Culture

[wizards8507]

It's total nonsense because there are thousands of jobs available right now in metropolitan areas they just don't want to move and work them for their market rate. All it takes is a bus ticket to get out, and just about every store in Tysons Corner is hiring. I'm sorry their communities are obsolete but it's the same situation my mom was in decades ago... you can't do structural engineering in a one stoplight town, so you have to move for a job. Similarly, if the plant/mill/whatever jobs are gone move and get a job in something else.

There are also TONS of manufacturing jobs in places like Charleston that can't find someone to work it for $18/hour if "blue collar" work is your kind of thing. Don't even get me started on the shortage of "skilled labor" in construction markets like Denver and DC. The whole economic premise is horseshit.

Whiskey doesn't think anybody should ever move for any reason whatsoever. Everyone should stay in their hometown for a thousand generations in the same house their great grandfathers built with their bare hands after World War I.

 

[connor_in]

It's total nonsense because there are thousands of jobs available right now in metropolitan areas they just don't want to move and work them for their market rate. All it takes is a bus ticket to get out, and just about every store in Tysons Corner is hiring. I'm sorry their communities are obsolete but it's the same situation my mom was in decades ago... you can't do structural engineering in a one stoplight town, so you have to move for a job. Similarly, if the plant/mill/whatever jobs are gone move and get a job in something else.

There are also TONS of manufacturing jobs in places like Charleston that can't find someone to work it for $18/hour if "blue collar" work is your kind of thing. Don't even get me started on the shortage of "skilled labor" in construction markets like Denver and DC. The whole economic premise is horseshit.

This line made me think of this


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sLQJjKtV2do" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Whiskeyjack]

1. I think the list of people who objectively "aren't college material" is very short. Most people are at least cut out for a trade.

2. It's not that hard for teenagers to get jobs. My idiot cousin just quit his job at Taco Bell because he didn't feel like walking there in the summertime. My pops works a $70,000 job that requires zero skill. They can't keep it staffed by people who show up on time and sober. I don't blame "the system" for idiots acting like idiots.

3. "Food service is almost entirely illegals" is just objectively false.

4. I don't think Kevin Williamson or any other "free market conservative" would defend "state forces and distortions." Those are the exact things that free market conservatives speak out against.

5. This guy wants to blame Obama that his kid is a loser fucking pothead who does nothing but play video games all day? Look in the mirror, pops.

By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.

Also: Put not your trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save.

It's total nonsense because there are thousands of jobs available right now in metropolitan areas they just don't want to move and work them for their market rate. All it takes is a bus ticket to get out, and just about every store in Tysons Corner is hiring. I'm sorry their communities are obsolete but it's the same situation my mom was in decades ago... you can't do structural engineering in a one stoplight town, so you have to move for a job. Similarly, if the plant/mill/whatever jobs are gone move and get a job in something else.

There are also TONS of manufacturing jobs in places like Charleston that can't find someone to work it for $18/hour if "blue collar" work is your kind of thing. Don't even get me started on the shortage of "skilled labor" in construction markets like Denver and DC. The whole economic premise is horseshit.

I shared it primarily because it seemed like an articulate diatribe against our liberal overlords, at least from the perspective of Trump-country. Don't feel like it's worth defending on a point-by-point basis, but the larger point you two brought up is worth addressing. We debated this last year when Williamson published an article arguing that much of the economically dysfunctional towns and cities from which Trump drew his support "deserve to die". I'd suggest that a political economy which requires large swathes of its citizenry to pull up stakes and move away from their family, friends, and their entire support network is not one that's oriented toward human flourishing.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Whiskey doesn't think anybody should ever move for any reason whatsoever.

Not true, but we should recognize it as a serious privation upon those forced to move, and ask ourselves how we can stop undermining communal stability so thoroughly. Responding with *shakes Magic 8 Ball of Liberalism* "Invisible Hand says you must move thousands of miles away and live in isolation if you want to avoid abject poverty... c'est la vie, prole!" isn't humane or acceptable.

Everyone should stay in their hometown for a thousand generations in the same house their great grandfathers built with their bare hands after World War I.

As if that wouldn't be a beautiful thing? But I guess living in a McMansion where you don't know your neighbors and rarely see your family is pretty great, too.

