The people in Harlan ,Ky who are one of our nations highest rates of dependency of federal benefits must be breathing in too much of Mitch McConnells toxic coal dust. They are voting for the culture of corruption GOP whose ideology is less government no more federal assistance. Only assistance for the rich. I hope the post office disappears there and there checks stop coming to the home. Privatizing the post office is another plan your GOP are pushing for now. You reap what you sow.
7
Okay. I get it. Slaves protesting slavery are fools because doing so endangers their livelihood.
Thank you NYT.
1
This article misunderstands Thomas Frank's argument in What's the Matter with Kansas? Frank isn't saying Republicans won by “appealing to their conservative cultural preferences — against gay rights, abortion rights, affirmative action and gun control.” Rather, Frank says Republicans present cultural liberals and professors as the ‘elites’ whom ordinary people should be angry with, deflecting attention away from the real elite: capitalists. That Republican argument has been the central theme of David Brooks’ columns over his decades at the Times.
6
The only thing that can solve this is EDUCATION.
51
My Republican Trump supporting county always wanted a new bridge over the St. Lucie river. The Obama Stimulus paid for that bridge but I have never found anyone who knew or would admit to that truth.
61
“Kentucky is an outlier--a one-industry state with a closed culture shaped by mountain isolation.“
Hmmm.... guess you have never been here. Until you have, please don’t judge an entire state on one tiny region. Appalachia is different. These people have lived isolated for generations. Many have owned their land for generations. They truly do not fare well in “the flat lands.” Fear, distrust, and yes fierce independence has been ingrained for years. I imagine IF you ever visited our mountains you would find it hard to even communicate up in the hollars.
18
>> “People in Harlan County have been on the front lines of the war on poverty for 50-plus years and can see its actual effects,” said Preston Jones, the 31-year-old assistant director at the Pine Mountain Settlement School, over the mountain from Harlan. “It is degrading.”
Ol' Preston oughtta see the 'actual effects', and degradation and subsequent hatred, without that resented war on poverty and without any of the resented support.
12
These people do not deserve what they receive. I might have to start voting republican.
22
One would think we’d be more inclined to blame the failures of Capitalism rather than a government that at least provides a semblance of a safety net . The idea that corporations are hampered from showering wealth upon the masses by big bad Government is laughable on its face .
46
This article makes clear how important it is for Republicans to suppress the vote. In these poor counties you can win big as a Republican when only 15% of the population is voting for you.
37
Many rural people are against gay rights, affirmative action and gun control. This group is the core constituency of Putin in Russia ( excepting gun control) and of Trump over here.
Both groups are easily lead by their nationalist
leanings. Bernie Sanders appealed to these groups and may have lead them out of their funk.
11
Government programs need to focus on retraining and relocation assistance, not on propping up uneconomic industries and dying communities. A better mantra than “get a job” would be “get moving.”
30
Trump's America First is illusory as non-MAGA know.
Once Trump's cuts to the SNAP food stamp program are felt in places like Harlan County, KY ; those residents should loathe Trump and the GOP's attacks on social services (e.g. - Social Security, SNAP, Medicare, etc.).
A problem with that logic lies with education. If rural Americans only watch Fox or Sinclair Broadcasting outlets, they are swallowing propoganda and lies. But there is a legislative improvement that could help.
Reinstate (or legislatively recreate) the FCC Fairness Doctrine killed during the Reagan Administration. Any media outlet providing information sold as "news" must follow definable tenets of journalism and should provide time or reading space where opposing views can be seen, heard and/or read.
Interestingly Trump call every news outlet but Fox Entertainment (which owns the "News" shows) "fake news".
20
It is easier to blame someone else than accept the poor choices that one has made.
Also as one of the commentators points out, racism has a lot to do with it with any aid that benefits blacks being automatically suspect.
I sometime wonder if Republicans don't feel ashamed of enjoying the benefits of the very programs that they denounce so loudly.
I hope the Democrats depend on their base and not waste a lot of time courting the votes of these know-nothings.
24
The only news they get is right wing hate radio or Fox. This won't change unless they get really educated. We need the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan eliminated to be reinstated and enforced. We need to support real journalism everywhere.
38
I often ask myself, "Why don't these people move?" Of course, I know that it's not easy to move, especially if you're broke, but that's what we used to do. I suppose the younger ones are moving. The ones who can't move need help and should not be ashamed when they or others like them receive help.
5
Much of this has to do with the total failure of education in this nation. Gone are the required civics courses in which we learned how government worked, what government programs were, etc.
If this were not so troubling, it would be great comedy. People who rely on benefits that every right wing republican wants to destroy, vote republican. This makes no sense.
Republicans rail against individual welfare at every opportunity, they attack Medicaid, Social Security, SSI, Food Stamps, Medicare, anything that attempts to make life a little easier for the average individual. Yet so many of those whose benefits would disappear if the republicans have their way line up to vote for republicans. Is this a psychosis? Is the nation mentally ill?
I do not mean to say that the democrats are much or any better. This nation has a problem and we need to fix it if we are going to survive as a nation. Trump and the other dividers are not an answer, they are an example of why we must fix this problem.
21
I would like to see the actual numbers for who voted for Trump. Just noting that counties that receive a lot of federal assistance voted for Trump does not prove that those on federal assistance voted for Trump. The author noted that turnout in those counties was only around 30% and that the poorest people are least likely to vote. So it is possible that the majority of those who voted for Trump were not receiving federal assistance. I have read other articles that explain how resentment of those who receive federal assistance is greater for those who do not receive it in regions where the economy is bad and even those who do not qualify for assistance are struggling. I can understand their resentment of those they see as getting a free ride when they have to struggle so hard to make ends meet. That is why programs that are more equally distributed (such as Medicare for all, and universal basic income) can be supported by some of those same people. They do not oppose government support per se, as much as they object the seeming unfairness in how it is distributed.
21
Disability lawyers on Main Street says a lot, as does the fact that most don’t vote. Free money and a dealer, what more does one need?
15
The key to the phenomenon presented here is the low voter turn out and the fact that those on benefits are unlikely to vote. Employed working class and middle class voters are vociferous and resentful about people they perceive as on the dole for dubious reasons. They are recognized as a part of workers tax burden as they trudge to work every day.
17
Harlan County is the presumed location of the TV series "Justified" and the actual location for "Harlan County Justice." The latter was illuminating to the culture, where a judge is arrested for corruption and woman drives another woman from her neighborhood by burning down her house (this practice actually goes back to Scotland, as in 'getting fired').
They seem to be a mean-spirited people. They should get their own country.
23
This story spends one paragraph discussing race when we know from countless political science studies and Arlene Hoschild's book that race is the key issue here.
All the reporter need have done is ask people which group they think has the worst work ethic yet receives government assistance, and, if he got honest answers, the mystery of why they vote Republican would have been a lot clearer.
31
Unemployment in Kentucky is 4.5%. SSI retirement benefits, disability benefits and payments to individuals under 18 years of age (children) account for a large majority of benefits. Kentucky is 87% white, 16% over 65, 22.7% under 18 years old, 17% in poverty.
7
In my humble opinion, no one has done more to destroy this country than the senior senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell. I admit fascination that the good people of Kentucky keep electing him - he who wishes to destroy the very thing keeping most of them alive - obamacare. That is their prerogative, but I sincerely wish they wouldn't keep forcing him on the rest of us.
60
The article highlights one of today's greatest political mysteries: why so many low-information voters vote against their personal economic interests. The Republican oligarchs, on the other hand, vote 100% consistently in their personal economic interests. You have to hand it to the Republicans for finding ways to frame cultural hot buttons to get people to vote themselves into greater poverty.
41
Why is Social Security in these discussions? It is not a government giveaway, it is a paid for benefit, not in any way like medicaid or SNAP. The disability part, it is true, could be categorized as welfare but not in the same way.
7
Social Security is a giveaway. I have been drawing it for 20 years and by my calculations I got back everything I paid in within three years. There isn’t an annuity on earth that would have paid like that.
13
@eddyb
It is an income transfer program, relying on the contributions of current workers to support the retired , disable, and eligible dependents. and has been that way since its inception.
17
@eddyb...
It absolutely is a government supported benefit. As I recall, when implemented, life expectancy wasn't much beyond 65. Now it's around 78...so about 13 more years than the initial financial model assumptions. Who makes up the difference between contributions and distributions.. The guvmint..
7
The blame for these attitudes goes to the state governments in which they live. When industries wither or leave, it is the responsibility of state governments to find and encourage replacement industries and retrain citizens for the new work. Additionally, the investments in education and social supports in states like Kentucky are appallingly low in comparison to others.
And, of course, there is obviously no way to transform citizen emotions about their plight in spite of either facts or realities. They keep voting for politicians who feed them a politics of lies that bears no relation to their needs. I empathize but I do not sympathize as they sink into the oblivion of their opioid addictions based on their self-righteous opinions that they have been either ignored or forgotten by some far-off bureaucracy that actually benefits them.
14
This is fascinating. I would like to know if the term "government assistance" includes farm subsidies, esp. since this latest farm bill was so heavy with those. I live in central Iowa and just looked up my very rural county and it ranks high on the income scale. In fact, a rural county (Dallas) is #1 in income for 2017, over the biggest urban area that includes Des Moines. The next county over from me, which has a big state university, is lower on the income ranking. So...what about farmers and all the government money they take? Of course, they mostly all vote Republican, too. And, own second homes along the coasts.
31
I'm originally from Kentucky, and spent a fair bit of time in and around Harlan in the 1970s. I've never understood where the anger and fighting sprit that once characterised the area went - but I do know that one of the government's most damaging "contributions" to Harlan County was its involvement in backing mine owners against the unions. The FBI had squads of spies and disruptors there for decades (I've actually met one of them - he was later assigned to work in another part of the state and openly boasted about his activities during a dinner with my family.) Community organisers of all kinds were targeted and harassed, including projects to develop work for women left behind when male breadwinners died, or moved away to work in Ohio or Michigan and never returned.
Memories are short - those who resent reliance on benefits today must not know (or perhaps care) that diseases of nutritional deficiency, real hunger, and third-world poverty were rampant there in the not so distant past. I saw that first hand too.
Those who need the help don't vote, and those who don't receive help resent those who do, as if it's a "lifestyle choice".
28
It's really simple: jealousy is a powerful emotion. The thing that stuck out was that the residents blamed the government for saving GM but not them.
The other factor is desperation creates strange bedfellows and sets people up to be fleeced. It's clear nothing the GOP promised these people during the 2016 election is occurring. They were played.
The country has waited too long on festering economic issues until they became intractable. That hasn't helped. Arguing about the finer points of economic theory for 30 years is useless. A prior generation may have chosen more direct and drastic paths of government action even if they didn't know what the final solution would be. But at least there would movement and change and wherever there is change there is at least hope for validation.
8
It's like reading an article about the stage coach stops and how the residents feel betrayed by their government for not forcing the stage coach businesses to stay open despite their being faster, cleaner, more modern alternatives in transportation. Also, they hate immigrants but immigrants risk EVERYTHING, sometimes even their very lives, to come here in order to have a chance at a better life. These people won't risk a move to the nearest city or a couple hundred bucks at the community college to be trained in something else.
48
Cut them off. Give them a taste of Paul Ryan policy. The Dems have nothing to lose here. It's a personal psycho-myth. "I am against hand outs, I'm just taking them until I can end them with my vote."
42
The reason is race.
23
Strongly suspect that if these folks lost ALL their government benefits they might change their minds.
Then again, anyone who would vote for a lying, theiving grifter like Donald J. Trump may be impervious to reality.
40
I just scratch my head. This people are disconnected from reality. They consistently self sabotage themselves by voting republican.
19
Can we just cut these Red States lose? Let Trump have them. They'll be happy and they can have Military Parades and build big walls around themselves.
As long as they do it with their money and not mine.
34
It’s never too late
To educate.
8
I’m done with this type of person. Whine and moan about the government while sticking their hand out looking for benefits. Nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. I do not feel any sympathy for them at all.
35
These folks are not all that different from the white working class people with middle class incomes, a lot of them unionized, in places like Rockland County, NY who went hard for Reagan in 1980 who was a sworn enemy of labor. Why vote for a guy who who promise to accelerate the forces that would make their lifestyles unobtainable with the skills and educations they had? Pretty simple: Reagan not so subtly dog whistle promised to stick it to racial minorities - "Welfare queens driving Cadillacs" who these people were obsessed with hating from afar in their all white towns. However, unlike their white bigot brethen in places like KY and WV post secondary education was pretty available for and expected of their children. Those who weren't on the college or skilled trade track, from places like Pearl River entered the NYPD, just like dad, and joined the union, you know - a deserving union.
29
Did you fail to factor in the racism resentment factor as a determinant in the Republican upsurge in the poor counties in the USA? There are stories of a rich, smart, black President (and Hillary Clinton worked for and with the Black Man). There is the myth about the black welfare queen checking out in the super market and using food stamps to buy a big, fat sirloin steak with her government-issued food stamps. And don't forget the Affirmative Action Program that pushes the black kids to the head of the line, while the poor white kids are stuck way back. Furthermore, the "government" (meaning the Democrats) let all those poor white coal miners get black lung disease. As the local, rural economies get sicker, the resentment grows.
27
Not just the sirloin steak, there’s also the lobster... don’t forget the lobster!
8
This is incorrect. First, sirloin steak is not fat, it is a lean cut of meat. Second, only poor people eat sirloin, the rest of us eat ribeye or tenderloin.
2
It is sure easy for us "enlightened" NY Times readers to chuckle at the ignorant rednecks who "vote against their interests" by failing to support a system that facilitates dependency and stagnation. They must be too stupid or uneducated to understand that its good for them to have 54% of their county's income coming from transfer payments - if only they understood they would see that as a good thing, just like we can see from the coasts. I wonder what % of Harlan County's income my liberal friends believe would optimally come from government assistance? 60%? 90%? 100%? And of course who wouldn't want to live in a community where 54% of your neighbors were dependent on government assistance...
4
I don’t think any ‘enlightened reader’ is chuckling. We are puzzled as to why!
I have been willing to vote against my self interest and pay higher taxes. But seeing this article- I ask myself- why?
25
Yeah, keep biting the hand that feeds you...see how that works out.
10
I'd never,ever say states that receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes should have less of a vote than states which contribute more in taxes than they receive. But it rankles that the former have far more electoral power per voter than the latter.
32
Anger and resentment. Then bargaining. Unfortunately betting on the wrong horse (even God can't bring coal mine industry back).
Acceptance will set them free and find peace. I hope they will get to acceptance stage one day.
7
The NYT believes that Republicans vote on the basis of: "against gay rights, abortion rights, affirmative action and gun control."
The reality is, Republicans vote in favor of a strong national defense; individual rights; reducing federal power and government and increased state power and government; and enforcing the rule of law.
Democrats have evicted certain classes of people based on identity politics. It has developed over time, but people who believe in a strong national defense are not welcome: the logic that carrying a big stick prevents war and that there is a responsibility on the part of a superpower to resist tyranny.
Fundamentalist Christians were long time Democrat supporters until Democrats took a stance that elective late term abortions were a civil rights issue. It is noteworthy that no Western democracy allows elective abortion after 15 weeks except in rare circumstances. Democrats developed a vicious narrative advancing a position that 80% of the country does not hold.
Next out were Democrats who were fiscal conservatives, "Blue Dogs." Followed by accusing the working class people who elected Obama racists. By the woman who promised to put all coal miners out of work.
In the absence of the ability to pass legislation, Democrats impose costs on the economy without justification.
Democrats have been unable to put together an agenda for progress, so periodically deflect by poking a stick about identity politics.
3
@ebmem
This is what happens to common sense distorted by identity politics. Us vs them
Them vs other and so on. Democrats are not anti defense or anti law and order or children to be hungry or someone down on their luck to forgotten. Republicans wants everyone to arm and shoot at random recklessly, tell you who you should worship, or love or be friends with. Democrats want you to be who ever and what ever but in turn respect others. Republicans want mob mentality that says anyone or anything that disagree with you are unAmerican or unpatriotic.
10
This is totally non PC: Many many members of my family are from Appalachia. Most coal miners or children of miners. They deride members of their family who pursue education, they marry (or don't) early, have many children, and succumb to drugs and alcohol. They are not stupid, they are uneducated. Their horizons are limited. They have never been out of their county, much less their state. They simply cannot imagine or dare the thought of leaving their little world and venturing into a world which is frightening and unfamiliar. Rather than admit their fear they fall back on hate.
My family, and my husband's, escaped through the military. Once you have seen the world it is hard to go back to such a stifling mindset. I have no answers here,only compassion for people whose world is so small and ever shrinking.
52
No state should get more than they pay in in taxes
16
How about personal responsibility? Do not, but do not bite the hand that feeds you as it will eventually come back to smack you. That goes for you too, Mitch McConnell. How did you go from being a middle income person to a millionaire? My husband and I moved to DC three years ago and, goes what, it has not effected our incomes. You sold your soul, Mitch and you will pay the price.
12
Remember in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and the Ghost of Christmas Past lifts his cloak, and the two huddled children peer from underneath? The ghost proclaims them as the children of man, Ignorance and Poverty. He warns clearly to beware the most of Ignorance.
15
It is plain that Harlen County residents blame Democrats for having to turn to government largesse which they resent, that some how the changing economy is the fault of Democrats. So how about giving them less, telling them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps or move to where there are jobs. As a tax payer ( stupid me, I actually pay taxes) I resent giving money to those who resent receiving it. That money can be used more productively elsewhere.
27
So, if natural gas killed coal, why aren't these folks anti-fracking?
8
cut them loose...logical consequences are the best teacher
15
I wonder what their media is. I'll bet it's a heavy diet of Fox, Limbaugh and hate radio, plus Sinclair. Hating the Federal Government is a line pushed by Libertarians like the Kochs. They only like government to enrich and empower them. They don't give a hoot about the rest of us as they get doors opened by doormen and then get into chauffeur driven limousines. Trump is one of them and he is one of the stingiest.
18
For every day Trump sits in office, a little more of my empathy for their plight dies. I hate it that I feel this way, but watching Trump just shred this country to pieces while they cheer along has hardened my heart.
