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Nobody Gets Off In This Town
“The Greyhound stops and somebody gets on, but nobody gets off in this town.” – Garth Brooks
Kevin Williamson recently set off the journalistic equivalent of a nuclear device at NR in his article about the travails of the white underclass. The article has been mischaracterized by many as Williamson expressing hatred for the subjects of the article, and some outlets blatantly mischaracterized the piece and tried to demonize its author. Williamson’s basic thrust is that — for those living in dead and dying small towns — the best option is to avoid self-destructive behavior and to move to where opportunity can be found. The response to the article has been intense and it raises some real questions about what can be done, if anything, for those left behind.
This is not a new problem. Towns have been dying since at least the beginning of the industrial revolution. Most towns came into being for economic reasons: proximity to a port or railway line, access to a natural resource, to support local farms, to support workers at local factories or mills, etc. But once that economic reason is gone, the town dies.
Many, many towns have died or are in their death throes because of the mechanization of farming that began to rapidly accelerate in the Thirties (Oklahoma’s Greer County had a population of 20,000 in 1930; today’s it’s about 6,200). And it’s continuing still. It isn’t hard to imagine remotely controlled farm equipment, or the use of drones to check on cattle in distant pastures. The same is likely in store for other industries, including oil. The construction of the interstate highway system led to the death of many towns along the older highways. There are now few kicks to be had on Route 66.
So what is to be done? The answer, perhaps, is nothing. As conservatives, we must recognize that not all problems have solutions, and that grim reality must eventually be faced. There is no possible government policy that is going to bring people back to Greer County.
I’ve seen it suggested — by Williamson in fact, in a different article — that we restructure unemployment benefits so that you get paid a lump sum for getting a job before the benefits run out and/or have Uncle Sam help pay to relocate workers to where the jobs are. These aren’t solutions, but ameliorations, but they’re likely the best we can do for folks in those towns. Maintaining them there in dependency should not be in consideration.
One idea suggested by some is to prevent factories from moving overseas in order to save those jobs and towns. Should that be tried, it isn’t hard to predict what would happen: Either the factories will close because they can no longer compete, or they’ll automate their production reduce costs. Either way, it doesn’t result in new jobs.
What about protecting the industry? If we apply tariffs, it may save the local jobs for a time, but would almost certainly invite retaliation, costing jobs elsewhere. It just moves the problem to a different community, and makes us all a bit poorer into the bargain.
It seems there is no good solution, other than to do what humans have been doing forever when local resources run out: Move.
Published in General
Or they could blow it on tatoos and drugs
Nice that we’re discussing this on St. Patrick’s day. Know why there are more people of Irish descent in America than in Ireland? Because there was no food there during the famine. Sometimes you either move or die.
It’s really the same situation as shown here, only with jobs instead of food.
Very true KP, but in some areas there is practically no work to be had. It takes some special creativity – I mean in the sense that it is more than just what is necessary to go to work every day – to put bread on the table. People desperately want steady work, but sometimes there isn’t any. Some leave their families behind and go to North Dakota to work in the oil field, but now most of those jobs are gone too.
Also part of the problem. This is just more evidence that we face cultural rather than political problems and that political solutions will not work for them. Kate can probably back me up on this as she gets to deal with aftermath of the “hold my beer and watch this” culture.
Hence the admonition in the OP and the article to move. I was fortunate that the job I have now flowed directly from my willingness to join the Navy and go where I was needed.
Even beyond the work ethic is the desire to be a husband and father. Many low-income men no longer desire that and have no sense of responsibility towards the children they sire.
I think maybe the roots of the problem go back to the sexual revolution, before which men who didn’t make themselves good husband material by staying sober and holding a job could expect a celibate life.
NR has been pretty upset about the Trump campaign, and the response of a good part of the republican base. Not a supporter of the Trumper here, but I do think it’s pretty funny how the NR people are upset about seeing visions and fantasies of their setting policy in a new conservative administration fly out the window. The base or a good part of it, ain’t what we thought it was. And the response of some conservative intellectuals has been an anger towards the white working class, who they see as trump supporters.
Tim
Right. But to prevent them from blowing it on tattoos and drugs, we pay layers of people to come up with and implement rules…that good people follow and bad people learn to elide.
Yeah that’s not why Williamson’s saying what he’s saying. He’s been doing it for years, because it needs to be said
Also, scholarly research indicates that moving out of disadvantaged neighborhoods helps the kids who get out.
Again back to the cultural rather than political problems. Why work if your needs are paid for, and why marry and take care of the kids if you can have the sex without those annoying responsibilities?
I like the conclusion to that: “Ultimately we wish to protect people, not places per se.” It is very sad when a town dies; it is sadder when people just sit there and die with it.
Exactly. I don’t think there’s a way to put that genie back in the bottle. Until…
You’re right. I’m glad that option was available for you (and me too!). Again, it’s young people leaving a depressed area, with the local economy contracting by that much, but if people get desperate enough, they’ll move. In some instances it’s a very big effort – my great grandfather, like many of his generation, left his wife and children behind when he came to America, then sent for them later when he had a stable situation. We forget that, and what we’re capable of undertaking.
