Lima, Ohio: A portrait of not getting by in the Rust Belt

[Indy Texas]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/where-the-tea-party-rules-20141014

Rather misleading title, since the article itself talks very little about the Tea Party, but has some very sad profiles of small town Ohioans and the bleak, underpaid lives they live.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Rather misleading title, since the article itself talks very little about the Tea Party, but has some very sad profiles of small town Ohioans and the bleak, underpaid lives they live.

Very heartbreaking, and very accurate.

And compared to many of the other small towns throughout the state, Lima has it good.

[dead0man]

The first paragraph has the answer.

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Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

[memphis]

The first paragraph has the answer.

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Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

And where might those jobs be? Should the poor pack up and move to San Francisco?

[Torie]

The first paragraph has the answer.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

And where might those jobs be? Should the poor pack up and move to San Francisco?

Interesting article somewhere that the jobs are where the Interstates are. Being near major transportation nodes is where's it's at in general.

[pbrower2a]

The Right tells us that we need more economic inequality, less economic security, more brutal management, and even lower wages so that the only part of America whose welfare matters -- the super-rich -- can indulge themselves more completely.

German efficiency with Bangladeshi wages, enforced with brutality... the dream of plutocrats. It's been tried -- in Germany.  Nazi Germany, that is, and the brutal order for workers is not so infamous as the genocide and aggressive warfare that killed millions.

A warning to those types -- we could live without you, thank you.

[Torie]

The Right tells us that we need more economic inequality, less economic security, more brutal management, and even lower wages so that the only part of America whose welfare matters -- the super-rich -- can indulge themselves more completely.

German efficiency with Bangladeshi wages, enforced with brutality... the dream of plutocrats. It's been tried -- in Germany.  Nazi Germany, that is, and the brutal order for workers is not so infamous as the genocide and aggressive warfare that killed millions.

A warning to those types -- we could live without you, thank you.

What a wonderful polemic - it's just fabulous. This certainly is one of your more worthy posts from an entertainment perspective. Thanks! 

[King]

I don't want our great nation riddled with ghost towns and people moving. Every state in this union should have opportunity throughout. We need two things:

1) Low interest small business loans based on ideas of the borrower and not their credit rating. Banks no longer loan on trust and belief but statistics. We need to make easier for anyone to start a business.
2) Planned debt-free education mobility. I'm not talking full ride scholarships. Associates degrees would make all the difference. The ability for a dental hygenist to become a paralegal at no cost would change society. For bachelors, a forward thinking grant fund run by the federal government, analyzing the economic future of the job market for the next 5 years, and then offering more incentives for people to move into those fields.

[dead0man]

The first paragraph has the answer.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

And where might those jobs be? Should the poor pack up and move to San Francisco?

North Dakota would be number 1, but there are more than a few options.  SF would be one of the last places I'd suggest....unless you were homeless

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

The first paragraph has the answer.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

And many of these people vote GOP, and sit there and beat themselves up because the reason for their plight is so obviously because they aren't tugging on their bootstraps hard enough.  The toxic rhetoric of the ruling classes puts poors in this insane environment where they think it's all a matter of working harder, and to be a poor is wrong, and if times get tough they just need to be looking up at the McMansion on the hills and dream harder.

Pragmatic progressive economic policy is vital for these rust belt/coal towns.  

I don't want our great nation riddled with ghost towns and people moving. Every state in this union should have opportunity throughout. We need two things:

2) Planned debt-free education mobility. I'm not talking full ride scholarships. Associates degrees would make all the difference. The ability for a dental hygenist to become a paralegal at no cost would change society. For bachelors, a forward thinking grant fund run by the federal government, analyzing the economic future of the job market for the next 5 years, and then offering more incentives for people to move into those fields.

Mobility is the key word.  We need to help struggling people move to the jobs, move to the better educational institutions, and away from vanishing industries like coal.  

[King]

Absolutely. Our Real GDP was back above 2008 levels by mid 2010 but employment always lags far behind. It's an education problem more than economic growth.
.

[Person Man]

The first paragraph has the answer.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

And many of these people vote GOP, and sit there and beat themselves up because the reason for their plight is so obviously because they aren't tugging on their bootstraps hard enough.  The toxic rhetoric of the ruling classes puts poors in this insane environment where they think it's all a matter of working harder, and to be a poor is wrong, and if times get tough they just need to be looking up at the McMansion on the hills and dream harder.

Pragmatic progressive economic policy is vital for these rust belt/coal towns.  

I don't want our great nation riddled with ghost towns and people moving. Every state in this union should have opportunity throughout. We need two things:

2) Planned debt-free education mobility. I'm not talking full ride scholarships. Associates degrees would make all the difference. The ability for a dental hygenist to become a paralegal at no cost would change society. For bachelors, a forward thinking grant fund run by the federal government, analyzing the economic future of the job market for the next 5 years, and then offering more incentives for people to move into those fields.

Mobility is the key word.  We need to help struggling people move to the jobs, move to the better educational institutions, and away from vanishing industries like coal.  

Pretty much all of this. The problem is as it has been since time immemorial, though. That problem is that you can lead a horse to water but cannot make him drink.

If the right person came along at the right time, would this work? Or are the the Carbon and Rust Belt areas too caught up in some sort of internalized karmic force that makes them (and for that matter will make them for the rest of our lives and perhaps the lives of the last of our descendants born during our lives) complain in vain while "clinging to guns and religion"? And if so, how should we towards them? Should we feel sorry for them for being poor? Should we feel grateful or proud of them for trying to uphold ancient traditions despite its futility (and beyond this, many of their young people are out doing things that us educated progressive folks should be doing ourselves or should help in doing)? Should we feel resentful because of all the bad ideas we feel they are forcing upon us while they complain in vain about their own lives? Should we simply be callous and indifferent towards them because they have such hard lives, spin their wheels and yet do nothing to help their problems?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

People are too poor to move.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

German efficiency with Bangladeshi wages, enforced with brutality... the dream of plutocrats. It's been tried -- in Germany.  Nazi Germany, that is, and the brutal order for workers is not so infamous as the genocide and aggressive warfare that killed millions.