588
@Johnsamo I feel the same way. As a retired social worker it was my life’s work to try and help “the least of these” to improve their lot in life. I worked for the state government and, while at work, remained apolitical; however, after work I was a Democrat and active in a red state and was disheartened when those we served either didn’t vote or voted Republican. Oklahoma is one of those red states, of which there are many, that is a net gain recipient of federal dollars. I just shake my head in wonder at the glee some reveal at the shredding (or pending shredding) of the programs they depend on. I often wonder what they’ll do if the tax cut for the wealthy and corporations lead to a significant reduction in social security and Medicare and Medicaid. I suspect it won’t be pretty.
71
Honestly, this is why the democrats would be wise to develop a universal basic income program, so that these mostly white voters in their 50's and 60's who can't find jobs for whatever reason have some security and it would also reduce income inequality.
That said, blaming Obama for his clean power plan is ridiculous. This is 2019 (almost). Coal is dead. People need to develop clean energy and green jobs. Why don't they ever think of that.
283
Come up with a formula that those in the welfare states, like this one, have their government payments capped. Excluding military bases, if a state gets greater than 5% more back in the form of Federal revenues than they provide to the Federal government, Federal payments get cut, across the board, until the 5% level is reached. Social Security, VA benefits, Medicare payments, HUD expenditures, Federal pensions, highway funds, SSI payments. Everything.
11
As a resident of the maligned town in this article, I find myself shaking my head in frustration at the way the author chose to portray my home, as well as the attitude of most of the comments. I think what is most frustrating is the bleak picture of Harlan that the author paints and the assumption by many of those commenting that anyone who lives here must be a “left behind” and unable to make it anywhere else. All this criticism and analysis by people who have never set foot in the county, or likely even in the Appalachian region, and who have no ideas on how to solve this incredibly complex problem other than to suggest people should get educated and move away, is incredibly offensive.
Harlan is not just a stereotype. It is a real place, with real people. It is a beautiful place, with gorgeous mountain scenery and culture. The problems mentioned in the article are also real, but incredibly complex. We have been a one industry region for so long that when people began to call for diversification, many viewed this as blasphemy. At the same time, the area has been used up and cast off by those who look down their noses at Eastern Kentucky now, after being content to enjoy the cheap electric bills that coal afforded.
It would be nice to read an article about the hope in the region and the people who are trying to help break the cycle of dependency instead of the tired theme about the ignorant hillbillies who don’t know enough to vote for their own best interests.
9
It’s wonderful to hear from someone who actually lived there. And I would love to see a story of hope. Even the governor doesn’t sell hope - just encourages one group of citizens to look down on others.
But the govt assistance statistics are clear - and the voting patterns are clear. What’s not clear is how they get out of this cycle of economic shrinkage.
27
It's not that hard to understand. They hate government. And having to live on government aid makes them hate government - and themselves - even more. They would prefer to get their jobs back. Except that their jobs make the rest of the country choke and ultimately cost the rest of the country more than the public assistance we'd rather give them. (That and the fact that reviving their old jobs requires reversing the rotation of the planet back a few decades, and Silicon Valley hasn't come up with that solution yet.)
10
Maybe the line of causality should be reversed. The article wonders why counties where more people rely on government payments are more likely to vote Republican. I think that we should see that the data shows that the more Republican a county is, the more likely the people in that county will be poor. Maybe the reason is that Republican policies lead to poverty. Policies such as less funding for schools leading to a less educated work force or less money for infrastructure leading to an area being less attractive to businesses, policies that gutted unions which protected jobs and pay scales.
21
The frightening message here is that to understand the fervid beliefs and groupthink of the Trump base one has to delve into the Freudian underworld of the mind. The various ways that people cope with a discordant self image--denial, reaction formation, etc--appears to be the driving force explaining their voting behavior. No wonder we live in a world of alternative facts and where truth isn't truth. A disturbed psyche is virtually impenetrable.
8
As I recall, HRC said that we must invest in education and re-training in the areas affected by coals decline. "Oh, no, I have to go to school? Vote for Don the Con. With him all I need to do is vote..." I think further de-population is the answer. Offer moving credits. Big ones! Go where the work is.
20
It would make more sense for the federal government to create jobs, as Roosevelt did during the Depression. Put Harlan County back to work planting trees, restoring streams, cleaning up the environment, building cabins and lodges, creating murals and art works, repairing roads; work the people can do and be genuinely proud of. Maybe even become a nice place to visit or retire. Let's start a National Reconstruction program!
39
The unemployed working class folks of Harlan and counties like it are the human slag heap left behind by an economic and political system that operates for the benefit of the same class that exploited them, gave them black lung, and condemned them to an early death for decades when coal was the primary local employer. The majority of these folks have reasonably concluded that since politicians of both parties have done nothing for them there's no point in voting. Those few that still vote, suffering from the collapse of their unions, their class consciousness, and their self-respect as now unemployable "deplorables" have become open to the appeals of right-wing populists shilling for the same class that exploited them as workers. Until there is a political force that addresses their real needs and offers a serious program of government-financed economic development for these regions devastated by neoliberal capitalist austerity and neglect Trumpism will live on and grow long past the official incumbency of it's namesake.
14
The biggest takeaway I had from this wasn't about Harlan, it was about the entire US: a greatly expanding part of the population is dependent on income transfer payments. Why? Is this related to the loss of manufacturing and blue collar jobs in general? Or related to the rising inequality in wealth and income?
Random thoughts - there were many subtopics in this:
The federal government HAS failed badly at past attempts to "save" small towns through these programs. They save individual lives. They do bring some money into communities, and often keep them limping along.
Where the Federal government can help is in massive regional projects beyond the scope or budgets of local governments. Bring in high speed internet services everywhere. It did it with rural electrification in the 1930's and 40's; in the interstate road system in the 50's (and yes, we need better transportation infrastructure) This is critical for the life of non-urban areas. to attract new businesses and new residents. It's not a hand out, but an investment in the future. Otherwise, all of the young, healthy, and resilient will continue to leave.
Almost lost was this:
". . . the people who rely most on government transfers are least likely to vote. Only 31% of Kentucky’s electorate voted in 2015; . . . . Participation was lowest in the counties most dependent on federal aid." Perhaps apathy and helplessness run deep, too.
12
Just like the retired military here who rely on government pensions, and get their health care at the VA, but back Trump all the way. The Republicans are happy to oblige their illusion, to their great benefit.
15
Place like Harlan county are also running up against natural selection. As noted, the kids who go off to university (and perhaps the military?) seldom return. The kids who weren't so smart or ambitious stayed around, got jobs, raised families.
Rinse and repeat a few times, and is it any wonder that the people in these places are not the sharpest tacks?
33
In my experience, many members of the working class tend to blame each other for little scams. Instead of holding the rich responsible, or being happy for whatever safety net that still exists, they are more likely to point the finger at their neighbor who is exaggerating his illness to claim disability or is stealing a cable signal or is not paying tax on his cash income. These are minor scams but some people resent them and fail to focus on the real cause of their bad economic situation.
23
@Douglas Husak, bingo! There was another article in the NYT several months ago discussing this very issue. One woman described in the article depended on TANF when her children were young. After she remarried and no longer needed help, she spoke out bitterly against the program because she felt her neighbors might be abusing it. When the reporter pointed out her own use, she insisted that her case was different because she really needed help.
Human beings often support their own benefits, but oppose whatever their neighbors get, even if their neighbors aren't scamming.
25
It’s a weird phenomenon, isn’t it. To a different degree, the Republican Party has capitalized on this resentment for years. “I’m working so others don’t have to”. “They’re taking my money”, they say.
Ah but if the opportunity presents itself...
I saw it after Hurricane Katrina. The biggest (racist) complainers worked the “system” like pros. “It’s my turn now”, they said.
10
I grew up in a very conservative rural area, which I left to attend college where the seeds of liberalism sown by well-read high school teachers. Still, though, I understand in a way why so many in hardscrabble places throughout our country can't swallow the federal government. Their behavior, in my opinion, grows at the nexus of two conflicting values: 1) independence, which to them means getting on without needing outside help 2) personal responsibility. which means providing for themselves and their families, something requiring that they accept the help offered by federal programs.
Thus they find themselves dis-empowered, trapped, and angry. For them, the logical entity to blame is the only entity they see that has power to do anything about their problem.
10
According to the report issued by the comptroller of NY, residents of NY receive more per capita in federal benefits than residents of Kentucky. Hmm, there's been some fancy accounting to create the belief that somehow states that recently flipped from Democrat to Republican are taker states. NYS residents receive 1.5 times the national average in bennies from the federal government.
1
@ebmem, the relevant statistics would come from the federal government. New York sends more money to the federal government than it receives; Kentucky receives more money than it sends. I'm not sure which agency publishes these statistics.
16
NY gets 90 cents for every dollar they send to the federal government.
NJ only gets 73 cents, MA 83 cents and Washington DC just 30 cents!!!
Meanwhile “anti-government” southern states get over $2
5
It's "my benefits" when the white folks in Harlan County collect from Uncle Sam. It's "stinkin welfare" when anybody else does.
68
But I wonder why their blame is only directed towards the democrats? If they feel government is not concerned with their plight, why does this negatively affect the democrats over the republicans in these areas? It's a shame this article didn't address this question; I'd be very interested to hear the answer to this mystery. This question seems to never get asked.
16
Because the Right radio TELLS them it’s our fault and they believe it.
8
The Republican Party is very good at what they do. Way way better at messaging than the Democratic Party. Read through the quotes from these republican believers. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, will change their vote unless you change the party affiliation of the candidate.
I have lost empathy for these voters. They have demonstrated through their continued support of this GOP that they will cut off their nose, to spite the face. Exactly where the GOP wants them to be.
28
When Bevin was running for governor he stated one his goals was to markedly cut back on the number of people on Medicaid. The numbers had markedly increased via the ACA and a Democratic governor. When asked how that be a winning theme given the large number of Kentuckians on that program he stated a simple truth that people on Medicaid do not vote. That truth is mentioned in this article.
The people who do vote are working or retired from working and perceive with anger the increasing number of people on 'disability' collecting benefits. Thus the applause that burst on on hearing of work requirements for Medicaid recipients. It is no accident that a large number of businesses in Harlan are disability attorneys.
Also those with ambition and some brains left Harlan leaving behind the left behind.
None of this is rocket science.
23
Many years ago I was given a book of a group of college students from MN that went to Decoy, KY in the mid-1960s. I have no recollection of who he was or the group involved. But it struck me then and still now about the profound challenges of outsiders trying to save locals indifferent to their less than optimal existence. These students tried to improve an old road leading to Decoy. On Google Earth it's KY 1098. The book stressed the difficulty of outside college students trying to solve a problem that that the local residents had never liked but nevertheless had lived with for some time. When I read stories like this one on Harlan County I think of how easy it is for outsiders to pass easy judgment. If I were a local high school kid I would immerse myself in the outside world and plot my escape. But I have to think that many of the current residents live as they see it an okay life and are well aware of their poor economic circumstances. I suspect in the end supporting Trump is more about saving their perceived dignity rather than making a calculated reasoned decision to vote Democratic.
6
In other words, people are not educating themselves on the basics of where their help comes from and who is in favor of helping them (and who isn't). And they are not interested in becoming educated. They will just vote R instead of D because it's easier than learning.
11
Which also really makes me question the “success” of these Democrat based programs. Maybe it is time for Democrats to drop many of these programs. One thing is for sure: social security disability is simply too easy to obtain. Many of the folks around here on disability are clearly capable of working.
2
"As Professor Mettler points out, the people who rely most on government transfers are least likely to vote. Only 31 percent of Kentucky’s electorate voted in 2015; only 16 percent voted for Mr. Bevin. Participation was lowest in the counties most dependent on federal aid."
The people who need help the most are the least likely to vote. Doesn't that explain everything?
12
This article provides important insight for the next election and how to speak with potential voters. Thank you.
3
I’m in a high-tax state (California) and I’m ever mindful of the fact that, as Californians, we are in this thing together—my taxes make life better for me and my fellow citizens. That’s what taxes do.
It is the patriotic duty of every citizen to approach the subjects of taxes and government with skepticism—of course—but this angry, selfish, self-centered idea that all taxes, everywhere, are bad, period, full stop? It’s got to end. If you don’t want to participate in the American Experiment, leave.
28
Your taxes also end up in the pockets of the people described in this article, who clearly see CA as worse than hell.
5
I fear that an important point is being lost in the shuffle:
The authors and many (if not most) of the commenters herein are looking at voting patterns from the perspective of an engaged electorate.
Put simply, we vote, and we are generally cognizant of our financial interests when we vote.
Poor people don't so much vote against their own interests -- they simply don't vote.
An earlier article about this reality in Kentucky: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whats-the-matter-with-maine_us_564fca49e4b0879a5b0b363f
This is the reason that voter outreach and mobilization efforts are so very, very important.
14
How many folks have actually visited or lived in the Appalachia region? How many commentators know the history, have watched John Sayles’s “ Matewan” or seen another film , “The Song Catcher” or read “ The Dollmaker” only a few of the artistic takes on the history, culture, and people of this area?
It is a complex bittersweet tale filled with courage and human stubbornness and for decades a life lived in vast separation from standard American life.
Start off with James Agee “ In Praise of Famous Men” and go in deep then comment.
4
Perhaps the money for the border wall would be better spent on improving education and infrastructure so that these impoverished areas can retool and be capable of attracting new business. I've read that many in the coal areas refused programs that would help them change careers.
The horse and buggy era ended and somehow those folks retooled. Maybe because we were still a more agrarian society than we are today. They had farms and other avenues for work. Regardless, as many have already stated coal is not coming back. The industrial revolution era of making things has been automated and outsourced. The roots of that change are more complex than just "jobs went overseas" or the "clean air act" or illegal immigrants took our jobs. The service industry is where the jobs are at.
9
If Obama had not run the coal mining industry into the ground then many people in coal mining states (like Kentucky and West Virginia) would have to turn to government benefits to prevent themselves from starving or keeping themselves financially afloat. This is really a mean-spirited, cold-hearted article since it really sneers at people whose lives have been ruined by Leftist policies and then turn to government for help when there is no alternative.
4
When Reagan uttered his famous and disastrous phrase about government as the problem, the media should have howled and done the reporting about all the “invisible” government work Michael Lewis has now done in the last two years. What a tragedy that most people have no idea how essential to our well being has been the research and data gathering of the departments of commerce and agriculture and energy, how much it has been under attack.
17
@dmdaisy
You are so right.
It is very unfortunate that the public has no understanding of all that the federal government actually does for our society. Schools barely teach about the three branches of government. No one teaches about what the various departments accomplish, the reason each was started and the public benefit. Every politician running for office finds bashing the government and it's civilian workforce an easy way to gin up support without any understanding the damage that bashing does to public trust in these institutions.
13
I like the conclusion that these people take the handouts but lose their self respect. How to get that back? They want others, perhaps not themselves, to work for medical benefits. It's the John Wayne big man philosophy at work.
1
Federal and State laws should be passed that require anyone who receives funds from Federal or State governments, e.g. Medicaid, SS, Medicare, unemployment comp, etc. must be registered to vote and actually vote in all Federal and State elections or they will lose their benefits until they do.
19
I went to college, grad school and worked in corporate America. Needs changed, and so did my job, over and over again. If I did not learn new skills, I would have been gone. I retooled several times, finally going back to learn a completely new field in my late 40’s. I have to adapt to changes in the world. Why do some people think the world needs to adapt to their skill set?
40
I'm sick and tired of victim blaming, as performed by hypocrites who call themselves "Christians".
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees seeking asylum.
Jesus was a democratic socialist if there ever was one.
Stop casting stones and crossing the road and looking for people to hate. If your sermons are about success and hatred, your leader is on the take. Open your eyes and read the Gospels instead.
Democrats are not the biggest evil in your world. That place is occupied by Trump, his enablers and dupes.
The sleazy con job from the cowardly bully in the White House is going to bring us all to smash: make America small and mean and the earth uninhabitable. I can't believe you think that is what god wants. That's the voices in somebody's head, not spirituality. No wonder so many of us think it's more ethical to be an unbeliever. Hurting and hating is wrong, and it's no way to live; the poison is as much the hater's as his or her target, if not more.
34
The followers of Jesus formed a socialist society around the Church of Jerusalem in the first century, as vividly recorded in the book of acts and mentioned in many of Paul’s epistles. But it was in NO way a “democratic socialist” society. All authority rested with Jesus, or his anointed representative on earth, which at the time of Acts was St. James the Just, the brother of Jesus.
2
The combination of urban disenfranchisement and wealth transfer from cities to ungrateful rural hamlets will ultimately cause wealthy under-represented states like California to just say no. The end of the USA as we know it will come from within, not from overseas or Mexico.
13
It is so sad that Sen. Mitch McConnell has been telling people for years that government doesn't work while at the same time failing to acknowledge that he is the government.
22
If there was ever a proof source to validate the findings of the Bell Curve, then Harlan County is that proof source.
Sorry, but true.
14
The election of Trump has nothing to do with Government help in these geographical areas. They voted for Trump because they could not bring themselves to vote for a woman. Disclaimer: (I am not a woman in disguise. I am an old man according to the census bureau.
14
You are disassembling, sir! I daresay they would have voted for Sarah Palin. Please stop looking for excuses on which to blame the failure of your candidate. Look instead to the flawed nomination process that produced a Candidate so weak she could not defeat the most disgusting major party nominee since Aaron Burr, a man rejected by 85% of his own hometown!
2
Perhaps Democrats would be wise to embrace reductions in some social safety net programs and let the cards fall where they may. If poor Republican voters in rural areas don't vote anyway then we have nothing to lose.
Why throw scarce resources at unappreciative recipients. Let's show that Democrats can be fiscally conservative. We can use the savings to build solar power plants.
15
It's really interesting to see that the same phenomenon is at play here in France. This is what we've been seeing with the yellow vests movement. The people who've been protesting are very angry at the government, claim they're paying too many taxes, when they're actually almost not paying any and benefit the most from it. They seem to not understand how things work in a welfare state. However, they understand that their interest is being pitted against that of the rich, who have the means to evade taxes, and have enough political power, thanks to their economic power, and also thanks to the competition between countries, to ask for lower taxes.
