Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining

[Badger]

I have empathy for their situation. Not the deplorable way they respond to it.

Why would it matter anyway? These people supposedly hate special snowflakes and easily triggered politically correct liberals. Can dish it out but can't take it? I'm just "telling it like it is", the very quality they love about Trump.

I agree with you. I’m tired of the pussy footing and skating around that we do when it comes to uneducated white people because we can’t hurt their feelings. They have no problem getting in the gutter and expressing their disgust with affirmative action, Hispanic immigration, same-sex marriage, or any other policy that don’t like but they can’t handle the truth about an industry that is basically a ing death sentence. Stop trying to pander to ignorant people and tell them the truth.

The more I read posts from liberals like this the more I think leaving the Democratic Party was a good choice.

True enough.  

What truths should the inner-city poor be told?  That their poverty is, largely, the decision of many young single females to bear children outside of marriage, by a male who is not likely to be prepared to act as a husband, father, and family provider (roles that provide family stability)?  That the negative conditions in impoverished urban communities are, in no small measure, made worse (if not caused) by the young male residents' criminal behavior within that community.  Why is it OK to lecture the unemployed coal-miners about their "bigotry", but OK to allow the anti-white sentiments routinely expressed in inner-city communities to go unchallenged?  Why are the inner-city poor that have no high school education, no training (often despite opportunities for such training), but who vote Democratic with regularity viewed by folks like RFK1968 as "low information voters"?

Aaand this is why I'm not a Republican, either.

Whenever we find a group of people who the government and our society has completely failed them, for generations, and now uplifting them from that situation is extremely difficult, the knee-jerk reaction is "Oh they're just lazy.", "Oh, they don't want our help.", "They need to address their own problems as a community first before we can help".

It's a sneering, condescending attitude that enrages me when I see it in either party.

I don't disagree with this.  I don't advocate the lecturing and sneering.  It serves no useful purpose. 

I DO think that the decline in family formation and family stability IS, however, an important factor in both urban and rural poverty.  The likely long-term outlook and long-term outcome of a child in a low-income family with two (2) marital parents in the home, in general, is so much more positive than long-term outlooks and outcomes of non-marital families that it amazes me that we have to educate folks as to the advantage.  This is not to say that the worst two-parent marital family, riddled with abuse and dysfunction, is better than the best single-parent family with a positive role model as head of household, but it is very much true in the aggregate.  Rural AND urban poverty is, very much, driven by out-of-wedlock births and the decreased stability of non-marital households (again, in the aggregate). 

Incidentally, one reason I am for single-payer healthcare is that it has the potential to stop the practice of folks deliberately not getting married so that delivery of a child can be funded by Medicaid; the present system PUNISHES poor married folks who are in the situation of having a spouse being pregnant but being up a creek as far as medical coverage for the child goes.

Fuzzy, I think you were making a mistake many conservatives do by mixing up cause and effect. The explosion of single-parent households in the Inner City, both African American and Hispanic, have next to nothing to do with the welfare system. What really happened is the industrialization took away steady working class income jobs from such neighborhoods. Sadly, even in the seventies and eighties the whole first fire last hired situation came to roost. Not to mention where the focus of the industrialization was in heavily African American communities like Detroit, Gary, East St Louis, Etc.

The end result is that it made a generation of Inner City young black males unmarriageable because there was no economic system by which they could support a family. That same phenomenon spread to Inner City Hispanic communities soon afterwards, and now has started praying on Rural white communities we're out of Whitlock boroughs are dramatically growing and number for much the same reason.

I guess the big difference is that blacks and Latinos have long blamed, rightly in my view, economical E2 yes are overwhelmingly white. Rural White in contrast seem to primarily blame blacks and Latinos, and take a tax on Elite whites as an attack on all White's. Too many rural working-class whites in hard economic Straits still find more in common with purported billionaire Donald Trump then they do equally economically challenged blacks and Latinos on racial and cultural identity. And that's just damn wrong

[Badger]

I have empathy for their situation. Not the deplorable way they respond to it.

Why would it matter anyway? These people supposedly hate special snowflakes and easily triggered politically correct liberals. Can dish it out but can't take it? I'm just "telling it like it is", the very quality they love about Trump.

I agree with you. I’m tired of the pussy footing and skating around that we do when it comes to uneducated white people because we can’t hurt their feelings. They have no problem getting in the gutter and expressing their disgust with affirmative action, Hispanic immigration, same-sex marriage, or any other policy that don’t like but they can’t handle the truth about an industry that is basically a ing death sentence. Stop trying to pander to ignorant people and tell them the truth.

The more I read posts from liberals like this the more I think leaving the Democratic Party was a good choice.

True enough.  

What truths should the inner-city poor be told?  That their poverty is, largely, the decision of many young single females to bear children outside of marriage, by a male who is not likely to be prepared to act as a husband, father, and family provider (roles that provide family stability)?  That the negative conditions in impoverished urban communities are, in no small measure, made worse (if not caused) by the young male residents' criminal behavior within that community.  Why is it OK to lecture the unemployed coal-miners about their "bigotry", but OK to allow the anti-white sentiments routinely expressed in inner-city communities to go unchallenged?  Why are the inner-city poor that have no high school education, no training (often despite opportunities for such training), but who vote Democratic with regularity viewed by folks like RFK1968 as "low information voters"?

