50 Years into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The sad fact is that McDowell County needs to downsize even more.  That's the biggest failure of our various anti-poverty programs, they fail to give people the assistance they need to successfully get out of communities whose economic reason for being has ended, yet they give them just enough to survive and produce another generation that will end up in the same trap their parents are in.   Back before coal mining began in the 1880s, the population of McDowell was under 5,000.  I don't think it needs to get that small, but if they transition to a rural tourism economy, they probably don't need but about 10,000 people in the county, less than half of what is there now.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The sad fact is that McDowell County needs to downsize even more.  That's the biggest failure of our various anti-poverty programs, they fail to give people the assistance they need to successfully get out of communities whose economic reason for being has ended, yet they give them just enough to survive and produce another generation that will end up in the same trap their parents are in.   Back before coal mining began in the 1880s, the population of McDowell was under 5,000.  I don't think it needs to get that small, but if they transition to a rural tourism economy, they probably don't need but about 10,000 people in the county, less than half of what is there now.

It would incredibly hard, even in New Deal times, to sell people on the idea of a welfare program for helping people move to new cities.

True.  If the solution were easy politically, it would have been implemented long before.  Tho in a sense that is what the homesteading program was all about.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Do you understand the concept of community? It's incredibly inhumane to suggest that McDowell County residents should be split-off from their friends and family for the sake of saving money on transfer payments.

Is it not more inhumane to leave people plastered in poverty with piss poor prospects of escaping it unless they escape the area as well?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I agree with all that Badger.  It's why if we want to solve the problem of these pockets of locational poverty, urban or rural, we would need to offer a better safety net for those who do leave for a better opportunity elsewhere than we currently do.