Here's another Twitter thread on modern v. classical pavement as an analogy for the way we live now, and the costs inherent to it. You guys are way too glib in assuming that our status quo is obviously superior to what came before, or the feasibility of alternatives.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">So, I'd say that modern pavement involves materials such as concrete and asphalt. Classic pavement is most purely expressed in cobbles.</p>— Nicodemus (@theroyalacorn) <a href="https://twitter.com/theroyalacorn/status/873532287467565056">June 10, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[woolybug25]

I see your guys points, but I am closer to Whiskey's opinion on this. I agree with you on there being plentiful job opportunity in our country right now if you're willing to move to a big city or commute. But I don't believe those opportunities are equal to those being local to the communities in which people live. A guy commuting an hour each way to work or moving away from his family support system is not a substitute a few bucks an hour is worth. The accumulated effect of society accepting that as a lifestyle, much like two income households, has a negative effect on how we live our lives. How we raise our children.

Furthermore, the people hurt are the family first rural American that only wants a decent life and happiness. A job in the city provides neither in the end. These are the same people that came out in droves to vote for Trump because of promises of manufacturing jobs. Which we all know are a thing of the past in rural America. These poor people think their job is being worked in a rural town in Mexico. When in reality, they are either being worked by a robot or someone living in a bigger city.

 

[BGIF]

Not true, but we should recognize it as a serious privation upon those forced to move, and ask ourselves how we can stop undermining communal stability so thoroughly. Responding with *shakes Magic 8 Ball of Liberalism* "Invisible Hand says you must move thousands of miles away and live in isolation if you want to avoid abject poverty... c'est la vie, prole!" isn't humane or acceptable.



As if that wouldn't be a beautiful thing? But I guess living in a McMansion where you don't know your neighbors and rarely see your family is pretty great, too.

Here's another Twitter thread on modern v. classical pavement as an analogy for the way we live now, and the costs inherent to it. You guys are way too glib in assuming that our status quo is obviously superior to what came before, or the feasibility of alternatives.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">So, I'd say that modern pavement involves materials such as concrete and asphalt. Classic pavement is most purely expressed in cobbles.</p>— Nicodemus (@theroyalacorn) <a href="https://twitter.com/theroyalacorn/status/873532287467565056">June 10, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

So which do you want the ADA or cobblestones? When cobblestones streets were common wheelchairs weren't. Those with canes who didn't have servants to carry them were told to suck it up or stay home. Think about it have you ever tried walking with a cane over cobblestones or corduroy roads if you chose? Ever tried to move yourself in a wheelchair or push someone in a wheelchair over cobblestones? I have.

It's a lot easier on a smoother surface like concrete or asphalt sans potholes. And try negotiating over cobblestones after frost heaves.

How much "communal stability" did those invalids have in the good old days?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

So which do you want the ADA or cobblestones? When cobblestones streets were common wheelchairs weren't. Those with canes who didn't have servants to carry them were told to suck it up or stay home. Think about it have you ever tried walking with a cane over cobblestones or corduroy roads if you chose? Ever tried to move yourself in a wheelchair or push someone in a wheelchair over cobblestones? I have.

It's a lot easier on a smoother surface like concrete or asphalt sans potholes. And try negotiating over cobblestones after frost heaves.

How much "communal stability" did those invalids have in the good old days?

They lived with family members who would run errands for them or help them get around whenever necessary. As the thread makes clear, there are drawbacks to both systems. My preference is for that which is locally-sourced and sustainable, since that seems to be the only scale on which communities can be built and oriented toward human flourishing. It's also worth pointing out that there are roads and bridges built by the ancient Romans which are not just still around, but still in use! Whereas the stuff we build now starts falling apart in a matter of decades without constant (and usually expensive) repair/ upkeep.

 

[wizards8507]

Not true, but we should recognize it as a serious privation upon those forced to move, and ask ourselves how we can stop undermining communal stability so thoroughly. Responding with *shakes Magic 8 Ball of Liberalism* "Invisible Hand says you must move thousands of miles away and live in isolation if you want to avoid abject poverty... c'est la vie, prole!" isn't humane or acceptable.

"A thousand miles seems pretty far, but they've got planes and trains and cars. I'd walk to you if I had no other way."

You just got #pwned by the Plain White T's.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

"A thousand miles seems pretty far, but they've got planes and trains and cars. I'd walk to you if I had no other way."

You just got #pwned by the Plain White T's.

You just quoted the Plain White Ts, and I'm the own who's owned?

 

[IrishLax]

I see your guys points, but I am closer to Whiskey's opinion on this. I agree with you on there being plentiful job opportunity in our country right now if you're willing to move to a big city or commute. But I don't believe those opportunities are equal to those being local to the communities in which people live. A guy commuting an hour each way to work or moving away from his family support system is not a substitute a few bucks an hour is worth. The accumulated effect of society accepting that as a lifestyle, much like two income households, has a negative effect on how we live our lives. How we raise our children.

