Lima, Ohio: A portrait of not getting by in the Rust Belt

[dead0man]

The first paragraph has the answer.

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Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

[dead0man]

The first paragraph has the answer.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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 where might those jobs be? Should the poor pack up and move to San Francisco?

North Dakota would be number 1, but there are more than a few options.  SF would be one of the last places I'd suggest....unless you were homeless

[dead0man]

Poor people should move to where the jobs are.  And don't give me the BS line that people are too poor to move.

People are too poor to move.

yep, a BS line.  Nice Godwinning too!

[dead0man]

Right, not too poor to leave, too stuck to leave.  As somebody that GTFO of a sh**tty place to improve my life, I have little sympathy.  Perhaps I should have more, but I still contend that you can't be too poor to move.  There might be other commitments and mental hangups keeping you in place, but poverty isn't one of them.


edit-and that's not to say it isn't hard or scary, it certainly can be.  It's also fun and exciting.  Getting to meet new people, new cultures, new food, new ideas.  These are good things that make us more rounded people.

[dead0man]

Again, it can be hard, but not impossible.  You're a smart guy, you can come with some ways around that.  Perhaps you'll have to sleep in your car for a week or take out a sh**tty payday loan if you can't borrow a couple hundred bucks from somebody.  Yeah, you might have to sell your sh**t and buy new sh**t at the new place.  Yeah, you might have to leave some of your family with relatives for a month. 

Yes, you can keep coming up with hurdles and eventually you'll find that one situation in a thousand where the person really is, at least temporarily, too poor to move.  But for the vast majority of people, they aren't too poor, they are too scared (lazy, attached, whatever) to move.

[dead0man]

Nothing fantastic.  I grew up in my only little corner of the rust belt surrounded by closing factories and urban blight in the StLouis area and moved to Atlanta after a couple of years of failing at community college (me and classrooms don't get along) and after 6+ months of manual labor (sheetrocker) joined the USAF.  Now I've got a good job (great job if you consider how much I make for how little I work), own a home (well, own a mortgage) and have enough toys to keep me happy (4 kids are expensive, otherwise I'd have most of the toys I want and will in a few years when they're gone).

I had no money or very many things when I left home.  Everything I owned fit in the hatchback of a 82 RX7.  But I had a job lined up and a place to stay for a few weeks until I got my feet on the ground.  It wasn't always an easy trip, but it wasn't always dull either.

[dead0man]

Yes, that's exactly what I said.  Those circumstances are the exact same ones everybody has.

[dead0man]

Yes, that's exactly what I said.  Those circumstances are the exact same ones everybody has.

It's just that you are falling into the "I did it therefore everybody else ever can do it" fallacy. If everybody had a job lined up and a place to stay for a few weeks then yeah, they could just up and move.

Dude, follow the train backwards.  DC Al asked me what my story was, I said what it was.  I never said it was the same for everybody, I didn't even imply that it was typical.  I admitted I had some advantages.  You cherry picked a couple of those advantages and made some narrative in your head that I was saying everybody had the same situation I had.  I didn't do fall into that fallacy, you did.

dead0, Ohio is bleeding population like crazy. Texas is being overwhelmed with Midwesterners looking for work. The people who are not moving shouldn't be blamed for clinging to the lives they've already worked their asses off for just because they lost the arbitrary geography/prosperity lottery eventually (say that five times fast). Their kids will probably gtfo though. I got waay out, obviously, and my other siblings ended up in, well, Texas.

I'm not blaming anybody for not leaving.  I'm just saying if you don't want to be poor in Rustbelt OH, you're going to have to move to where there is work.  Just like people have always done.  I don't give two sh**ts if some of them chose to stay.  I even gave some valid, non lack of resources reasons why some people would stay.  And I'm really only talking about the younger people anyway.  Obviously a 54 year old isn't going to move to N.Dakota to work the oil fields, but his kids should, unless they'd rather sit at home and bitch and regret, which is fine too.

[dead0man]

Six Flags in StLouis is the whitest place in the entire area (except for some of the expensive enclaves in the west county...Chesterfield, Clayton...others).  Do black people go to amusement parks at anywhere near the same rate crackers do?

(did you enjoy the Screamin Eagle, Tom's Twister and the Highland Fling?...I've been to that Six Flags like 30 times....good times)

[dead0man]

If you're bored, take a look at some Census demographic data from a few random rural counties within a few hours drive of St Louis. In rural Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Kentucky you'll find a lot of white people, which helps to explain the park's demographics.

I've got plenty of family in those places, and yes they are very white, especially compared to the rural south.

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Hey, I'm one of those tall, blonde(ish), better educated Germans...I'm offended!  (not really)