/lit/ - Literature

>>15859767
>>15853417
>>15856697
I will just leave this pic here.
>>15856981
I know, it just far too often develops solely into rants blaming outsourcing.
>>15856787
>The issue is that America was once a mass producer and exporter of various goods and resources. There is literally no reason for there to be large towns in isolated valleys / hollows of West Virginia, other than coal and related industries. These industries caused massive population booms, the formation of towns, industrial giants building houses and libraries etc to attract workers. When coal no longer became profitable, then the coal mine shuts, as does the local engineering firm which provided gears and tools etc for the mine, as does the local diner and cafe which fed the miners, etc. It becomes a welfare town where the most ambitious and those with the academic support and ability leave to find their fortunes elsewhere, while others compete for minimum wage and government jobs, while others fall prey to the vices caused by a lack of economic prosperity (drugs, crime, welfare lifestyle etc).
>If this were an isolated incident in a particular region and a particular industry (say, coal mining) then it would make sense for the bulk of that population either independently or through government assistance to either move to another region where similar industries are prospering (e.g., manufacturing, factories, steel industry etc), or the region itself could hope to attract new industries which could benefit from a huge unemployed workforce ready to work for low pay. However the collapse of American manufacturing and production is not isolated to one region, but is an almost nationwide issue caused primarily by a globalised economy whereby a corporation can shift its base of production from Pennsylvania to Mexico, Taiwan or Malaysia without much of a second thought, and with the tacit approval of the government (NAFTA, as I understand it, encourages such relocation to Mexico, etc). Additionally, mass immigration from places like Mexico and central America means there is more competition for fewer jobs, which itself leads to a kind of pauperization of the working class, where both employer and prospective or actual employee knows there is abundance of available labour and so any attempt to improve working conditions or pay is precluded.
This hits awfully close for my city and area. We used to have like half dozen coal pits and some serious industry producing wires 60 years ago, but the last pit was closed down in 2014 after a long decline(coal mining in Germany had already become uneconomically way back during the 60s but kept artificially live for decades with subsidies) and the wire industry employs nowhere as many as it once did and the remaining industry has shrunk rather drastically.
>t. anon from the Ruhr area (Germany's rust belt)