Short story about small town in the midwest where I spent childhood summers and watched it transform over the course of my lifetime from a modest manufacturing hub that made domestic appliances and textiles and little bit of this and a little bit of that, sustained by a mix of these factory jobs and the surrounding ag economy, not without problems but a place to raise a family and have a pretty good life, culturally homogenous with little crime and a real sense of community that transcended class boundaries…
But then NAFTAcame. The plants shuttered and the jobs dried up and in response to the vacuum left by NAFTA the state decided to build a state penitentiary right outside of town. This added some prison jobs, sure, but it also brought the prisoner’s families––mostly consisting of girlfriends and out-of-wedlock children–who were a transient presence but needed a place to send their kids to school and K-Marts to shop in, and this had exactly the effect you’d expect. The town’s demographics shifted rapidly, just as the meth epidemic began to sweep through (followed, years later, by the opioid crisis.)
This led to a pronounced generational bifurcation. Pretty much every Millenial-aged person capable of a 4-year degree left and never came back while the rest stayed behind to work a variety of retail and “gig” jobs (at worse wages and in worse conditions than their parents’ manufacturing jobs) or maybe even more likely not work at all, in a community that had badly frayed at the seams and was in many ways alien and unrecognizable and degraded and lesser-than in every way from the one they grew up in.
It is still like this, only now with the added pressure of illegal immigrants who initially came to take sub-market rate ag jobs and have since rooted themselves as a permanent, scarcely integrated rump segment of the population which, as a whole, but for maybe a few dozen doctors and lawyers and high-agency business owners and farmers who have stuck out it because it’s their home and they are duty-bound to it, really don’t give a shit about the S&P or short-term supply shocks and while I am not going to presume whether they agree with Trump about anything, I’m pretty sure are glad that at least he is trying something other than what’s been done to them over and over again for the last 30 years.
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But then NAFTAcame. The plants shuttered and the jobs dried up and in response to the vacuum left by NAFTA the state decided to build a state penitentiary right outside of town. This added some prison jobs, sure, but it also brought the prisoner’s families––mostly consisting of girlfriends and out-of-wedlock children–who were a transient presence but needed a place to send their kids to school and K-Marts to shop in, and this had exactly the effect you’d expect. The town’s demographics shifted rapidly, just as the meth epidemic began to sweep through (followed, years later, by the opioid crisis.)
This led to a pronounced generational bifurcation. Pretty much every Millenial-aged person capable of a 4-year degree left and never came back while the rest stayed behind to work a variety of retail and “gig” jobs (at worse wages and in worse conditions than their parents’ manufacturing jobs) or maybe even more likely not work at all, in a community that had badly frayed at the seams and was in many ways alien and unrecognizable and degraded and lesser-than in every way from the one they grew up in.
It is still like this, only now with the added pressure of illegal immigrants who initially came to take sub-market rate ag jobs and have since rooted themselves as a permanent, scarcely integrated rump segment of the population which, as a whole, but for maybe a few dozen doctors and lawyers and high-agency business owners and farmers who have stuck out it because it’s their home and they are duty-bound to it, really don’t give a shit about the S&P or short-term supply shocks and while I am not going to presume whether they agree with Trump about anything, I’m pretty sure are glad that at least he is trying something other than what’s been done to them over and over again for the last 30 years.
🄳🄾🄾🄼🄿🄾🅂🅃🄸🄽🄶
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Media is too big
VIEW IN TELEGRAM
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“Just teach your kids right from wrong”
No one ate up the nurture > nature nonsense more than the 50+ generation
Education solves far less than you think
🄳🄾🄾🄼🄿🄾🅂🅃🄸🄽🄶
No one ate up the nurture > nature nonsense more than the 50+ generation
Education solves far less than you think
🄳🄾🄾🄼🄿🄾🅂🅃🄸🄽🄶
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