10
Article states a paucity of jobs exist in Harlan County yet the governor and his acolytes want the Medicaid recipients to work . The republican concept , more often then not , is illogical .
24
Ultimate hypocrisy: GOP voters biting the hand that feeds them.
14
The white voting pattern in this region has been compared to a child playing "dress up." For those dependent on government assistance in this depressed region who vote Republican, for one part of one day, they feel they are in the same elite ruling "whites only club" as the likes of white billionaires Mitt Romney and Donald Trump.
11
For most of my 55 years, I voted for tax raises, knowing that "my hard earned money" would go to support those who were indigent, disabled, etc. I was quite glad to do so, because I assumed I was part of a national community - that those receiving would happily share with others should their fortunes improve. I learned in 2016 that there is no such social contract - the takers lack the decency even to acknowledge the aid they receive, and rail against those upon whose charity they rely - those of us who bothered to study hard, use birth control and have a family responsibly, work hard, make a good living. I am sick of Red State takers and their selfish, morally primitive ways. I am tired of hearing that we just need to listen and understand them - they are all too easy to understand - selfish, ignorant, intolerant, refusing to accept reality, and without any sense of obligation to the greater good. May they reap what they sow.
77
I wish there was an easy answer to everything. But we have created a society where it has become all about "me." It's always those "other people" who are taking and stealing.
I once had a neighbor who falls right into the demographics of this article. On disability, medicare, and any other handout he could get. But his excuse was "I worked for it," while everyone else (especially minorities) was stealing. He blamed Mexicans for taking his job, the economy was blamed on a president.
It's so easy to point a finger. Yet at the end of the day he never bothered to take care of his body, drugs, massive amounts of alcohol, and a sedentary life of sitting in front of the television led him to "retire" around age 55.
I certainly can't wait to get my checks from the goverment because I earned it.
9
Pure Hypocrisy. They vote against their own interests because they know they can always have their cake and eat it too.
They can "talk the talk" but not have to "walk the walk."
How would they react if their 'wish' ever came true? If the politicians they voted for actually refused to accept assistance from the evil government. And from now on they had to support themselves with their own tax base? It would be interesting to see what reaction Bevin, McConnell and Paul would have to that. They can talk all they want. But not a cent will be denied their constituents if they have anything to say about it.
11
These folks have been deluded by the Republicans for years that their woes are the government's fault. Trump played on their anger and these delusions. They refuse to open their eyes to the fact Trump and Republicans have conned them for years.
They won't accept the fact that the world has changed. Despite Trump's promise, coal is not coming back. We are no longer in the 50's. They simply are incapable of adapting to this, turning instead to opiates and rage to escape from the truth. It's a sad situation without any easy answers.
13
Democrats need to level with the good people of Kentucky. Tell them that they're from a relatively poor state that gets more in federal dollars than they pay out, and that 40% of their state budget relies on federal funding. Tell them that the 80% of Americans living in big cities don't want to subsidize their lifestyles by having coal burning power plants, which pollute the air and contribute to poor health of those who mine the coal as well as those who live downwind of the plants, poison the rivers and lakes with acid rain, and contribute to global warming which is threatening coastal cities already. The pollution travels far beyond the borders of Kentucky.
Tell them Trump is a liar and a fraud, there is no such thing as "clean beautiful coal", and if their local gov't had a better solution for providing healthcare, where were they hiding it all these years?
Ask them how they define "able bodied" and if the "work requirements" include unpaid labor such caring for one's grandkids or elderly or disabled relatives, and if not, why not?
20
Republican economics haven’t worked in Kansas, which had total control by Republicans. The state has been in an economic crisis.
7
Are the people receiving disability who cheered at a work requirement going to be the ones having to work? Perhaps they see this "requirement" as a way to bring jobs to the county: you can't really make people work to receive benefits if there aren't any jobs available...
4
There should be a separation of regular Social Security payments from other "government transfer payments." People generally perceive these payments differently because you generally have to work and pay taxes for a lifetime to get them. If the population has declined by two-thirds as the article says, it's likely a high proportion of residents are on regular SS. Retiring of the baby boomers is responsible for a considerable portion of the darkening of the maps. I know that around here, urban residents move to rural areas in droves once they retire in order to cash in on their home equity. In fact, the town I was raised in used to be a regular town but has become loaded with retirees. Retirees tend to be socially conservative, and they don't consider their SS payments to be threatened by Republicans.
5
If the election of 2016 has taught us anything, it is that there must be a plan for communities like Harlan, Kentucky. Failed policies like corporate tax cuts did not reach these towns and villages. Let's make a bipartisan effort to apply what we now know about economic development strategies, "nothing about us without us" frameworks, and get our fellow Americans back on track.
Enough of the political nonsense. There is work to be done.
8
Maybe there is a relationship between this cognitive dissonance, and the disproportionately high rates of opioid use and deaths in these areas. When you rationalize hating the government that is helping you and your community, just maybe you are missing the connection between assuming self-responsibility and psychological well-being; hence you feel hopeless and engage in substance abuse.
8
1. Recipients don't vote.
2. Non-recipients resent the recipients.
3. Everyone blames economic changes on the government.
4. Some don't even understand their benefits are coming from the government.
5. Government procedures, forms, and program language frustrate the average person.
6. Everyone ignores what the local studies have concluded.... they need roads. Ever drive through KY?
10
The Republicans didn’t call these folks names.
The entire “in their own interesest“ baloney needs to stop.
Just looking at tax reforms — owners of expensive Manhattan real estate will be much more impacted by Trump policy than any small town citizen in KY.
I suppose that may be the point of these statistical take downs of deplorable country.
2
@Bicyclist, owners of expensive Manhattan real estate saw their taxes skyrocket with Trump's 2017 tax bill. Of course the citizens described in this article weren't affected by the bill--it wasn't designed to help the poor. In fact the lowest tax bracket--10 percent--was eliminated. The goal of the tax bill was to shift taxes from corporations to wage earners.
Why do you think these statistics aren't true? Why do you consider them insulting? Isn't it important to learn that most beneficiaries of government help don't vote?
3
George Orwell’s fable “Animal Farm” summed up how this kind of situation develops. The gullible and downtrodden desperate for miracles look to saviors who confidently promise the moon, who line their own pockets with power at the blanket expense of their constituents. It’s really a tale as old as time and should be no surprise to the historically literate.
13
If I thought like many of the Trump-supporting Harlan County residents, and the Republic party in general, I'd say these people getting exactly what they deserve, and tough luck.
16
The desire for respect, and self-respect, lies deep in the human psyche. I have more than once observed that, when they feel fundamentally disrespected, people build alternative realities in their minds, and make irrational decisions based on those realities. It's easier on the pride to believe one's plight is all the government's fault than to admit dependance on taxpayer handouts.
I agree that most of these people would rather work for their money, but I don't see any realistic chance of that unless they're willing to move. And even then, the choices available to low-skilled or unskilled workers is limited. I wish I had an answer.
8
@Silty People who have never worked do not qualify for Social Security, because they never paid FICA taxes.
1
People don't WANT to link benefits to the concept of welfare. If others get it, it is undeserved welfare; if THEY get it, it is deserved, earned assistance, even if they have never worked!
It's the same as for the middle class and up. They cannot see their tax exemptions for housing expenses or or instate college tuition or student financial aid as the welfare it is! THEY don't get welfare-- it is those "other, different people!"
10
@Ginger - Education, health care etc. are things we all need and use and things we should all pay for. The entire country benefits when everyone is healthy and educated.
10
These rural whites receiving sometimes more than half their income from the government must really, really rage internally every time they hear Trump tout how low the black and Latino unemployment rate is.
20
Sounds like giving a man a fish is less transformative than teaching him to fish, eh? Maybe some federal funding for the latter would indicate an interest in a future for welfare recipients??
5
@John Brews ..✅✅Maybe. But you'll almost never make a data miner out of a coal miner...
8
Too bad they consider higher education as “elitist”
3
There's an old curse to the effect of "I hope you get everything you wish for."
I hope these people get exactly what they're wishing for--the government (and its checks) out of their lives.
21
They are also probably getting their "news" from Fox. Misery plus misinformation is a dangerous mix.
21
The problem with having a country that prioritizes independence, is when asking for help becomes an identity crisis. People aren't stupid. They know where their food is coming from. The shame of assistance is just too big to admit sometimes.
10
This is an example of the cognitive dissonance that the sane, intelligent world can't wrap our heads around.
11
illegal immigrants are doing what they will not moving to areas where there is work for them..a wall will not help harlan county nor will the residents pay any of the bill for it
13
They have nothing to gain from a liberal agenda. They hate that they are dependent on the government for their survival. All that they have left is wounded pride and that is best expressed by voting for Republicans who offer them others to blame. In particular those that offer them support for the changes in their lives that they are experiencing. They bite the hand that feeds them because it confirms their dependence on others.
6
@HT - Nothing to gain? How about clean air and water, affordable health care and education for starters?
15
The poor South lives in an "antebellum" fantasy world. They hate social programs, and hate California and other wealthy "Northern" states but eagerly take government aid that we richer states pay for. The South has, for probably over a century, paid less in Federal Taxes than they receive in Federal Benefits.
My theory is that the South hates these programs only when the non whites are allowed to use them.
29
I think you are confused. First of all,the parts of Kentucky discussed in the article are almost 100% white. Secondly, Harlan County is as much a part of the “ante-bellum” South” as is California. Kentucky was never part of the Confederacy.
1
The cruelest act, using people's ingrained ethics and beliefs to deceive and enslave them! Righteous conviction drives the unfortunate to vote for those such Mitch O' Connell, who have devoted their carriers and lined their pockets denying healthcare or recourse in court. The employers who have O'Connell in their pocket profit greatly from denying basic safety and rights. This is the place where company thugs and even U.S. Troops have fired on workers to force them back into the mine! Where is the disconnect? Its purely conviction over reason in its most perverse. The proudest most independent of us, turned into puppets while the puppet masters plot to cut the strings. Hope truly dies last!
7
These folks need a few thousand dollars in help to move to a place that has jobs and a future.
6
I wish this article and the research involved included more on the key fact that so few in these areas vote! It seems to me that the Democratic Party has to do more to reach out to those who require federal assistance, and better persuade them to vote to protect that assistance. It's a amazing that so many ignore the intensive GOP efforts to limit programs that benefit so many fellow Americans. Our democracy requires participation through voting to get effective political results. If folks don't vote to protect vital programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, they will eventually be reduced in the scope of coverage. Poor areas in Kentucky and West Virginia wouldn't be the only ones negatively impacted.
9
Do you suppose this concentration of public assistance in red counties could be a right wing plot to deplete the financial resources of the blue, more affluent, coastal states? Such an activity has appeared before in fable lore. Recall, the greed that led to the killing of the golden goose? This resource migration smacks of the same story. /sarcasm
4
They make sense, actually. These people depend on the government to feed, shelter, and care for them. They are little different than a prisoner that's chained and shackled. Little wonder that they resent their chains and hate the jailer that nevertheless feeds them.
3
@AlexanderTheGoodEnough, but their prison is in their heads. They aren't chained and shackled.
The best thing that could happen to the residents of Harlan County is to realize that coal jobs aren't coming back. No president, no policies from Washington, can change our evolution away from coal, which has become too expensive.
6
In the early 80’s I worked on building the Baptist Hospital in Corbin, Ky. There went even contractors in the area capable of doing the simple clearing and grading work. When I held the pre build meeting, then bidding meeting I had Highway big boys fly into Corbin for the site clearing and sitework.
The only place to stay and eat in Corbin in 1985 was an Old Holiday Inn.
To not even have clearing and dirt Contractors is sad!
Three years ago I drove back from my mothers funeral in Western NY and showed my daughter the hospital I built. it was busy due to Medicaid expansion. In Georgia where I live a rural hospital would either be closed or closing. Their were doctors office built up around it. There was every chain hotel at the I-75 entrance ramps. There were now fast food and chain dining resturants. At every highway exit. They have also added exits. If they take away Obamacare these fools will loose all this.
They just need to drive about 400-500 south on I-75 about 100 miles south of Atlanta to see what rural life is like without a hospital. It is pretty bleak!
9
What's the logical response to things biting the hand that feeds them? Remove the hand. Problem solved.
10
What the article omits is that even in our poorest areas and States, there are still people who work, people who own businesses, who are professionals, who are middle managers, etc. Those people, their spouses and the non-destitute elderly, are the people who vote. Even Harlan County has some people who work and are middle class. They are the ones who are voting GOP in the poorer areas. The people who are gainfully employed, or are seniors with a decent retirement income, do not collect benefits intended for the very poor. They do not see themselves as very poor and are not so likely to vote for a party that they see as interested only in the poor (or other beneficiaries of identity politics). The truly indigent don’t vote, or vote at lower rates than the middle class.
8
You’ve hit one of the nails right square in the head.
1
If you want to read the longer version of this article, read the chapter on the Department of Rural Development in Michael Lewis' latest book, The Fifth Risk. When a project the department funded opened, someone from the department showed up as part of the celebration with a replica check of the amount the government supplied to the project. The local officials asked that the check not be displayed because they did not want the local populace to know where the funding came from.
13
Truly, I’m serious: Thirty-plus years ago, while visiting relatives in Kentucky - for the last time, I was planning on driving down to Harlan County to do some local-color-type photography. My father, alarmed, vehemently discouraged my doing so. He stated that it would not be a safe place for someone with out-of-state license plates and a camera.
Yep, like I said; thirty-plus years ago - and for the last time...........!
12
@William B. Thanks for continuing to perpetuate the stereotype.
After government regulations destroyed their jobs, government feeds them crumbs - and expects to be loved
3
@Alain Government regulations did not destroy their jobs. Cheaper natural gas did.
29
And lack of education.
These folks still feel entitled to the “good life” with only a high school diploma, like their parents had.
6
So is the import from the article that these voters should prefer Democrats to keep the government assistance coming? Isn't that rather short-sighted? Isn't it more alarming the amount of government assistance increases nationally? So is the answer to just keep increasing such assistance? Or improve the economy so less assistance is needed.
3
I haven't read through all the 200+ comments, but I want to point out that linking these folks and their support of Republicans and 45 is sloppy thinking, given what even the author cites as voting percentages. Bevin was elected by a TOTAL of 16 percent of Kentucky's eligible voters. You can bet the house that many, many of the folks he writes about here help put him and 45 in office - by NOT going to the polls, and as the author says, making little to no connection between their lives and the act of voting. Whether in Harlan County, KY or Orange County, CA, and in many of the states that produced the Electoral College victory in 2016, these folks whose interests are not in line with their Congressional delegation, their governors or the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, just plain do not vote. And yes - I believe the anti-education, fear-mongering policies and rhetoric of the last 50 years (I'm looking at you, 1968) have contributed to that alienation from the fundamentals of democracy.
18
Well Said... thanks
Time to break up the country and let those regions figure it out. The women for sure will leave for the United states Of the north east. As will the children. Anyone who wants to stay in Kentucky can just stay
12
I agree that these folks vote against their own economic interests, even to the point where the government assistance that keeps them alive is scorned. I agree that they should accept the end of the old way of life and that they need to find alternatives such as getting training, education, moving to where the good work is.
At the same time, so many commenters treat as trivial how degraded they feel having to accept this assistance and how hating that feeling easily translates to hating the supplier that they can pretend is the cause of their humiliation. It’s much like the drug addicts that so many have become. Heroin addicts are not happy porch-sitters, either. They despise what they have become but feel completely stuck. Shaking our fingers at them is about as useful as saying to the opiate addict, “why don’t you just stop?”. Like the drug addicts, these folks hate their addiction to government assistance and like any of us, have a hard time facing up to that pain. I wish I could see a pathway out, because, as with opiate addicts, the toll their humiliation takes on all the rest of us is also painful, and the more “we” (blue state citizens) try to help, the worse they feel, and the worse we resent them.
7
The explanation is negative partisanship: Many Americans no longer vote for the party most likely to help them; they prefer to vote for the party dedicated to hurting the people they hate.
23
That’s why building the wall is more important to trump than anything. Hatred of “others” was always the top issue for them, not some imaginary “economic anxiety” cooked up by the media.
1
I wonder how many of those who bought into the "vote for me and I will reduce your TAXES" trap. Many of these voters following the pie in the sky good boys dont realize that those selling this line are the primary if not the only recipients. THE PRIMARY BENEFICIARIES ARE THE UPPER CLASS. THE RICH AS USUAL GET RICHER AND THE POOR POORER.
4
Let's see the effect that the government shutdown will have . All the words; opinions; and analysis bandied about will not bring about change. Let the well run dry and witness the action that follows.
7
To me the striking thing in this article is not only its subject, but also the stability of the map of Federal assistance since 1970. If ever more data to show the uselessness of place-based development programs were needed, these maps should put an end to it. (Of course it won't; politicians come from geographically-defined districts.)
“People in Harlan County have been on the front lines of the war on poverty for 50-plus years and can see its actual effects...”
“Most of the kids from here who have a chance to go to university never come back...”
Those kids are doing the right thing, and our taxes should be used to help them, not to continue our useless "help" for Harlan County.
10
Fallacy alert: that plot does not show that "states receiving more federal spending for every tax dollar they contributed were more likely to go Republican." It contains zero information about Republican voting, given that the trend line was calculated only within the set of counties that voted mostly Republican. What the plot appears to show is that within those counties, higher dependence on government assistance was associated (somewhat) with the proportion of the votes that were for the party that was sampled. This association is far from the one claimed, and its meaning is ambiguous. Nor did the writers bother to calculate an analogous trend line for the counties that voted Democratic.
3
Easy: The counties won by Hillary generated 64% of our GDP, while trump’s only brought 36%
Urban centers are the economic engine of our nation, not the poor rural ones.
2
Simple solution - cut off their federal dollars.
I don't want the taxes, taken from my very hard-earned income, to pay for people who are at best apathetic and at worst openly hostile, to the very government which is facilitating their safe little world.
Join the rest of us or fall behind. Don't expect us to handicap our own collective progress just because you can't keep up.
