After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all.
There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that are walking distance to poor areas, but for the most part, those are the lucky ones, and the unlucky ones are walking distance to nothing.
I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area where I am totally dependent on rides to anywhere.
The advantage of the rural poverty accrues solely to the wealthier, who don't have to look at the poor as much as the urban wealthy and middle classes do. And perhaps that is why we are kinder (well, ok, slightly less unkind) to the deeply poor here, because we actually see them regularly rather than having locked them away so securely we can actually trick ourselves into thinking we don't have them here.
It is deeply ironic that you came to the opposite conclusion by accepting superficial appearances. The trick of hiding the poor by means of car culture sure worked on you.
A $2k car is a lot less than higher average taxes and housing costs.
I was thinking of the rural South, where maintaining some degree of radical poverty even in the face of all kinds of modern development has been a strange national sport of sorts for hundreds of years. The OP seemed to be pitting southern red state rural vs northern cities based on their list.
$2000 is a lot for plenty of poor people. And it's not even that easy to get a reliable car at that price anymore, you know. I'm glad it's hard for you to imagine that, but having to constantly either deal with the lack of a car (which usually means being unable to get to work, and thus earn money to feed the car...) or struggle to keep a car (worrying about a surprise bill) is a huge, huge pain for the poor.
Public transportation? Public transportation to where? Down the road to the grocery store? Someone is about to wait at a bus stop outside the projects to go 500 feet? Just ride a bike or walk.
Can’t get to work? Someone will pick you up and bring you. Overslept? Expect that same person dragging you out of your bed.
You can find shelter for less than $100/month.
Need food? Go out back and get it.
If I ever was destitute, I’d go back to the rural South in a heartbeat and it blows my mind how many people don’t do that very thing.
Bottom line, I’m 99% sure I’ve a better understanding and closer relationship to extreme poverty than you and you have no idea what you’re talking about.
And despite the fact that we have double the poverty rate of NYC it's nowhere near as apparent.
If you own your hovel outright you can be incredibly far below the poverty line and be "okish" for some value of "ok". Especially if you have a number of people banding together on the same property (very common in rural areas) - some on SSI or SSD, some on welfare, some making some money on odd jobs.
You can't really have that in the city or near it; the land is too valuable.
This is why so many commuters forego cities' public transit in favor of driving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car...
You lived in rural America and didn't experience families whose only source of meat was what they hunted? Dude, come on. Or families living in ancient trailer homes/campers?
As for the camps, these places aren't really visible or publicized, I bet plenty of locals don't know about our camp town (or choose not to know). It's way out of town and not near any roads.
There are boatloads of programs to support the urban poor. I donate to many of them. If you need a hand up in Portland, it's there outstretched and straining to reach you. What we have in the streets are not poor people who need help. They are sick, or mentally disabled people. And some are just truly bad people.
Growing up, my own family's primary (at times only) source of protein was fishing and hunting. We somehow struggled through without being degenerates.
Nah, you may need a ride every once in a great while, but in most counties you can get by just walking or biking so long as you live in the county seat. Most services are still consolidated within a couple square miles.
The bigger difference is that you can be incredibly poor and still have a house. We didn't have utilities a decent portion of the time growing up because we were so poor, house was in condemn-worthy condition for most of the time we lived there (roof, basement), but my mom's mortgage was, and still is, around $200 a month.
These places have a lot of violence, social issues, drug overdoses, etc. They may not have homelessness at the same level because housing is cheaper and in many cases involves a trailer or an old house in disrepair.
Got it.
It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet.
Social problems exist everywhere, but that's no reason to give up on having pleasant and usable public spaces.
This is your alternative.
/s Wouldn't it make more sense for them to ramshackle up together in bobbies place down the road? I hear he's got the good meth.
Red states are filled with poverty/inequity it’s just more spread out.
Drive through the derelict areas in rural America and you will see similar issues.
Because urban areas tend to be blue, and urban areas attract more poverty (costs are higher, easier to get into poverty; but also there are plenty of public services around that make it "easier" to be poor). Poverty is also just much more visible in areas with denser populations.
I assure you that there's plenty of poverty in right-leaning areas in the US. They're just usually not as visible.
Crime has been dropping for decades, and cities are safer than ever. Hell, San Francisco is one of the least violent cities in the country.
