Is there a universal Appalachian economy? Some of you people talk as if the entire Appalachian range were Mingo County. The factors that make the Shenandoah Valley Republican are incredibly different from coal country.
Well, the Shenandoah actually was never part of the Appalachian Regional Commission (which was a political construct anyway)
https://www.arc.gov/research/MapsofAppalachia.asp?MAP_ID=149I think when Atlas says "Appalachia" they are defaulting to the coal mining, or increasingly, the former coal mining areas. Besides coal mining, there are remnants of the lumber industry here and it's been a magnet for the prison industry (which has been hurt by the sentencing reform movement).
As for what their alternative development might involve, well the potential workforce here has poor education levels, poor health, they're older than average. The infrastructure is substandard in part because it's hard to maintain given the terrain and declining population and tax base, like Detroit, it once had a much larger population, so there is abandoned everything here--industrial, residential, commercial, coal waste, scarred landscape. It all works against redevelopment, even for recreational opportunities as they're looking for more pristine locales.
So, after three more bad years for coal and a currently disastrous one, what is their economic interest? Four years with fewer people and the people left getting even older. There's been a wave of hospital closures in the region. The prison gravy train seems to have ended. So, what is there to vote for now?
Poll