30
There's a veteran I know who hates all government, and makes it known with his daily online posting of anti-government memes and his constant assertions that government ruins everything it touches, and that all taxation is theft of his hard-earned money. He also enjoys free government-provided health care for life; a military (government) pension; and bought his house with a guaranteed government loan. Government also paid his way through college.
Republican politicians in the south train their constituents to feel shame for accepting government assistance, to play into their desire to be "rugged individuals" who don't need help to survive, and yet many of them take full advantage of government entitlements while also shaming others for doing the same. "Well, the programs are there so you might as well use them," is their usual reply when you confront them with the hypocrisy. Town hall meeting held by politicians are filled with wild applause any time an anti-government statement is made; when it comes time for the Q&A part of the meeting, most attendees ask why government programs are being cut.
21
@Vexations
If he/she is a vet, they earned it; it isn't FREE.
1
These folks are not getting their benefits from "the government," they are getting them from ME and millions of other working middle-class taxpayers, especially in high-tax states such as NY where we pay the federal govt more than we get back in benefits of any kind. Sure we may kvetch about taxes, but we pay them - and vote Democratic - because the Republicans are cutting taxes on the wealthiest, cutting help for the poorest & sickest and running up the federal deficit after decades of demanding a "balanced budget." Phooey (to put it politely enough to get published)!
24
Is coal dying ?
Numbers please
US metallurgical coal export, year to date. shot tons
2018 2,198,369 Up 13%
2017 1,944,683
Data
https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t11p01p1.pdf
@Woof There is no such number in the linked page, but in any event metallurgical coal is a very specialized item with low impurity levels for smelting. This is not for power plant fuel.
9
@Woof
Metallurgical coal is for coke for ironmaking. It's a small portion of coal production, the great bulk of which goes to power plant and industrial boilers.
Coal for power plants and boilers is deservedly decreasing (despite occasional blips) because of pollution (soot, toxics, smog precursors, ash pits, acid drainage, mountaintop removal...not just greenhouse gases), natural gas and renewable energy is getting cheap, and more efficient use of energy moderates demand. Oh, did you catch the NPR piece on growing black lung disease as Appalachian miners drill through more and more rock to get coal?
Of the coal that is produced, fewer people are needed due to productivity gains. There are a bit more than 50,000 coal miners in the country left according to the Energy Information Administration.
Except for niches--like metallurgical grade--coal coming back is as probably as building battleships in Brooklyn; Gloversville, NY and St. Louis becoming glove and shoe capitals again, respectively; and finding vacuum tubes and CRTs in your smart phone.
Coal country communities needs help to transition to the future, not cling to the past.
9
I am not sure I see a disconnect. The GOP attracted these people with a disdain for the 'other' not the benefits. These folks like the benefits and thank their GOP rep for them. At the same time they remind him/her that they expect the GOP rep to deny benefits or make them harder to get for the 'other'. Stop that government. In a nutshell, the Federal government is funded to serve and reward the white conservative folks.
The problem Democrats have is they do not hate the 'other' that is all.
No disconnect.
17
There's no help for people like this, people who can't put two and two together and who are so easily motivated by hate. They're happy as long as they can prevent others from having what they have, even if that means shooting themselves in the foot. Education is the only way to overcome this but the Republicans have done a great job in reducing the quality of education in this nation that it is exceedingly hard to get people to see reason. I felt bad for people like these in the past but frankly, I think they deserve what they get at this point. We all have to live with the consequences of our actions and these people will have to live with theirs.
22
I disagree that small cities are universally suffering. Many large cities have declined also. Come to Kingsport and see a legitimate small city thriving, manufacturing, and exporting. Most people here live better than rich people on the coasts--we have nice houses, short commutes, and all the accoutrements of modern life -- shopping, cultural events, excellent medical facilities, great schools, and responsive government providing good service. Many parts of New York City are inhabited by poor people getting by with government subsidies. They should get training, move, and find a better life in a small city.
4
@Tim Nolen, true, there are many small cities that are thriving, especially in the South and West. Kingsport is relatively close to Harlan County. It would be a perfect destination.
2
This is, in part, about the so-called "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. People see their own plight, and those of their family and friends, through the lens of larger external factors (such as the loss of the coal industry and related employment) and conclude that they are the deserving poor because there is relatively little that they can do to change their lives. On the other hand, there are the undeserving poor, living in other communities and in the inner cities of this country who have access to jobs but have bad personal characteristics (and other "controllable" factors) that should disqualify them from being deserving enough to receive government assistance.
I don't accept this distinction but I think that it plays a role in people's thinking.
12
Keep "blue" money in "blue" states. Let the others fend for themselves. Then we can form our own regional alliances for healthcare, education, infrastructure improvements and the like.
21
@Kevin
Totally agree. Congress should slash individual income tax rates and reduce all government assistance programs. I live in San Diego and would much rather pay higher state income taxes to help people who share my values instead of subsidizing red state citizens who continually vote against their own self-interest.
13
@Kevin: While I understand your sentiment, we are the "United" States of America. That means that we must help our neighbors whether they live next door or across the country.
6
@Jeff
No one is advocating a dissolution of the Union - merely a redefinition of the social and economic relationships between its members. I'm all about helping those in need, but at the same time we can't continue to allow those same people to hold hour ability to enact common sense legislation to protect and improve our own health, safety and quality of life hostage.
5
I wonder if Daniel Lewis will have to get a job or volunteer 20 hours a week to keep his Medicaid benefits, which probably cover his daughter also. Be interested in his response if he is.
13
@Gene
the changes apply to able-bodied adults without children
1
So, what now? We do a full 360 and Democrats start talking about personal responsibility, lower taxes, and the need for individual states to have more power over local policies?
Just a preview of the AI/ML world to come. As we will no longer need the middle class skills we have been trained for - in the future the need for UBI (Universal Basic Income) will turn the 2015 to solid black with the exception of a few counties that hold the ownership of the AI revolution.
2
These people are collecting benefits, and they know this is bad for them. Men without anything to do will get into all kinds of trouble, and families and communities will fall apart.
They would prefer to have a job and earn their living, and they are totally correct in this.
5
@Jonathan: Except that they lack the courage to leave their poverty stricken areas for jobs. They are the descendants who stayed o=home during the Great Depression. The movers and visionaries came to California and made it the 5th largest economies in the world while those in the South who stayed at home are not even on the list.
17
@Jonathan,
in which case you need to keep up on your education and skills for the jobs that are out there.
you can't both want a high-paying job and refuse to learn new skills or believe in science. what tech or engineering or healthcare company is going to hire someone coming out believing the world is 7000 years old?
10
@Jonathan So they'd prefer to starve while they're waiting for a job to come along? Does this make sense to you?
4
Those with ambition have been leaving SE KY since at least the 1960's. I worked with many from SE KY in Indianapolis in the early 1970s. Should the goal be decent outcomes for everyone, in the place of your choosing, in perpetuity? Why not decent outcomes if one is willing to adapt, retrain, and seek the opportunities offered elsewhere?
7
I just wish the south would just leave the US.The rest of us would be better off. There are years of mooching by the southern states that has not done the rest of us any good, and it encourages the racism, misogyny, and antiSemitism so prevalent there.
14
all that's missing from this story is the tea party zealot ignoramus holding up his 'keep your hands off my medicare' sign.
20
I've been saying for a while that we ought to expel Kentucky from the Union for sending Mitch McConnell to the Senate.
8
The southern states have been a drag on this country since before the civil war - nothing is different today.
30
We are about 20 to 30 years away from the biggest hit to employment in a very long time which no one discusses, the automation of driving; no more truckers uber drivers taxi drivers and yes highway patrolmen and traffic cops all gone.. State coffers depending on DUI and traffic tickets drying up... So what is playing out in coal country and rural America is coming to an urban area near you.. peace
8
Many people will burn their house to the ground for the mere permission to hate an "other."
14
Both Kentucky senators and most of its congressmen voted against emergency relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Those politicians represent the people of Kentrucky, and their votes made plain that what they (and their constituents) really hate is not government help, but government help for anybody but themselves.
Don't they remind you of a hungover panhandler who complains that you only gave him $5 instead of $20?
25
I'm sure these Kentucky folk rail away daily at those in Detroit and Flint, MI, e.g., for *their* dependence on government help to survive and inability to find decent work with the shrinking of good auto factory jobs. Make no mistake about why many of these people vote Republican, and it has little to do with their cognitive dissonance. It's about "those people" on welfare, not them.
14
I remember the socially liberal, fiscally conservative "Rockefeller Republicans." These days they're a thing of the past and things have flipped -- now the party is dominated by socially conservative, even hateful crypto-fascist values while they rack up more debt than the Democrats, with their tax cuts for the 1%. I have two words for them, and they are not "Merry Christmas." Unfortunately one of them is not printable.
6
A smart Democrat would create a type of flyer using this article and its comments.
Then have a small plane to distribute thousands al over Harlan.
If people knew, finally, that they've been manipulated for decades,
many would finally come to their senses.
My guess is it would be hard to find the NYTimes in Harlan, but
loads of places that carry the National Enquirer.
These people can be awakened.
"Lies persist, but truth is eternal", someone once said.
6
Cognitive dissonance. The only explanation is pure, unadulterated cognitive dissonance (plus unhealthy doses of racism, white privilege, and self-loathing).
7
and here in New York City we have to pay for this as we are a net exporter of Tax $$$$$ to Red States.
If Harlan KY hates the government so much give us our money back
13
The cognitive dissonance problem should resolve itself when Congress gets around to "entitlements reform" which should come some time after the next economic crisis. Spending cuts in Social Security and Medicare will make clear what government really means to the citizens of Harland county and other places like it.
2
If Central Americans can walk to the US seeking work, then the residents of these counties, can also walk to find work. Why should these counties rely upon the tax dollars of people who have invested time and money in their educations and moved to high-rent areas for opportunities? Many of us who are educated lived in high-crime areas and worked blue-collar jobs to fund our educations. Now my tax dollars are being used to support lazy, wallowing people. These rural residents may resent me, but don't acknowledge the contradiction of accepting my tax dollars. If the US intends to follow a policy of not taxing corporations and instead relies upon taxing income, then government policy should be directed not to redistribution, but to education and relocation. If the capitalists don't want to stay in an area, go to where the work is.
7
I find this somewhat helpful in my ongoing attempt to understand this concept of voting against self interest( or not voting at all)--a strong component is these areas have become more reliant on government assistance but they hate that. They want jobs back. I can understand that. They hope/have decided that republican policies will help return those jobs so then they can quit needing the government assistance. THAT still is frustrating, however, because it implies that government assistance CAUSES/CAUSED the need for more government assistance rather than simply being a result of the same forces that left fewer jobs in the first place: physical isolation limiting opportunities, reliance on industries for which cheaper alternatives have been found, automation, and reliance on jobs that can be more cheaply outsourced. I guess the entire principal of Republican thought these days is something akin to just that- 'if we get regulation out of the way and quit supporting people then freedom to do as coporations/pepople want and all the people eager to work because otherwise they are starving to death will FORCE jobs to materialize again'. Voting in their interest should look like voting for easily accessed and subsidized retraining programs, enhanced education, broadband and wifi internet access that likely will need government subsidies/loans, and more regulation to limit monopolies on things like cable providers. So...still should be democrat. Still cognitive dissonance.
4
Should you distinguish between various types of government spending? Helping the poor with income transfers is never that popular. Helping the middle class (who are much more likely to vote) generally is popular. Social Security would be an example of that, it's perceived as a benefit that was earned through work.
2
To this insightful piece by Eduardo Porter i would add a recommendation to view Barbara Kopple's seminal documentary Harlan County USA, a stark take on the tensions between labor and management in coal country that goes a long way to explaining the anti-union, anti-government bias that is rife in places like Harlan.
4
You glossed over the statistics regarding how many Eastern Kentuckians actually voted. In September 2016 I spent ten days hitchhiking there (I hold up a 10¢/mile sign; I pay the drivers, if they'll accept it) and based on my admittedly anecdotal evidence, I would confidently wager that a significant majority of those who actually voted nurse a righteous feeling of superiority and resentment toward those who they perceive as "getting a free handout." Just sayin'.
3
Bevin strolled to re-election winning the votes of an astounding 16% of Kentucky's eligible electorate. This should be a sorry state of affairs by anyone's measure, but the Republican party is heartened by the turnout. Because, if Kentucky actually had a turn out on election day, their tunes might well be dirges and their bags packed for home.
3
@Glen Bevin is actually only on his first term as governor and many of us in Kentucky hope that it is his last. New Hampshire is welcome to take him back.
1
Re:
As Professor Mettler points out, the people who rely most on government transfers are least likely to vote. Only 31 percent of Kentucky’s electorate voted in 2015; only 16 percent voted for Mr. Bevin. Participation was lowest in the counties most dependent on federal aid. The governor’s victory was not propelled by the neediest Kentuckians.
Combine this with a complete absence in the article of what if
anything the democratic party is actually proposing,
or of its organizing/political presence anywhere in this deep poverty zone. The inference is that there is none, and there are no ideas that mean anything or resonate with the population. Indeed, Rogers' wins are by absurdly wide margins, i.e. he has no real opposition.
It is, however, unexplained why there is a complete absence of any sort of cooperative social local solidarity, a feature one might expect of geographically isolated groups.
The only conclusion to draw is that neither the political nor communal offers anything to those in deepest need, other than an increasingly challenged daily aid allotment, while everyone else doing marginally better couldn't care less.
This expresses the underlying belief that there is no collective future nor any expectation of one. You are on your own and too bad about that.
In such cases, why vote at all when citizenship means
little if anything concrete. The neediest have truly tuned out.
And everyone else doesn't seem to mind.
4
I remember several years ago when studies revealed that people on Social Security didn't know that SS is a government program.
Serious education is needed in these places . . . that is if anyone is willing to see anything new.
6
Nice work, Mr. Porter!
An important and hard to know factor is who votes? Clearly a minority and who is in that minority? Who was in the room cheering Bevin?
Even Harlan county (like my small home town) has a local elite who are employed and do have property, money, and local power. They greatly resent the intrusion of larger government - mostly federal- as it undercuts that local power. Of course they also vocally resent the large number of unfortunate fellow locals that they regard as lazy spongers - particularly ones of color. This attitude too helps them maintain their local power. They are the only ones with the admirable attitudes that give them the right to lead and to profit.
Cut off the federal aid and they'd suffer too. They hope, unconsciously perhaps, that their demands never come to fruition.
7
Reagan quipped that if someone shows up at your door and says “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help” then you should respond with a mixture of fear, distrust, and disgust because government is not the solution, it’s the problem. Tell that to citizens of Normandy watching American GIs (Government Issued) coming ashore on D-day to solve the problem of Nazi occupation. Or, ask the people living in the Tennessee Valley how they feel about the Tennessee Valley Authority bringing electricity into their homes and businesses. Go to an airport and ask people if they are willing to fly on an airline not subject to FAA safety regulations. If people running for government positions think that government is the problem, then they should drop out of their races, stay home and be part of the solution (and that goes for their voters too).
18
Great article!
3
I beleive that the comments of some respondents have correctly diagnosed the essential problems which explain the subject of this article: Why is it that people most dependent on Government transfer payments consistently vote against their interests, or don't vote at all?
Racism, sexism, tribalism and lack of education all preclude rational, analytic thinking. Ignorance is easily exploitable. Humans with little capacity for conceptualizing complex issues grasp for simple minded explanations for their intractable problems. They are therefore suseptible to propaganda which supports their prejudices and encapsulated by three or four word slogans which either promise the impossible (“Bring back coal !”, MAGA”) or which demonize “the other”— whether it be a female presidential candidate (“Lock her up”), LBGT individuals, or “coastsl elites.”
Sadly, makes the case for the notion that the most plentiful commodity on Earth is stupidity.
9
I read this article in growing anger and frustration. It illustrates clearly the manipulation of low information voters by republican government officials who should be acting in the best interests of these people but instead are acting in support of the donor class that funds their re-election accounts. That used to be considered corruption. This article demonstrates the toxic consequences inherent in the intersection between low information voters, criminality, greed, stupidity and hypocrisy. Unfortunately, even those who pay attention and try to make reasoned choices end up paying the bill for this toxicity.
14
Fine. Then close the programs, shut down the assistance and let them go without. My sympathy and willingness to lend a hand or two is gone. Let them go without.
17
No good roads, no broadband. The local Chamber of Commerce gave its award to a coal company providing 200 jobs. Forget for a moment what government does or doesn’t do- what is capitalism, business doing? Apple, Amazon, Verizon, name your giant- where are you? Oh- you’re going to NYCity, Austin.....not-a-rural-region. Not an area that believes in hard work, self-reliance, family.....
Little wonder the young who do go off to college don’t come back. And what of all those tech workers in Seattle, San Francisco, now NY, Austin- maybe they would rather work in a small town, where neighbors actually know your name, hike those mountains, fish those nearby rivers - rather than miles of pavement, traffic jams.
All these non-voters have phones- land lines, I presume. Start calling those conservative reps and ask- where’s my capitalism? Where’s the investment from those tax cuts? And why, why, are the toothpick boxes still laughingly claiming, Made in China. Promises made- ha!
3
So urban areas do not have people who “believe in hard work, self reliance, family”??
Ummm, actually they are the ones working.
And apparently large companies have no interest in a work force with low education - just like the Republican Party.
Kentucky - Everyone- stop letting your political beliefs be shaped by campaign ads and take a few minutes to figure out where your interests truly lie.
Or maybe it’s just easier to wait for McConnell to throw you scraps.
11
Capitalism is about taking a risk, about innovation. Doing things differently. Rural people may be uneducated, but bring the training center, the startups, the supply centers (aka, fulfillment centers) closer, and in six months half of them will probably code the socks off of some techie in CS 220. And I’m pretty sure Kentuckians could manage to manufacture an iPhone just as well as any worker in China, or elsewhere.
American capitalism ought to be about spreading out the opportunities, and- heaven forbid, making a difference. And as far as I know, Kentucky doesn’t have any missiles pointed at us and isn’t hiding behind/orchestrating North Korea’s belligerence.