The sad thing is that Sinclair is not pushing this narrative in some of the most crime ridden cities, so the sentiment in those places is actually higher.
All speculation, but worth considering nonetheless?
Crime is actually down, but crime reporting is considerably up. It drives local news viewership, which drives their advertising revenue. People don't watch news for good news. Because of this trend, people also think that crime is at all time highs.
Crime is higher in republican controlled areas because poverty, as a whole, is higher, and assistance programs are slashed. Crime (excluding white collar) is primarily driven by poverty. Republican controlled areas do also police more aggressively, and tend to heavily over police particular groups, but that hasn't lowered their crime rate, and has likely made it worse, by further pushing those groups into poverty.
FWIW, I work on a national news media app and advertising CPMs are down considerably year over year thanks to Apple's ATT update, so advertising is not the driver for these business as much as it once was. Many are looking to subscription revenue to fill the void, but even that's not enough to cover the loss.
I know less about the linear (TV) and print distribution side of the business, but my guess is they're also struggling given that their target demo is getting older and older while younger cohorts aren't adopting these legacy distribution channels. https://mobiledevmemo.com/att-is-killing-advertising-perform...
You're correct in that "if it bleeds it leads"; people are fixated by bad news.
I can say anecdotally after living in both NYC and right-leaning rural NY and PA areas where the crime and poverty rates are statistically higher that it's cleaner and these issues aren't as apparent, so something isn't adding up.
A democrat could have genuinely good policy that would make an enormous difference for a lot of republican voters. But stances on social issues like gay marriage, gun control, etc, will make them unviable as a candidate. If they switch and support these issues, then they'll lose their primary.
“Why doesn’t the urban coalition simply win rural votes?” is a silly question. They would win rural votes by prioritizing different issues and then the issues important to urban citizens would be less likely to get addressed.
Also, notice how I said political parties and not an urban coalition: these are not the same, and their needs are different. There are rural democratic voices, and they do engage in these issues, but the wider party does not seem as interested in this. And that's why they will continue to loose rural voters in the house this November. They don't care as much to spend the time and resources on these campaigns, and this whole fight against the electoral college and how seats are dived up among states is a ruse to further consolidate power while abdicating accountability on a national level.
Also, when democrats spend money on an extreme opponent campaign (which is diabolical) to make their own party look better, people see through that. It's just sick and could severely backfire on everyone. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/dem...
But you’re missing my point by ignoring coalitions to focus on parties.
Imagine a religion that is a mix of democrats and republicans. Imagine Saturday is a holy day for them where they try not to engage with the modern world as much.
If elections were only held on Saturday this would hurt their community.
This is why farm subsidies are plentiful for example, neither party wants to claw those back and face the consequences.
It’s also why social security is “the third rail of American politics”. Republican or democrat, no senior wants their checks messed with. And having elections on a Tuesday in November is a fine time for seniors and retirees to vote even if it sucks for other people.
Massachusetts does the same thing but from Boston to places like Fall River.
Homeless are being bussed to SF without any housing arrangements.
It is the state's prerogative to distribute this as it seems fit.
You know what’s demonstrably shown to improve moral and connectedness of a society? Being forced to live next to people who are worse off than you so that your self-interest is to vote and advocate on their behalf so that you’re not living in a shithole.
Sure some do contribute in a qualitative way to culture and social functions, but not as much economically.
Yes, I'm often accused of being an un-empathic robot, but I can't help looking at this in a macroeconomic sense. Just trying to be intellectually honest with what I see around me in the world.
Results indicate that voucher receipt causes a large increase in violent crime arrests for male recipients. They do not, however, indicate that vouchers have an effect on women or on other types of crime. Specifically, we find a statistically significant increase in violent crime arrests for the overall population and male recipients alone. There are no statistically significant effects for female recipients alone. This dichotomy in the effects for male and female housing voucher recipients is consistent with previous research on the effect of the MTO experiment on juvenile criminal outcomes (Kling et al., 2005, Sciandra et al., 2013, Zuberi, 2012, and Clampet-Lundquist et al., 2011).
At this point, Florida and Texas have record net in-flux migration from California. Can't wait to see this competition completely kick California's butt. It is a shame, I am stuck here, I'd move otherwise. With all my heart, I want to improve California. I just don't see a way.