Aaand this is why I'm not a Republican, either.

Whenever we find a group of people who the government and our society has completely failed them, for generations, and now uplifting them from that situation is extremely difficult, the knee-jerk reaction is "Oh they're just lazy.", "Oh, they don't want our help.", "They need to address their own problems as a community first before we can help".

It's a sneering, condescending attitude that enrages me when I see it in either party.

I don't disagree with this.  I don't advocate the lecturing and sneering.  It serves no useful purpose. 

I DO think that the decline in family formation and family stability IS, however, an important factor in both urban and rural poverty.  The likely long-term outlook and long-term outcome of a child in a low-income family with two (2) marital parents in the home, in general, is so much more positive than long-term outlooks and outcomes of non-marital families that it amazes me that we have to educate folks as to the advantage.  This is not to say that the worst two-parent marital family, riddled with abuse and dysfunction, is better than the best single-parent family with a positive role model as head of household, but it is very much true in the aggregate.  Rural AND urban poverty is, very much, driven by out-of-wedlock births and the decreased stability of non-marital households (again, in the aggregate). 

Incidentally, one reason I am for single-payer healthcare is that it has the potential to stop the practice of folks deliberately not getting married so that delivery of a child can be funded by Medicaid; the present system PUNISHES poor married folks who are in the situation of having a spouse being pregnant but being up a creek as far as medical coverage for the child goes.

Fuzzy, I think you were making a mistake many conservatives do by mixing up cause and effect. The explosion of single-parent households in the Inner City, both African American and Hispanic, have next to nothing to do with the welfare system. What really happened is the industrialization took away steady working class income jobs from such neighborhoods. Sadly, even in the seventies and eighties the whole first fire last hired situation came to roost. Not to mention where the focus of the industrialization was in heavily African American communities like Detroit, Gary, East St Louis, Etc.

The end result is that it made a generation of Inner City young black males unmarriageable because there was no economic system by which they could support a family. That same phenomenon spread to Inner City Hispanic communities soon afterwards, and now has started praying on Rural white communities we're out of Whitlock boroughs are dramatically growing and number for much the same reason.

I guess the big difference is that blacks and Latinos have long blamed, rightly in my view, economical E2 yes are overwhelmingly white. Rural White in contrast seem to primarily blame blacks and Latinos, and take a tax on Elite whites as an attack on all White's. Too many rural working-class whites in hard economic Straits still find more in common with purported billionaire Donald Trump then they do equally economically challenged blacks and Latinos on racial and cultural identity. And that's just damn wrong

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

This article forms the basis of many of my views on the relationship between the disintegration of the family and poverty.  (It's also where I get my "signature" from.) 

I remember the article quite well when it came out. It was clear then, and a hundred times clearer now, Quayle and his conservative ilk were--are today still are--dead wrong. The idea that our of wedlock births are significantly increased by pop culture like Murphy Brown and hip-hop lyrics is downright laughable. While it's true acceptance of out-of-wedlock births becomes more acceptable as it becomes more common, the root cause is still fundamentally, overwhelmingly, de-industrialization and income gains going overwhelmingly towards the elite leaving a growing underclass of young males un-marriageable.

(A quick aside about Murphy Brown: She was a successful newscaster who decided to keep her baby after getting pregnant from a one night stand with her ex-husband. How in hell is anything she did do anything wrong?? What was she supposed to do? Join a convent after divorce? Have an abortion?!? Oh, and no one said anything about her ex-husband being at fault.)

Conservatives want to close their ears and deny nearly 40 years of economic dislocation for young males caused by policies they support, and try to shift the blame on scary cultural changes in music and non-Victorian sexual mores they fetishize (at least in public).

Reality is a demanding bitch, and gives no ground here.

[Badger]

I have empathy for their situation. Not the deplorable way they respond to it.

Why would it matter anyway? These people supposedly hate special snowflakes and easily triggered politically correct liberals. Can dish it out but can't take it? I'm just "telling it like it is", the very quality they love about Trump.

I agree with you. I’m tired of the pussy footing and skating around that we do when it comes to uneducated white people because we can’t hurt their feelings. They have no problem getting in the gutter and expressing their disgust with affirmative action, Hispanic immigration, same-sex marriage, or any other policy that don’t like but they can’t handle the truth about an industry that is basically a ing death sentence. Stop trying to pander to ignorant people and tell them the truth.

The more I read posts from liberals like this the more I think leaving the Democratic Party was a good choice.

True enough.  

What truths should the inner-city poor be told?  That their poverty is, largely, the decision of many young single females to bear children outside of marriage, by a male who is not likely to be prepared to act as a husband, father, and family provider (roles that provide family stability)?  That the negative conditions in impoverished urban communities are, in no small measure, made worse (if not caused) by the young male residents' criminal behavior within that community.  Why is it OK to lecture the unemployed coal-miners about their "bigotry", but OK to allow the anti-white sentiments routinely expressed in inner-city communities to go unchallenged?  Why are the inner-city poor that have no high school education, no training (often despite opportunities for such training), but who vote Democratic with regularity viewed by folks like RFK1968 as "low information voters"?

