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After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America

175 点作者 iamjeff超过 7 年前

18 条评论

hestipod超过 7 年前
I&#x27;m not as bad off as this woman but the difference is irrelevant in the big picture as I won&#x27;t survive either. I am in my 40s with no skills, a dead CV and the expectation that if I really wanted it I would just pull on my non existent bootstraps. Over a decade ago my life was ruined by medical mistakes. It cost me my career and everything I had worked for. It started a long road of being denied assistance from disability and other programs as I fell in every crack or got unfair adjudicators. I was not able to navigate the legal system for recompense as it was loaded on the side of the doctors despite common belief.<p>I survived this long on a partial pension from my job, a large savings since I lived frugally, and occasional assistance from others. My health has worsened, problems and needs have piled up, the occasional assistance has tricked off mostly, and I have no hope.<p>Most people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes. In the end it comes back to victim blaming and me not trying hard enough. People who have health, security, and lives and cannot imagine what it&#x27;s like to live in so much pain and have no real options love to judge.<p>I have tried and considered all the usual advice like &quot;learn to code&quot; or &quot;just do content writing&quot; that comes along to disabled and isolated people. At my age and with the stability issues I have it&#x27;s not realistic. People don&#x27;t seem to get that. I should be getting assistance but this country doesn&#x27;t do it like the rest of the first world so I am expected to suffer more just to stay alive in pain. I am moving abroad to a cheaper country to try and stretch my pension but I won&#x27;t survive there either without earning and I cannot find any feasible way to earn that doesn&#x27;t make things worse. Seeing people talk about people like me here in terms of &quot;usefulness to society&quot; enrages me. I served society...I did good in the world...that life was stolen and society rejected me. We are legion.
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ggm超过 7 年前
I cannot find it in my heart to admire the people who comment here proscriptively, without any attempt to signal empathy. Its understood few of us (myself included) will be doing anything to ameliorate this situation, and that empathy signalling is at best chest beating, but I still find the lack of compassion in the responses chilling. Yes, not smoking would reduce health risks and spend. so what? If you haven&#x27;t tried to survive on minimum wage, I am very unsure your critique of their behaviour, which is essentially poverty shaming: you are only poor because [lazy | stupid] forms of logic, adds anything. If you walk over a begger muttering &quot;get a job&quot; you deserve contempt.<p>If you hate America, vote capitalist, randean individualism.
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megaman22超过 7 年前
No shit. The tricky thing with this kind of work is it has to be all cash-only, under the table. Best if nobody sees you doing it, which rules out a lot of the more legitimate kinds of side work - if you&#x27;re supposed to be 80% disabled, it looks a little fishy when you&#x27;re out cutting lawns or splitting firewood or caretaking... I grew up on the northern end of Appalachia, and huge numbers of people there supplement their income growing a little cash crop out in the woods - you had to be a little careful in places that you didn&#x27;t blunder into a plantation when you were out deer hunting. I wonder whether the recent legalization pushes are putting a hurting on that front.
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reaperducer超过 7 年前
Not sure why this is an article. This is just normal life in many parts of rural America from Pennsylvania to Washington to Arizona.<p>When I lived in West Virginia, I did note that the Washington Post had a weird fascination with the place. Whenever things got slow, you could expect some big exposé about what a bunch of uneducated, dirty bumpkins we were.<p>WaPo even once held a contest to come up with a new slogan for West Virginia when it didn&#x27;t like seeing &quot;Almost Heaven&quot; on the license plates. The winner was &quot;Almost Haiti.&quot;
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oftenwrong超过 7 年前
Reminds me of a few articles I have bookmarked - more about suburban than rural, and how the people get by:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;6&#x2F;best-of-2016-suburban-poverty" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;6&#x2F;best-of-2016-s...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;granolashotgun.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;15&#x2F;suburban-poverty&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;granolashotgun.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;15&#x2F;suburban-poverty&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;granolashotgun.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;30&#x2F;affordable-housing-maui-style&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;granolashotgun.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;03&#x2F;30&#x2F;affordable-housing-mau...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;granolashotgun.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;04&#x2F;the-precariat-shoppe&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;granolashotgun.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;04&#x2F;the-precariat-shoppe&#x2F;</a>
logfromblammo超过 7 年前
That is so depressing. No wonder suicide rates are up.<p>You know there&#x27;s a difference between &quot;give a man a fish&quot; and &quot;teach a man to fish&quot;, but what do you do when the fish are just <i>gone</i>?<p>It was mentioned in the article, but not extensively discussed. I think maybe the largest distinct segment of the economy in ex-coalcountry regions is now pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal. There&#x27;s the legal root and mushroom hunting, which go into supplements, but a large fraction of the people are growing marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, collecting sassafras root bark for MDMA cooks, and reselling their prescription opioids, in addition to the older traditions of moonshining and tobacco cigarette smuggling.<p>And <i>everyone</i> is on social security disability. If all you ever knew is coal mining, <i>that&#x27;s</i> your condition that prevents you from finding gainful employment. If you need to see what happens with bare-bones basic income, that&#x27;s it. The whole community barely scrapes along, and everyone has to do some niche hustle to earn their gas money a dime at a time. If you threw out the penalty for working, most of those people would be doing something productive, even if it&#x27;s manufacturing ugly tchotchkes to be sold in a tourist trap, because whatever it is would give them beef in their stew instead of just barely enough gas in the tank to keep going.
