Why the Left Isn’t Talking About Rural American Poverty

[Dendrek]

The same left that can't tell the difference between men and women? Yeah those backward southerners at least figured that one out. I am beyond thankful that I'm not a fucked up social progressive.

Also, money isn't everything. The south has figured that one out too. I do believe it's all those sophistimicated city folk that suffer from the highest levels of mental disorders, so Arkansas is probably a relative paradise in every way, unless money is the most important thing in your life. Which would be pathetic, but carry on.

The south has figured out that money isn't everything? So all that whining about taxes isn't coming from the south? Where's it coming from then?

[Wooly]

You're trying to oversimplify everything so that it makes it easier to sort people into baskets or categories. All living things don't conform to your narrowly perceived ideas of 'how they should be', just because it's easier that way or because 'that's what you believe'. People, genetically, are going to present a vast spectrum of personalities and behaviors.

Your challenge is to understand that it's not so straightforward as "Black or White", "Male or Female". As far as mental illness goes, it's easy to project that as a 'city folk only' problem. Saying that makes you guilty of the same thing you accuse 'the left' of doing. "Thay ain't mah kand!" "They're weird, I'm 'normal'!" Claiming to be 'Christian' then pointing fingers at what you perceive to be other people's weaknesses, now that's pathetic.

[Yvaelle]

So.... have at thee. Does the Left have a anti-rural bias.

Nope. Because - in my role as Voice of 'The Left' - when I talk about wealth inequality I am including rural poverty. If we go back to my last few macroeconomics posts, I've specifically gone out of my way to point out the accumulation of wealth into cities at an accelerating rate - meaning that not just are people migrating to cities, and their money with them - but those who do migrate to cities make more money than those who remain in the countryside: this effect will continue until it impoverishes the countryside.


With that said, that doesn't mean there isn't also wealth inequality within cities - obviously there is huge wealth inequality here too - but it is growing even faster in rural areas, due to the added synergies of urbanization over rural life - beyond the more commonly identified concern about wealth inequality due to unshackled capitalism.

Your post claims that the rural poor are not courted by the Democrats - but that is simply false - they benefit more from the Democratic initiatives for social safety nets than they do from the elimination of the safety nets that they rely upon by the Republicans. If you are asking how many times Hillary gives a stump speech on a stump in a forest - not often (though she does do small rural events for the photo shoots), and you could claim that the Republican do them more often - but to correlate how often the Republicans say they care about the poor, versus what the impacts of their policies are upon the rural poor - is where you make your poor assumption.

The Republicans talk a lot of shit about how they are the party of the rural vote - and they succeed in getting those votes - but that isn't evidence of bias: it's only evidence of effective marketing. Bias would need to appear in policy - and the reality is that the policy of the Republicans is designed to harm the rural poor perhaps more than anyone else in the country - their trick is to do this simultaneously to successfully courting their vote.

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So essentially "we are in this together," is a bit less true when we talk actual numbers here.

That's just a strawman for Communism. Nobody on the Left is arguing for Equality of Condition.

Just because cities get sewers, because their property taxes and density can afford it, doesn't mean I should run a sewer main to every hermit living alone on a mountaintop.

You aren't accurately portraying any Liberal position, you're just strawmanning us into defending a claim, which you invented, which is a) absurd, and b) more communist than any communist country on the planet has ever been (even Soviet Russia wouldn't do what you are suggesting).