Want to understand the average American rural community, watch these videos

Happened across one of these videos looking for something to watch on Youtube. I don't know how their algorithm works but hey!




This is a great video about a smaller community in rural Ohio where DHL was the main employer and what happened after they left. This is a lot like the old coal mining town I am currently trying to move out of for a better opportunity in technology. I live in a town with a ton of jobs where you can make 25k a year and very few jobs that aren't manual labor. Even many of the manufacturing plants aren't paying very well and the unions are constantly busting our losing leverage.



I feel like these are great videos for people to watch to actually see and meet these rural Trump voters people are always talking about, how racist and stupid they are. Mostly just normal people who want very basic things. They also generally realize that the economy is still in the dumps regardless of what the TV is saying.

This is what I think of when I hear my left leaning friends from the west coast talking about hicks and rednecks lol. These are the videos they should watch to understand that we all actually have a lot in common. Not listening to the rhetoric that is force fed to us by the MSM.

Many points for the Mudpit.

No further comments allowed.



Far from "Global Meltdown"

a reply to: toysforadults

Mostly just normal people who want very basic things. They also generally realize that the economy is still in the dumps regardless of what the TV is saying.

Yah sadly, real life has very little to do with whats seen on TV.

a reply to: toysforadults

As an LA resident, one thing I noticed is that many white wealthy LA liberals called all Trump supporters especially rural Americans racists yet exclude certain minority groups from their neighborhoods because they see them as poor.

It is sad,But the town in the first video.... What was it that created the town in the first place? DHL has not been in business that long.

DHL moves out and the town dies. I think it is Walmart lowes home depot... etc. I shop at Lowes,

Most urban folks, city dwellers forget that people live in smaller towns all over the country. They actually like that lifestyle, not because they're racist, but because they like the pace of life.

Not everyone wants to urbanize to survive.

a reply to: tinner07

Well a lot of these places are remnants of older industries such as coal mining and manufacturing before the 90's.

a reply to: toysforadults

I spent a good chunk of my military career in the Midwest and South.

I grew up in liberal areas of the Desert and Pacific West.

I've never seen such a distance between perception and reality.

originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: toysforadults

I spent a good chunk of my military career in the Midwest and South.

I grew up in liberal areas of the Desert and Pacific West.

I've never seen such a distance between perception and reality.

We're you a pilot? I don't know too many guys hanging around the states unless they fly.
Midwest people are not bad , just poor.
I grew up midwest, working class.
My military career involved horrible places in the M.E. and Africa where I spent a lot of time lying very still for long periods of time. So I could come home to see people acting far worse right here at home.

But yeah, there's one hell of a difference between pacific coast and the Midwest point of view.

Not trying to piss in your cheerios, I just don't see how midwest people are living in false reality and west coast people aren't.

Correct me if I've read your statement wrong.

a reply to: Hewhowaits

In fact, I was an H60 crew chief and door gunner.

Spent 1/4 of my career in Afghanistan watching my airframes catch bullets.

a reply to: toysforadults

I've lived in these types of places for 15 years now. Here's the problem, the old jobs are not coming back. People aren't unwilling to work, they're unwilling to obtain the necessary education. They want to do blue collar unskilled work like coal mining, truck driving, and loading/unloading freight (those last two being what the industry in that town in your first video shifted to after many years), even you, going by your posts over the past year, are looking at the blue collar side of IT work.

That doesn't get anyone anywhere.

5 years ago I actually took some advice from someone in one of these threads on this topic, and they were 100% right. If you're going to get an education, pick a school and a major where companies come to the school and hire substantial numbers of students in their junior year. Internships for all (or even permanent positions), and keep the ones who work out after they graduate.

I did that with my current program. We had a large company in Columbus (Nationwide) come to our school and hire the entire graduating class before mine, sight unseen. They said that if you were good enough to pass our program, you were good enough to work for them. I was hired directly out of the program by a fortune 500 company, before graduating. They liked my work enough that we recently expanded and hired two more of my classmates, literally because they went through the same program.

I also happen to work in a factory (on the days I'm not remote). I've taken a lot of # in the past year from factory workers and technicians who deride my education, lots of comments like college boy and such (not all though, the vast majority of people are nice, decent, polite individuals).