Furthermore, the people hurt are the family first rural American that only wants a decent life and happiness. A job in the city provides neither in the end. These are the same people that came out in droves to vote for Trump because of promises of manufacturing jobs. Which we all know are a thing of the past in rural America. These poor people think their job is being worked in a rural town in Mexico. When in reality, they are either being worked by a robot or someone living in a bigger city.

You're correct, it's certainly not easy. To use a personal anecdote, a co-worker of mine at my first job had a fiance from Wheeling, WV. They had met at school (WVU) and she agreed to move to the western Northern Virginia burbs... about 4 hours from home. Wheeling is the classic Trump town -- population of 30,000 so not particularly small and about an hour from Pittsburgh in the rust belt. Wheeling's economy was largely dependent on coal and other "blue collar" work.

She had trained to be a physical therapist at school and was able to land a great job making $70k in the burbs (about 45 minutes from DC). However, she faced extreme pressure not to leave home... even though that same job simply doesn't exist in Wheeling. She eventually moved back to Wheeling, then realized that was a mistake, then moved back to NoVA and I've lost touch with them now so I'm not really sure how it ended.

Lots of people end up in situations where they have to move away from "home." Some people -- like my wife, who left her family in Chicago of her own volition to move out here with me -- have to live away from where they grew up. Either me or my wife would've had to have left our families behind and moved because it's physically impossible for us to be in both places at once. For people who aren't OK with that mobility... you break up I guess?

Given the demographics and layout of this country, most people from small towns could find a job staying reasonably close to where they grew up (i.e. moving 2 hours away or less to a metropolitan area). It's a burden, but it's not unreasonable. To sit in a dying town and say "I'm not moving, and it's the Government's responsibility to bring back jobs to this town" seems extremely misguided. Especially when there are thousands and thousands of jobs available to anyone willing to come take them. Migration and relocation in this country has been happening since the first colonies and I don't know why these people think they should be exempt from it... in fact, their ancestors likely picked up and left a big city a few generations ago to move to that small town for a job. So the complaint expressed in the Tweetstorm is even a bit ironic to me in that sense.

 

[no.1IrishFan]

In the almost ten years I've been a distinguished member of IE, I've moved from southwest Florida, to NYC, to Scottsdale, AZ. Each time taking another step towards my financial goals. Each time wishing I didn't have to move to make it happen. This was after my parents moved us from Elkhart, IN, where I was born and raised, to Florida for the same reasons. It does really suck having to leave friends and family, though. I've settled in nicely with a family here and am happy that the previous steps taken have put me in a position to not have to move anywhere I don't want to in the future.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Lots of people end up in situations where they have to move away from "home." Some people -- like my wife, who left her family in Chicago of her own volition to move out here with me -- have to live away from where they grew up. Either me or my wife would've had to have left our families behind and moved because it's physically impossible for us to be in both places at once. For people who aren't OK with that mobility... you break up I guess?

I don't recall if you've ever shared how/ where you met your wife, but as one who attended an elite university--which siphons up talent from all over the nation and deposits it within one of a handful of cities-- your experience likely isn't very relevant to most Americans. Unless you're fortunate enough to end up with a local girl, one of the two spouses in those situations almost always has to move away from their family (which, again, is a serious privation for the family).

Given the demographics and layout of this country, most people from small towns could find a job staying reasonably close to where they grew up (i.e. moving 2 hours away or less to a metropolitan area).

What sort of a job? Is it worth moving or commuting to work at, say, Best Buy? The fact that people in these towns aren't doing it is pretty telling. wizards' instinct to write them off as lazy/ entitled strikes me as way too convenient.

It's a burden, but it's not unreasonable. To sit in a dying town and say "I'm not moving, and it's the Government's responsibility to bring back jobs to this town" seems extremely misguided. Especially when there are thousands and thousands of jobs available to anyone willing to come take them.

I don't think that's what happening. Our economy simply isn't producing meaningful labor for the lower classes anymore. It might not look that way to you, but you live at the heart of a global empire, which has basically become recession proof in recent years. Shit doesn't look so rosy in the hinterlands.

Migration and relocation in this country has been happening since the first colonies and I don't know why these people think they should be exempt from it... in fact, their ancestors likely picked up and left a big city a few generations ago to move to that small town for a job. So the complaint expressed in the Tweetstorm is even a bit ironic to me in that sense.

