Ending Poverty in America

 

This article in The New Yorker, about J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, revolves around the question of who or what is to blame for the poverty of “hillbillies”:

  • Society
  • The Economy
  • Culture
  • Hillbillies themselves

Its conclusion is that a good case can be made for any one of these – all are true. A question I have is: On which of these truths should we concentrate? Here are my thoughts:

If I’m a hillbilly looking to get out of poverty, I should concentrate on what I can do, rather than wait for society, the economy, or my culture to change.

If I’m in the government, I can do things to help turn the economy around: Remove barriers to employment such as, licensing and minimum wage laws; remove barriers to mobility such as zoning restrictions; remove trade barriers.

And there are things that government can do to change society such as: Stop giving special privileges to businesses, special interest groups, and individuals.

If I’m a teacher or a pastor, I can concentrate on changing the culture.

What I should never do is encourage hillbillies to lay the blame on others, because doing so reduces their “agency” – that is their perceived ability to make their lives, and the lives of their children, better.

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  1. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Poverty used to mean you did not get enough to eat. That has mostly been eliminated in this country. 

    I reading the Article linked, one thing that struck me is that it had little to do with poverty, and a lot to do with family dysfunction. 

    People get enough calories in this country. Poverty is not a thing. Dying off of marriage is a thing. Paying people not work is a thing. Moving jobs overseas is a thing. Automating jobs is a thing. 

    The number one way to avoid what we call poverty today is getting married, and not having kids out of wedlock.  

    • #1
  2. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Poverty used to mean you did not get enough to eat. That has mostly been eliminated in this country.

    I reading the Article linked, one thing that struck me is that it had little to do with poverty, and a lot to do with family dysfunction.

    People get enough calories in this country. Poverty is not a thing. Dying off of marriage is a thing. Paying people not work is a thing. Moving jobs overseas is a thing. Automating jobs is a thing.

    The number one way to avoid what we call poverty today is getting married, and not having kids out of wedlock.

    Stop dumb-ass shaming! 

    • #2
  3. Jason Obermeyer Member
    Jason Obermeyer
    @JasonObermeyer

    The number one thing that most “hillbillies” can do is leave where they are and never come back. This is unpopular, even among conservatives (as evidenced by the negative reaction any Kevin Williamson column on the subject gets here and elsewhere), but it is probably correct.  Most depressed “hillbilly” towns in, for example, Appalachia were at their economic height because of coal mining.  Coal mining will continue to diminish in some areas because much of the economically  recoverable is already mined; this is true even if Obama was wrong to try to hasten its demise.

    Even if the people in those regions voted for more economically favorable polices and jobs returned from overseas, if you were trying to site a new factory, would you choose:

    (1.) one of the hundred or so other small towns in the same state that enjoy greater access to interstates, rail transport, and airports.

    (2.) a town in the mountains that can only be accessed by one, two-lane, poorly maintained road (which becomes impassible in even the lightest of snows).  Oh, and even if you like the town for some reason, siting your new factory will require expensive earth moving and blasting because there simply isn’t enough level land together in one parcel.

    People in such regions face three choices in the long term absent government or charitable support:

    (1.) Go back to the subsistence farming/mountain man life style of the original settlers of those lands.  I don’t think most would be happy with the standard of living that life provides – especially given the work involved – and most don’t have the skills necessary in any event.

    (2.) move.

    (3.) get an expensive new interstate blasted through the mountainous (or swampy or otherwise isolated) region they live in.

    Apart from that, I don’t see a way forward.

    • #3
  4. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Jason Obermeyer (View Comment):

    The number one thing that most “hillbillies” can do is leave where they are and never come back. This is unpopular, even among conservatives (as evidenced by the negative reaction any Kevin Williamson column on the subject gets here and elsewhere), but it is probably correct. Most depressed “hillbilly” towns in, for example, Appalachia where at their economic height because of coal mining. Coal mining will continue to diminish in some areas because much of the economically recoverable is already mined; this is true even if Obama was wrong to try to hasten its demise.

    Even if the people in those regions voted for more economically favorable polices and jobs returned from overseas, if you were trying to site a new factory, would you choose:

    (1.) one of the hundred or so other small towns in the same state that enjoy greater access to interstates, rail transport, and airports.

    (2.) a town in the mountains that can only be accessed by one, two-lane, poorly maintained road (which becomes impassible in even the lightest of snows). Oh, any even if you like the town for some reason, siting your new factory will require expensive earth moving and blasting because there simply isn’t enough level land together in one parcel.

    People in such regions face two choices in the long term absent government or charitable support:

    (1.) Go back to the subsistence farming/mountain man life style of the original settlers of those lands. I don’t think most would be happy with the standard of living that life provides – especially given the work involved – and most don’t have the skills necessary in any event.

    (2.) move.

    (3.) get an expensive new interstate blasted through the mountainous (or swampy or otherwise isolated) region they live in.

    Apart from that, I don’t see a way forward.

    Your points are well taken, logical and sensible. 

    But completely unpalatable. 

