Jefferson County is a rural county with less than 7,000 people who are disproportionately elderly. Young people with any sort of ambition have been leaving it for decades for places like Atlanta, Houston, etc...
Places like that are never going to recover economically via statewide incentives. It's like pouring water into a leaky bowl, hoping to fill it up. Instead we should be supporting the positive economic process that's already happening, which is people moving to opportunity to make a better life for themselves.
The people left behind need support, but not in the form of businesses. Businesses aren't charities, and if they are relying on state incentives that can change at any moment, you're likely to attract short-term business owners that are just going to play the state government and their connections with lawmakers to game the incentives-system. Legitimate businesses that can sustain and grow themselves don't want to set up shop in dying rural counties.
I don’t think it’s fair to say a place will never recover. Especially for places that have such high Black populations. They’ve been told for generations that they won’t succeed. Many people don’t want to leave the communities they were raised in, and they shouldn’t be forced too. It’s not an either-or - we can also invest in Atlanta too. Nearly every business in America benefits from some government service - small business loans are very common, and certainly not charity.
My dad lives in a county with 7,000 people, and his hometown is a medium-sized-city version of Jefferson. Near mill are dozens of former steel mill towns and people have been talking about "bringing them back" for generations with incentive programs, but mostly it's just failure after failure.
It is Jefferson or Atlanta, because there is only so much money and political capital. Prioritization always matter. And whatever Black people have been told for generations, the ones moving to Atlanta are doing vastly better than the ones who stay in Jefferson.
More often than not they fail, because worldwide people move to big cities for opportunities. If this was any other context 99% of liberals would agree that cities are good for the country, and backwards rural places where literally no one walks anywhere and public and social services are expensive and difficult to deliver are not the future of the country.
"Marginalization can perpetuate cycles of poverty and restrict individuals’ ability to fully participate in society (ACTEC.org)." Marginlaiztion doesn't just happen. When, for example, Walmart comes in and takes over a town, decimating all the small businesses that have supported and sustained and created community for generations, it is planned, and--in the south--where there are no jobs or educational opportunities, Republicans convince people "it's cuz of those damn liberals!" After years of zero opportunity, maybe they'll learn. https://www.actec.org/planning-for-a-diverse-and-equitable-future/marginalized-communities/
💯 on this. A couple other issues here in SW Mississippi is systemic racism in education (the privileged & politicians like to try & keep folks “willfully ignorant” as I politely state it. Policymakers are wrongly attempting to use public school funds for private religious schools), & our healthcare system and just about everything else in our state is awful & collapsing because of those $7.25 wages & bad policy. It is a domino effect.
Our governor helped initiate bringing a business to our city that uses the poor to prey upon the poor. It’s nuts! We do not need a shady ass company with 10 different collection agency names as “jobs”. Weirdly they are always supposedly hiring but as I am proof of, they really aren’t!
I’ve been unemployed for 2 years this October. The corrupt people in our state are also part of the problem. I have never in my life trusted no-one where I live, until moving to SW Mississippi, where I have personally witnessed “othering” and corruption being valued over intelligence & ethics at a terrifying level.
And just to be clear, project 2025 has already begun in my state. We are slowly being cut off more & more from the rest of the country & spoon fed utter bull sh*t from our news, politicians, & the wealthy.
The entire state of Mississippi has been blocked by social media app Bluesky for good reason. The willful ignorance is astounding. Common phrases “This is how we’ve always done it here” or “I’ll talk to your husband” or “Where ya’ from” (used as an otherism) etc. avoid anything that says “Old South”!
Mississippi is definitely an outlier and thank you for sharing your story. What were you doing before you became unemployed and how has the job search in the state been?
I was a 911 tele-communicator & the job search has been horrific mostly due to corrupt people on positions of power. I had one neighbor that moved into the neighborhood & moved to Wisconsin shortly after due to same toxic environment I experienced. Federal employment laws are violated here on the regular without an eyelash batted. The wage theft is horrific.
Thank you for this overview. In this administration where the "bill" will wreck further economic terrorism how will the a state in this scenario MS protect its citizens . Many may lose healthcare and SNAP.
One carveout of the bill is that for places with higher than 10% unemployment they are able to waive many of the work requirements. However, implementing this and freely offering those waivers is likely going to be a challenge.
Thank you for this analysis. Jobs are moving in the direction of an incarceration-driven economy. Prison culture destroys the lives of everyone involved in it and creates more problems than it solves. Discourage people from working in this sector.
There's substantial evidence that putting a prison in a community does not increase employment in the area, not to mention that incarceration makes it incredibly difficult to get a job later in life
Good point to make. Many of those incarcerated were young adults that in some cases could have been shown another alternative to fend for themselves. The system says they want to "rehabilitate but the opposite is true. The prisoners learn how to improve their "trade-craft" then graduate the penal service and nobody wants to hire them! So a misdemeanour is treated like a repeat violent offender? They go on committing crimes when they get out because it's the only way out..