But hey- it’s so much easier to trash Kentucky than...corporate boards. If Repubs trash socialism, they’d better start demanding capitalism step up to the plate.
4
@Jo Williams, I think the important question is why big companies like Apple and Amazon aren't relocating to depressed regions like Harlan County. The answer is that all large companies relying on cutting edge technology require a very large pool of highly educated workers. Also, I think most engineers who live in Seattle or San Francisco don't really want to live in Harlan County, in spite of its folksy charms. They want the comforts of a city-- museums, performing arts, plus opportunities to live the outdoor life. Unfortunately, this will never be Harlan County.
I agree that we're not getting much from those big corporate tax cuts. I don't think its authors ever expected us too.
4
If this reporter is correct, the people obtaining federal assistance in rural small town Kentucky mostly don't vote. The fact that the far right governor won his election to 16% of the eligible voters is absolutely amazing.
5
What ever happened to pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps?
How about this - take away all their welfare benefits, since they don't appreciate them. Let's see what happens then.
11
We've seen pieces like this before.
Why aren't their any articles being written about the hard working people who are paying the taxes for the benefits these people live off of?
7
"Most of the kids from here who have a chance to go to university never come back,”
No wonder the republicans are so negative on education.
16
This article oversimplifies a more complicated picture.
The fact someone needs and accepts public support does not mean that same someone wouldn't rather not need it. Trump played into that in the election with all of his miracle plans to bring back lost jobs. Clinton had a hard time against that kind of argument: "She'll give you a handout; I'll give you a job." If you're ready to claim coal jobs are coming back, you're ready to claim anything.
Until we have a effective plan for economic dislocation (as opposed to pretending it doesn't exit) we will be vulnerable to that kind of demagoguery. It's hard to take a step back, but even fair amount of what gets blamed on China is in that category. Also, it should be recognize that 3.7% unemployment doesn't mean the problem is solved. Most Trump supporters were not unemployed; they just lived the difference between good union jobs and Walmart.
Education is obviously important, but even plain ordinary government-funded jobs should be taken seriously. We should recognize the crazy mismatch that currently exists. There is a great deal of necessary work that isn't happening (infrastructure is just the beginning), but the private sector alone is not going to get it done.
4
Let's give the GOP what they want here. Let's decrease federal welfare programs, lower federal taxes, and then in blue states we can keep that money and run state welfare programs. I'm tired of paying for these people.
18
OK, let's take note of the chart in the article showing the change between parties in percentage of voters: The last big jump coincided with the election of a black man to the presidency. Coincidence? I think not.
3
Same with Missouri. It stopped being the “Bellwether State” in 2008.
I'm not sure this is any more complicated than this: we have the government we have earned and deserve.
Harlan Co is hardly unique...the country is full of like-minded places, uninterested and uninvolved. Why is it surprising that an underachieving white population (in Harlan Co and elsewhere) doesn't understand the disconnect?
I would also recommend the NYT send Mr. Porter back Harlan Co. with an eye to examining the local Social Security office. Federal government offices in remote areas like Harlan Co are obviously staffed with locals. In small population counties like this one, it would hardly be surprising for SSO employees to know many if not all of the population seeking government assistance.
1
Those horrible liberal states such as NY and Ca send millions of their tax dollars to Harlan and other trump areas.Trump tries hard to transfer this to his wealthy supporters and corporations. As long he as he can convince them that its the "others" stealing their place at the table he is going to succeed. Most folks on food stamps are white and working at suboptimal jobs yet trump is going to make it more difficult for them. He is taking away health care and reducing almost all social help. That nasty dangerous Pelosi is fighting to keep these for the Harlen folks and the others suffering. Yet, they hate her and love trump. Go figure?
8
Good insights into the plight of the left-behinds in Harlan County. Particularly for males not working destroys self-respect, self-knowledge and breads resentment and anger at the world, at those up there (government) in power who are to blame for the historic slide into oblivion (Unions, Dems, Obama=coal killer).
The article is focused too much on the personal and political disconnect of these resenters (not resisters!) whose cultural heritages make them susceptible to the lying republican ideologies. Trump's Master-of-the-World attitude makes him a (hollow) messiah of empty promises. Resentment/emptiness meets blindness/emptiness. What DT and the left-behind have in common: the entitlement genetics: he reigns with criminal energy; the unfortunate want status without having to deliver - as jobs are scarce and to fall for populism is so easy/convenient.
The Times had, maybe 2 years ago, a much more hopeful article about retraining and self-help in the region, initiatives to go into organic farming etc. Nothing about alternatives in this sad account of political betrayal (switching parties and voting against self-interest).
DT's hate speech (immigration etc.) meets the resenters' anger and wishing for scapegoats. Enlightening of the minds would have to come before the retraining of their skills or maybe: enlightenment comes through well-working retraining. Huge problems. KY will have intoxicating industry: thanks to Mitch McConnell: Marijuana! Exit from the opioid-crisis?
4
Republicans have used hate as a currency, and people bought it.
Guns are all about the "other" that they're worried about.
Churches demonize gay people, and they eat this up.
Politicians use religion as a wedge to get votes, when they likely don't believe in the dogma themselves.
Religion tells people they'll be happy and fulfilled when they're dead, ("heaven").
5
There are approximately 3,000 counties in the U.S. In 2016, about 500 of those counties voted for HRC, and about 2,500 for tRump.
The 500 counties that voted for HRC generated 64 percent of the GDP in 2016, while the 2,500 that went for tRump generated 36 percent of the GDP.
You do the math. On one hand, Republicans hate, hate, hate the federal government, and with the other, they're picking our pockets...
10
Unemployment is at its lowest level in decades. Jobs are going unfilled all over America. The good folks of Kentucky need to go where the jobs are, and it ain't in the coal mines. Good old American capitalism, with help from fracking, killed off the coal industry, and it is never coming back. Time to face reality, and stop listening to Mitch McConnell's lies.
9
This article makes the mistake of focusing on the recent whittling down of what are just the remaining coal jobs, making it easier for short-sighted politicians to blame Obama or blame natural gas fracking.
Here's the list of coal employment in Kentucky by year between 1979 and 2006. Between 1979 and 1989 it dropped from 47,190 to 30,656. This was during the Sunny Days in America reign of Ronny, then Bush senior.
The coal industry in Appalachia has been in decline for decades and people there need to face reality. In many areas, the coal is simply gone. In others, the job losses were from automation, or the job losses were due to the fact that it takes fewer employees to blow the top off a mountain and dump the waste into streams.
The Republicans and the mine owners have not been friends of the workers. To give any impression that their collapsed industry is recent or is potentially based on liberal policies is perhaps wishful thinking at best, and is readily exploited by big-city blowhards like Trump.
12
@b fagan - forgot to add the link to the employment decline numbers
http://www.coaleducation.org/ky_coal_facts/employment/ky_employment.htm
Another link to people trying to break Kentucky's addiction to an industry that's no longer good for them. It has a sidebar quote from Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO about how climate change is real, and also a real source of employment to make the changes we need (and that are inevitable).
http://kftc.org/campaigns/appalachian-transition/coal-production-and-employment-trends
2
Has anyone wondered whether this discrepancy occurs because the people who need help the most, and take it, are ashamed of it and to dissuade people from thinking they are getting handouts they vote republican?
3
If government is such a dirty word, let them do without government benefits. Why don't they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? That's what they expect "those other people" to do.
1036
@Celia Sgroi The residents of Harlan County and other similar areas believe they are the truly deserving of any and all aid they get based on their belief that they got shafted, despite being God-fearing and hard working, by undeserving groups who support Democrats (e.g. anyone not white and Christian). This was made very clear by Arlie Hochschild's book "Strangers in Their Own Land,
66
Human beings have an amazing ability to ignore the reality around them and believe what they want to believe. But sooner or later reality rears it’s ugly head. In this case a depression just might focus these people’s attention. Some may riot, some may die, and some may say Thank You.
5
One takeaway is that if the Democratic Party had nominated someone other than Clinton in 2016, Trump would probably not be president today.
3
More people chose her to be the candidate for the 2016 presidential election, and more than 3 million Americans voted for her to be POTUS. I don't think your hypothesis is correct.
5
@Jon Orloff, that's a bit of a leap. What in the article leads you to believe this? Do you know of any Democratic candidate who would have won Kentucky?
1
The hypocrisy of the Republicans is extremely clear.
Remember back to those protests when the Tea Party was first getting organized? All those grandmas and grandpas out there with their signs and slogans, and all saying "cut government spending, but don't touch my Medicare"?
We know who the "takers" are in this country. Just look at the maps in this article. It's Trump country, especially the South. They voted for Trump, and have watched him trash America time and time again, and are OK with that. Why? Because Trump enforces their own bigotry and hate for all the wedge issue things. Hate the gays, hate the people of color, hate Planned Parenthood, and especially, hate all the criminals and Typhoid Marys coming across the border.
And who pays the most for all government programs they rely on? My home state of New York. Ours isn't a perfect state (see also: Andy Cuomo), but, oh, do I love it. And what I hate is the way these takers take advantage of our good will.
I hope the energy and momentum toward the left we saw in the midterms continues into 2020 and beyond. To paraphrase Pogo, we have met the enemy, and it is the Republicans. It's time to vote them ALL out of office.
Unless you like your hypocrisy and Trump's destruction of America, of course.
And all those freebie benefits you love so much, that others like we NYers pay for? The way Trump is killing the economy, it won't be long before those are gone, too. And you only have yourselves to thank for it.
14
Having gone to college in Eastern Kentucky I know a tiny bit about the folks there... at the end of the day they're not much different then all of us. Many of the seeds of their distrust of the 'government' lie back in the civil war times and those seeds lie back in the way our government was structured in the beginning around the idea of states rights. The quickest way I can see to move beautiful Harlan county and many other equally disadvantaged areas into the 21st century is to start rewriting the Constitution which has enshrined 2 Senators from every state. This anachronism is a direct contradiction to 1man/woman > 1 vote. Kentucky should have 1 Senator. Calif, NY, TX should have 3 or 4... the legislation could then be passed to pay for the infrastructure and education that alone will lift these areas out of their poverty.
8
One of the great ironies here is that if a lot of folks from these impoverished areas resent the government for not preventing their decline, then what they really want is: ‘Big Government’!! Just- their preferred version of it, not someone else’s.
Cognitive dissonance is an amazing thing.
6
As a Kentuckian I appreciate finally seeing an article in the NYT trying to explain this paradox, but I think you missed a key factor. Stupidity....plain and simple...exacerbated by a terrible education system. Although you can try to weave a convoluted tale about why people would go out of their way to bite the hand that literally feeds them, it really comes down to a lack of introspection. That and the fact that Republicans have knowingly and willfully appealed to this group's diminished intellect with ridiculous appeals to niche political ideas that have almost zero impact on their daily lives. These 'Republicans' in Harlan county may finally be able to drive to that 'Lynch Hillary' demonstration while carrying a gun, wearing a Klan robe and stopping to firebomb an abortion clinic (there's only one in the state), but they won't be able to afford the gas or the car payment to get there. MAGA!
26
Cultural values of these voters resonate with the messages that the Republicans broadcast to them. The source of these cultural values, seems to me, is within their pride system which works as protective shield against the adversity in their environment.
This is not unique to the Appalachian region but a more general phenomena that can be seen almost everywhere people are beset with poverty and resulting ignorance, basically for lack of good hope. The pride system is an adaptive psychic response to the environment in order to survive, in a way perhaps similar to the immune response of human body to egregious infections.
This psychic response 'immunizes' the mind to rational thought and can lead to self destructive social and economic behavior, including political behavior, by voting against self interest.
Drug abuse is another example.
There is no quick fix to this. Economic deprivation has led to this. Economic development and education are the way out it. The Republicans take votes of these people and then forget them or work against them. This is the real tragedy. Yet, the Democrats need not despair and keep working toward the uplift despite no or low return in the short term. It will be decades and billions before any substantial change occurs. Do not know how much patience is there for it. But there is no choice but to do it. If China could and India could uplift its poor, in some ways poorer, then America can do it as well.
7
History, culture, economics: all these big forces collide, and present day Harlan County is the result. The way out is to embrace things most of the people interviewed may not like: to promote tourism and inexpensive second homes, which requires attracting young people to open restaurants, organic farms, cafes, state parks for hiking, etc. To promote building of retirement homes that would be less expensive than those in big cities. If I were them, I would embrace the future rather than pining for the past. But I'm not them. They don't want to be a "destination" for me, they want their old town back, their old lives. And in a democracy, they have a voice just like I do. All I can offer is support for politicians who really want to help -- when they (or their children) are ready. I can also offer compassion (not pity) and be patient, and I can resolve not to judge them. If the roulette wheel of history had turned in a different direction, they would be me and I them.
6
Interesting article. I'd be interested in seeing an update to the graph with share of vote by government assistance updated with the size of the dots showing population size of the county.
1
I'm from New Jersey. My state consistently ranks 50th or 49th in terms of money back from the federal government. And I'm sick and tired of supporting the lazy, ignorant taker states.
Let them live out their Darwin Award-worthy delusions and elections on their own dime. That kind of head-in-the-sand denial, gullibility, and bigotry deserves to go extinct.
23
The fact that people in Harlan County and similar areas consume massive amounts of taxes paid by people in other areas, yet support government-hating politicians, leaves no room for sympathy. Hillary Clinton’s plan to create solar power-related jobs to replace the forever-gone coal jobs would have helped these areas. But they preferred having someone to resent rather than making some changes.
15
@Theresa NelsonTthe Republican Party has thrived for 50 years (since Reagan) using the politics of bigotry, envy, hate and division. Perhaps it's time to think about dividing the country into two separate entities, the progressive coasts and the interior Trumplandia. Let them stew in their own juices of resentment without the aid of the tax dollars of the progressive states.
6
This article clearly explains the perfect intersection of white entitlement, racism and a lack of education in this country - exemplified by the hard Christian right. The largely white residents of Harlan County feel entirely entitled to receive government assistance (because God wants them to have it?), but readily and easily decry minority groups of who receive the same or less benefits from the government. Racist hypocrisy of the highest order.
Equally the press seems obsessed with "explaining" the grievances of rural white America. Maybe the explanation is as simple as limited, and poor, education combined with centuries of ingrained racism, have produced these people and their backward views. The temptation seems to always to be to explain it away by saying that there are no jobs, but does anyone seriously believe the residents of eastern KY were any less entitled and any less racist when coal mines were running full out?
15
Republicans played the culture war card with the article describing the results...
... calling out the disconnect between cultural proclivities and actual reliance on government needs to be an ongoing task.
5
Gee, I'm a professional horse and buggy driver. When will the federal government start to understand my needs and bring back the buggies?
17
@Saba And I'm a VHS tape manufacturer. When will the government understand that my lifestyle must be protected against all forms of "progress" such as digital media?
8
Several commenters allege that racism is involved here, and this perspective, that rural white working class communities vote against their own interests because they are all a bunch of "racist deplorables", who hate non-white people on welfare, is exactly the sort of dismissive and contemptuous, elitist view that isn't helping the Democrats gain working class voters.
In the book "Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild takes a more charitable view, and tries to understand and empathize with those who sadly vote against their own interests. More of us should try to do this, scaling the "empathy wall" to build bridges, instead of just dismissing people. The book can help build compassion, when you see that in addition to being people receiving government benefits who vote against government aid, many in the rural south are people living in areas where the environment has been seriously damaged by corporate pollution, and yet they also vote against measures that would strengthen environmental protections, and protect their own health.
Education and bridge-building are needed, not wholesale contempt and dismissal.
5
@Oakbranch Why should anyone scale the "empathy wall" with people who insist on building physical walls to keep out others that they despise simply due to their ethnicity and race. What could be more unAmerican?
4
Behold the logic of the ignorant. It reminds me of a McConnell rally in Louisville when the ACA was being debated and so many conservatives were railing against it. Lots of people at the rally were holding signs saying "Keep the Government Out of My Healthcare." Most of those people were on Medicare. Many of them were sitting in cute little scooters that Medicare had bought them. As long as they benefit directly, it's OK. But when others stand to benefit, all that compassionate conservatism flies out the window.
17
Seems they accept the monies but hate the fact that they need to. Sounds like they want to earn their daily bread, support their families, live the American dream they believed in. Can you blame them? I can’t.
1
@Outer Borough
then wake up to changing technology and a xhanging economy And don't ask us American taxpayers to support a dying way of economic life
they are not entitled to that. No one is.
7
As technology improves our ability for remote work, and home prices soar into the stratosphere in the areas that are rich with tech companies, why can't we figure out how to move workers into beautiful rural areas? Isn't there a way to revitalize rural economies as we become better connected?
5
Would you want to live in Harlan County? I wouldn’t, no matter how pretty it might be.
5
Why not?
1
@interestedpartyrd, check out Vermont's small pilot to provide $10K to remote workers who become full time VT residents. Not all rural parts of America are dying backwaters. Sparsely populated rural states like VT and NH have extremely low unemployment rates and are working hard to attract new workers at all types of jobs- service jobs, trades, educators, corporate, nonprofit, and government leaders. I think to attract younger workers for jobs like these, leveraging technology so that people have options both in person and virtually is going to be really important.
2
During the campaign, Hillary Clinton carefully pointed out, "I'm the only candidate who has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?
"And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.
"Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on."
In contrast, trump promised to bring back the coal jobs. He hasn't, of course--yet another promise made, promise broken. Of course, no government policy could bring back those jobs for any kind of future for those people.
Obviously, they preferred trump's lies to Hillary's truth.
67
@Andy Beckenbach As they preferred the politician who promised to "Make America Hate Again", as opposed to the candidate whose campaign slogan was "Stronger Together". I think the country should now be renamed in honor of DJT, The Divided States of America.
5
@Andy Beckenbach . I bet they'll back him again.
3
The thinking of people mentioned in this article is so stupid I can hardly believe it.
Hopefully their offspring will become educated and worldly enough to explain how things work and convince them of the true value of OUR governments. They are social constructs and should protect 99.9% of us from the Robber Barons like those who own the mines and other slave-labor companies.
12
I am 63, and this has been the story all my life. I was born in Harlan, but my father left because mines are dangerous and the industry has always been boom and bust. We ended up back in Kentucky, but not in Harlan. King Coal is dead and he is never coming back.