This is a great post and discussion. Regarding the quoted paragraph, you might find this bit of history interesting: from the fifties to seventies, the government of Newfoundland basically bought out rural towns (for a pittance–$1000 base rate per household plus $200 per dependent) because it was cheaper than continuing to maintain infrastructure, transportation services, and schools in those towns. 90% of the residents had to agree.
Fantastic post and a great piece by Kevin. I’m sad I missed this discussion.
\And what makes it all more difficult is that so many of the characteristics associated with success in life are learned, even made into habits, in childhood —and I don’t mean mere Trumpish economic success in life, but personal, moral, spiritual success, the satisfactions of a meaningful, useful existence, of being loving and beloved.
I remember a social worker here in Maine telling me—to my astonishment—that keeping an apartment clean is a skill that many do not learn. “And I’m talking about the kind of clean that you can achieve with a bar of generic soap and an old t-shirt,” she said. “These people literally do not know how to clean a toilet. I have to teach them.”
This explains the peculiar smell that clings to the dwellings of the poor…
Had never heard of that. Interesting. Just thought of Pitcher, a town in Oklahoma sitting on a Superfund site. They were bought out, but some refused to leave. An F4 tornado forced the issue.
I wonder what they would have thought of the apartment I shared with my buddies after college. Once came back from a three-day weekend trip to find mushrooms growing in the bathroom carpet.
Yah, well, college students (boys, especially) are a whole other thing…
Their quality of life has already been damaged. The question is whether they want to risk a move that might not work out for them.
Before you ask, I’ve moved a few times and generally been better off for it, but I’ve had peers who were significantly less successful. One does hear both sides, and gets both encouragement or discourage-ment, depending on who is speaking. We may now be in a risk averse culture and depend on others for even the definition of success.
The big risk for many is reality tv. Naked and afraid. The Island. No risk there, just mental titillation.
Assorted comments:
My uncle has a history of Kansas which gives the number at 17 miles. So at least it is known on both sides of the border.
re: Newfoundland
Professor at my former university studies that phenomenon. Those who moved to the mainland often still come back, but as seasonal labor in the fish-packing industry. No children live there except in St. Johns (held aloft by the oil industry). The adults are consciously “aging in place.” The island, except for St. Johns, will be depopulated in 40 years as the last of them die. The rest will live in Montreal or Toronto and fly in for three months to work the fisheries or the forests, then return to Toronto with money to live the other 9 months.
re: Ghost towns.
They have long existed. I’m not sure why we should think the phenomenon ended in the 1900s. For that matter, urbanization has been constant for over 5000 years. The only restriction on it was disease, fire, and violence. Which is to say, there was a balance between dying of starvation on the farm or dying of cholera in the city. But as neither is as much of a concern anymore, it is hardly surprising that urbanization has resumed its upward march.
Well, the free market theory is a theory about how human behvaior, so if humans don’t act accordingly, by definition the theory is wrong.
To be less pedantic: free market theory tends to assume that people will be forward-looking, recognize obvious potential threats, and plan accordingly. This might mean, for example, setting aside a good deal of one’s salary as savings if one gets into a better-paying job based on the risk that that job might not be there.
But people – especially those who aren’t as well-educated – generally don’t take the risk of future unemployment as seriously as they should.
The poor are generally more risk-averse (it’s one of the reasons they are poor). For those getting government benefits there are ready carrots and sticks: stick around and you get nothing; move to take a job and we’ll help with relocation costs.
re: Selling the house
At least in my part of Appalachia, that house is often paid for, if it wasn’t built by the current occupant’s grandfather. But even if you get past the sentimentality of selling a paid for asset -who are they going to sell it to? Who wants to buy property on a tapped out coal mine? In Lexington a couple years back there was a big problem with doing revitalization downtown because the area was so poor no one wanted to buy it out until the city set up a non-profit to do it.
re: Cleaning
I direct you to one of my more recent conversations: Soap Don’t Cost That Much.
I agree – didn’t have enough space to spell out all the options.
On the other hand, I think some actions hurt more than others. Getting laid off is certainly painful, but I know a number of people for whom selling their house is much worse.
Similarly, while getting laid off is indeed painful enough, for somebody like a laid-off shift leader, the humiliation of working an entry-level job sweeping the floor and getting bossed around by someone half their age might be harder to swallow than just waiting around at home, unpaid, hoping against hope that their old job will come back.
I would like to see someone run the numbers for what it would cost to pay people to move out of a dead town relative to the cost of providing services to it.
I love my home town and love to go back and visit. My father is always happy to see me, but always warns me with something like the following: this is a great place to grow up, but there’s nothing for you here. He’s right, barring some big capital and a grand idea, there is nothing there for me. My friends who have stayed struggle along slowly dying with the town. Drugs, alcohol, broken or never formed families are rampant. I don’t judge them, better said – I don’t look down on them or think ill of them. I know if not for grace I don’t deserve it would be me. But I also don’t think they are victims, as noted: We did this to ourselves.
People of course have the right to wait around as long as they like. They don’t have the right to do it on the someone else’s dime, and really the taxpayers are doing them no favors by enabling them.
Ha! Though to be precise, there would have been fungi growing in the carpet for some time prior. Mushrooms appear when it’s ready to disperse some spores (perhaps because it had started to dry out).