re: Why is Appalachia so poor and decrepit

Appalachia is worse

From someone who has seen it up close, not all of Appalachia has the crazy issues that are often seen. Only the counties and small towns with corrupt politicians, commissioners, mayors and lawmen who have lined their own pockets, and local physicians and nurse practitioners who have fed these folks pills for 30-40 years. Also those whose employment has been pretty well ravaged.

I went to one of the smallest high schools in the whole state of Tennessee and grew up in one of the most remote hollers in the northeastern end of the state. There were elder folks without electricity, running water and still using outhouses up until I was in high school in the 90s. That all being said, most of the kids at my school, myself included, have gone on to great things - because most parents and folks could still live at home and get to decent work within an hour or so, and we had resources at home even when our local education systems may have not.

I can take a two hour drive through some of the hollers and rural mountain communities from Western North Carolina through Northeast Tennessee into Southwest Virginia and southeast Kentucky and it’s night and day difference. In North Carolina, you can live somewhere remote and be in Asheville or Boone or Morganton or Hendersonville to work in a pretty decent amount of time. In Northeast Tennessee, same with the Tri-Cities or Greeneville, the Smokies or Knoxville.

In Kentucky, it’s a damn haul to get from a holler to somewhere with decent work that isn’t educational or medical related. Same with Southwest Virginia or WVa.

There are plenty shitbox houses with refrigerator boxes as doors 15 miles from Wal-Mart's IT facility in Bentonville. I was driving a consultant from San Francisco back to the airport, and I asked her if she knew white people could be poor like that. She had no idea.

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That all being said, most of the kids at my school, myself included, have gone on to great things

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My wife and all her friends graduated high school and left. That was really the only thing to do. The interesting part is a lot of them are at retirement age and are moving back. It's cheap and the areas are actually quite nice if you aren't required to make a living there.

To describe what it's like there. You know those papers that they'd put on the trays at McDonalds? The local McDonalds put all their employees' pictures on the tray paper. The newest employee had been there for five years.

Small towns that are basically secluded from the world have had generational inbreeding that has not helped the IQ

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De-industrialization, war on coal,and the proliferation of drug addiction

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Yep. Lots of government dependence, the number of people now getting social security disability has skyrocketed. Way too many able bodied people sitting around waiting on their draw.
Cases of soda have been used for years as “currency”, buy a case, sell it back to the store for pennies on the dollar.
But it’s some beautiful country, cost of living is lower so people are retiring to some areas.

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I’ve been to some crap holes across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and ex Soviet Bloc countries and none of those are comparable to an Appalachian county without an interstate running through it.

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GFY

This entire Asian country can’t buy a 20 piece Caniac meal-

Coal mines started waning decades ago, and instead of relocating for jobs like people used to, they stayed in their "holler" and took welfare.

Now welfare and drugs are the common theme, not so much coal.

Welfare broke the natural cycle of mobility for employment in many poor communities.

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I think the culture in the Appalachian mountain chain isn't one that supports or promotes innovation. The one thing that I consistently observed by the folks that lived there was when someone from there did really well, they weren't celebrated, they were derided.

My wife grew up with a kid that became a very successful professional athlete. After retiring, he decided to give back to the community he was raised in a pretty substantial way.

You'd think something like this would be celebrated. The sentiment was that he did those things to show how much money he had and rub it in everyone's faces.

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A pretty common phrase in the area is "gettin' above your raisin'". A lot of people who go on to become educated or progress in a professional capacity are looked at as betraying the area because they almost always have to LEAVE the area to get those things. And many don't come back.

I think they're getting better at embracing it, but it's a hard thing to push back against when its that engrained.