Aaand this is why I'm not a Republican, either.

Whenever we find a group of people who the government and our society has completely failed them, for generations, and now uplifting them from that situation is extremely difficult, the knee-jerk reaction is "Oh they're just lazy.", "Oh, they don't want our help.", "They need to address their own problems as a community first before we can help".

It's a sneering, condescending attitude that enrages me when I see it in either party.

I don't disagree with this.  I don't advocate the lecturing and sneering.  It serves no useful purpose. 

I DO think that the decline in family formation and family stability IS, however, an important factor in both urban and rural poverty.  The likely long-term outlook and long-term outcome of a child in a low-income family with two (2) marital parents in the home, in general, is so much more positive than long-term outlooks and outcomes of non-marital families that it amazes me that we have to educate folks as to the advantage.  This is not to say that the worst two-parent marital family, riddled with abuse and dysfunction, is better than the best single-parent family with a positive role model as head of household, but it is very much true in the aggregate.  Rural AND urban poverty is, very much, driven by out-of-wedlock births and the decreased stability of non-marital households (again, in the aggregate). 

Incidentally, one reason I am for single-payer healthcare is that it has the potential to stop the practice of folks deliberately not getting married so that delivery of a child can be funded by Medicaid; the present system PUNISHES poor married folks who are in the situation of having a spouse being pregnant but being up a creek as far as medical coverage for the child goes.

Fuzzy, I think you were making a mistake many conservatives do by mixing up cause and effect. The explosion of single-parent households in the Inner City, both African American and Hispanic, have next to nothing to do with the welfare system. What really happened is the industrialization took away steady working class income jobs from such neighborhoods. Sadly, even in the seventies and eighties the whole first fire last hired situation came to roost. Not to mention where the focus of the industrialization was in heavily African American communities like Detroit, Gary, East St Louis, Etc.

The end result is that it made a generation of Inner City young black males unmarriageable because there was no economic system by which they could support a family. That same phenomenon spread to Inner City Hispanic communities soon afterwards, and now has started praying on Rural white communities we're out of Whitlock boroughs are dramatically growing and number for much the same reason.

I guess the big difference is that blacks and Latinos have long blamed, rightly in my view, economical E2 yes are overwhelmingly white. Rural White in contrast seem to primarily blame blacks and Latinos, and take a tax on Elite whites as an attack on all White's. Too many rural working-class whites in hard economic Straits still find more in common with purported billionaire Donald Trump then they do equally economically challenged blacks and Latinos on racial and cultural identity. And that's just damn wrong

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

This article forms the basis of many of my views on the relationship between the disintegration of the family and poverty.  (It's also where I get my "signature" from.) 

I remember the article quite well when it came out. It was clear then, and a hundred times clearer now, Quayle and his conservative ilk were--are today still are--dead wrong. The idea that our of wedlock births are significantly increased by pop culture like Murphy Brown and hip-hop lyrics is downright laughable. While it's true acceptance of out-of-wedlock births becomes more acceptable as it becomes more common, the root cause is still fundamentally, overwhelmingly, de-industrialization and income gains going overwhelmingly towards the elite leaving a growing underclass of young males un-marriageable.

(A quick aside about Murphy Brown: She was a successful newscaster who decided to keep her baby after getting pregnant from a one night stand with her ex-husband. How in hell is anything she did do anything wrong?? What was she supposed to do? Join a convent after divorce? Have an abortion?!? Oh, and no one said anything about her ex-husband being at fault.)

Conservatives want to close their ears and deny nearly 40 years of economic dislocation for young males caused by policies they support, and try to shift the blame on scary cultural changes in music and non-Victorian sexual mores they fetishize (at least in public).

Reality is a demanding bitch, and gives no ground here.

I certainly don't support a number of policies that have caused economic dislocation, and I don't deny the role of these policies in families ending up below the poverty line.  But the article is entirely correct in that the decline in family formation increase in family disintegration is, very much, a factor in families (A) entering poverty, and (B) remaining in poverty.  

"Dan Quayle" is, really, a side point in that article.  The point of the article is that we, as a society, have shifted our paradigm from one that focuses primarily on the needs of children (stability and continuity) that compels a family to form, and to stay together, to one that focuses on the needs of adults (options, choices, personal fulfillment, frustration with a partner) that drives one or both of the adults in a family with children to divorce.  The article also points out that this came about, in part, by removing the stigma of divorce, out-of-wedlock childbirth, etc.  "Pop Culture" is something of a side issue, it has been a factor in driving these trends, but not the only one.

Families can't prosper in poverty. A unit that gets married has no greater chance to escape poverty without at least working class jobs to support them. Create jobs, families can follow. Expect moralizing to create stable families and thereby reduce poverty, and you'll achieve neither.

Cause and effect, FB. Don't mix cause and effect.