chapters, but only 5 of them have to do with trade. Most Americans don't realize this, but this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, health care, the trading of derivatives, copyright issues, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more. It will also merge the United States far more deeply into the emerging one world economic system.
Once again, our politicians are betraying the American people and millions of jobs will be lost as a result.
Not that the economy needs another reason to go downhill. The truth is that our economic foundations have already been rotting away for quite some time.
But now the ongoing economic collapse seems to be picking up steam again. For example, the Baltic Dry Index (a very important indicator of global economic activity) is collapsing at a rate not seen since the great financial crash of 2008...
Despite 'blaming' the drop in the cost of dry bulk shipping on Colombian coal restrictions, it seems increasingly clear that the 40% collapse in the Baltic Dry Index since the start of the year is more than just that. While this is the worst start to a year in over 30 years, the scale of this meltdown is only matched by the total devastation that occurred in Q3 2008. Of course, the mainstream media will continue to ignore this dour index until it decides to rise once again, but for now, 9 days in a row of plunging prices is yet another canary in the global trade coalmine and suggests what inventory stacking that occurred in Q3/4 2013 is anything but sustained.
Soon economic conditions will get even worse for Appalachia and for the rest of the country. The consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are rapidly catching up with us, and millions upon millions of Americans are going to experience immense economic pain during the years to come.
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If you went back in time you'd probably see it as being pretty much the same (sans modern stuff).
While Wall Street is certainly greedy -and I don't believe that greed is outlawed- it's not out to turn everything into rubble. I believe that it's just a sign of the grow-or-die system starting to pop apart at the seams.
The American way of life was NEVER sustainable. Dick Cheney, when he stated that "the American way of life isn't negotiable," wasn't understanding that mother nature bats last...
ALL slogans are just that, slogans.
It IS in a war zone-the War on Poverty.
Poverty won-a long time ago.
The bluest skies, you've ever seen are in Kentucky
and the Bitchez don't have teeth, in Kentucky
in Kentucky, in Kentucky, in Kentucky !!!
/true story, dat...
Of all of modernity I can say that I'll miss modern denistry the most...
Since 2005, the Pentagon has processed military orders for the Iraqi government worth nearly $10.5 billion. Iraq has initiated other orders that, if approved, could raise that sum to nearly $25 billion, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service.
Bullish for .gov
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqs-maliki-says-he-has...
$25 billion? That's like, what, 10 days worth of Fed activities?
Gotta keep demand for the defense industry strong, even if we have to force others to take USD from us (aka "foreign aid") so they can turn around and give them back to the MIC! (who the fuck thought up This plan?)
As a native of the area, it isn't "Crazy Check", it is "Crazy Lazy Check."
People have been pointing this stuff out for many decades.
10% of Americans control 99% of the wealth. The rest are plantation workers. Recipe for revolutionary desaster if you're in the 10%.
Chance to rebirth, restart and a fair shot at life when you're in the 90% who presently doesn't have anything worth keeping or mentioning.
So go work for a Socialist company if you don't like the Evil Capitalists.
There must be millions of socialist companies that want to pay you what you think your worth, right?
why are you suggesting he's a socialist?
pointing out the increasing income inequality is merely stating the facts.
and no, that does not mean one supports any sort of socialist wealth distribution scheme, nor does it imply that everyone ought to make the same amount. what it does suggest, however, is a current threat to social stability, turmoil, and revolution, that should be recognized.
one should look at the root causes of the increasing income inequalities, and the vanishing middle class carefully. things such as the fed's money printing (QE), ZIRP which destroys the wealth of savers and those on fixed income, big bank bailouts, tbtf / too big to jail, crony capitalism where the politicians are in the pocket of the big corporations, and other such schemes funnel the money of ordinary working people into the pockets of the elite .00001% who own the politicians.
the solution to this is not socialism at all, it is the free market. end the fed, and end the government, or at least minimize it as much as possible.
a healthy and normal society free from central planning interference is one with a strong middle class; it doesn't need to be acheived by wealth redistribution, it can be achieved by removing the sickness (fed).
Funny a lot of survivalists here on ZH, talk about going to the BUSH.
