"You need to move"- Why do Americans stay when the towns have no future?

[packman]

Last edited Wed Jun 6, 2018, 11:45 AM - Edit history (2)

A rather lengthy read about families who must make a decision when the jobs dry up in their community. In this case, the article focus is on Adam's County, Ohio. A coal power company closes and decisions have to be made.


Lee Anderson, director of governmental affairs at the national Utility Workers Union, has spent years trying to get elected officials around the country to grapple with what’s happening in places such as Adams County. But there’s just no political will, he says. There’s support on the left for public investment in struggling areas, but less so, he says, when it comes to communities that are increasingly voting Republican—Adams County among them—and whose decline is linked to fossil fuels. On the right, he says, there’s no appetite for public investment, period. Not to mention that the scale of the challenge is so huge and the potential solutions so expensive.

I can relate to this article, coming from a Pennsylvania valley whose life depended on steel mills and coal mines. I remember the boom and the bust periods. A time when life was good in the mid to late 50's and then - as if someone, somewhere turned a faucet off - the bottom fell out and the people began to leave. Many stayed, particularly the older steel worker, hoping with each passing rumor that the mills were going to come back, life would be good again. It wasn't until they dynamited the old brick ovens and bulldozed the mill grounds that many reluctantly accepted reality.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-23/why-do-americans-stay-when-their-town-has-no-future

[wasupaloopa]

1. I grew up in Dayton OH. The same thing happened

there when factories closed.

In the 50’s factory jobs were plentiful but as the plants relocated to other areas the laid off workers were left high and dry.

You needed a skill in the service economy to keep your head above water.

[brush]

2. Will read later but wondering if lack of funds to move is the reason people stay?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. People don't move because they are AFRAID to do so.

Moving takes courage and foresight and stamina.

And also, I think a lot of folks think: Better the devil you know. So they stay. It's the path of least resistance.

[Skidmore]

4. Moving is easy

for the young. Many rural towns are full of elderly people. Also, what do you do with that home you invested in but cannot sell?

[marble falls]

5. Maybe we want to stay. Our houses are paid for, we have enough to stay comfortable...

our friends and older family members are here. There are cycles and they roll up and down.

My home town, Akron is an example, first the canals made Akron, then the railroads slowed it, then the agricultural machinery boom, then the bust of the 1890's, then clay products particularly drainage tile, then the bust around the 1910's, then the rubber boom, then the great depression, then the war and the post war car boom and rubber came back, then the rubber bust, and now a technology industry seems to starting.

[loyalsister]

11. Yes

My response to "why don't they leave? " is "why should they have to?"
I get really tired of the disregard for what that demand means to people who have invested their lives in building some kind of wealth in communities they love. I remember hearing home ownership was part of "the American dream." We are finally realizing that was a lie, yet people who want to cling to the only part they achieved are judged.

[tblue37]

15. Space is an extended aspect of one's identity. It is why people can be persuaded to

feel devotion to the parcel of land they call their homeland. For many people relocating is almost as psychologically stressful as losing a limb or one of their senses.

People shouldn't have to abandon their home space to survive in a country as wealthy as ours.

[marble falls]

16. The question is: How much is enough. Frankly Tiffin, Ohio is good...

for me. Lived Cleveland, Akron, Chicago, Phoenix, Austin as well small towns in Iowa and Nebraska.

I want somewhere with a population under 50,000 with a real accredited liberal arts college. Snows OK, but no 100F days fifty days in a row. If I could afford western Oregon, we'd be selling the condo.

[Blue_true]

17. The people in these declining small towns are the very people that

are making more equitable wealth sharing possible by voting heavily republican. They are victimizing themselves.

[Girard442]

6. Imagine that you're on a cruise and the word goes out that the ship will be scuttled midocean.

You'd think that someone, somehow, had made some sort of provisions to get you safely to land. In Trump's world -- you'd be wrong.

[NCTraveler]

7. These are mostly skilled and transferable workers being discussed in the article.

Arnett's issue seems to be fear of change, which is understandable. He is very well qualified to take any number of solid paying jobs in Ohio or around the country. He truly wouldn't have to step far out from where he is now. He has rejected good paying jobs that he admits fit him well. That is not standing up for your community like he says. It's just the opposite.