18
"As small towns lag behind prosperous urban centers along the coasts, as rural communities shed businesses and jobs, and as their residents turn to welfare as a last line of sustenance, the more they will resent Washington’s inability, or unwillingness, to stem the decline."
Why Trump won.
4
Change is hard, and there are always victims as change rushes on. But the reality is that the GOP is happy with the speed toward an Oligarchy, and they have no real desire to lift these people out of their poverty.
I understand the frustration that leads them to distrust the government, given their plight. But the republicans are happy to leave them without any safety net, so they are indeed voting against their interest.
9
This is an excellent article. 2 points:
"And the line from Ronald Reagan got chuckles all around: “The worst thing you can hear,” the governor told Harlan’s gathered residents, is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
- Bevin is there from the government and he's holding a town hall to help. The people who are attending the town hall Mr. Bevin is holding are there looking for help from their government. Further, Bevin makes a career in government and I would imagine the reason for this is the government's ability to help people.
The other point: Coal is a dirty means of providing energy. We live in a time of awareness of the consequences of reliance on dirty energy and the nation is, rightly, moving towards other, cleaner forms of energy to meet our needs. Those who made their living from coal now need to adjust and find new means of support other than the government assistance to which they have turned to take up the slack. A good use of resources would go toward retraining and education initiatives that would give these people the tools to find a living in a more sustainable area.
8
If our society was really concerned about communities like Harlan County, we would use industrial policy to address them. However, we do the opposite.
Building communities means people and jobs. However, our current policies favor cities that are already booming and not the left behind towns like those in Appalachia. Look at the Amazon decision, where essentially the localities bribed a corporation to move to their communities.
If we prevented this constant bidding for corporations at the local taxpayer base's expense and used something like national/local tax policy to incentivize business to move into depressed areas, we could get some progress. And these dollars have to be meaningful and sustainable, not some half baked "industrial zone".
I believe the residents of Harlan County that they want to work. Work is a core part of our self worth. But the deck is so stacked against these communities because of current defacto policies.
If you want to rebuild these communities, policy has to lead not follow. If hundreds of businesses were moving into Harlan based on tax policy, I think the people might start to put their faith back in our government. Handouts can be demeaning, particularly those built on generations of poverty and welfare.
But we have to stop blaming the victims and build policies that really address the problem.
2
@Mike
Yes, policy needs to be more carefully crafted, but it's hard to avoid being at least a little put out by the obstinance of these coal country communities that have refused for decades to recognize the permanence of the decline of coal. When a community's only economic plan is to somehow bring coal back, which is economically impossible (cheap natural gas won't allow for it) and would be environmentally devastating, the result is that resentment overpowers any possibility of innovating a new Appalachian economy. Pandering to that resentment won't solve anything.
5
@Mike, I agree with the principle that we need to incentivize businesses through our tax policies to move to depressed areas like Harlan County. However, I no longer believe that any tax policy could achieve this goal. Amazon didn't move to Virginia just because of tax giveaways. It moved there because of the infrastructure and a large pool of educated workers. It never considered any locations without these large pools of workers.
We aren't the only country with this problem. East Germans resent their more successful countrymen in West Germany for the same reasons, and they too are susceptible to rightwing populism. Germany has tried extensive tax incentives, but taxes don't motivate companies as much as other factors. I wish I knew the answer to the problem, especially as I see a young man already living a life of dependence while he holds his baby daughter. I don't want her to live the same life as her father.
The same story over and over again. The economy moved on and for some areas of the country, moved on without them. It is neither the fault of the people that live there or the fault of government and it will not change economic fact. Politicians have been selling vaporware for years, promising to bring back extinct jobs. The sooner voters understand it is not going to happen, the better.
677
@tom
Absolutely, politicians should be creating programs to help people relocate to places with better prospects. Assistance with underwater mortgages, assistance with moving expenses, job matches between states etc....
13
@Umm..excuse me
People are fleeing places like Harlan County and Upstate NY where I live. That's part of the problem.
Many of the people who remain are retired and rely on pensions and social security. That explains why so many depend on government programs. They are also increasingly poor.
The younger people who still live here are often damaged. They may have poor work ethics, are not very intelligent and are poorly educated, or use drugs or alcohol.
It will take more than encouraging more people to move away to solve the problems.
50
@Umm..excuse me - Great idea, now try getting even one GOPer to support it! That's "welfare!" That's a "hand-out!" - Well, at least if any of the recipients is other than "Lily-White."
Sadly, it seems either nobody has mentioned to these Americans that the elected officials walking around commiserating over marriage equality and abortion rights with them are the exact ones determined to cut their Social Security Disability, Medicaid and SNAP benefits!
How nice to share "conservative" social ideas while cutting the services out from under them! In the end, they cannot eat "conservative ideas" or use them to pay for medicine or housing, and 220 coal mining jobs do not equal "bringing back coal," though they are bringing back Black Lung Disease, which has made a resurgence- and in a more deadly form - after years of decline under Dem safety regulations repealed by the Trump-ettes.
Maybe it is time to explain just where the benefits are coming from, and who is fighting to ensure they keep coming? Studies show lots of beneficiaries don't see THEIR OWN benefits as the same as identical benefits being provided to "Takers." They believe that term is reserved for people not like themselves, less deserving, less valuable, but to the GOPers who want to cut, ALL recipients are undeserving "Takers."
There appear to be a number of areas where Trump supporters could use a bracing reality check - and voting for your own best interests is definitely one of them.
47
I'm from this part of the country (Letcher County, immediately to the northeast), and this article is absolutely infuriatingly true. there are no more rabidly anti-liberal citizens in the country than some of my relatives, who declare with one hand how bad welfare is... for OTHER people. "not me, though - I've earned it." they seem to believe it comes from God, not the government, and only the worthy deserve it. of course, no one is ever more worthy than they are.
32
@Judy Hill I remember a taxi driver in New Orleans telling me that he wanted the government to keep its hands off his Social Security. It's not just a Kentucky thing.
9
It used to infuriate me when my late father would rail against "socialized medicine," while he and my late mother would avail themselves of the services of Memorial Sloan Kettering and other state-of-the-art medical facilities, all paid for by Medicare. He would protest that he paid into Medicare all his life and I would point out that they had consumed almost one million dollars worth of services in care - far more than they ever paid in.
10
@Sneeral Which, of course, is the nature of insurance, (i.e., collectivism or socialism). Not all individuals will receive the same amount of benefits proportionate to the amount they paid in premiums. However, to decry others' use of the same benefits to which you see yourself as "duly entitled" is clearly perverse.
5
I am astounded by the number of Americans that continually vote against their own interest. How someone, anyone, could believe any of the rot that Republicans promise and then vote for them - promises which will never be delivered unless you are in the donor class - is insanity. Republicans are NOT the friends of people who rely on Social Security, Medicaid, CHIP , or SNAP. The most amazing element in the 2016 election is that the very districts that rely on government services for their livelihood voted overwhelmingly for Republicans. Republicans are diametrically opposed to government subsidies to those in need. They have worked to eliminate ALL social services across the board. I have no idea what these people think is going to happen, but it isn't what they think.
774
@Michael Gilbert
As this article alluded to, most such people don't WANT subsides and aid. What they want are jobs and a piece of the growing economic pie that most of the rest of the country experiences. So when they vote, they're not voting with their government welfare in mind, they're voting for the community they hope to one day have when they are no longer reliant on aid. I wouldn't want aid either when I could be working....if jobs existed.
The problem is the Republican politicians like Bevin and 5th district congressman Rogers do nothing to help these people because, with the status quo, their votes are locked in Republican. What platform of accoplishments does Bevin have to run on in these counties? On the other side, Democrats have offered no solutions either as they remain singularly focused on identity politics of urban areas, and government handouts. No wonder these folks have such low voter turnout.
52
@MikeG
Your response here is indicative of a basic philosophic conflict. This is an often heard, but barely understandable refrain on the subject. These people distrust government because the government hasn't done enough to help them, which is naturally why they don't want government help, but are angry the government hasn't found or created jobs for them. Completely ridiculous. And if they really wanted jobs, there are major metropolitan areas within a 3-hour drive with historically low unemployment rates. If only the government would finally give them a car and a gas card.....
123
@Michael Gilbert
The people mentioned in this story aren’t voting against their own interests. They are not voting. The winner in November got 16% of the vote.
69
This is an extreme example, but this same story is playing out in many places across the country. One thing that is apparent in reading stories like this is that very few people have even a rudimentary understanding of economics or of what is going on in the economy. For example, many people love to blame President Obama for the decline in coal use and jobs. But coal jobs would be declining even if there had never been a President named Obama. For one thing, natural gas is cheaper and cleaner than coal so if you are building a new power plan it makes sense to use gas. Also, the way coal is mined has changed with more use of machinery and technology and fewer people. People seem to be unaware that the energy business is undergoing tremendous change -- more use of solar, wind, natural gas, etc.
There are many deep red counties across the country. Many people in these places love for their politicians to talk the standard lines about the evils of the "guvment" and other talking points which relate to racial/cultural/religious antagonism. I have never been sure what they mean by the evils of the "federal guvment." I heard the "feds" tell us that everyone should be allowed to vote, everyone should be allowed to go to a good school, we should have clean air and water, etc. Apparently some people find equality and a clean environment upsetting.
What happens to places such as Harlan County? Probably more of the same.
412
@Aubrey The other question is what places like Harlan County are going to do to the rest of us.
42
@Aubrey
What happens to places such as Harlan County?
They die
25
@Aubrey Actually, why would anyone expect anything different in Harlan County? The republican politicians which they love will tell them anything to get their vote then disappear until the next election.
The basic problem is that places such as Harlan County don't want any change and they don't want any different people around. They definitely don't want any smart people around. They want to keep doing what they are doing and be prosperous. But the economy of the future is based on change and education. Why did Amazon locate its new headquarters in New York and Northern Virginia? Lots of intelligent, well-educated people, good transportation facilities, good internet access, etc. Similar decisions on a smaller scale are playing out across the country every day.
99
"A cognitive disconnect is at play: People often don’t link benefits they rely on with the idea of government welfare."
A more accurate description of rural America would be hard to imagine. Whether its SNAP, disability payments, crop insurance, price supports or Medicaid, much of rural America would disappear if not for US Taxpayer subsidies, paid for by the widely disparaged "educated coastal elites".
And yet, somehow these "Good People" fail to take responsibility for their own lives, obtain the needed skills and training for the jobs available and move to where the jobs are located. It's so much easier to rail against the government while cashing the checks sent out every month.
Cognitive dissonance indeed!
676
@GTM
And many elected leaders gain political advantage by encouraging them not to take any responsibility, but rather to blame "others."
55
@GTM I don't know.... our schools have failed people like this. Once you're uneducated, pregnant and 18 it's hard to leave the paid-for trailer with a young one in search of a better life in the city. You're just as likely to end up homeless under a bridge as successful. It seems irrational to me too to live on gov't assistance and vote for people that want to tear it all down, but we should also be realistic about their prospects.
41
@ LB Nearly 60 years ago, my great-grandfather, grandmother, and mother left South Carolina and moved to NYC. They were part of the Great Migration of millions of black people who moved north looking for better economic opportunities. My mother was a child. My grandmother was in her 30s, my great grandfather was in his 50s, and neither one of them completed high school. And yet, they moved when living in the south became untenable. They pooled their resources and lived in an apartment together in Brooklyn. They weren't rich, but they had a home, three meals a day, and clothes on their backs.
I know that moving isn't easy. But it can be done.
141
A good insightful article. But I think Porter could also do a little more emphasizing the role of politicians (and often local media) in pushing these issues too. After all, there are high poverty, high government benefit areas that are strongly Democratic too. Politicians and the media affect norms and attitudes in these communities and share substantial responsibility for promoting policies that are probably against the best interests of many of their constituents. In depressed areas it is not surprising that many feel that government has let them down or is on the wrong track. But powerful voices in the communities influence the direction in which their discontent moves.
1
I'm grateful for this in-depth reporting on the growth of federal assistance - on a scale that is shocking and deeply significant. But I'm frustrated at the choice of Harlan Co. KY as the exemplar for examining this trend.
Coal is a commodity no one wants. That's a separate topic, one that has been over-reported, again and again--until I sometimes wonder if we're supposed to go back to using a dirty, poisonous, planet-killing fuel because we feel sorry for the unemployed white men of one small state. Kentucky is an outlier--a one-industry state with a closed culture shaped by mountain isolation. Using it as a sample tells us nothing.
Please study anger against federal aid in Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, where the shifts in employment and political views are far more complex and meaningful. And why has the entire South - the heart of the Reagan anti-government revolution - become radically dependent on federal assistance? The New South was the poster child for the new, nonunion economy: prosperous retirees flocked to the Sun Belt, as did rust-belt industries --until the vulture capitalists bought them, loaded them with debt, gutted them, and sold the carcasses to China.
The question is: why do jobless people in so much of the heartland believe that Republican policies will help them? As always in America, racial resentment underpins the "cognitive dissonance" cited in the article: "federal assistance" is code for aid to black people in cities. That explains the map, no?
544
@Eve S. I understand community, I think, even though my father left his farm-town home for a career in the Air Force and I didn’t grow up in one fixed place. But I am still puzzled by people who remain in a failing community. They don’t reinvent for a prosperous future in place, or move to better opportunities. They thus do not live enviable lives, and often seem resentful about this.
Do we owe these people a living? I don’t have the answer to that.
29
@hagenhagen It comes down to fear. Fear of the unknown the unfamiliar. My sister in law was like this. She was in a thankless job at Publix, worked there for many years. An owner of a new business that works with Verizon Wireless setting up wireless networks was begging her for months for her to join him. She finally did after every family member told her to do it. She finally did and is now happy and content and making a good living.
30
@hagenhagen
Moving when poor and jobless can be almost impossible... how do you afford the move itself?how do you afford deposits on housing? How do you pass credit checks for said housing? if you take care of elderly parents, grandchildren, children what do you do about those dependents? The logistics alone can be overwhelming....
39
Many of these people grew up in a world where their parents worked the same job for 40 years and retired comfortably at 60 despite having no formal education beyond high school. That's simply not how the economy works anymore. I can't blame them for being frustrated. The current world, where switching jobs and possibly housing every 5 years is the norm, is overwhelming. What do people do when they are overwhelmed? They either seek out a strong figure or try to return to the familiar. The rhetoric of MAGA embodies both of those desires.
307
@Evan This part of the country has been poor since Kennedy and before that.
13
@Evan - "…their parents worked the same job for 40 years and retired comfortably at 60 despite having no formal education beyond high school."
And it was such a narrow window in time. Widespread, boom-time growth from the end of WWII until the 80's when the Needy and Greedy rich grew jealous of the "little people" making a good living. Fortunately for them, they found the amiable (R)onald (R)eagan to sell his trickle-up voodoo economics that began the transfer of our nation's worker's wealth to the pluto-corporatocracy.
26
@Evan Trust me these people didn't retire comfortably at 60. Working in a coal mine is hard work and many end up disabled and don't forget those that die from black lung. Years ago they left this area and moved to Michigan along with many others to work in the car plants. Most opportunities like this have disappeared. Many say educate yourself and move. Exactly who is going to pay that expense? As far as the politics how does needing assistance obligate you to one party or another.
12
There's a general trend in our country: the areas that pay into government more that they receive back are the liberal urban areas, and the areas that receive more from government than they contribute (ie. farm subsidies, military bases, etc.) "hate big government." How did this happen? The Republicans have successfully fooled the uneducated into being more concerned about religion and, let's face it, racial purity then about anything else. Personally, I'm done worrying about the religious, anti-science, racist cry-babies who don't educate their children and insist on keeping America a "Christian" nation. These people have nothing interesting to say - even though the NYT continually tries to help us "understand" them.
8
This contradiction is so intractable that the best way forward may be to take them up on their word. Let's allow Harlan to run a pilot program on workfare and see what happens!
Are we absolutely sure that many of those 50-something chronically unemployed people might not get something out of helping out in the community in some way? Are we absolutely sure that they won't enjoy and appreciate finding a place in the economy that otherwise wouldn't be filled.
So, yeah, let's pay them to monitor playgrounds, steward public forests, help overwhelmed new parents, and pay visits to the elderly in need of contact.
The irony could end up being that workfare might be the best way to find a path back to progressive community values. I just don't see why liberals and progressives don't want to at least experiment with this idea.
211
@K
"I just don't see why liberals and progressives don't want to at least experiment with this idea"
Speaking as someone who spent years helping people navigate this kind of system, allow me to explain.
But first a comment: I don't get why Conservatives and Republicans can't just let it go at trying to help people succeed.
Instead, they turn every contact into a humiliating public punishment, they turn every conversation into an occasion for blame, aspersion-casting, threats.
So, yeah, I would be one liberal, excuse me Liberal, who wouldn't mind 'experimenting' with all the things you say : "helping people find a place in the economy that otherwise wouldn't be filled". All for it.
So long as you promise me these people won't be exploited, abused, spat upon administratively, forced to jump through hoops made impossible by Conservatives' refusal to support such luxuries as functioning transportation, office hours that make it possible to make mandatory meetings and not get fired from the job.
I do have one condition: Let's not spend a second or a penny on job training programs, or job requirement enforcement in places where there are no jobs to be had because of how we choose to run our sad economy.
Now you do me a favor: take a look around the world at all the wealthy, successful free market economies that do these things as a matter of course. Maybe learn a thing or two.
And stop that "We want you to succeed, so we're taking away all your support."
96
@K
Great idea, but who provides the funding for these make work jobs?
At this point your pseudo conservative concept crashes in propagandic flames... lol
25
@oogada
Yeah, I'm not sure whether Republicans who support these ideas are naive or cynical. These workfare ideas ignore the deep shame many people feel about being on assistance. And making that private shame into a public humiliation by assigning mandatory busywork 'volunteering' may not be a bug, but a feature for these right wingers. I know, maybe folks could be required to wear some sort of distinctive clothing (purchased at their own expense of course) while participating in workfare. Say, maybe an orange jumpsuit?
