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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Yea, you're getting at a very unpopular reality that, if spoken would sink anyone's political career, so politicians will never say it: Many of these little towns probably just shouldn't exist. Nobody wants to admit that a community has failed. Go for a stroll through the Rust Belt or any other economically devastated area. People still live there, despite the misery! You drive through, and it's just old houses and the occasional Walmart vampirically sucking out what little wealth remains. There's no real industry anywhere. You wonder what do all these people living here do for a living?

Instead of trying to prop up obsolete mining communities with hopeless economic support, it would be better to 1. focus on retraining/re-skilling and 2. send fully-subsidized moving vans to help people physically get away from the misery.

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> You wonder what do all these people living here do for a living?

Most of those people either a) commute a long distance to scrape by and lose a significant chunk of their earnings on gas because they own a 30 year old hoopty of a truck or b) live off of welfare. That’s how a lot of these small communities continue to exist. People can’t afford to move out and obviously don’t want to commit suicide (nor should they).

Having come from a small town, I don’t think these people will move even if it’s paid for. Many rural folk have these warped views of more populace towns and cities because of the warped political rhetoric and constant bombardment of negative news coverage.

It’s an extremely difficult problem that I don’t personally believe has a solution because you have to have willing participation (some will, but most won’t).

> People can’t afford to move out

Why not? There are good-paying jobs in financially functional towns and cities reasonably close by. The people who grow up in those towns can afford to live there.

Sure, they're not going to be able to upsize without a mortgage by selling the 1400 sqft 100-year-old house on a lot in a decaying ghost town. But most people don't start out with an already-paid-for home.

Because very few companies offer relocation. Living on welfare in a paid for trailer on land your ancestors lived on is much more appealing than moving without relocation for worse lifestyle in a rental in low wage work that will result in a lower effective income in a higher cost of living area.

People are often dumb, but they're not insane and over years they do respond to incentives.

>Nobody wants to admit that a community has failed. Go for a stroll through the Rust Belt or any other economically devastated area. People still live there, despite the misery!

What you call misery, others call home, and have an attachment to the land.

Go for a stroll through San Francisco and see people living in tents and defecating on the sidewalk. Maybe everyone should move to California to commute hours to work (because you can't afford to live anywhere near your job). That sounds awesome!

What you call misery, others call home, and have an attachment to the land.

Okay, so now what? Not say the quiet part out loud about how the area has economically failed? What you typed is a retort, but I don't hear a lot of solution, unless the suggestion is that a solution is not needed. I guess what I am saying is that I don't understand what point your driving toward with your comment.

The world population also had an attachment to its land but were uprooted and transported and mingled and spread all over the world and has resulted in significant economic development. Get on with the program , it is the new reality.

It sucks and only a minority of anti-social people think structuring an economy that way is desirable. If you poll Asians, well under 10% say they would migrate to another country if they had the choice. Even in sub-Saharan Africa only 1/3 of people would move: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-mi...

My large, tightly knit family emigrated in the last generation (to Canada, the US, and Australia) and it was devastating. We went from living in the same city to living on three different continents. Life is materially better, but there’s no replacement for kinship ties.

For an opposite story, my family emigrated from the Mid East to Europe then USA and it was by far the best thing that could have ever happened. My QOL would have been so much worse in Mid East, and even in Europe (developed, Northern Europe at that), vs. what it is today in the US. It's the number one thing I am most grateful for.

Materially things are better, no doubt. It helps that me and most if my cousins ended up as affluent professionals. But in some ways quality of life is much worse, being separated from our family and culture.

I think my mom never really perceived it as an upgrade. My dad did, but as he gets older it’s getting tougher. Professional networks disperse, and he doesn’t really have family in the country. His relationship with his brother (who actually immigrated to NY recently) didn’t really survive 30 years of separation. My kids will probably never meet all of their cousins.

I totally get the folks in rural Ohio that don’t want to emigrate to the coasts for jobs. They’re going to be facing significant disruptions in their family networks. And it’s not like they’ll enjoy a quantum leap in living standards and social status elsewhere. They’ll just be at the bottom of the totem pole somewhere unfamiliar.

The small rust belt and Appalachian towns we're talking about are not much different than the streets in San Francisco in terms of their social ills.

| and have an attachment to the land.

This is understandable, but does not always make sense. After all, these towns were created by European immigrants who left their homeland of hundreds of years, their language, customs, foods, climate etc for a better opportunity. These towns had sizable black populations who left southern towns for the same reasons.

Before Europeans, north america was settled by many different tribes who had migrated from eurasia . Not to mention different groups of humans also migrated from Africa all over the world, because they saw good reason to do so.

At some point you have to cut your losses, or seek a better life. Not saying it is easy, but this option should be pointed out to anyone in untenable situations.

> What you call misery, others call home, and have an attachment to the land.

Mostly, people aren't moving to better communities because they can't.

In a good year, a typical relocation requires stacks of available cash and jobs waiting at the other end for every working member of the household. And those jobs need to add up to the living expenses at the destination.

If you're a household that needs to move to survive, the odds are quite low you have the resources at hand to make that happen.

I'm a big fan of programs which help pay for both those relocations and the educations to help the transition.

I'm not a fan of holding the economy and the environment hostage because they have a traditional "attachment" to something that makes the world a worse place.

No argument from me. I just wanted to clarify that while moving is an impossibility, all other reasons for staying are moot.

Don’t underestimate people’s attachment to their homes. Only 1/3 of people in sub-Saharan Africa say they would emigrate to another country if they had the choice: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-mi.... In South Asia it’s under 10%. Is it a surprise people in rural Ohio want to stay put?

Indeed the desire to stay near home is probably strongest for those with the fewest resources. For skilled, educated people, emigration is often an adventure. Exciting opportunities await you in the new place. But if you’re a low skill worker in Ohio, what does moving to San Francisco get you? What do you get for leaving your friends and family behind? Better chances to get a service job waiting on some Facebook engineers?

Usually it happens anyways, just delayed. Old people usually don't want to move, but the younger people are more flexible and move away as soon as they can if they don't see any future.

Then these towns get older and older until eventually they won't be viable anymore (or find something else to still attract young people).

So the trends are happening, they are just delayed by a couple of decades. As the average life expectation grows the cycles get longer however.

Nearly all of these towns are slowly dying. Young people leave and few come back. Nationwide its a lot of people but many of these towns are literally a few dozen people or less who will never leave because they live in a home for almost nothing or they have a family home they have inherited.

It's the same thing that has happened in lots of rural areas of Texas.

> You wonder what do all these people living here do for a living?

I don't, because I know over half the federal budget is spent on welfare: social security, medicare, medicaid.

The irony is that their little communities are going to die out no matter what. There is only so much coal in that soil.

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