Let's talk real MA&PA are meth users, picture that scene in BREAKING-BAD, when the kid goes to the house to get his money back from the METH couple, and he finds a 'child' the child is stupid, but the kid has pity. Now that CHILD, will always have a sub 90's IQ, and nothing can fix, not even OBAMACARE.
1/2 the rural communitys in the USA, are on 2 to 3 generation of METH, its in the blood and the IQ has dropped well below 90,
***
Long ago almost all these communitys had good jobs, loving family, and church. Then the CAPITALIST assholes 'clear-cut' and the sustainable forests were gone, people can live under any condition, with no education, and no possibility of escape generation after generation remain, but make no fucking mistake.
GOD DAMN FUCKING GREED DESTROYED RURAL AMERICA.
Once upon a time TEDDY ROOSEVELT passed a law making all mining and logging sustainable, but the WALL-STREET assholes killed the protection, and post WWII 1950's all was clear-cut and strip mined,
Today you have what you CAPITALISM at its best.
Get over it bitches defending USA capitalism is just as fucking stupid as defending BITCOIN.
This ain't capitalism.
Read what I wrote carefully, in every instance I write "USA CAPITALISM"
Tocqueville in 1860 said "NEVER confuse 'REAL democracy' with 'USA DEMOCRACY'"
I say never confuse Capitalism, with "USA Capitalism"
***
What is the USA? Since 1700's?
The USA is a HAMILTONIAN FEDERALIST KLEPTOCRACY, aka a gubmint ran by common criminals top to bottom, left to right.
It's predatory capitalism. There is piece on CNBC about all the Chinese millionaires running away from China, some 64% of the wealthiest Chinese have already left with their money to mostly US--the last refuge of the globalist swindlers where they're protected and sheltered by US taxpayers. But they're all so stupid because their jobs depend on being stupid to realize that once you rip-off 90% of global wealth, the whole economic system will JUST SIMPLY COLLAPSE and there won't be anyone left to sustain them.
You ignorant clod...you haven't a clue to what you speak. Clear cut and sustainable forests are gone? North America's percentage of forest coverage has increased since the 1970's, Not decreased. Go look at the UN data reported by its membership. In fact, about the only continent not increasing its forest coverage is in S. America. Mining is being eliminated by gov't policies...destroying thousands upon thousands of jobs just in Appalachia alone. STFU you posting Moll.
"USA CAPITALISM" the finest criminal government in all world history.
"USA Capitalism", ... Nazism/Fascism
"USA Capitalism", United Slavery Amalgamated Capitalism
"restart" merely means reappointing resources, it STILL doesn't address the FUNDAMENTAL issue that we're globally going into the shitter because the planet's capital is running out! (the planet's resources are insufficient to keep pace with our perpetual growth meme)
But where does that meme come from?
It comes from the need to pay un payable debts. The meme comes from the monetary system. If you had a monetary system which was sane then the need for perpetual growth goes away.
=> More important than anything else is monetary reform, because without that nothing else matters.
So how do you go about monetary reform? Big bang, all at once? Because you need to think about how long the existing system has overall been in place. I know that fractional reserve banking has been around for at least 300 years and it almost certainly goes back many more centuries, possibly thousands of years to the earliest forms of currency and banking. Big bang reform seems... unlikely.
So how about looking at incremental and alternative systems instead.
that white poor people, no? then who fucking cares?
http://www.fbi.gov/detroit/press-releases/2013/hustle-boys-gang-member-s...
read a couple paragraphs and tell me WTF chance do folks in w v and Ky have
E... Creek,
I read your FBI article posted here.
Isn't it sad that we the population applaud these arrests and convictions, and yet, along our southern border, drugs flow in, firearms flow out, mexicans are abused, Americans can't even use our own land near the border... Fear, murder, intimidation, corruption... The will to stop it is all but gone if not seriously waning, the understanding that these things are happening is less well known in our country than what the average American knows about movie stars and rock stars.
There is a creeping uneasiness that some law enforcement agency is going to come busting in on your home because of wrong intel, your kids are being force fed socialistic, communistic, fascist philosophies (take your pick or maybe a mixture of the three), I could go on and on but I would just depress myself...
Here at the Fight Club, we read, we vent, we dialogue, we provide feedback, but we don't give up.