The agricultural and industrial revolutions both produced huge amounts of disruption and forced relocation on a massive scale. And we're gearing up for another round with automation now. Pointing out that, "Hey, one of your ancestors likely had to leave his farm, move to a city, and work crazy hours under terrible conditions..." isn't much of a retort. The Gilded Age was brutal, which is largely why we have social safety nets now. That those safety nets are now being strained because the assumed social and economic factors they were designed to operate under have changed should be setting off alarm bells in DC and Brussels, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[woolybug25]

"A thousand miles seems pretty far, but they've got planes and trains and cars. I'd walk to you if I had no other way."

You just got #pwned by the Plain White T's.

 

[wizards8507]

You just quoted the Plain White Ts, and I'm the own who's owned?

That's the joke.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

That's the joke.

 

[Buster Bluth]

It's total nonsense because there are thousands of jobs available right now in metropolitan areas they just don't want to move and work them for their market rate. All it takes is a bus ticket to get out, and just about every store in Tysons Corner is hiring. I'm sorry their communities are obsolete but it's the same situation my mom was in decades ago... you can't do structural engineering in a one stoplight town, so you have to move for a job. Similarly, if the plant/mill/whatever jobs are gone move and get a job in something else.

There are also TONS of manufacturing jobs in places like Charleston that can't find someone to work it for $18/hour if "blue collar" work is your kind of thing. Don't even get me started on the shortage of "skilled labor" in construction markets like Denver and DC. The whole economic premise is horseshit.

Yeah my family owns a road contracting company and it's very difficult to find guys willing to labor for ~$24/hr. And if they last two years they'll be an operator at ~$29/hr, and they know it, yet 80% last two weeks. It's mindblowing. I can't say it's worse than it was in the 1990s though, I wasn't there.

I've seen a guy with a middle school education go work in the docks in the offseason and make somewhere in the neighborhood of $75k-80k in a year. He then had too much money on his hands and got addicted to crack, but that's a different matter...except maybe it's not.

The lack of work argument is lower for me than the argument that it's harder to exist as a "traditional" family these days with the cost of medical care, raising kids, buying a home, staying above water as suburbia nickle and dimes ya, etc. Especially if they had a kid at like 19. That's why I'm stunned when I see Republicans oppose subsidized or insurance covered contraception access. We should be dropping condoms from helicopters.

It wouldn't hurt to make community college and trades school free though. And maybe eminent domain the whole god damn state of West Virginia to alleviate the cycle of Appalachian poverty haha

 

[Buster Bluth]

I don't recall if you've ever shared how/ where you met your wife, but as one who attended an elite university--which siphons up talent from all over the nation and deposits it within one of a handful of cities-- your experience likely isn't very relevant to most Americans. Unless you're fortunate enough to end up with a local girl, one of the two spouses in those situations almost always has to move away from their family (which, again, is a serious privation for the family).



What sort of a job? Is it worth moving or commuting to work at, say, Best Buy? The fact that people in these towns aren't doing it is pretty telling. wizards' instinct to write them off as lazy/ entitled strikes me as way too convenient.



I don't think that's what happening. Our economy simply isn't producing meaningful labor for the lower classes anymore. It might not look that way to you, but you live at the heart of a global empire, which has basically become recession proof in recent years. Shit doesn't look so rosy in the hinterlands.



The agricultural and industrial revolutions both produced huge amounts of disruption and forced relocation on a massive scale. And we're gearing up for another round with automation now. Pointing out that, "Hey, one of your ancestors likely had to leave his farm, move to a city, and work crazy hours under terrible conditions..." isn't much of a retort. The Gilded Age was brutal, which is largely why we have social safety nets now. That those safety nets are now being strained because the assumed social and economic factors they were designed to operate under have changed should be setting off alarm bells in DC and Brussels, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

But I agree with this too...

 

[IrishSteelhead]

Trump Presidency

Trump Presidency

it's harder to exist as a "traditional" family these days with the cost of medical care, raising kids, buying a home, staying above water as suburbia nickle and dimes ya, etc.

You just summarized my entire existence as an adult....

 

[Whiskeyjack]

One for the "Ban Pornography" file:

Nearly half of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, according to new research.

The country is facing a steep population decline as a growing number of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships.

Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that 43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins.

Show off to your date at Japanese theme park by beating up bad guys
One woman, when asked why they think 64 per cent of people in the same age group are not in relationships, said she thought men "cannot be bothered" to ask the opposite sex on dates because it was easier to watch internet porn.