Recession first!!! Which is happening right now, by the way! Great Depression next! Blame Trump and his administration! Democrats need to shut the government down when the next votes happen! Schumer, take your head out of your arse!
I agree, we needed to advance the new industries and jobs forward not go back to the 1950s or worse the 1920s and even pre- industrial America. You can only drive in reverse so fast and avoid obstacles. America is driving in reverse
I’m going to be crucified for this comment, but it seems that having children doesn’t help. It’s an added burden on an already existing problem. So childcare eats up what you need to get by, and you have said children anyway. It’s a no win situation.
In virtually all civilized Western countries both free childcare and universal health care are available to open up opportunities for parents to join the workforce. The US historically resists this trend for misogynistic and racist reasons, then “blames” women and especially black women for “having too many babies”. Don’t fall for that racist troupe.
Trump and Vance are alarmed that we're not having more children, but they make childcare prohibitively expensive and make it nearly impossible for young working mothers to stay in the workforce.
Great post! It points to a number of structural issues, but might overlook the extent to which organized labor has been marginalized through a bipartisan commitment to what MLK described as “intersecting evils”: capitalism, racism, and militarism. Labor is the key to challenging the corruption of capital—which is likely why Trump has escalated the longstanding attack on organized labor in which Democrats have been largely complicit. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/organized-labor-is-the-key-to-overcoming
The Path Forward discusses how we've seen a real loss in the strength of unions. In the 1950s, 1 in 3 workers in the U.S. was in a union. Now it is 1 in 10. It's not an accident that the declines have been so steep
Indeed! I wrote in a separate post that "[Bill] Clinton ultimately traded principles for which Democrats had long fought in exchange for his personal political success.
By supporting Wall Street’s agenda on labor rights and international trade, Clinton effectively broke the previous Republican monopoly on support from Wall Street. Few appreciated at the time how a Democratic president championing policies once favored only by Republicans would induce the entire political spectrum to shift to the right." https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/i/140911089/clintons-concessions
Jefferson County is a rural county with less than 7,000 people who are disproportionately elderly. Young people with any sort of ambition have been leaving it for decades for places like Atlanta, Houston, etc...
Places like that are never going to recover economically via statewide incentives. It's like pouring water into a leaky bowl, hoping to fill it up. Instead we should be supporting the positive economic process that's already happening, which is people moving to opportunity to make a better life for themselves.
The people left behind need support, but not in the form of businesses. Businesses aren't charities, and if they are relying on state incentives that can change at any moment, you're likely to attract short-term business owners that are just going to play the state government and their connections with lawmakers to game the incentives-system. Legitimate businesses that can sustain and grow themselves don't want to set up shop in dying rural counties.
I don’t think it’s fair to say a place will never recover. Especially for places that have such high Black populations. They’ve been told for generations that they won’t succeed. Many people don’t want to leave the communities they were raised in, and they shouldn’t be forced too. It’s not an either-or - we can also invest in Atlanta too. Nearly every business in America benefits from some government service - small business loans are very common, and certainly not charity.
My dad lives in a county with 7,000 people, and his hometown is a medium-sized-city version of Jefferson. Near mill are dozens of former steel mill towns and people have been talking about "bringing them back" for generations with incentive programs, but mostly it's just failure after failure.
It is Jefferson or Atlanta, because there is only so much money and political capital. Prioritization always matter. And whatever Black people have been told for generations, the ones moving to Atlanta are doing vastly better than the ones who stay in Jefferson.
More often than not they fail, because worldwide people move to big cities for opportunities. If this was any other context 99% of liberals would agree that cities are good for the country, and backwards rural places where literally no one walks anywhere and public and social services are expensive and difficult to deliver are not the future of the country.
"Marginalization can perpetuate cycles of poverty and restrict individuals’ ability to fully participate in society (ACTEC.org)." Marginlaiztion doesn't just happen. When, for example, Walmart comes in and takes over a town, decimating all the small businesses that have supported and sustained and created community for generations, it is planned, and--in the south--where there are no jobs or educational opportunities, Republicans convince people "it's cuz of those damn liberals!" After years of zero opportunity, maybe they'll learn. https://www.actec.org/planning-for-a-diverse-and-equitable-future/marginalized-communities/
this was an excellent article. thanks for this piece.
i'm still struggling to find a good job, been dealing with ghost jobs.
the struggle for a living wage is real.
How’d you realize it was a ghost job?
I feel every bit of this.
When Trump was crashing the stock market, my company laid off 14% of its staff. Including me.
Still struggling to find a good job in this market.
Great article.