Here's to those like minded folks who realize that we have little control over the things that others may send our way, but we have great control over how we are going to respond. We respond with grit and determination and a philosophy that says, you may knock me down, but unless you kill me, I will get back up and I will be back...
Mexican reformer & revolutionary (1877 - 1919)
If he is not the original author, I don't care. It is the statement that matters.
"read a couple paragraphs and tell me WTF chance do folks in w v and Ky have "
Not being insensitive, but there's like 2/3 of the world's population -that's 4.6+ BILLION- live on $3/day or less; and try these numbers out: 750 million people in India live on $0.50/day!
I haven't been to India, but I HAVE been to the Philippines (no, not as some sleazy white guy looking for cheap thrills) and I have gotten a glimpse of what life is like for those 4.6+ billion folks. (I've also been out in the rural countryside of eastern Tennesee.)
I'd have to conjecture that the pressures to live beyond one's means (which is pretty much what the American Dream marketing scheme was all about) is what creates these ugly scenarios.
So, is the "chance" about becoming a banker or a lawyer? How about working for the "defense" industry?
The measure if all wrong, in which case the "problem" (which isn't properly recognized) cannot be "solved."
do you have a source for those statistics?
just curious how current those numbers are.
Collapse is being brought forward because 'the world' needs peoples backup for something 'new'. Obamacare, QE, with a little cream on top aka 10 billion taper to make it not too obvious. It seems they don't care, because they know something is up.
Ah, well, fuck it, forget it. It's just a game for sociopaths.
Obamacare is the thing that takes down the global economy?
"Ah, well, fuck it, forget it. It's just a game for sociopaths."
Sociopathic thinking would be along the lines of conning everyone into believing that we can have perpetual growth on a finite planet. If you can believe in this then believing in Obamacare is quite doable.
http://www.fbi.gov/detroit/press-releases/2013/hustle-boys-gang-member-s...
hustle boys in the hills really bad cause the drugs sell for more in ashland ohio and Ky etc than detroit,
It's just like that here in WNC, don't come.
Asheville and West is beautiful. If you can make a living in that hardscrabble country...then why not choose there to live? Beats the swamps in the south-central and easter parts of the state.
"If you can make a living in that hardscrabble country...then why not choose there to live?"
There you go!
It's all going to become a hardscrabble life, therefore find the place that is most comfortable to live it.
Reminds me of some advice I once read about choosing rural property for farming. One point was that you wanted to choose an area that had some nice scenic parks or destinations nearby because you weren't likely going to be able to take vacations. I can't say when the last time I took a vacation; I do, however, say that every day is a vacation because I live amongst beauty (even while slipping in mud and animal shit). Go where it makes you feel the most in-tune with your "life forces."
"Beats the swamps in the south-central and easter parts of the state."
Not necessarily true for all.
Look at the CIA, Blackwater (Xe, Academi). Dis-allow all soda under foodstamps (or whatever it's called). Look at the major banks. Look at the pharmeceuticals.
Dis-assemble the black market linkages. Stop The Trans Pacific Partnership. Stop Agenda 21. Stop further efforts of "privatizations" of government functions. Stop internationalization. Reestablish national, and state sovereignty. Jubilee (in the oldest sense). Initiate protectionism and favoritism in American trade and manufacture. Ban payday loans. Hunt down human snakes and containerize them.
Nationally legalize pot and most drugs.
How about this one: Stop asking govt to do ANYTHING. Do this and we'll get to a state of equilibrium faster, and likely with a better understanding of how to stay there.
kurt, I agree, but we need food stamps for truly starving people. EBT cards should be restricted to raw foods, unprocessed except for bread and lunchmeats. No fast food, frozen meals, boxed dinners, soda pop, etc. Also the cards should be visible to other shoppers, like maybe a separate swipe box or something. Making most drugs legal would save a lot of money that we spend keeping people in prison. We're not saving the children. How many children have you met that have no way to buy drugs?
A good book to read on poverty in Appalachia is Harry Caudill’s , Night comes to the Cumberlands (1962)
Also good follow up piece called 50 years of Night by the Lexington Herald Tribune (www.kentucky.com/eastern kentucky
If you want a taste of what they're going through watch the movie, "White Lightnin'". It is the story of Jesco White, an Appalachian rockabilly dancer. This movie was extremely uncomfortable to watch. It is a brutal movie with extreme violence and crazy dream sequences.