22
I hope people actually read this story instead of just nodding at the headline and moving on. What it seems to show isn't that those receiving government assistance vote against their own interests, but rather that they don't vote at all, leaving elections to be decided by their more prosperous neighbors, who vote conservative.
We Democrats need to quit writing these states off as unwinnable. With an intensive voter education/mobilization effort we could get these people to the polls. Even if we can't get enough votes to win, that might make things competitive enough to force the Republicans to move back towards the center.
344
@Green Tea. Absolutely. The Dems have to really listen to the people in the more conservative states. I like that Pelosi had a new conference and I think she should do it weekly and televise it so people know what the Democrats are doing for them. I have always thought Obama should have had a "Fireside Chat" program to introduce him to the America that was against him. They need to hire PR people who have an understanding of this electorate and come up with ways to communicate with them. Any 2020 Democratic presidential candidate should get out there now and introduce themselves to the electorate that voted for Trump.
46
@Green Tea. Bingo. It's the same here in WV-- very low voter turnout, especially among the very poor.
The wealthier people turn out, and we stay in the same cycle OVER and OVER.
Change the voting demographics-- i.e. and you change the ballgame.
We could start by making it much easier for people to vote.
29
@Green Tea
Excellent point, and as so often in the Times, this essential nugget of information is buried among the “narrative journalism” details.
The stunning contradiction is less than meets the eye.
16
I'm sorry if I sound cold and cruel, but....
I don't care about how strongly these people feel "justified" about their "strongly-held" convictions. If their "distrust" of Others is based on contradictions and false premises, I can't have any sympathy for them.
For example: The support Republicans because they don't support LGBT right. Fine. But Republicans also stand for spending $20,000,000,000 on a Wall, rather than spending that money on building new roads into their dying town, providing job training programs to get them off of relying on coal jobs, providing treatment for opioid abuse, etc.
THEY consciously made that trade off! THEY're the ones who elected the people into the givernment that they distrust so much! THEY're the ones who believed in the Reagan Lie that the govt is the enemy of the people.
We Liberals have given them the facts to make better electoral decisions. THEY've chosen to ignore the facts, and hold onto the "alternative facts" spewed by the very same people they distrust.
Why can't they realize these contradictions? Either they're so blinded by unthinking tribalism; or they're not intelligent enough to understand.
We Liberals have tried to show them the truth. We have gladly, and in good faith, offered them alternatives; but they've rejected us. You can lead a horse to water; but you can't make him drink.
If they're Wall is more important to them than worrying about allowing me to get married, I'm sorry, but I can't feel sorry for them.
419
@Paul-A
Paul, these are America's walking wounded. They aren't looking down the road at all. In the 2016 election Trump was handing out crude corn liquor. Clinton offered some sort of continuity with the Obama administration. In their situation the choice was easy.
29
@G C B
Maybe the time has come to stop propping them up, walking wounded or not. Maybe it is time to let them fall and let them learn just how far the drop is. Are people going to get hurt? Are some of them going to die? Are there innocent children who will be damaged? Yes to all of those questions. But maybe its time. Some lessons can only be learned the hard way.
66
@Paul-A
Maybe liberals need to listen as well as talk?
10
Anyone who is dependent on State or Federal welfare programs will become frustrated and angry with the systemic problems they encounter. These usually include bureaucracy, indignity and favoritism (tollgate vigilantism), which are compounded by idle time and over crowding. My personal observation is that many, if not most people, would prefer to work - if there were jobs to be had.
80
I once heard a politician say that every Congressman and Senator could give you a full list of 49 states where we should cut federal spending.
The poor people in this article seem to be a rather ungrateful lot to me. If they don't want my blue state, liberal tax dollars, I'm willing to cut them off at any time. However as long as they are on the receiving end of my hard earned tax dollars, perhaps the could avoid sending to Washington sanctimonious hypocrites like Rand Paul who make sure that Kentucky keeps getting my money, while lecturing me on the evils of big government, corrupt politicians like Mitch McConnell who use my money subsidize his coal company friends and nihilistic people like Donald Trump who is running our country into the ground. If it isn't too much to ask.
53
The only thing stronger than their hatred of government is their fear of women. And nothing's more powerful than fear.
8
Well, the obvious comment to these people is "And what are you going to do when the government checks stop?". I've actually asked that question and I get blank looks. I guess their attitude can be summed up by quoting Craig Nelson "I was on food stamps, I was on welfare. Nobody helped me"
9
Racism trumps reason.
7
People vote for Donald Trump because they empathize with racist, incompetent fools. It makes them feel better to have one of their own in charge. Yes, it really is that simple.
13
Once Social Security and Medicare get cut to the bone, then maybe all the white nationalists in KY will start to wonder what they voted for.
3
It has been my experience that people who receive government assistance feel shame and they blame the government programs itself for causing that shame. Paul Ryan and Social Security is one example.
2
My suggestion is for the Democratic party to run ads on billboards highlighting what government's safety net does fir the people of Garlan County and call out on Republicans who are trying to cuts these cery policies. Don't just blame the voters, blame Democrats for not having a clearcut message.
I remember that Mitch McConnell's Democratic opponent was not even willing to mention Obamacre that benefited people of Kentucky in large numbers. She desreved to lose.
7
"Keep your government hands off my Social Security!"
Kentucky and other states branded their medicaid expansion so that it was not associated with ACA/Obamacare. That had the effect of signing up millions of residents to get healthcare that they needed from a program that they "hated".
There are many other examples of federal aid supporting depressed communities in ways that are not advertised. The perversity of voting for anti-government politicians is clear. What do we do about a citizenry that is essentially on welfare but votes against any politician who favors welfare?
10
Coal jobs peaked at more than 800,000 in the early 1920s; they've since shrunk by 90 percent.
But coal production kept booming until the middle of the Obama Administration, before any climate-change rules affected it; the downturn came because of the natural gas boom, mainly.
Coal jobs won't ever come back, except a handful here or there, even if coal production spikes for some reason, and in a free market, coal production probably won't spike.
It's hard to believe that people in coal country don't know all that. How could they not know?
12
@Jake Roberts Coal jobs might be back, since we will need coal crayons to draw pictures of animals on cave walls.
Excellent article, Mr. Porter. I agree with the commenter who isn't surprised, given the attitude of so many Tea Partiers regarding the ACA debate in 2009. Professor Mettler's finding that "...the people who rely most on government transfers are least likely to vote." is also not surprising. I suspect that many people who do vote feel resentment to those who rely on government transfers and thereby support onerous conditions for continued eligibility. This imbalance between people who should most support a robust set of public services yet do not vote, versus people who resent public services but do vote is lethal to not just Democrats but democracy as well. We need to do a better job at voter education and turnout.
4
Good article, but please explain that scatterplot? The title is accurate in the sense that the few data points in the top right are both very conservative and depend heavily on transfers, but the plot itself shows no discernable relationship between the variables and the 'trendline' is definitely not a regression line.
5
I say, if they want a wall on the border, take the $5 billion from Medicare and Food stamps and disability for these people. Obviously they will understand when Gov. Bevin and Trump explain it to them.
68
A lump of coal for Mr. Lewis and the rest of his family.
Santa’s tax dollars are already paying for their sleigh ride.
Let Mr Lewis reap what he has sown in the voting booth.
17
Why are we surprised by any of this?
Remember, in 2009 there were numerous town hall-style meetings about the Affordable Care Act in which attendees got up and told their elected representatives -- angrily, and in all seriousness -- "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
35
How "hard-scrabble" could Bevin's youth have been in a small New Hampshire town with a poverty rate of less than 3 %? Especially since New Hampshire has excellent schools and medical care. And he grew up before drugs became a problem in NH. His father came from a family with a successful bell manufacturing business in Connecticut which much later fell on hard times but Bevin supposedly took charge of it in 2011 and turned it around. No mention of the fact that it burned down in 2012. As to people on welfare voting for the "lesser of two evils" I'll bet the decision was more on the sex of Trumps opponent than that she was a Democrat, plus years of Republican lies about her integrity. And is anyone questioning why a family with a disabled father is having children they "can't afford without government help?" Or is that question only for families of color?
229
@Julie Carter
The writer of this letter asks appropriate questions. Can the reporter go back and ask individuals described in this article for their answers?
23
@Julie Carter
Excellent points!
12
@Julie Carter, don't forget the demonizing of Clinton via Facebook, etc. I'll bet a lot of these people get their "news" from places like that. To my great surprise, a friend of a Facebook friend actually believed and was promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy!
13
Great article! You got to the heart of the matter. People know they benefit but don't trust Washington to really alter their situation--it's just palliative care. It's demoralization combined with skepticism (a sort of group depression). People first need to see a solid, credible pathway that will reorient their lives and very likely their community--or help them relocate--and you'll have a line around the block.
6
One wonders if there is another issue at play. Harlan County is 95% white (2000 Census). Supporting a Democrat might imply that all those Federal benefits would go to the "hoards" of non-whites (i.e., those who support Democrats) and severely dilute the resources for benefits they receive and to which they feel entitled. I imagine that they do not see these programs as coming from a large Federal bureaucracy (Democrats), but from the smart Republican representatives who take care of "us". In their eyes, Democrats equal inclusion, and inclusion implies more people seeking a slice of the pie.
44
@Carey Turoff This is an excellent conjecture and one worth looking into.
3
"Gov. Matt Bevin ... deplored the parlous state of a half-mile stretch of U.S. 421 and said $802,000 would be spent to rebuild it." That's a sensible use of government money to create some jobs as well as restore infrastructure, the latter being a key function of basic government. One wonders how much of that $802K is federal highway dollars, aka federal tax dollars paid by residents of other states. But by all means, let's get the federal government off Kentucky's back.
27
@Dean Yes - a "parlous" stretch of highway. I've expanded my vocabulary ... though the online dictionaries seem to agree that the word is a bit archaic.
2
People have a right to vote the way they vote and those in need within our system should receive aid as determined by law whether they be R or D. Folks that like to crunch numbers can crunch away but it is what it is.
1
@jazzme2 That's the way it does work, but it's tough for Dems to stomach the insults and vitriol from places like Harlan County while taxing themselves to send the place so much aid.
Re Mr. Lewis: I highly suspect that he's NOT receiving "disability insurance" as at the time of accident, when he was 21, it is doubtful he had a policy. Plus, the article states he crashed his car into a coal truck, not that the coal truck crashed into him. Thus, it's doubtful that he's getting any "insurance" of any kind. More likely, he's receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability, which is a government welfare program for adults. His monthly income of $1600/mo jibes with the amount provided for his family: two adults and two children. Too bad the writer didn't clarify this issue for the readers.
The distinction is critical to the theme of this article, which is welfare-receiving people voting for anti- and small-government policies--- applied to Others.
The unspoken truth for trump's acolytes is intense fear of losing white dominant status in American culture and politics. White fear is pervasive throughout all economic and educational levels, and is the only feasible explanation for the white trump coalition of poor/rich, educated/uneducated...the common denominator being "white".
2016 trump voters had an average income of $72,000, vs Dems of $58,000. The Dems need to base their strategies on this fact, rather than chase the false "white working class" vote. White voting is based in their fears of the changing color of America. The Dems need to focus on further developing and strengthening the Obama coalition, which was a carbon copy of RFKs.
22
There are different rules for younger workers applying for disability under SSDI, Title 2 benefits. The number of credits needed to qualify is significantly less for a worker under 24 years old at the time of disability. Mr. Lewis may well have met those standards at 21. Additionally, if he is the child of a parent who was disabled and receiving benefits, he may have qualified as a disabled adult child, which could also provide significantly more in benefits than might otherwise be the case under his own work record. SSI only provides $750 per month, $1125 max for a disabled couple who are both SSI recipients. There is no additional amount paid under SSI for a wife and children. So, if Mr. Lewis is receiving $1600 per month, and has been on benefits for 15 years, I am pretty sure he qualified under Title 2 (SSDI) in some way, and isn't getting SSI (Title 16). https://www.ssa.gov/planners/credits.html has more information regarding this.
1
I agree with the Republicans. Lets cut the safety net to shreds. Let these people feel the consequences of voting Republican or not voting at all
18
@Bob
That's a hard truth, but yes, let them reap what they sow.
4
Senator Mitch McConnell runs the joint. Need I say any more?
I will. Mitch McConnell. Senate majority leader. Can afford a trillion dollar war machine but won’t tell his constituents the truth about coal. Or immigration, or education or health care.
Can’t have a democracy without informed citizens.
Do you live in a democracy?
22
The author, Thomas Frank, and others can do their best to explain the self-defeating votes of these people, but these explanations do not qualify as excuses. They also largely avoid touching the third rail of racism. People who keep voting against the party which is actually trying to help them -- in ways both large (which they may not trust) and small (from which they derive tangible benefits every month) -- are people who deserve what they get.
6
He avoided race even though it’s the elephant in the room here. These (white) areas have been on the public dole heavily since the 70s but it’s always minorities that get derided as welfare recipients (or as Reagan called it “Cadillac-Riding Welfare Queens”).
11
But we don’t deserve it....
Anyone who depends of government assistance has reason to hate the government. The rules are picky, the bureaucracy slow and pitiless. Make an extra $30 one month, the spend hours on hold to plead with someone from Medicaid so you don't lose your health insurance. Or discover that your 50-year old handicapped brother is in danger of losing his supports because the rules for disability or proof of it changed and what you sent in to recertify him was rejected for not meeting the new rules in form, while the substance has been the same for the last 30 years -- he's too handicapped to ever have a job that comes close to supporting him.
14
@SAO This is the voice of experience. I wish people would listen to it...
2
@SAO
If you hate government assistance and feel burdened by its rules, why deal with it at all? Drop all business with Uncle Sam and rely wholly on private charities. Until then it is incumbent upon you to meet the income criteria and form requirements if you wish to continue receiving assistance. The rules applying to government assistance in The Bronx and Detroit also apply in Maine.
3
Yet, it is Republicans who are throwing up more roadblocks.
2
So, the champions of "personal responsibility" "... will resent Washington’s inability, or unwillingness, to stem the decline."?
How many doctoral thesis on cognitive dissonance could be written on Harlan! They should promote that.
Or eat their lump of coal, which they deserve.
9
(White) conservatives have no problem with public assistance, as long as it doesn’t help “others”
40
I would happily support a border wall, around every State or county that votes GOP while holding a cup in their hand.
77
"Able-bodied Medicaid recipients"?
The pluto-corporatocracy continues to exceed at distracting us by directing the conversation to the nickels and dimes we spend on regular citizens so we'll ignore the gazillions of dollars we throw at corporate welfare.
24
What on earth is wrong with these people? Cut their benefits if that's what they vote for.
13
The republicans in this state, first class A one hypocrites especially the Sen. Rand Paul.
He rails against any form of gov't aid to citizens but gladly rakes it in for his voters.
17
Mr Porter...You observations and analysis are extremely informative...the sagacity of your article is profound.
4
I am weary of widespread efforts to inform the hostile, willfully ignorant recipients of public funds how they benefit from taxes paid by other people. I am a progressive voter, and I believe that a good government meets the needs of its people. I am in a high tax bracket and I put my money where my mouth is by willingly paying the taxes I owe. But at this point, the rest of us may need to take these folks at their word that they want all government out of their lives.
The vaunted free market has spoken; industries, employers, and residents with options have left this county. If the remaining few insist on returning someone like Mitch McConnell to the US Senate, where he apparently represents their biases but not their actual interests, so be it.
I remember bumper stickers in the early 70s, during the oil crisis, that targeted supporters of environmental regulation, perceived to be Northeastern eggheads, by declaring: "Let them freeze in the dark." Maybe it's time for the rest of the country to stop sending money and let Harlan County's voters live out the consequences of their free choices.
88
Totally agree. Congress should slash individual income tax rates and reduce all government assistance programs. I live in California and would much rather pay higher state income taxes to help people who share my values instead of subsidizing red state citizens who continually vote against their own self-interest.
6
And what was president bone-spurs' first order if business after being appointed president?
Slashing his own taxes.
But fret not, any day now he'll swoop in and make your lives better.
Promise.
23
This article proves the average voter doesn't have a clue about where his/her best interests lie. Give them a juicy wedge issue to chew on and they'll cast all else to the wind.
I guess universal suffrage gives people a right to choose their own poison.
15
I've wondered for a long time where are Mitch McConnell's plans for Harlan County? Unfortunately, one of the most powerful men in the world and it appears all he has done is take advantage of the anger to get himself reelected. Oh, and he had a lot on his plate obstruction anything that Obama proposed.
17
@barbara schenkenberg: Uou're right, and it's even worse than you've said. McConnell's votes to cut taxes on the rich and on corporations directly benefit his own family's wealth, including the hundreds of millions of dollars of the family of his own wife, Elaine Chao. For instance, her family gave him and her a gift in 2008 of "between $5 million and $25 million", which is as close as the information can get to the actual amount. That gift multiplied their net worth and annual income. Not only do his votes mean they will now pay less in taxes themselves, but her family's corporations will also pay less in taxes. They already work hard to avoid paying US taxes and hiring American workers, and now they are even better off, thanks to McConnell's tax legislation. You can read all about them here: https://www.propublica.org/article/familys-shipping-company-could-pose-problems-for-trumps-transportation-pick. Do the people of Harlan County have any understanding of how they are being robbed by their own Senator?
8
@barbara schenkenberg I don't imagine that Mitch spend much time thinking about Harlan County. He probably wants their votes at election time; other than that he probably doesn't know or care.
As they say he has "bigger fish to fry" -- Like packing the federal judiciary with business friendly judges and undoing anything that President Obama supported.
6
“Getting over” is a long term life strategy in many poorer communities. They calculate their welfare like others calculate pensions and insurance. Some do it so well some not so well. I know of a family that kept transferring their property to their children then getting on the dole. Three generations in one house and enough for all with the head of the household a 22 year old woman who stayed in the family “business”
3
Perhaps the mailman should knock on the door to deliver the welfare benefits: He could say: "here is your check from the Federal Government of the United States of America.
18
The current administration would have the carrier say "here is your check from Donald Trump."
2
Is it a coincidence that these communities are also at the epicenter of the opioid crisis?