The thought of going from one environmentally shitty job to another is also a recipe for failure. It's a mind-set once one becomes entrenched in rightward thinking. That is hinted at in the piece.


We cannot be worried about how these people vote, overall. We need to be honest with them like Clinton was and work with the states and federal government to help them. If that means offering incentives to manufacturing companies depending on local infrastructure, so be it. If it means job training and relocating, so be it.

We must stop telling people their shit might be coming back. It's hard to understand how someone would believe it but hope is an amazingly powerful thing.

This isn't like coal mining where many of the skills are not transferable.

Lastly, I'm going back to human nature again. Don't expect many of these people to support us as we work to force them into a different line of work. I don't kid myself in that area yet still don't want to hear another damn Democrat say "clean coal".

Great topic.

[unblock]

8. moving is emotionally risky and expensive because it's not all about the job.

some people are adventurous, and some people don't have much in the way of roots in a community. to them, moving might be a specific logistical hassle, but not much of a big deal, and they may see more upside in finding new things there than in leaving old things here.

but others have deep roots in a community and their lives don't revolve around their job, it's just what pays the bills. to them, moving is a huge ordeal. they're giving up all the work they've put into their community to start over with a blank slate elsewhere. leaving their friends behind. will the new place have a church or other social group where they fit in as well as here? will there be a good bowling alley close enough? and all that pto work, we finally got the school in good shape, now we have to move the kids to a completely unknown school? and what about our favorite restaurant? and all this for a new job, and what if that new job doesn't work out?

i'll also note that conservatives are probably more prone to this, as they operate more on fear than on hope.

[Girard442]

9. Also, with the community deprived of its main employer, the value of your house just tanked.

[frazzled]

10. Many generations of Americans and immigrants have moved ... despite the risk

Think of the Great Migration: more than 6 million Southern blacks moved to other parts of the country for better opportunities.
Or the Dust Bowl Migration of the 1930s: a quarter million (at least) farmers left to find land to work in the West.

Think all of all the waves of migration of people from foreign lands to this country across the centuries, most of whom came--at great risk--to find economic opportunity. All four of my grandparents came from Eastern Europe in the early part of the 20th century, with barely the clothes on their backs, without knowing the language, leaving relatives and country behind, and with unknown prospects. It was the people who stayed behind who didn't fare well in the end.

My husband and I have moved to different states five times over the years, for job opportunities, dragging our kids and leaving friends behind. Not that it's been noble or all that risky, but it's always tough to establish new roots. You do it because it's the best thing to do at the time.

I'm fine with people staying because they want to live in their house, or near their friends, or not disrupt their kids' educations. But then they have no reason to complain. The jobs very likely will not come to them. That must be accepted as the price for the comfort of home. So stay, but own the consequences of your choice.

[packman]

13. "own the consequences of your choice"

Lower tax base, less law enforcement , poorer upkeep on roads and other community shared things like parks/sidewalks, more crime, more opiate usage, more blight, more closed store fronts......

Good posting - It was difficult leaving when I had to, but seeing the ravages that time and a declining population and a dying industry has done to my hometown and valley, I made the right choice.

[left-of-center2012]

12. I graduated high school 1964

I graduated high school 1964 in New Kensington, PA.

The city has lost 10,000 residents (going from about 23,000 to 13,000)
and for several decades much of the downtown shops have been closed and boarded up.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kensington,_Pennsylvania

[cynatnite]

14. One stop-light town girl here...

I grew up in a small farming town. A lot of us moved and a lot of us didn't. There's not much of a future unless you carve one out for yourself or if you're going to run the farm that's been in your family for a hundred years. Plus there's marrying that can keep you there, too. Entire families stay generation after generation as well. And sometimes lack of money is a factor because wages in small towns like the one I grew up in are pretty depressed.

It's home.

Folks shouldn't be made to feel guilty or thought less of because they stay. A lot of the ones I know serve their community because hiring people from the outside is next to impossible.