You don't even have to go that far South. I grew up in the far southern regions of IL and can take you 50 places right now to see the same conditions and the same people. I opened the hometown newspaper this week and saw a page full of Winter's Bone extras who had been arrested on meth charges.
Same here, when I was a kid in the 50's you could go any direction out of LA, up into the mtn's and find OKIE's living like dogs, and guess what its still the same,
Up in NW washington around BELLINGHAM there are old logging and mining community's where guys/gals live in shacks and never come out, except for METH supplys been this way forever up in the dark woods.
The original RAMBO movie of 1980 was filmed in NW-WASHINGON, biker-gangs are rampant in all these places
***
When ever I go back to any of these old logging places anywhere in the NW I always get offered METH in the bar's, everybody is using it, young, and old, .. male and female, ... dog and cat,
The USA imploded within a long time ago,
Then hell yes most ameriKKKan city's look like DETROIT,
But then you can live in ASPEN,... its your choice
Dig it, baby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy6EuZp9IY
It was that show with Samo and the black guy
Yeah the urbanites have it rougher, I just don't like them because they're even dumber than whities.
They will be fine. They have ginseng ETFs to trade.
It's not just appalchia, its all over the USA, especially in old logging community's with the trees gone post 1950's, now 3rd generation welfare.
NW washington, SW oregon, N-Idaho, most of Montana.
Get out and travel the back roads and you will see that all the kids are on meth, that nobody has teeth, that 3-4 generations are living in a shack.
Don't kid yourself about METH, the local FEED-STORES for the PIG's and COW's sell everything you need to COOK, iodine is sold in bulk for infection of livestock, ... I repeat in the woods and farmlands of ameriKKKa, cooking meth is so easy, anybody and everybody is doing it,
Gov't destroyed the logging industry in the North West during the 1990's, along w/ many smaller farms/ranches in the 3 coastal Western states....it's always about the "environment." Now as you are probably well aware, the Sierra Club and the EPA are literally destroying thousands of the best paying jobs in Appalachia, coal jobs and along with those jobs, the associated jobs connected w/ the coal industry. It is an utterly disgusting torture being practiced upon real Americans by the cultural elitists. I can't but despise the gov't I worked for for 30 years.
logging history 101
bull fucking SHIT
In the 1950's the great stands still remained, by the end of the 50's they were gone,... it was the post wwii building boom, and the corporations cleared all.
The 1990's was just the big companys like boise-cascade, and LP moving down south, cuz by the 1990's all the trees were gone,
But the good trees were all gone in the 1950's.
Yup.
And govt was where during the Easter Island times?
There's also Haiti, which saw absolutely NO environmental protection: in the Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo, indirectly through his monopoly of forest products, kept the DR from being clear-cut (to make way for mud-pies).
More folks who have drunk the "divide and conquer" Kool-Aid: it can only be black or white, so someone picks a side and then refutes ALL of the other...
They just need to fight income inequality and racism. And more roads and bridges.
This is nothing new. It has always been this way (although those who worked for the coal companies did okay for a while). The biggest business/job killer in these small towns is Walmart.
I'm not really a fan of Wal-Mart, but I don't think that Wal-Mart is the source of the "problem." The source is declining growth. Wal-Mart is basically the tail-end, a means to chop to the bone and still continue to operate (until they cannot). If it wasn't Wal-Mart selling stuff made in China it would just be someone else...
I've spent some time out in Philippine provinces. Folks are quite capable of creating their own "jobs." And I'd have to state that they're likley far more efficient than Wal-Mart. You see, it's about sustianability, subsistance living: if it's TOO much it's TOO much; and, of course, if it's TOO little it's TOO little.
Seer, growth hasn't declined in eastern Kentucky. It never existed. For a time, we had the coal industry but people still lived in their run down little trailers with the junk cars parked in the yard. The only difference was, there was a boat and new Camaro parked in some driveways.