Something I'm watching play out with a friend of mine right now, that people don't seem to grasp. Their general plan is to get a degree, and use that degree to get a job. The problem, is that a degree doesn't actually make you stand out. While it's something few have in terms of general population statistics, anyone under serious consideration for a job is going to have a degree. Most of them (outside of new grad specific positions) will also have some number of years of experience. Degrees do not get you jobs, you need a degree to get a good job, but it's what you bring above and beyond that will get you hired.

For this reason, 4 year degrees are not enough. That's why we have so much underemployment in the US. The jobs don't justify a graduate degree in many cases, but a degree holder with little to no accomplishments just isn't an interesting hire.

Think about this, the average rate in the US is roughly 1 employer response per 100 resumes sent out. That's a very low hit rate, and it means there's a problem with peoples resumes. They just aren't interesting enough to get an interview... that's why so much of the system has moved to a tangled web of personal network contacts and recommendations that bypass HR.

I retired and moved to a very rural area, in Kentucky.

I know if I need something, my neighbors have my back...same as I have theirs.

All good people.

They never discuss politics.

Don't miss the DC metro area one bit.

a reply to: Aazadan

I personally stand out on resumes from something I did in the past successfully. That's never been an issue for me however that's a ridiculous amount of work for just average people to make a living wage.

Most people aren't and shouldn't have to be the most competitive people on the planet just to put a roof over there head which is where are.

a reply to: toysforadults

Is it? We live in a competitive society (as much as I dislike competition). Competition says X units of work can be completed for 10 cents an hour in Mexico. If you want to make $20/hour in the US doing the same job, then it's your job to be 200x as productive. That means getting an education to figure out how to make that a reality.

American exceptionalism means we have to work the hardest at being the best too... it's not innate.

Alternatively, we could try protectionism, but that just raises prices domestically, results in worse products, and throws away the free market. Even protectionism needs job retraining though. What are truck drivers supposed to do when we have driverless cars? UPS with drone deliery? Construction when houses are 3d printed?

High tech involves higher education.

It's all about scale. The impact of remaining jobs is scaling up, and therefore the salaries are too. Jobs that have stagnant impact are declining in wages and disappearing.

a reply to: toysforadults

how racist and stupid they are.

blinks - do you really believe that the cencus count of a county determins the intelligence of its inhabitants ?

a reply to: Aazadan

Education isn't enough, you need contacts like good friends or relatives in the field of your study. That's why people from Ivy League schools end up with most of the really good positions in this country it's a networking thing.

I got a BS and MS in engineering and I was probably in the top 1% of my class and field regarding knowledge, ability but the first thing you learn when you get out of school is they didn't teach you anything you needed to know.

Most of all technical work is done by either people directly out of school for about 4-5 years or designers/technicians. And this is enabled by all the standards. So once you get a professional license (if required in your field) you more or less become a gatekeeper. Your 'value' is related only to your certification, which you can't get unless you have the education.

The system has undermined true talent and ability, skills and knowledge at least for the field I was in, construction, civil engineering, architecture. Software and standards take care of almost everything and what they don't plans examiners take care of.

Engineers put themselves out of work over time because we standardize everything, and that is easily automated. Even the 'high tech' skills like programming or EE will end up putting themselves out of work once AI is common. So the government has created this situation where the professionals they certify are put out of work by the same standards and codes they developed and install them as gatekeepers.

I'm re-tooling now hoping to get into 3d printing or modeling, but I also know there is a small window there before AI and automation take over most of that work. Basically 1 engineer with AI and automation will do the job of a whole office 10 years ago.

I live in a fairly rural type area.
If you want to make decent money you have to drive at least 60 miles a day to get a well paying job at a chemical refinery.
I call it the "golden noose."
Most men doing that work die at an earlier age with disease and broken bodies.
What good is a new car if you die of cancer with every joint in your body in pain in your mid 50's?
Myself, I prefer to live frugally and live off the land as much as possible.
It is wise to have craftman's skills that are in demand if you plan on living to be a ripe old age.

a reply to: skunkape23

If there is an economic collapse (there will be eventually) you will come out far ahead.

thank you for posting these videos. As a EU citizen, i struggle to convince my fellow countrymen that there is a huge difference between the liberal coast and the conservative rural countryside. These might help them understanding that simple fact

a reply to: starwarsisreal

Not always,ever notice who they have doing their lawns and as servants? the immigrants I know these people and call them on it all the time,only time they treat an immigrant with any respect is when the camera is on trust me