Hacker News Reader

Comment by lumberjack | Hacker News Reader

>With good education, even just K-8, people will have the ability and resources to understand that they can vote with their feet and move to where the economic opportunities are.

With good education you might understand that there is a non-insignificant relocation cost that not everyone can afford.

View on HN

Well, no one's saying it's easy to pick up and move. But sometimes it's just necessary.

Even if it's necessary, how do you manage to move if you have zero dollars, empty tank (or no car), constant calls from collectors (if your phone is hooked up)...

Sometimes it's not hard, but impossible.

I think the point is that whatever aid is provided should help people leave, not help them stay.

The point is, if you aren't going to do BIG, at least revive the 'new deal'. Unemployment shouldn't mean you don't have a job, it should mean you have the default job; sure that job might be underemployment and you might be underpaid relative to your skills, but you still have a job, a way of actually making the ends meet. Let's also finish the job of providing the other basic rights that a society expecting people to live in a city instead of carving their own village out of the wilderness should. Basic food, shelter, security, and health/death care.

You have to wonder then how is it that Mexico's poorer rural farmers are able to migrate over to the USA and start from scratch in a new country?

Deep family and community support system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com