Very, very few lived within their means and used that money as a step towards a different type of life. When the coal companies pulled out, people lost their boats and new cars, and went back to what they've always known. Yes, there is intense poverty here and no jobs, but that's the same as it ever was.
Before Walmart, the handful of streets were filled with locally owned business after locally owned business. They are all gone now. Now there is Walmart. Walmart might not be the root source of the problem, but it did kill what little bit of "growth" was left outside of the coal companies.
I'd rather hang out with these druggies than the Wall Street druggies.
rural meth heads will rape you after you get high with them,
nyc banker drug heads will take you out to find some high priced HO
no comparison with rural meth head and banker snot nose spoiled city bastard,
***
Here I will tell a good story, when I was a kid, on my older 'sisters' dated the HELLS-ANGLES and I used to go to the party's, ...
A common 'trick' for a newbie was "HEY wanna fuck my old lady, and if the guy said yes, then off they went for a romp", "then when he came out, now the guy said to the newbie, OK, you fucked my old lady, now we're all going to fuck you, and they did".
Nope folks comparing the rural world and the pussy nyc world is not the same.
" I used to go to the party's"
It's "parties" (not possessive)
Bottom line: being ignorant can be a problem.
I categorize people into only one of two categories: 1) Good person; 2) Asshole. If I am unsure I don't engage to any degree that would expose myself to possible trouble.
I've been around drug deals with weapons "hidden" under cushions. That was in stupider times... I have exactly ZERO interest in drugs at all now days: if you want more of life then you're best to keep it as far away from you as possible; folks can do whatever they wish as long as they don't harm others- unfortunately, drugs (most) have a way of distorting this sense, of creating false narratives as to why harming others might be OK (or, just completely failing to take note of being in the position until it's too late).
Seer, I have a lot of interest in drugs. I just choose not to to do them at this time. Oh yes, I will do them again eventually or perhaps never. I like smoking really good weed on occassion. I do not need any of the other stuff.
"On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero"
Inhabitants here are at or near zero.
Proposal for a solution (sticking with the zero theme)
1. Zero income taxes forever in this tax free zone.
2. Zero corporate taxes forever in this tax free zone.
3. Zero capital gains taxes forever for all residents of this tax free zone.
4. Zero plus five percent sales tax for a maximimum of 20 years.
5. Zero sales taxes shall be used for anything else other than the protection and proliferation of this zone.
6. Zero new residents are not welcome.
Difference is between helping someone vs. a person gaming the system.
WELFARE ABUSE: 32 years old Austin, TX welfare recipient says working is stupid.
And this is different than the folks high up the "ladder," how?
Ohhhh...Gee...She needs to be punished for thinking too small. I mean the ones that game the system for Hundreds of Millions are "respectable".,. right?
Quite sad to see that folks just don't get it, that not everyone can be measured the same.
I once scouted property in eastern Tennesee. Saw folks with nice homes and property right alongside folks with trailers (I'm talking travel trailers- one place that I was looking at has someone just around the corner of the dirt road living next to that road in a travel trailer- might own the property or squating?).
And now I have neighbors who span the complete spectrum. One in a huge McMansion. One in a run-down single-wide mobile home; these folks raise pigs and sell medical marijuana- I would suppose that one could quite readily categorize them as living in "poverty." I've never met the McMansion folks: I've met just about everyone around except them. The others, well, the guy is someone I am glad to have as a neighbor- hard-working and kind.
I'm married to someone who lived in poverty (Philippines) for most of her life. And she's the most well-adjusted and happy person I've ever met.
So, living in the economic strata that is defined as living in "poverty" is not the same as being impoversihed. And, even trailer-trash can't always be said to be "trailer trash" (though I'm pretty sure what the stereotype is painting).
There is unlikely to be an economic recovery because all the efforts of politicians, government, central banks etc are focused on saving banks instead of targeting job creation which is the only way economy can recover.
The true extent of slowdown in the world economy can be judged by the data points which are not subjected to adjustments by the government. Eg. Change in Electricity and Fuel consumption, Ratio of working population to the total population of a country, Miles driven, Baltic Dry Index, Change in commercial Rental Rates etc.
www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40231.html
On one hand you seem to get it, and then on the other you tend to appear to not get it...