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occultist_throw超过 7 年前
Ive been there. Years ago.<p>Back in &#x27;07 got laid off. Company shut down. Lots of us tried to scramble to get jobs, and all the quick low paying jobs filled up. I got into unemployment and started collecting the $207&#x2F;week. And this, obviously, wasn&#x27;t enough. It certainly didn&#x27;t equal to the part that was taken out of my paycheck for &quot;unemployment insurance&quot;.<p>2 weeks turned into a month. Which turned into months, then into a year. Then the &#x27;08 recession hit. I saw people with graduate science degrees working at McDonalds. There was no fucking way I could get a job, even with blanketing my resumes and filling out webforms that are never responded (Thank you for submitting your application. You will never hear from us).<p>And im still struggling with the $207&#x2F;week. So I start hustling on craigslist, doing odd jobs. Of course I&#x27;m supposed to report this. Well, guess what.... I used this money to relocate myself to a better location, and got a job.<p>Ideally, if you make 1$ on unemployment, you are supposed to report it, and you get $1 less. And if you do work a low paying job, then you get worked to the bone for 30 hours, and get minimum wage which is $187 after taxes. And minus gas, minus lunch, and too tired to look elsewhere. So you hold out for a better one that can get you out of the hole.<p>Yeah, it&#x27;s just a bad situation all around. And it turns everyone into criminals.
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leggomylibro超过 7 年前
&gt;because disability payments on average amount to less than minimum wage, sometimes much less, ...<p>Why is this? How are these people expected to survive, if they are disabled to the point that they can&#x27;t hold down a job, and aren&#x27;t allowed to work without the risk of losing their disability payments? Busking? I know that&#x27;s been one traditional job for disabled people over the centuries, but I feel like we should be able to do better.
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patrickg_zill超过 7 年前
The real shame in the article is that rent of $300 per month is being charged on an unimproved 10x20 shed, which you can buy for under $5k almost anywhere in rural and suburban areas.<p>Who set up that deal? How did they get a certificate of occupancy without a toilet?
Diederich超过 7 年前
Once again, I&#x27;m probably breaking the rules.<p>Consider this person: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;threads?id=hestipod" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;threads?id=hestipod</a><p>&gt; I made an account just to comment on this issue after lurking for a long time but it&#x27;s surely just another pointless action because it&#x27;s the same story over and over. Empathy is not common.<p>Three (at this time) comments that seem to be very relevant to this topic and discussion, yet all [dead].<p>&gt; Most people ignore me, some give useless advice that makes them feel like they did something, and nothing changes.<p>Indeed.
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marak830超过 7 年前
(edit: I finished it,as I should have the first time. Not that i change my point of view though) &lt;s&gt;I couldn&#x27;t finish the article, not because it was too heartbreaking, but because of the stupidity of the author.&lt;&#x2F;s&gt;<p>...&quot;went to the already-crowded Dollar Store and Dollar General and bought dog food, dog treats, Slim Jims, three six-packs of Milwaukee’s Best, pruners for digging roots and a backpack to carry it all.&quot;<p>I have been on the poverty line, I&#x27;m damn close to being there again. You have money for dog food and beer? Also earlier noted in the article smoking.<p>I&#x27;m not sorry to say, fucking pull your head in.<p>I have had to grow my own vegetables and cut lawns to feed my family (when I was 14!), None of us had money to mnoke, drink or have pets.<p>Oh you spent your day digging up roots? Why not plant something then?(if you&#x27;re already stealing from public land, why not at least try and utilise it somehow?)<p>“I worked underground until I started having anxiety and I couldn’t stand to go back underground,”, I sure hope that doesn&#x27;t deserve a disability payment, there are many more deserving than that. Shit I don&#x27;t like underground either, doesn&#x27;t mean I&#x27;m disabled, just means that I don&#x27;t like the idea of that much mass over my head. I can still do other work.<p>My opinion on this piece is that the author was trying to pull heart strings without actually being objective.
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retromario超过 7 年前
It reminds me of this incredible HBO documentary from 2009 chronicling the daily life of a (pretty crazy) rural family called &quot;The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia&quot;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AQBiXDNVeSA</a>
spitfire超过 7 年前
Is there a non-paywalled link available? I&#x27;m not finding anything via the web link.
thaumaturgy超过 7 年前
Logan County, West Virginia, where this article is set, voted 80% in favor of Trump, giving him 10,000 additional votes. [1] The entire state of West Virginia went to Trump.<p>If Democrats want to change the current political landscape in this country, they might start by addressing some of these peoples&#x27; problems while they&#x27;re campaigning on everyone else&#x27;s problems too.<p>Trump (and conservatives) aren&#x27;t going to do a thing for these people, but at least they mentioned them.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;2016-election&#x2F;results&#x2F;map&#x2F;president&#x2F;west-virginia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.com&#x2F;2016-election&#x2F;results&#x2F;map&#x2F;president&#x2F;...</a>
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24gttghh超过 7 年前
&gt; She lit a home-rolled cigarette and, getting to work with a mattock, tried to ignore the weather. <i>She had lately been telling herself that she had to stop taking these risks.</i> They were more than an hour from the nearest hospital, and what if she had another heart attack?<p>Yeah...she seems to be ignoring the heart-attack risk she is pumping into her lungs while she says that. I get that it&#x27;s an addiction that is hard to kick, but come on. If you&#x27;ve already had <i>quintuple</i> bypass surgery, maybe it&#x27;s time to give up smoking?
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cyberpunk0超过 7 年前
Welcome too late stage capitalism
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vmarshall23超过 7 年前
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Basic_income" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Basic_income</a>
forkandwait超过 7 年前
So why can&#x27;t we invest enough time and money in these people to make them engineers and technicians? Then they might be able to start shops that make and distribute the tourist trinkets mentioned by another poster. Why is the only solution that a large company that someone else creates moves in and provides low skill jobs?
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