    • #4
  5. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    I’ve moved many times, though not in the last 25 years.  It’s not the disaster many people make it out to be.

    • #5
  6. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    I’ve moved many times, though not in the last 25 years. It’s not the disaster many people make it out to be.

    Exactly. Just ask the millions of illegals Who were willing to move to where the money is. 

    • #6
  7. Jason Obermeyer Member
    Jason Obermeyer
    @JasonObermeyer

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    I’ve moved many times, though not in the last 25 years. It’s not the disaster many people make it out to be.

    I used to look at ghost towns as failures, but it actually means that everyone made the adult decision to leave once the reason for being in a particular place went away.  If we had the programs we have today back in the Old West, we would still have the descendants of old prospectors living in trailer parks in places like Tombstone, AZ waiting for the gold mining industry to bounce back. 

    • #7
  8. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Jason Obermeyer (View Comment):
    The number one thing that most “hillbillies” can do is leave where they are and never come back.

    The downside of younger people leaving for greener pastures is that older or disabled people get left behind. In fact, that’s a big reason people stay in these depressed communities even when they could get better jobs elsewhere. To their credit, they don’t want to abandon family members.

    If we, as a nation, want to use relocation as an anti-poverty strategy, and I’m in favor of doing so, we have to realize that a human being is always part of a small group of people, and we need to address those concerns and needs that people have about other people. And we also need to recognize that it is nice of them to care so much.

    When we got serious about evacuations in times of natural disasters, researchers told the agencies involved (I know this because I read one such study years ago) that a big reason people wouldn’t leave is that they didn’t want to leave their pets behind. That’s why today so many shelters either take pets or have separate shelters set up for pets.

    If we want to help people, we need find out what their needs and wants really are.

    • #8
  9. Qoumidan Coolidge
    Qoumidan
    @Qoumidan

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jason Obermeyer (View Comment):
    The number one thing that most “hillbillies” can do is leave where they are and never come back.

     

    The downside of younger people leaving for greener pastures is that older or disabled people get left behind. In fact, that’s a big reason stay even when they could get better jobs elsewhere. To their credit, they don’t want to abandon family members.

    If we, as a nation, want to use relocation as an anti-poverty strategy, and I’m all in favor of doing so, we have to realize that a human being is always part of small group of people, and we need to address those concerns and needs that people have about other people. And also recognize that it is nice of them to care so much.

    When we got serious about evacuations in times of natural disasters, studies told the agencies involved (I know this because I read one years ago) that a big reason people wouldn’t leave is that they didn’t want to leave their pets behind. That’s why today so many shelters either take pets or have separate shelters set up for pets.

    If we want to help people, we need find out what their needs and wants really are.

    Many people I know, including my family, have had the parents following the children to their successful career locations.    I’m not sure what one does if the parent’s house is worthless for selling.

    • #9
  10. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    The “white privilege” meme takes agency away from black Americans in poverty and gives it to white people: White people created all the problems, and they must fix them before black people can advance.

    But that’s an ugly lie. The black poverty rate in the United States fell to 47% in 1960 from 87% in 1940. This before the Civil Rights Act, before Affirmative Action, and during a time when anti-black discrimination was the law in much of the South.

    Blacks pulled themselves out of poverty at an astonishing rate in a time of naked white hostility and aggression. This truth should be celebrated as a triumph of the human spirit and not sacrificed on the altar of white guilt. It’s not all about us

    • #10
  11. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jason Obermeyer (View Comment):
    The number one thing that most “hillbillies” can do is leave where they are and never come back.

    The downside of younger people leaving for greener pastures is that older or disabled people get left behind. In fact, that’s a big reason people stay in these depressed communities even when they could get better jobs elsewhere. To their credit, they don’t want to abandon family members.

    If we, as a nation, want to use relocation as an anti-poverty strategy, and I’m all in favor of doing so, we have to realize that a human being is always part of a small group of people, and we need to address those concerns and needs that people have about other people. And we also need to recognize that it is nice of them to care so much.

    When we got serious about evacuations in times of natural disasters, researchers told the agencies involved (I know this because I read one such study years ago) that a big reason people wouldn’t leave is that they didn’t want to leave their pets behind. That’s why today so many shelters either take pets or have separate shelters set up for pets.

    If we want to help people, we need find out what their needs and wants really are.

    I suppose I could support chain migration in this one instance. 

    • #11
  12. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    First off, thanks for this post. I wish this site would have much more discussion on these types of topics and many fewer on you-know-who(m?). Even if it means going back to New Yorker articles from 2016.

    But I’ll push back slightly on the premise of the post:

    Richard Fulmer:

    This article in The New Yorker, about J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, revolves around the question of who or what is to blame for the poverty of “hillbillies”:
    – Society
    – The Economy
    – Culture
    – Hillbillies themselves

    Its conclusion is that a good case can be made for any one of these – all are true.