"The true extent of slowdown in the world economy can be judged by the data points which are not subjected to adjustments by the government. Eg. Change in Electricity and Fuel consumption"
That's about RESOURCES, limited resources.
"There is unlikely to be an economic recovery because all the efforts of politicians, government, central banks etc are focused on saving banks instead of targeting job creation which is the only way economy can recover. "
Recovery to WHAT? The bubble days? And given that the "Change in Electricity and Fuel consumption" could be the result of too high of a cost due to declining resources I'm pretty sure that not only could we NOT get back on the rails of growth but we won't even be able to get back to the same level (being static) as the bubble days of yore.
The simple fact is too many people. The world can possibly support the current growth rate from a food perspective. But what a shitty life. Compare these places with norway or new zealand. Stop having kids who will never work or basically do anything.
"The world can possibly support the current growth rate from a food perspective."
Any "positive" growth rate can NOT be sustained. To really understand why this is so one is advised to catch Dr. Albert Bartlett's presentation "Arithmetic, Population and Energy." The exponential function is real, and it's a killer...
Too bad they are white. They simply need to check a different racial demographic when asked on government forms. They could then get a Housing Choice voucher, free Medicaid, foodstamps, free car, free job training, free education, social security payments and much more!
Now your making my stomach hurt.
A few years ago, maybe 20 years ago in Oregon (ESTACADA), there is an old logging town, now a METH-TOWN of course and the GUBMINT came in and opened office of FED's, and guess what? The FED WOMEN got raped.
Let me tell you a little secret, that while The Welfare biz has created tons of good jobs for black women with BA degrees (OBAMA VOTERS), there is nobody on TEAM-OBAMA or TEAM-WELFARE that wants to work in the METH rural communitys and IF they do work there, they'll commute back to the city 100's of miles, cuz they will not sleep there.
***
The thing about FED's is they like opening offices in nice places,.. so they can have a job near a paradise, that's why there are so many FED offices in Bolder, Colorado.
But the FED's, and especially the WELFARE FED's would never live or work near white trailer trash,...
Probably the best kept secret in america is that MIDDLE CLASS blacks with government jobs see white trailer trash as "SILL PLATE",... or even lower than the "N WORD"
Avatar says it all...
"Will job for food."
Clearly doesn't read the same as "Will work for food."
My point is is that we ought to start thinking more in terms of working than in having a "job." And when this becomes more established in one's mind then the notion of working for oneself becomes a bit clearer... (create a dependency upon oneself)
Thanks FED!
What went wrong with AmeriKKKa doesn't have anything to with Socialism or Capitalism
It has to do with 'reserve currency'.
FIAT IMPOSITION UPON THE WORLD is WHY the USA is NOW Un-Inhabitable.
With over 60% of the USA citizens feeding at the FIAT-PIG-TROUGH .. The USA is a nation of parasitic assholes, ran by assholes trying to control the world, WHY? Because the USA has gone FULL RETARD NAZI to maintain its RESERVE CURRENCY STATUS.
"reserve currency", means
1.) export jobs
2.) world policeman
3.) permanent war's
The USA MOFU's that decided back post civil-war in Lincolns time to make the USD the worlds reserve currency, they are why the USA is what it is today.
All the symptoms of ROT in the USA have nothing to do with Capialism or SOCIALISM, it has to do with 'reserve currency'.
This is called the 'reserve currency paradox' ( go read wiki ), once a country goes "reserve" it must 1-3 above, in order to maintain reserve currency, eventually the country cannibalizes itself, thus its a paradox, TPTB want to print money for nothing, but to do so they destroy the country and its people, ... too late now, ... the damage has been done.
This is why NOBODY on earth except the NAZI-USA wants to be 'reserve currency'.
This is why Russia&China want IMF-SDR for 'reserve currency', then an army of PRAETORIAN-MERCENARY's can do the dirty work.
OK, stupid question here, but what "went wrong?"
Was it that the Ponzi couldn't continue? Keep in mind that the REAL Ponzi is that of perpetual growth on a finite planet.
What went wrong is that that which cannot continue forever won't. We're getting to that "won't" part. Still in denial that what we've been doing could magically continue forever...
Seer,
R u fucking brain dead, or just /sarc, /stupid, /snide?