Physical disability turns into existential distress. As a physician in Indiana I often see patients on disability who appear to be physically fit and able to function and prosper. The system has robbed them of their will and self esteem.
2
So the “system” robbed them of their self esteem? Put up much of a fight?
It’s easier to blame someone/something than to do the hard thing and change your life.
If their ancestors didn’t cross an ocean and undergo hardships we can’t even imagine, the put-upon wouldn’t be waiting for their government check, snap card etc here in the US.
Even the “poor” in this country have opportunity unimaginable to much of the globe.
4
@GatorGranny
I think we’re saying the same thing. The ancestors didn’t get government checks. What we have in many, but not all cases today is a welfare mentality. The checks people receive takes away any incentive to improve their lives. They accept their lives as disabled or poor and keep getting money they didn’t earn.
Fundamental human nature. People who view themselves as 'vital' members of the community are resentful that they have to rely on outside sources to live. They then blame the source as charity, stifling, bureaucratic, too many rules, demeaning.
And it doesn't help if they have limited access to the ballot box.
8
"Conservative values surely run strong in this county of many churches and only one liquor store."
"A cognitive disconnect is at play: People often don’t link benefits they rely on with the idea of government welfare."
Conservative values = cognitive disconnect
44
People can get trapped into poverty by a combination of circumstances that sap their ability or willingness to get out ... and in situations like Harlan Co. and coal mining, getting out is literal. For an individual, it's the obvious best choice in most cases: so much more opportunity elsewhere.
"College kids leave and never come back ... The biggest business for a long time was the U-Haul rental business..."
The question is why won't/can't more people go?
The US has lots of ghost towns emptied when the mine played out. There's nothing new here.
18
@Lee Harrison
Down South there used to be a saying "Coal mine, moonshine, or move on down the line"
3
The Shadow Self. It's basic psychology. Why are we still surprised by it?
4
Just goes to show that anger and stubborn self righteousness are lots stronger than problem solving and common sense. The Republicans have learned how to channel the anger into electoral victories that promise only more pain, anguish and decline in the future but who thinks longer than the latest tweet, anymore?
50
"Able-bodied Medicaid recipients"?
The pluto-corporatocracy continues to excel at distracting us by directing the conversation to the nickels and dimes we spend on regular citizens so we'll ignore the gazillions of dollars we throw at corporate welfare.
166
@Miss Anne Thrope
Corporate welfare and the military.
20
As long as people like the residents of Harlan sit back, demand the return of coal, and blame others. (Democrats and people who have some sense, generally) their situations will become more dire and their need for debilitating Federal assistance will become more acute. The government should have provided more moving assistance when U Haul couldn’t keep up with demand. I don’t know if work requirements is the way to go, but with abuse rampant and costs escalating, something must be done to pare the rolls of those who exist on government aid - especially in states like Kentucky which don’t even cover the Federal costs of these programs. These programs were never intended to support 40 million Americans who do not work for a living.
34
@Ed This is one case where I think the Libertarians are right. Pull the plug & let them fend for themselves. As long as they keep electing leaders like Bevin, McConnell & Paul, I am happy to sit back & watch the experiment play out, without wasting more time (or money) trying to convince them.
23
The problem in places like Kentucky is a fundamental lack of personal responsibility. Nobody is "owed" a job in coal mining, steel, the auto industry, buggy-whip manufacturing, or anything else. WHO "owes" anyone else such an assurance? Who feels entitled to one?
The economy constantly changes and develops. With technology, it changes at an ever-increasing pace. People had better get used to this; it will continue. Robotics are a reality. People need to adapt to new technologies and their supporting jobs, and be willing to relocate and retrain as may be required. We shifted from agriculture to industrialization; now, we need to shift to information management, service and hospitality, new energy, health care, and other emerging fields.
All the whining we hear from Trump supporters is the moan of a baseless and self-indulgent sense of entitlement. The modern economy calls, instead, for a little determination, planning, creativity, and drive. And don't tell me about lack of education; education is now more available to everyone than it has ever been. That's just another excuse.
236
@AM
Where did they learn that entitlement. There ancestors were self sufficient. Who taught them this?
7
@AM Couldn’t agree more, quit complaining about being left behind; get to the bus stop and the get on the bus! Otherwise you certainly will be left behind.
16
@AM For years I have heard white people talk about the black people on welfare who "sit on the porch and wait for their welfare check." Why don't they get up and get a job? Why don't they pull themselves up by their boot straps?
Now we find that there are lots of "laid off" and out of work white men. The people who have been left behind. Why don't they pull themselves up? When are they going to get a job?
39
We should no longer burn coal as an energy source. But coal can be used for a number of other purposes, from furniture to structural beams telephone poles. It is an industry being born. Will this help Harlan, Kentucky and other rural, coal mining area? It can but using the graphene in coal for alternative products requires infrastructure changes, cutting-edge technologies and, hence, an educated workforce. Investing in developing this workforce seems more productive than eternal handouts.
21
@Jim McDonald
"Educated workforce"... and, judging by their legislation, how do red states view education? The word "distain" comes to mind, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise, recalling that I based my thoughts on legislation.
28
@Jim McDonald
Coal isn't just an environmental disaster when it's burned, what's left behind after coal is mined is a blight on the landscape throughout Appalachia. If it's possible to mine coal "cleanly" without mountaintop removals, without toxic ponds left behind, etc., then maybe we should talk about graphene mining. Otherwise it's just another excuse to prop up a dying industry.
14
If you can build, inter alia, wood, metal and plastic products from coal, we save forests and keep plastics out of landfills. While I do not know the volume of coal that would be required, I imagine it to be a lesser amount than for use as a fuel. Consequently, extraction methods perhaps can be tailored to do less environmental damage. Certainly more research is required.
An excellent example of former workers rejecting Democrats and voting for Republicans exists throughout PA and Ohio too. Coal miners, steel workers, machine tool builders, heavy equipment operators, truck drivers and scores of other blue collar workers particularly in rural areas of those states are appalled at the thought of welfare being distributed to non-working people but quickly accept their own personal benefit checks to keep afloat. And while Republicans campaign to end the benefits they refuse to help restore jobs and industry. Education suffers too as the dwindling tax base cannot support local schools and other necessary public institutions for safety and health.
The Republicans believe they are in the catbird seat. They control the state legislature while successfully blaming Democrats for the spending that keeps citizens living hand to mouth and dependent upon government benefits.
In the meantime jobs and industry wanes. Republicans though broadly proclaim how benefit spending is reduced and government is being made smaller. That appeal is what gathers votes. It's a cultural appeasement that satisfies while people languish. People can't admit they need assistance so they vote Republican. Democrats can't provide jobs and would raise taxes for improvements and drive voters away.
In the next election particularly in PA the Dems may stand a chance if jobs and benefits continue to end. Impoverishing people with no future is not a way to gather voter support.
70
So let's try this. Federal funds should return proportionally to the tax base i.e. the states that pay in. In my blue state we are crushed under the costs of aging infrastructure and now loss of tax deductions. Perhaps Kentucky and McConnell would understand the work that generates the services taker states contribute. If this return of tax dollars doesn't happen, many contributor states will become decrepit Kentucky-like third world in terms of infrastructure. Then add global warming to speed up that degradation of the contributor states and see how that works for the GOP.
133
@poslug
I wholeheartedly agree. Why are our hard-earned tax dollars disproportionately going to subsidize these hateful/unappreciative people? McConnell and his Red State hypocrites have perpetrated a fraud on us and we need to heavily lobby our Reps and Senators that we're tired of supporting ingrates while our infrastructure deteriorates each day. The GOP has duped these people for 40 years and they've ingrained the hatred of those in more progressive states while enjoying our tax dollars to their benefit. It is time for this thievery to stop.
13
Are the buildings and housing stock in the area good enough for people to live and work there or are they below code and falling apart? That makes a difference in whether it is better to move people to jobs or look for jobs that can be moved to people.
9
Since I am from Kentucky, I feel qualified to answer your question, @Kay. Most of Eastern Kentucky has aging housing stock, mobile homes and decaying infrastructure.
5
The problem with trying to move jobs to these declining areas is that the experienced managers who are required to make the operations successful often don't want to move to them.
7
The people of Kentucky have done nothing bad. They are not evil. They are Americans who have been left behind, by a cheaper and cleaner source of energy, or by automation and robotics, These are forces too strong for them to fight on their own. They do not want a hand out, they want a job. The elitists of both parties ignore them, so they are susceptible to a populist message. If we talked to them, instead of sneering at them, perhaps we might get somewhere.
33
@Rich Caroll - And as I recall, H. Clinton did talk about providing training for these folks (she did poorly, as is her wont) and got hammered for it.
83
@Miss Anne Thrope I think much of this is attributed to cognitive dissonance, denial of reality. That is why Trump was appealing, he told people what they wanted to hear even if it isn't true. Unfortunately, reality has a way of blindsiding us when we refuse to acknowledge it.
35
@Rich Caroll
I believe you are wholly incorrect. The workers who have left behind want their old jobs back. That isn't going to happen. Coal is an expensive, environmentally devastating fuel source. Those jobs, rightfully, will never come back.
Workers in those regions need to be willing to be retrained into other fields. Everyone has had to adapt to the new economy. Many traditional jobs don't cut it anymore. Yet, you don't see people from the blue states pining away to bring back horse and buggy jobs or telephone switchboard operators.
As another commenter stated above, it's about entitlement. The people who work in coal feel entitled to jobs in coal. No one is entitled to a job. If the jobs don't exist, either find a job that does exist in your area or move to another location to find a job. That is the reality that everyone else lives with, why are they exempt?
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Harlan County USA is a superb Academy Award winning documentary film by Barbara Kopple about unionizing the coal mines in the 1970's and is worth viewing to see how citizens of Kentucky used to live. Unfortunately not a lot has changed, no jobs and unions are powerless again.
35
There’s very little discussion of the role (and lack) of education in these red states, except the line that students wishing to attend college can’t get out of places like Harlan County fast enough. Republican state leaders promise lower taxes and then achieve the savings by starving public education and related social services. That allows them to keep the population ignorant while the federal government provides the financial support. It’s a pretty clever — if odious — way to retain power.
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Globalization and environmentalism are a two-edged sword. Sure, economists can demonstrate that international trade and smart pollution controls improve the welfare of the nation as a whole but there are still winners and losers. What's ironic are smug citizens in blue states taking personal credit for the windfall gains they reaped and then heaping scorn on the citizens of red states who paid the price in terms of shuttered textile mills and closed coal mines. If Social Security disability payments, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits are the best we can do in terms of trade or environmental adjustment assistance, then the victims of government programs are not wrong to feel they deserve the help.
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@Earl W.
Perhaps the smug citizen in blue states are doing better because of the policies these states enacted in order to help their economy, while the red states emphasized policies that only made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Abortion comes to mind as one of these economically destructive policies.
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@Earl W.
You might be talking of some blue states being smug but I surely know you're not talking about New Englanders. Shuttered textiles mills can be found all over New England and it caused immense pain for my region. It was a long hard slog to reinvent ourselves but it was done. If it can be done here, red states can do it too.
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@Earl W.
Um, Earl, maybe they don't teach much history in NC, so I'll explain. All those textile mills in the South came from New England. In the 1800's just about every town in CT, and the rest of NE, had factories (run by water power) that made the states rich and gave people a good living. After the Civil War, the factories started moving South to take advantage of cheap labor, low taxes, and few regulations. New England suffered years of financial hardship, depression, and population loss. Same thing happened with mining when better sources elsewhere were found. But New England has always put a lot of money & resources into education (schools, colleges, libraries, etc) and so we re-invented ourselves. And now we prosper. Why do you do the same? Why didn't you listen to Clinton when she talked about retraining? You reap what you sow.
10
A dog trainer once told me that we should never leave a full food bowl on the floor. If we do, the dog will think that he gets his food from the floor. Instead, the dog should see a full bowl come from me.
One of the problems with government entitlements is that they just show up. There is little, if any, association between the benefits and the provider. Perhaps requiring recipients to actively engage in some activity in exchange for benefits will re-enforce the relationship between the benefits and the provider.
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@EPB...I find it quite interesting when one speaks of " entitlements "for individuals that's a problem...when corporations don't pay taxes ...or pay them at lower rate than their lowest salaried employees ,that's never considered a outrageous "entitlement ".
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@EPB I suggest that public educators reinstitute basic Civics 101 again, a class that was once universally required in Junior High and disappeared sometime during the Reagan recession years. I took it in 9th grade in Kansas in the 60's and our instructor explained the basic functions of government from a pragmatic standpoint, i.e. tax money goes in and benefits come back. The"mysterious" disappearance of "Civics" coincided roughly in time with the rise of the extreme right in Kansas in early 90's and the subsequent “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” book to which the author of the article referred. The loss of the class was not the only cause, but I think it helps explains the rising hostility toward government from those who should know better,
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@EPB, my pets are smarter than that. When my cat's food bowl is empty, he bugs me mercilessly until I fill it. Same with the dog.
3
Why should I be expected to understand people who don't even have accurate information? Coal died when fracking took over. These people need to acknowledge that and look for solutions in other career fields - including wind energy which pays well in my part of the world, which isn't far from Harlan County. They need to move to where jobs exist and stop complaining.
327
I do know that with UAW union members, personal accountability is a problem. Many have come to see their jobs as an entitlement, blaming their employer when their plant closes for lack of business.
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@Samantha
But why couldn't we have taken some of that $1.5 trillion tax cut, and turned it into jobs, even manufacturing jobs in places like Harlan County.
I have some sympathy for people who are attached to a landscape, and to longstanding relationships with family and community. But the coal company executives made a fortune out of fighting unions, resisting adaptation and taking what might have been their tax money out of the state, instead of investing in education and infrastructure which might have helped the next generation of workers.
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@Bonnie Luternow
Many of them have reason to blame their employers. They worked hard, with steadily eroding salary and benefits. They watched CEO pay climb in recent decades, while tax breaks from bought politicians starved the coffers for education, health and infrastructure. They saw nobody care about plans for continuity -- employers had no loyalty to their workers, they just cut and run. And yes, I think that is a violation of decency and the basic social contract. Capitalism needs some checks.
8
Not that surprising. Dependency breeds hostility. It is true in any relationship and any type of relationship.
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“Research by Dean Lacy at Dartmouth College on the presidential elections in 2004, 2008 and 2012 found that states receiving more federal spending for every tax dollar they contributed were more likely to go Republican.”
Pat Moynihan’s Office used to post this research every year. It was true in the 80’s and 90’s and it’s true now. THIS is the redistribution of wealth Republicans are always complaining about. Basically blue states work and create all the wealth in this country and then give it to Republican welfare states. And as a thank you Trump raised our taxes.
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@Mike
"blue states work and create all the wealth in this country" This "wealth" is part of the problem, because the "wealth" is largely a matter of transfer of income upward, towards banking and finance, and away from working people, no matter where they are. Republicans' deliberate policy is to increase this transfer, but it has continued during Democrats' control of the Presidency and Congress.
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@skeptonomist
"But it has continued during Democrats control of the Presidency and Congress?"
You must mean those two short years between 2008 and 2010 when the Democrats taxed the wealthy to provide affordable health care for the working poor?
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@Ronny
And trying to keep the Country from going into a Depression instead of the Great Recession after the Republicans gave away taxes that had they stayed on course the deficit would be gone by now, and loosened or ignored financial institutions to allow the housing bubble to happen, not to mention the 2+ trillion in non-tax supported war spending, and and the most recent 1.5 trillion gift to corporations and the 0.1%
34
I can see how people might bite the hand that feeds them if they feel the handouts degrade them and blame government for its hand in their plight because the coal industry has collapsed. That said, people need to me more mobile and go where the jobs are and get the skills they need. The government would be better off providing training and relocation assistance. Some localities are so short of employees they are providing financial incentives to people who move to the city. It’s time for the feds to get behind that idea.
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@John Smith
If they are being relocated to a place that already suffers from overpopulation, might our nation's resources be better spent training the workers and incentivizing the company to locate in towns where there is a ready workforce? Manifest Destiny only succeeded because the government gave people a reason to go to the interior of the country. Now maybe we need to give companies a reason to go there. We can't all live on the coasts. It's inefficient and will exacerbate the effects of climate change be it hurricanes, drought, or forest fires.
9
@John Smith There’s a huge disconnect between the jobs available in full employment states and the qualifications of some of the Harlan County residents. Many of them require in depth technology knowledge or advanced education degrees, Sure, there may be openings for minimum wage home health aides, or agricultural labor (which is seasonal anyway), but think for the moment about how daunting it is for the high school drop-out to relocate to a Mass. or WA, where she faces daunting cultural integration and higher living expenses while subsisting on benefits and seeking employment. It would be like landing on Mars.
I have a profound disrespect for the damage that this has created for our country, and the damage to our international standing and the environment, to name two, but let’s be realistic about what’s going on. Work brings self-respect. Unemployment is a breeding ground for resentment and anger. When you can’t get work, the future looks hopeless, and resulting anger is directed at those who sleazy politicians point to as ‘the enemy’.
Doling out benefits solves only a part of the problem. We need what amounts to a WPA for reconstruction of the regions left behind by these profound changes, and in depth commitment to education for the modern age. How we get there in the face of these disruptive political forces is the challenge.
29
@John Smith - You're not listening. These people don't want to be retrained. They don't want to move. They want their old jobs and old lives back and insist that others are cheating them of their rightful, owed, guaranteed success in life.
Eeyores who live on government assistance and complain about papercuts they get when they open the checks. Life is so cruel to them.
42
I'm an expat living in the former East Germany where my wife and her family are. There are many similarities here to West Virginia and Kentucky, the region lived for centuries based upon mining extraction of copper instead of coal, but now like coal the copper is too expensive to mine and the mines have all shut down.
The locals a good portion of them are simply reluctant to accept the fact that their world as it was is gone for ever. There is also here a reluctance to train for the new technologies and most shocking there is a shortage of people working in trades or healthcare. Germany is recruiting people outside of the EU to try to find workers. Like Americans there are jobs some Germans just don't want to do.
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@Robert Keller
Human nature is human nature everywhere. People complain about it but in both cases someone is enabling them by housing and feeding them. If we are going to fund sloth, we will get sloth.
6