    The author of the article (full disclosure: a guy I knew in high school) actually argues that the “culture vs. economics” debate (which really means the “external vs. internal forces” debate) is really a false dichotomy:

    And yet it would be wrong to see Vance’s book as yet another entry in our endless argument about whether this or that group’s poverty is caused by “economic” or “cultural” factors. “Hillbilly Elegy” sees the “economics vs. culture” divide as a dead metaphor—a form of manipulation rather than explanation more likely to conceal the truth than to reveal it.

    Despite not remembering Hillbilly Elegy perfectly (it’s been a few years now), this was also my take on the book. I found the central conflict of the book to be: how much do we blame the outside world for our problems, and how much do we blame ourselves? And Vance’s answer was essentially: there is no answer, so stop spending so much time dwelling on this question. I think that’s the proper response, because in the end any attempt to answer the external vs. internal factors question inevitably leads to a blame game: do we blame the people themselves for their own suffering, or society/the government/the elites etc.?

    But at a societal level, assigning blame almost never solves any actual problems – indeed, it usually just makes them worse.

    • #12
  13. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    One lesson of Hillbilly Elegy that surprised me (and that I’ve rarely seen discussed) is the identity politics angle:

    From literally page 1 of the book and the first sentence of almost any interview with Vance on the topic, he mentions how the hillbillies are Scots-Irish. And that ethnic identity comes up again and again in the book, enough that it’s clear that this self-identity is not some reaction to our current political wave of identity über alles, but is a trait that hillbillies have been very conscious of going all the way back.

    But as a general rule of American life, if your group is still referring to itself primarily by its ancestral lands more than two centuries after your forefathers stepped off the boat, then the chances are pretty high that your group is not doing well.

    One of the difficulties of the American success story is that nearly everyone has to break from their ancestral group at some point, but that break is quite the tightrope walk. Turning one’s back on one’s family, community, and traditions to become a true rootless cosmopolitan may reap short-term rewards but is almost never the path to long-term success.

    Yet at the same time, assimilation into American society usually requires enough of a break with one’s past and one’s community that that community is likely to feel betrayed, at least at first. It doesn’t mean disowning one’s parents, but it might mean losing friends, or that one doesn’t feel welcomed when one returns to visit. And it seemed clear to me from reading Vance’s book that many of the people in his community weren’t willing to face that type of ostracizing.

    • #13
  14. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Mendel (View Comment):

    … any attempt to answer the external vs. internal factors question inevitably leads to a blame game: do we blame the people themselves for their own suffering, or society/the government/the elites etc.?

    But at a societal level, assigning blame almost never solves any actual problems – indeed, it usually just makes them worse.

    Absolutely. The blame game also makes things much worse at the individual level. Looking around for someone on whom to blame my problems saps my ability to solve those problems.

    My basic point is that there are a lot of “truths” on which we can choose to concentrate/obsess. Focus on the truth that is going to make your life, and the lives of the people around you, better.

    • #14
  15. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    I heard a nice analogy years ago. Remember back to when you were first learning to ride a bicycle. You’re wobbling down a path and here comes a tree. You don’t want to hit the tree, so you concentrate on it…, and drive right into it. Eventually, you learn that the trick is not to concentrate on the tree but on the path around it.

    • #15
  16. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    I heard a nice analogy years ago. Remember back to when you were first learning to ride a bicycle. You’re wobbling down a path and here comes a tree. You don’t want to hit the tree, so you concentrate on it…, and drive right into it. Eventually, you learn that the trick is not to concentrate on the tree but on the path around it.

    I kept repeating, ‘there is no spoon’ and veering off into traffic, so your way definitely seems better. 

    • #16
  17. Jason Obermeyer Member
    Jason Obermeyer
    @JasonObermeyer

    Mendel (View Comment):

    One lesson of Hillbilly Elegy that surprised me (and that I’ve rarely seen discussed) is the identity politics angle:

    From literally page 1 of the book and the first sentence of almost any interview with Vance on the topic, he mentions how the hillbillies are Scots-Irish. And that ethnic identity comes up again and again in the book, enough that it’s clear that this self-identity is not some reaction to our current political wave of identity über alles, but is a trait that hillbillies have been very conscious of going all the way back.

    If I remember right, Thomas Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and While Liberals is, in part, about the Scots-Irish. It makes sense that they stayed apart for so long because that culture/ethic identity was first developed in the lawless borderlands between Scotland and England.  When King James became king on both sides of the border and put the lawlessness to an end, they first moved to Ulster and then to the back country of America.

     

    • #17
  18. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    TBA (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Poverty used to mean you did not get enough to eat. That has mostly been eliminated in this country.

    I reading the Article linked, one thing that struck me is that it had little to do with poverty, and a lot to do with family dysfunction.

    People get enough calories in this country. Poverty is not a thing. Dying off of marriage is a thing. Paying people not work is a thing. Moving jobs overseas is a thing. Automating jobs is a thing.

    The number one way to avoid what we call poverty today is getting married, and not having kids out of wedlock.

    Stop dumb-ass shaming!

    ?   Shaming dumb-asses? or being a dumb-ass shaming others?   I think our society has too little shaming of dumb-asses —  a little more shaming might help things.

    • #18
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