1-3 above, ... if you want to be reserve currency, you must
1.) export jobs
2.) be world policeman
3.) murder the world and your own people
The USA has gone into complete fucking toilet because the 'reserve paradox' says that while you can print to infinite, in order to get the world to accept your FIAT you must give them all your jobs, you must kill them, you must kill your own people, and you must do this until everyone in your mother country is dead.
This is called the 'reserve paradox', I know your ZH stupid, but please why the fuck not get off your lazy ass, and study this shit, and make your own post, your a fucking ZH immortal, what's stopping you?
We know this stuff already. It's not that ZH'ers are immortal at all, the difference is that we are not fixated on one thing. You are fixated. Now take your medication, calm down and perhaps come back later after you have rinsed out your little potty mouth.
3 yrs 34 weeks, bomdog that is fucking immortal on ZH
Yeah, here more than anywhere else the readership understand what high demand for a currency means... And you're wrong, the wet dream of the sociopaths in the Military Industrial Complex in every country in the world wish they had reserve status so they could bulk up and take over the world.
There are solutions though; Localism, local currencies, credit unions, co-operatives etc etc. Though you need a populace who can see beyond red/blue, left/right.
Wow. Everyone should watch The Keiser Report E551 It is on Bitcoin 2.0 No more Ebay. No more bankers, No more Paypal.No more stock exchanges or gold exchanges. Everything is distributed.
I'll be sure to pass it along to the folks here:
http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rjdemp/1/1269609770/tpod.h...
Fuck the rednecks.
Dumb rednecks on this board vote here.
I can state that no one's ever called me a redneck. What are you saying is a "redneck?"
Much of my life could be said to contain elements that one could say is "redneck-ish." And, well, I'd think that anyone who thinks that I'd be a sterotype would be highly confused.
Folks leaning heavy on labels are folks whose opinions I generally take lightly.
And I got Seer's back. If you fuck with him then you are fucking with me. It's a country boy thing.
Get to make more moonshines.
Redneck METH,
1.) Iodine, go to a farm-store, all pigs and cattle are soaked their feet nightly to keep them dying from hoof&mouth disease
2.) Round Up ( kicker # 1)
3.) Cross bow ( kicker # 2)
4.) Sudafed, lots of it epehedrine, ... whatever ... they find, any thing they steal in a neighbors medicine chest will do
5.) common ammonia, to make iodine crystals from your iodine
6.) red phosporus from lots of match-heads,...
Shake, but don't spill, dry after mixing, ... and sell to your neighbors and watch them get 'high'.
***
Moon shine was your grandpa's drug of choice.
***
My point is that no ZH'er do this at home, but just to note that all this stuff is available in the hills of anywhere in ameriKKKa.
***
Some here may wonder why is RURAL ameriKKKa special? Mostly because METH is rampantly available, and gubmint can't do nothing to stop it, not even tax it to death.
Holy Cow. I come here for lurid charts, econo-kookery, and to pick the odd fight with an anti-semite. But this article by Williamson, and the write-up by Snyder, are really high-quality examples of detailed reporting and context aggregation, respectively.
Top-notch.
R U Mind fucking me? Rush Limbaughs calls ZH the closest thing you can get to legal lynching without goin to jail.
**
That said, ... and I hate to use the Niggah word here, but what we have here is problem of Mis-communication, .... what we have now is nation of Wiggah's, and you know who am I talking about, no ebonics intended.
The Corporate Nazi empire,... of course we already know that post LINCOLN the slaves weren't really freed. The blacks never did have thier day in ameriKKKa, not even under OREO-OBAMA.
But what breaks my fuckin heart is to see millions of church goin, white folk with good jobs, and beautiful children, and boats in the yard post 1950's, and today or post 1990's to see these same rural community's now living like plantatation 'folk in Cabin', and I note for accuracy of the english language, that back in the day of 'slavery', cabin is where you locked the black-folk at night, today 'cabin' means idyllic serenity in the woods, but once upon a time 'cabin' meant a small box that you were locked in at night.
So now here we are 2014, and I would dare say that 90% of rural white ameriKKKa is living like black-slaves pre civil war, where in the FUCK are we going with this?
Parabola.