💯 on this. A couple other issues here in SW Mississippi is systemic racism in education (the privileged & politicians like to try & keep folks “willfully ignorant” as I politely state it. Policymakers are wrongly attempting to use public school funds for private religious schools), & our healthcare system and just about everything else in our state is awful & collapsing because of those $7.25 wages & bad policy. It is a domino effect.
Our governor helped initiate bringing a business to our city that uses the poor to prey upon the poor. It’s nuts! We do not need a shady ass company with 10 different collection agency names as “jobs”. Weirdly they are always supposedly hiring but as I am proof of, they really aren’t!
I’ve been unemployed for 2 years this October. The corrupt people in our state are also part of the problem. I have never in my life trusted no-one where I live, until moving to SW Mississippi, where I have personally witnessed “othering” and corruption being valued over intelligence & ethics at a terrifying level.
And just to be clear, project 2025 has already begun in my state. We are slowly being cut off more & more from the rest of the country & spoon fed utter bull sh*t from our news, politicians, & the wealthy.
The entire state of Mississippi has been blocked by social media app Bluesky for good reason. The willful ignorance is astounding. Common phrases “This is how we’ve always done it here” or “I’ll talk to your husband” or “Where ya’ from” (used as an otherism) etc. avoid anything that says “Old South”!
Mississippi is definitely an outlier and thank you for sharing your story. What were you doing before you became unemployed and how has the job search in the state been?
I was a 911 tele-communicator & the job search has been horrific mostly due to corrupt people on positions of power. I had one neighbor that moved into the neighborhood & moved to Wisconsin shortly after due to same toxic environment I experienced. Federal employment laws are violated here on the regular without an eyelash batted. The wage theft is horrific.
Thank you for this overview. In this administration where the "bill" will wreck further economic terrorism how will the a state in this scenario MS protect its citizens . Many may lose healthcare and SNAP.
One carveout of the bill is that for places with higher than 10% unemployment they are able to waive many of the work requirements. However, implementing this and freely offering those waivers is likely going to be a challenge.
Thank you for this analysis. Jobs are moving in the direction of an incarceration-driven economy. Prison culture destroys the lives of everyone involved in it and creates more problems than it solves. Discourage people from working in this sector.
There's substantial evidence that putting a prison in a community does not increase employment in the area, not to mention that incarceration makes it incredibly difficult to get a job later in life
Good point to make. Many of those incarcerated were young adults that in some cases could have been shown another alternative to fend for themselves. The system says they want to "rehabilitate but the opposite is true. The prisoners learn how to improve their "trade-craft" then graduate the penal service and nobody wants to hire them! So a misdemeanour is treated like a repeat violent offender? They go on committing crimes when they get out because it's the only way out..
Recession first!!! Which is happening right now, by the way! Great Depression next! Blame Trump and his administration! Democrats need to shut the government down when the next votes happen! Schumer, take your head out of your arse!
I agree, we needed to advance the new industries and jobs forward not go back to the 1950s or worse the 1920s and even pre- industrial America. You can only drive in reverse so fast and avoid obstacles. America is driving in reverse
I’m going to be crucified for this comment, but it seems that having children doesn’t help. It’s an added burden on an already existing problem. So childcare eats up what you need to get by, and you have said children anyway. It’s a no win situation.
We are very badly in need of universal childcare
In virtually all civilized Western countries both free childcare and universal health care are available to open up opportunities for parents to join the workforce. The US historically resists this trend for misogynistic and racist reasons, then “blames” women and especially black women for “having too many babies”. Don’t fall for that racist troupe.
Trump and Vance are alarmed that we're not having more children, but they make childcare prohibitively expensive and make it nearly impossible for young working mothers to stay in the workforce.
Great post! It points to a number of structural issues, but might overlook the extent to which organized labor has been marginalized through a bipartisan commitment to what MLK described as “intersecting evils”: capitalism, racism, and militarism. Labor is the key to challenging the corruption of capital—which is likely why Trump has escalated the longstanding attack on organized labor in which Democrats have been largely complicit. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/organized-labor-is-the-key-to-overcoming
The Path Forward discusses how we've seen a real loss in the strength of unions. In the 1950s, 1 in 3 workers in the U.S. was in a union. Now it is 1 in 10. It's not an accident that the declines have been so steep
Indeed! I wrote in a separate post that "[Bill] Clinton ultimately traded principles for which Democrats had long fought in exchange for his personal political success.
By supporting Wall Street’s agenda on labor rights and international trade, Clinton effectively broke the previous Republican monopoly on support from Wall Street. Few appreciated at the time how a Democratic president championing policies once favored only by Republicans would induce the entire political spectrum to shift to the right." https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/i/140911089/clintons-concessions
And MAGA conveniently forgets that their Great period was a strong union time with far lower inequality and higher taxes on the rich.