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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I must say it's interesting that all my white relatives, of varying income and education levels, rail against low income black people and other minorities and ask, "what about personal responsibility?"

Yet apparently unemployed whites in the rust belt don't have to be personally responsible for their fate. [/quote]
Why didn't they move to farm country and take the $10/hr jobs that are offered to American workers?  Americans used to move to where the jobs are. Now, they just sit on their asses and complain about how the government doesn't bring them jobs.[/quote]

The Great Recession changed people's moving rates. If you think people aren't still scared, then I assume you don't know anyone affected by the Great Depression.[/quote]
The Great Depression saw lots of people moving for jobs, and it was a damn hell harder to move back then than it is today. Spare me the "you don't know what it's like".  My father was a blue collar worker in a manufacturing plant who got laid off; I also at one point got laid off.  Neither of us blamed the government. We updated our skills and found a new job. That's called personal responsibility.  Oh, and he had limited English skills, to boot.[/quote]

What I was saying is that my grandparents were permanently scarred by the Great Depression. Why is it surprising that people today were scarred by the Great Recession?

The rate of families moving has decreased significantly, a phenomenon that started in 2008. People are irrationally fearful.

Most of the younger families have already moved to where the jobs are. Many small towns are entirely older people. They also have a high and increasing suicide rate.[/quote]

NP here.  You simply can't compare the Great Depression to the situation now.   The current problem is that a lot of the unemployed people in the Rust Belt don't have the skill set to match the kind of jobs they would find if they moved.  Do you think a former factory worker is really going to find a job in D.C. that pays enough for that person to support a family living in D.C.???  People love to blame immigrants, but if you look around, immigrants who work low-skill, low-pay jobs in D.C. (janitors, lawn maintenance workers, etc.) usually live with extended family.  The way they are able to live in a high COL area on such low wages is that they have lots of relatives living together and sharing housing expenses.  People like to make fun of them for this, but it is out of necessity.  How does one afford rent in D.C. on a job that pays $25k and still support a family of 4?  The only way that works is if they share housing expenses with extended family and/or apply for some form of assistance.

The disconnect I see is that the same people who feel disenfranchised and like they have no options (Rust Belt workers) are also the people who seem vehemently against higher education or schooling.  The only thing that will change their reality is for them to get training in a skill set that is or will be in demand.

Even infrastructure jobs require skills.  Sure, laid-off welders and other skilled tradesmen will be able to find employment with infrastructure projects, but ex-factory-workers will still have a difficult time finding work unless they get some kind of training.

I feel like no one wants to talk about one of the central issues with the Rust Belt, and that is that there used to be a time when a person could get a factory job with relatively little training or higher education and also get a livable salary with benefits and even a pension.  They had a path to a middle class life.   There are a number of reasons why those jobs went away, but I don't think any politician is going to bring them back.  Whatever plan is put in place to help revitalize the Rust Belt, training and education is going to have to be a part of it.  But I feel like people don't want to hear that.

The same goes for coal country.  The reason people are upset is because, realistically speaking, those skills don't really translate to other jobs.  So even if coal workers moved, where would they move and actually find jobs for which they are qualified?

I understand their hurt and skepticism, but I haven't really heard any politician (even the one who won the election) address how to actually fix that situation.  But what I have heard is a lot of anti-education rhetoric, and I firmly believe that if there is a solution, education/training is going to have to be part of it.  But people don't want to hear that because it's scary.  They don't just want jobs; they want their OLD jobs.  That simply isn't going to happen.  The best hope is to bring new jobs to those regions of the country, but my guess is that the unemployed people in those regions are going to have to get some sort of training/education.

That is why I don't understand why everyone was so "afraid" of what Sanders was proposing -- affordable post-HS education.  He wasn't talking about 4-year liberal arts college.  He was talking about community colleges and state colleges.

The combination of affordable education and affordable health care would be a bridge for those communities while they transition to a new economy, new jobs (in infrastructure, in energy of the future, etc.)

[/quote]

You make way too much sense to be understood by those who need to get it. [/quote]

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