The first paragraph has the answer.Poor people should move to where the jobs are. And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.
And many of these people vote GOP, and sit there and beat themselves up because the reason for their plight is so obviously because they aren't tugging on their bootstraps hard enough. The toxic rhetoric of the ruling classes puts poors in this insane environment where they think it's all a matter of working harder, and to be a poor is wrong, and if times get tough they just need to be looking up at the McMansion on the hills and dream harder.
Pragmatic progressive economic policy is vital for these rust belt/coal towns.
I don't want our great nation riddled with ghost towns and people moving. Every state in this union should have opportunity throughout. We need two things:
2) Planned debt-free education mobility. I'm not talking full ride scholarships. Associates degrees would make all the difference. The ability for a dental hygenist to become a paralegal at no cost would change society. For bachelors, a forward thinking grant fund run by the federal government, analyzing the economic future of the job market for the next 5 years, and then offering more incentives for people to move into those fields.
Mobility is the key word. We need to help struggling people move to the jobs, move to the better educational institutions, and away from vanishing industries like coal.
Pretty much all of this. The problem is as it has been since time immemorial, though. That problem is that you can lead a horse to water but cannot make him drink.
If the right person came along at the right time, would this work? Or are the the Carbon and Rust Belt areas too caught up in some sort of internalized karmic force that makes them (and for that matter will make them for the rest of our lives and perhaps the lives of the last of our descendants born during our lives) complain in vain while "clinging to guns and religion"? And if so, how should we towards them? Should we feel sorry for them for being poor? Should we feel grateful or proud of them for trying to uphold ancient traditions despite its futility (and beyond this, many of their young people are out doing things that us educated progressive folks should be doing ourselves or should help in doing)? Should we feel resentful because of all the bad ideas we feel they are forcing upon us while they complain in vain about their own lives? Should we simply be callous and indifferent towards them because they have such hard lives, spin their wheels and yet do nothing to help their problems?