Also, Nazi Germany was the first place with so-called "right-to-work" laws.

[dead0man]

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

People are too poor to move.

yep, a BS line.  Nice Godwinning too!

[Torie]

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

People are too poor to move.

yep, a BS line.  Nice Godwinning too!

Getting to know the working class of the Hudson Valley a bit better, up close and personal in a way that I never have before, one thing that I have come to discern is just how wrenching it is for these folks to decamp from the only world that they have ever known, and their family and folks with whom they grew up. Plus, all those connections help them to survive, offering an informal social safety net of sorts, opportunities for odd jobs and whatnot from their buddies since high school and so forth. For many, the thought of leaving is really scary, something to be avoided if at all possible.

The bottom line is that I have more sympathy than formerly in subsidizing the desire of these folks, and in fact their need, to stay in the environment which is their world, at least up to a point. (Another factor is that many have parents who are too poor to split to Florida to retire, and are often in rather poor health (many have prematurely aged, and are obese, drink too much etc.), and need assistance and support). As in most things in life, it's one of those balancing tests, which tests sometimes can be extraordinarily difficult to get just right - even if everyone approached the matter rationally and gave the competing factors relatively similar weights.

[dead0man]

Right, not too poor to leave, too stuck to leave.  As somebody that GTFO of a sh**tty place to improve my life, I have little sympathy.  Perhaps I should have more, but I still contend that you can't be too poor to move.  There might be other commitments and mental hangups keeping you in place, but poverty isn't one of them.


edit-and that's not to say it isn't hard or scary, it certainly can be.  It's also fun and exciting.  Getting to meet new people, new cultures, new food, new ideas.  These are good things that make us more rounded people.

[King]

Moving is expensive man. Most of these people don't have the savings to pay first and last month's rent on a new place in a new city without a job.

[dead0man]

Again, it can be hard, but not impossible.  You're a smart guy, you can come with some ways around that.  Perhaps you'll have to sleep in your car for a week or take out a sh**tty payday loan if you can't borrow a couple hundred bucks from somebody.  Yeah, you might have to sell your sh**t and buy new sh**t at the new place.  Yeah, you might have to leave some of your family with relatives for a month. 

Yes, you can keep coming up with hurdles and eventually you'll find that one situation in a thousand where the person really is, at least temporarily, too poor to move.  But for the vast majority of people, they aren't too poor, they are too scared (lazy, attached, whatever) to move.

[Torie]

Right, not too poor to leave, too stuck to leave.  As somebody that GTFO of a sh**tty place to improve my life, I have little sympathy.  Perhaps I should have more, but I still contend that you can't be too poor to move.  There might be other commitments and mental hangups keeping you in place, but poverty isn't one of them.


edit-and that's not to say it isn't hard or scary, it certainly can be.  It's also fun and exciting.  Getting to meet new people, new cultures, new food, new ideas.  These are good things that make us more rounded people.

That may be high on the agenda for you and me, but for many of them, it is hardly on the agenda at all. What is familiar is far preferable to the "new."

[King]

Payday loans? Really?

I'd swallow a bullet first.

[TJ in Oregon]

My hometown in Ohio is in a similarly bad state, albeit a little better off than Lima. I do love it still and would like to move back some day if it made sense to do so. But I really don't see much of a future for me given my choice of field, chemical engineering. My older siblings have both managed to land jobs back home, though it took them each a while of being unemploymed first. Such is the state of things.

[DC Al Fine]

Right, not too poor to leave, too stuck to leave.  As somebody that GTFO of a sh**tty place to improve my life, I have little sympathy.  Perhaps I should have more, but I still contend that you can't be too poor to move.  There might be other commitments and mental hangups keeping you in place, but poverty isn't one of them.

Could you elaborate a bit? What's your story?

[dead0man]

Nothing fantastic.  I grew up in my only little corner of the rust belt surrounded by closing factories and urban blight in the StLouis area and moved to Atlanta after a couple of years of failing at community college (me and classrooms don't get along) and after 6+ months of manual labor (sheetrocker) joined the USAF.  Now I've got a good job (great job if you consider how much I make for how little I work), own a home (well, own a mortgage) and have enough toys to keep me happy (4 kids are expensive, otherwise I'd have most of the toys I want and will in a few years when they're gone).

I had no money or very many things when I left home.  Everything I owned fit in the hatchback of a 82 RX7.  But I had a job lined up and a place to stay for a few weeks until I got my feet on the ground.  It wasn't always an easy trip, but it wasn't always dull either.

[Cory]

Nothing fantastic.  I grew up in my only little corner of the rust belt surrounded by closing factories and urban blight in the StLouis area and moved to Atlanta after a couple of years of failing at community college (me and classrooms don't get along) and after 6+ months of manual labor (sheetrocker) joined the USAF.  Now I've got a good job (great job if you consider how much I make for how little I work), own a home (well, own a mortgage) and have enough toys to keep me happy (4 kids are expensive, otherwise I'd have most of the toys I want and will in a few years when they're gone).

I had no money or very many things when I left home.  Everything I owned fit in the hatchback of a 82 RX7.  But I had a job lined up and a place to stay for a few weeks until I got my feet on the ground.  It wasn't always an easy trip, but it wasn't always dull either.

Because these circumstances totally apply to everybody ever.