re: Visiting family in Texas this week. Down here from MN

"You know what winning the rat race makes you? I'm sure a smart fella like you can figure it out."

Yes, it makes you the winning rat and not the dumb arse rat living in a mobile home with no underpinning and the front door missing. And y'all know that is a pretty standard sight in rural America......

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You undercut your own argument that rural people can’t cut it in the city. First of all, you over generalize about a group of people. Secondly, you can’t farm or ranch in areas that are largely paved. That was my original point. Third, some smart people prefer to live in the country by choice. You paint with too broad a brush, IMO.

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Obviously broad generalizations are not intellectually honest. Of course there are many people in rural America who choose to live in rural America and are more than capable of making a living anywhere. But I don't think this is the rule and I know for certain in my own experience it is not the rule. I have friends in rural America who are brilliant and making some serious bank...but for every one of those there are 100 trailers with 2 or 3 kids in them living on the government teat and the parents are too sorry to better their own lives or that of their kids. Again, most conservatives are MORE than willing to accept this premise about people in the inner city living in squalor on the government teat...that they are too sorry to better themselves and their progeny....yet many are unwilling to admit that a person in rural America is far more statistically likely to live in poverty and receive assistance from the taxpayer than people in metropolitan areas are. Many of those people in rural America would not be living in poverty and on the teat if they did a similar amount of work in a city that they do in the country....but they are not driven to better themselves. They are scared to leave their hometowns.

This nation was built by crazy people....when a european told his neighbor "I am going to America to live" his neighbor's inevitable reply was "you are crazy!". The amount or risk tolerance needed to enable that crazy person to actually immigrate is what made this country what it is....and people in rural america who won't better themselves there or move where they can are the same as the old european too scared to risk it all on a dream....and rural America suffers from this lack of drive and risk taking because the people dwelling there are, in large part, either scared, ignorant, or just damned sorry and wont better their lot in life.