Owsley County, Kentucky - Poorest county in the US

A devastating article about welfare dependency and the limits of government.

And, the fact that Owsley is 98.5% white should prevent BJerk and other knee-jerk progressives from hurling accusation of racism.

Key quotes:
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"Like its black urban counterparts, the Big White Ghetto suffers from a whole trainload of social problems, but the most significant among them may be adverse selection: Those who have the required work skills, the academic ability, or the simple desperate native enterprising grit to do so get the hell out as fast as they can, and they have been doing that for decades. As they go, businesses disappear, institutions fall into decline, social networks erode, and there is little or nothing left over for those who remain. It’s a classic economic death spiral: The quality of the available jobs is not enough to keep good workers, and the quality of the available workers is not enough to attract good jobs. These little towns located at remote wide spots in helical mountain roads are hard enough to get to if you have a good reason to be here. If you don’t have a good reason, you aren’t going to think of one.".
. ..
"Well, you try paying that much for a case of pop,” says the irritated proprietor of a nearby café, who is curt with whoever is on the other end of the telephone but greets customers with the perfect manners that small-town restaurateurs reliably develop. I don’t think much of that overheard remark at the time, but it turns out that the local economy runs on black-market soda the way Baghdad ran on contraband crude during the days of sanctions.
It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

. . .

“The draw,” the monthly welfare checks that supplement dependents’ earnings in the black-market Pepsi economy, is poison. It’s a potent enough poison to catch the attention even of such people as those who write for the New York Times. Nicholas Kristof, visiting nearby Jackson, Ky., last year, was shocked by parents who were taking their children out of literacy classes because the possibility of improved academic performance would threaten $700-a-month Social Security disability benefits, which increasingly are paid out for nebulous afflictions such as loosely defined learning disorders. “This is painful for a liberal to admit,” Kristof wrote, “but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency.”
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This has got to be one of the saddest reads ever. The part about parents pulling their kids out of literacy classes to maintain welfare payments is too depressing for words.

Just saw this story a couple of days ago after it was linked from another site I sometimes visit.

Yes, it is a very sad read.

Link to the full Kevin Williamson article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...n-d-williamson

On a related note, I've long wondered why we don't build nuclear power plants in some of the poverty-stricken valleys of Appalachia. Safer, new-generation plants could add a great deal of additional baseload capacity as well as replace the 1970s-era stuff still in operation, such as Indian Point just north of New York City. Imagine what would happen in the event of even a minor incident there. The panic-filled evacuation could be a real nightmare, even if the incident itself turned out not to be particularly life-threatening. Operating a 40-year-old nuke plant within 40 miles of Manhattan doesn't strike me as one of the wisest things I've even seen.

New infrastructure centered around ultra-high voltage transmission lines could carry the power to the densely populated load centers on the east coast. The distances involved are not that great.

And the impoverished region could sure as hell use the jobs. People who have worked in various construction related capacities for generations could get a fresh start, and many lost coal mining jobs could be replaced.

A plan such as this could tide us over until we (eventually!) develop the capability of producing commercially viable nuclear fusion power.

Welfare to the poor is almost as bad as welfare for the rich...almost.

Amazingly, Cap'n NotBright has a pretty good idea. A free market solution to a social problem. Bravo!

County population is less than 5,000. What's your point? That poverty sucks as much for hillbillies as it does for hoodrats?

How about for entire metro areas that are neither white nor black? in America's most prosperous state (allegedly)?

http://247wallst.com/special-report/...rest-cities/5/

Yeah, let everybody starve!

Amazingly, Cap'n NotBright has a pretty good idea. A free market solution to a social problem. Bravo!

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Capt. "NotBright?"

Excuse me, but aren't you the pathetic little fraud who got caught lying about having taught university-level economics?

Why, yes, you certainly are, aren't you?

http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=740839 LOL!

But not to worry. I mean, it's not like resume fraud on an SHMB can cost you a job.

It must be a little embarrassing, though, to be exposed as both an ignoramus and a liar in the same marathon thread!

If COG teaches anything other than Chicken Little to third graders this country is fucked!

Capt. "NotBright?"

Excuse me, but aren't you the pathetic little fraud who got caught lying about having taught university-level economics?

Why, yes, you certainly are, aren't you?

http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=740839 LOL!

But not to worry. I mean, it's not like resume fraud on an SHMB can cost you a job.

It must be a little embarrassing, though, to be exposed as both an ignoramus and a liar in the same marathon thread! Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Nah, he won't be embarrassed.

Nah, he won't be embarrassed. Originally Posted by timpage

True that!

Some people simply revel in their ignorance and obnoxiousness!

CertifiablyOutofhisGourd, WhineAway, and Professor Barleycorn are all capable of putting on quite a display of intellectual fireworks, aren't they?

(OK, maybe not the sort of intellectual display one should be proud of -- but a display nevertheless!)

Gee. I try to be nice . . .

Gee. I try to be nice . . . Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Yeah, no doubt about it.

In that long "FairTax" thread, you were a veritable paragon of civility and decorousness!

County population is less than 5,000. What's your point? That poverty sucks as much for hillbillies as it does for hoodrats?

How about for entire metro areas that are neither white nor black? in America's most prosperous state (allegedly)?

http://247wallst.com/special-report/...rest-cities/5/

Yeah, let everybody starve! Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Your article is full of BULLSHIT.

============================== ===============

pasusq • a month ago −
I think someone is cooking
the numbers on the data for the cities. # 5 on the list is Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ.
Both are small towns not cities. They are 60 miles apart separated
by desert. Lake Havasu has a population of 58,500 and Kingman has a
population of 28,000. Not 203,334 as listed in the
above article. People, check your facts, this article is full of lies to
lead you, to a false conclusion

I think the theory behind Cap'tM's idea is good but in reality won't help. Nuclear power away from major cities, fine, though I'd argue pound for pound the folks on Wall St and Madison Ave deserve to be melted more than any others nationwide. Nevertheless the new industry would bring in folks to work more than hire the folks there, who even if they did get jobs would probably push brooms and not last long at it. I'm not thinking the area is not set up to handle the extra folks, which would bring jobs too, but there must be more deserving areas.

Who should be hired is a hundred or so shitkickers to follow the money and act on infractions. Public assistance has to be spent right and the kid has to be in school, or else the checks stop. Stick around until they're right or in jail. I know its idealistic and simplified, but poor behavior shouldn't be rewarded with industry.

And I'll be damned if the oxy express couldn't be traced back up to big pharma. Lobbyists and congressmen are guilty of something too. It isn't so much a matter of solving problems as it is of just spending some time and money handling matters as if they were occurring in your own home.

Capt. "NotBright?"

Excuse me, but aren't you the pathetic little fraud who got caught lying about having taught university-level economics?

Why, yes, you certainly are, aren't you?

http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=740839 LOL!

But not to worry. I mean, it's not like resume fraud on an SHMB can cost you a job.

It must be a little embarrassing, though, to be exposed as both an ignoramus and a liar in the same marathon thread! Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

So COF the "Nutty Professor" never taught university- level economics? COF liar, liar pants on fire. Certainly seems like you changed the subject in that thread about the fair tax. You made such a big deal about Obama not being a "tenured" Professor at University of Chicago in another thread. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

To think or to even believe that government and social engineering can fix a problem like what is depicted is insanity revealed.