The number of births dropped below one million in Japan for the first time last year, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research predicts that the country's current population of 127 million will decline by nearly 40 million by 2065.

The fertility crisis has left politicians scratching their heads as to why youngsters are not having more sex.

Comedian Ano Matsui, 26, told the BBC: "I don't have self-confidence. I was never popular among the girls.

"Once I asked a girl out but she said no. That traumatised me.

"There are a lot of men like me who find women scary.

"We are afraid of being rejected. So we spend time doing hobbies like animation.

"I hate myself, but there is nothing I can do about it."

Artist Megumi Igarashi, 45, who once made a 3D image of her own vagina, said "building a relationship is not easy".

"A boy has to start from asking a girl on a date," she told the BBC.

"I think a lot of men just cannot be bothered.

"They can watch porn on the internet and get sexual satisfaction that way."

The shrinking of the country’s population – deaths have outpaced births for several years – has been called a "demographic time bomb" and is already affecting the job and housing markets, consumer spending and long-term investment plans at businesses.

Other countries including the US, China, Denmark and Singapore have low fertility rates, but Japan's is thought to be the worst.

A nationwide survey earlier this year revealed that nearly a quarter of Japanese men at the age of 50 are yet to marry.

The report, from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, also found one in seven Japanese women aged 50 were yet to be married.

Both figures were the highest since the census began in 1920, and represent a raise of 3.2 per cent among men and 3.4 per cent among women from the previous survey in 2010.

The growing trend was attributed to less social pressure to marry as well as financial worries.

The institute said the number of single Japanese people will likely rise, as another survey shows more young people have no intention of getting married in the future.

 

[Buster Bluth]

You just summarized my entire existence as an adult....

haha right?

I guess I'm just saying that much like a "bad economy" and "good economy" is basically having 8% and 4% unemployment in most people's eyes, it just takes a few percentage points of people with living standards below their parents for millions to look around and think the economy isn't working for them anymore.

 

[ACamp1900]

I may not be not the hero they deserve, but I'll be the hero these young Japanese women need...

 

[woolybug25]

Yeah my family owns a road contracting company and it's very difficult to find guys willing to labor for ~$24/hr. And if they last two years they'll be an operator at ~$29/hr, and they know it, yet 80% last two weeks. It's mindblowing. I can't say it's worse than it was in the 1990s though, I wasn't there.

I've seen a guy with a middle school education go work in the docks in the offseason and make somewhere in the neighborhood of $75k-80k in a year. He then had too much money on his hands and got addicted to crack, but that's a different matter...except maybe it's not.

The lack of work argument is lower for me than the argument that it's harder to exist as a "traditional" family these days with the cost of medical care, raising kids, buying a home, staying above water as suburbia nickle and dimes ya, etc. Especially if they had a kid at like 19. That's why I'm stunned when I see Republicans oppose subsidized or insurance covered contraception access. We should be dropping condoms from helicopters.

It wouldn't hurt to make community college and trades school free though. And maybe eminent domain the whole god damn state of West Virginia to alleviate the cycle of Appalachian poverty haha

I am with you on the third paragraph. I don't think it's necessarily people asking government to create jobs for them, as it is to provide an environment for business to thrive. The true job creator in this country isn't big business, it's small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures. Right now, it's harder than ever to do that and provide for a "traditional family". Private insurance coverage is at an all time high, super stores make it difficult for small business to compete. Then tax and regulatory compliance make the idea of starting a business too burdensome.

So it's one thing to give away trade training at the the community college, an entirely different to provide grants to entrepreneurs so they can purchase equipment to start. What value does a trade school with free skills training do for a local economy if the jobs they are training for are located in the bigger city a couple hours away?

 

[IrishSteelhead]

haha right?



I guess I'm just saying that much like a "bad economy" and "good economy" is basically having 8% and 4% unemployment in most people's eyes, it just takes a few percentage points of people with living standards below their parents for millions to look around and think the economy isn't working for them anymore.

Which generation did they say was the first to have a worse SOL than their parents? Was it Gen X? I forget.

 

[woolybug25]

I may not be not the hero they deserve, but I'll be the hero these young Japanese women need...

I got about a quarter of a way through that and thought "Acamp could slay this entire country". Went to post... and unsurprisingly you were already all over it. Bravo!

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I may not be not the hero they deserve, but I'll be the hero these young Japanese women need...

I got about a quarter of a way through that and thought "Acamp could slay this entire country". Went to post... and unsurprisingly you were already all over it. Bravo!