ALL empires decline eventually.
you are Oreo, not ME! screamed a pissed-off Obama
Stop callin Obama "Oreo"! He has done his best to be Ebony. He worked low-paying jobs, got bad grades, married the blackest bitch around. He has put a lot of effort into becoming Black. Lay off!
I listen to Rush and never heard him make such a comment.
You sir, are a liar (just like 0bama!)
They have been through a war, a quiet war fought with silent weapons.
As for the National Review link, no thanks. Fuck Bill Kristol.
Keep on moving to town fokkers. Leave paradise to me.
Rural whites will keep on working and fighting like hell for this multicultural empire that impoverishes them.
But, what can you do.
Rural white IQ
1950's 121 average
1960's 111
1980's 101
2000 91
2010 81
2020 71
Not any fault of their own, but home-made drugs, and systematically destroyed the future generations, and now its like the DOWNS and AUTISTIC out-number the abby-normal
Again no fault of their own, the US Corporation, took people who had lived in the MTN's for 100's of years and proud and hard-working and turned them into welfare morons, call it DELTA's or gamma's as you wish from Brave-new-world, yes they did it to themselves but the CORP-GUBMINT enabled the transistion.
The welfare state ( mostly black and educated ) will NOT go near white trash,just saying.
Humanity is a petrified fiction hiding from zero, a purgatorial imprisonment of dissolution, but to be stricken with sanctity is to bask in death like a reptile in the sun.
God is dead, but immeasurably more importantly, God is death (except ‘God’ means the fascist ass-hole of the West). The beginning of the secret is that death (= 0) is immense.
From birth we are brain-washed into conformity with the cage, taught to accumulate, to shore ourselves up, to fear madness and death. Trapped in a constricting tangle of language routines we tread a narrow circuit in the maze.
We are told that chance will not take care of us, and that it is difficult to live but work and seriousness are slums of delusion the garbage-heap of individuation has no worth what is called life at the outer edge of patriarchy is a bleak box of lies, drudgery, and anaesthesia blended with inane agony what matters about the outside of the box is not just that it is the outside of the box, but that it is immense what matters is the abyss, the gulf.
They want us to fear death so much, but we can inhabit it like vermin, it can be our space, in our violent openness to the sacred death will protect us against their exterminations, driven insane by zero, we can knot ourselves into the underworld, communicate through it, cook their heavenly city in our plague.
- Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, 1991
Tragedy in the heartland = record bonuses in the cities.
Printing money will save us all!
Seems like West Virginia needs to legalize Pot outright. It would give the residents a new source of income, and a better way to escape.
Sounds like they've come a long way from moonshine!
This is just more of 0bozo's marxist enviro-nazi bullshit.
Here is another example of an article that is synthesized to make you think that all of America is falling apart. This is just a part of a vast country where the jobs moved away and went to another country. The author of this blog failed to mention that the jobs didn't go to China, but to another county. Well of course the area is going to die. This has played out in every farming community in the country slowly over the last fivety years.
Let's be serious here. The only reason those people mentioned in the article are there is because they have no skills and they get a check from the gov't. If they were getting nothing they would move and get a job digging ditches somewhere else.
America has problems all over the place. As a person who has held gold since 04, I understand the WORLD is in some sort of soft depression. But let us not pretend that this type of thing mentioned in this article has not happened before in this country. What about gold, silver or oil boom towns. Those places became ghost towns as they slowly died. There is a place in Colorado called Ashcroft. At one point it had 10,000 residents. It is right by Aspen. When the silver ran out the population collapsed. However, there were people living there for another 50-60 years. I imagine life was not swell for those left after 50 years of stagnation.
500+ comments already. This article must surely have touched a nerve.
Don't worry about Country folks. We will be OK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-GwdaKrn8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpTOVnd-9gA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B1EsB8U_l8
One thing about us white trash is we are like a bad rash that won't go away, or we're like cockaroaches that will survive anything, even being stepped on, 'cause the white in us just can't be beaten out of us, we'll still drag ourselves out of the mud and take one more punch and give one more kick to your balls, basically we just want to be left alone by all you superior people who think you need to help us.
'Poverty porn' is becoming a spectator sport in Ireland and the UK.