The year is 2054. It's been several decades since Aaron Campbell's epic visit, but the island nation will never be the same:

 

[Buster Bluth]

I am with you on the third paragraph. I don't think it's necessarily people asking government to create jobs for them, as it is to provide an environment for business to thrive. The true job creator in this country isn't big business, it's small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures. Right now, it's harder than ever to do that and provide for a "traditional family". Private insurance coverage is at an all time high, super stores make it difficult for small business to compete. Then tax and regulatory compliance make the idea of starting a business too burdensome.

So it's one thing to give away trade training at the the community college, an entirely different to provide grants to entrepreneurs so they can purchase equipment to start. What value does a trade school with free skills training do for a local economy if the jobs they are training for are located in the bigger city a couple hours away?

I would say health insurance being tied to an employer makes taking a risk and starting a company in your garage a bigger challenge.

This conversation sorta shows why my economic criticisms tend to be towards corporatism and the massive piles of wealth in the 1%.

 

[ACamp1900]

Just call me Godzilla... I'll crush that whole freaking Island.

 

[IrishLax]

I don't recall if you've ever shared how/ where you met your wife, but as one who attended an elite university--which siphons up talent from all over the nation and deposits it within one of a handful of cities-- your experience likely isn't very relevant to most Americans. Unless you're fortunate enough to end up with a local girl, one of the two spouses in those situations almost always has to move away from their family (which, again, is a serious privation for the family).

At a party at ND.

And I'm not saying my experience is typical, that's why I shared the anecdote about Wheeling which I feel is much more applicable to the situation. People of all sorts have to make tough decisions vis a vis relocation... they've had to for centuries in this country... it's only now that there's some strange entitlement that people should be able to live where they want and it's the Government's job to guarantee their employment.

What sort of a job? Is it worth moving or commuting to work at, say, Best Buy? The fact that people in these towns aren't doing it is pretty telling. wizards' instinct to write them off as lazy/ entitled strikes me as way too convenient.

I don't think that's what happening. Our economy simply isn't producing meaningful labor for the lower classes anymore. It might not look that way to you, but you live at the heart of a global empire, which has basically become recession proof in recent years. Shit doesn't look so rosy in the hinterlands.

Good jobs definitely exist. There are tons of manufacturing jobs that I know of in Charleston that pay $18-$30 an hour. Do those jobs exist in every single metropolitan market? No. But my father-in-law ended up in manufacturing for a short stint in Chicago -- a bankrupt wasteland in a bankrupt state -- where they couldn't find people to staff positions for $25/hr because they either 1) couldn't pass a drug test 2) had a criminal record or 3) just simply didn't want to work a factory job.

No, it is not a "laziness" thing primarily... I have half my family in rural America, and it's not an unwillingness that's the problem for most people. It's that people grow up basically never leaving their town/state and then have a fear of the outside world... and then their families guilt trip the hell out of them about moving away. At a wedding recently where a friend of mine from ND was marrying a guy from rural Tennessee and he was moving to Colorado for his job the family was pissed that she was "stealing" him and the speeches were hella uncomfortable. The tweetstorm was emblematic of this mindest I've seen first hand many times.

The agricultural and industrial revolutions both produced huge amounts of disruption and forced relocation on a massive scale. And we're gearing up for another round with automation now. Pointing out that, "Hey, one of your ancestors likely had to leave his farm, move to a city, and work crazy hours under terrible conditions..." isn't much of a retort. The Gilded Age was brutal, which is largely why we have social safety nets now. That those safety nets are now being strained because the assumed social and economic factors they were designed to operate under have changed should be setting off alarm bells in DC and Brussels, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

That's actually basically the opposite of what I was trying to get at. When people first emigrated from Europe to this country, they generally settled in highly dense cities... then they continuously spread out across the country, for lots of reasons but basically to find a livelihood. Many became farmers in what we now call rural America or moved to mining towns or mill towns or plant towns. There have been many, many migration patterns in the history of this country. Half of my family ended up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and the family business they had has been wholly destroyed by globalization. No President or policy is going to bring it back.

The idea that millennials should be exempt from having to migrate as the economy dictates is nothing but entitlement. Every other generation has done it as necessary to find jobs and provide for themselves/their family.

 

[ACamp1900]

I know it's Korean but still:

She could steal my wallet any day:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vAHN2BXkCcQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hite ads are just the best lol... and it's a super refreshing beer to boot:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A5oaac4OtFY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[ACamp1900]

How's this for 'culture':

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2IsuwUJ6NFk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>