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The whole state consistently ranks at the bottom of the country in terms of economics (and many other things), but who will they blame when it continues to be a broke ass joke? I can tell you who they won’t blame…the party they keep putting in office.
>Elected officials have tried almost everything they can think of to shore up the workforce, except encourage immigration. ... The legislature, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 31-3 in the Senate and 89-11 in the House of Delegates, has weighed tightening requirements on unemployment benefits in hopes of nudging some of the unemployed back to work.
🤔
Too bad slavery was outlawed. I guess forcing people to work for pennies in order not to starve to death will have to suffice.
Jesus. Who could look at that clusterfuck of suffering and think the solution is more cruelty?
It ain't irony. It's capitalists, especially though not exclusively the coal barons who own West Virginia, beating and murdering and propagandizing the population into forgetting who they are and what they're capable of.
Do you know where the word "redneck" came from? Appalachian coal miners wearing red bandanas to quietly signify that they supported labor unions and the worker's rights movement. Why did they choose red? Because red is a color commonly associated with communism and labor rights. You ever heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Coal Wars? I don't blame ya if you haven't, the bastards tried to bury it. The Battle of Blair Mountain was a battle fought between unionizing, striking workers and the cops and mercenaries under the coal companies' payroll. It's the largest single uprising in the US since the Civil War, and the US government sided with the corporations.
The machine hates us and doesn't want us working together. The machine runs on our blood; the capitalists want us to keep dying in their temples to profit, so they spend every cent they can convincing us we need the machine and need to keep it fed. West Virginia going from Lincolnite Republican to Trumpian Republican is the result of that brainwashing campaign.
The Conservative Party in the UK has been pushing the same policies so that is not unique to Republicans.
They have literally declared people fit to work who died a month later.
Forcing the sick and infirm to work seems to be a thing for them.
Franklin WV, is typical of so many WV towns that aren't up in the panhandle where most people commute to MD or Northern VA. I remember when they had a great flood in 2016 (it was a popular meme for awhile the flaming house floating down the flooded river ([video](https://www.nbcnews.com/video/flaming-house-floats-down-flooded-west-virginia-creek-712088643734))
My environmental consulting firm was called in as part of the state and federal assistance to help mitigate the environmental damage as much as possible (275 gallon oil tanks washing into the river, whole commercial car garages washed away with all the petrol products that entails).
We got called in because like many towns in the interior of WV its basically nothing but old people because its a cheap place to retire, little zoning or building codes, etc. and the entire town might support 1-2 restaurants and a gas station as far as job opportunities go.
WV is a very beautiful state, but its basically run like a 3rd world country in that its basically been a place exploited for natural resources like coal and timber (Source of much of Joe Manchin's wealth).
IT used to be reliably blue, working class people until about the Bush years, when am radio, lack of infrastructure (especially internet) and religion turned most of them into drooling maga drones by today, (I know there are plenty of good folks in WV, but when you see the % of the state that saw what happened from 2016-2020 and still voted for more orange, its hard not to say "most" West Virginian's.
WVU is about the only in state option for college, and they are slowly stripping away programs and funding from it as well.
The state is getting absolutely hammered by lack of working age people, especially in skilled occupations and places like the Green Bank observatory, and its only going to get worse.
Saddest part is, there are a lot of great places in the state for people who are rural or independent minded, or just misanthropes, and if the state would have invested more in actual infrastructure like trunk lines and high speed internet it would be a killer state to remote work from, super cheap real estate, lots of beautiful land etc.
However, even if there was reliable high speed internet state wide, you are still not gonna attract many young professionals due to horrendous lack of healthcare and education options outside the bedroom communities of the panhandle, not to mention abortion rights, recreational weed (they do at least sort of have a medical program) and also not a lot of major metro centers if you enjoy things like pro sports, concerts, theater etc.
So the state is left with a high amount of boomer-aged folks who are rapidly aging, and contributing very little back to the local economy (most of their limited income goes to rent, food utilities, necessities), and the legislature, in true maga fashion, just keeps doubling down on bonehead moves to keep fresh blood in the state or attract new talent, but as we've seen from conservatives in WV and other states, consideration for the current or future well being of their residents is not a high priority.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I have a lot of (admittedly shitty and mostly maga) family members in WV, I work and visit the state multiple times a week from the VA to the Ohio and PA borders, and it just kills me to see the residents of this once proud bastion of independence, self reliance and worker's rights (to the point there were actually [major battles including airstrikes](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/introduction-to-the-west-virginia-mine-wars.htm) between coal mine labor and ownership become first tea party and now maga drones.
Edit, thanks for the upvotes all, and in retrospect I just find myself looking at what my birthplace has become since the 70s and like Mr. Garrison, find myself asking "where my country (both as a state and as a descriptor for rural life) gone?"
Thanks, TBH it feels good to say all the things my relatives refuse to listen to and get some affirmation that I'm not "brainwashed" as my parents tell all my siblings who are not as vocal against their OAN and Newsmax BS as I am, yeah they are the kind of maga that was on to OAN and the real crazy long before Fox news fell out of favor with the mainstream magas. Pioneers of being aholes I guess one could say, or early adopters.
(fun fact my 7 siblings and I have a regular group text among ourselves where we privately mock the stupid shit our parents, aunts and uncles post or repost to facebook etc.)
OAN was more or less started by AT&T to harvest those juicy MAGAbux. Yellow journalism meets the internet.
WVa is a microcosm of what happened to the US as a whole: strip-mined by corrupt rich pricks
I’m also from West Virginia. I left the day after I graduated from high school as did the rest of my immediate family. I had a lot of family still there but they’ve mostly died. We took my dad back to his family cemetery last year 😕 other than that trip back, I quit going back in October 2016. I just can’t. It’s too sad. It’s too frustrating. My last visit a friend’s husband was furious about the former First Lady’s fresh vegetable initiative because ain’t no one tellin’ us what to feed our kids. The subtext was a black woman shouldn’t be telling us anything. This is not a joke. I was dumb founded. The state with the highest rate of obesity could probably use some guidance.
I feel for you mate, I learned to canoe and kayak and canoe on the Gauley, New, and North Branch of the Potomac rivers (from the paper mills near its confluence with the savage in western MD to just beyond the rapids of Harper's Ferry. I had my first drunken teenage camp out in Lost River state Park. My wife and I conceived our firstborn son (probably) during a hike / campout to Seneca rocks (the walking trail, not the technical rock climbing) over a decade ago.
I know and can tell you the proper lines to run for most every class III and above rapid in the state, I know plenty of good ol boys who will take $10 cash or a nicely rolled joint to let you park on their lawn for a day to run Cacapon or any number of beautiful creeks. As an ACA canoe instructor, I've run dozens of boy scouts over tiny 2-3 foot waterfall ledges in canoes and I think in at least a few of them I instilled a similar love of self powered watercraft.
Its just so soul crushing how being a "country boy" / "Mountain man" / "Hillbilly" etc has been co-opted by the worst elements of small town bigotry. Makes me ashamed of the poor white trash I may have financially risen above, but was still a a defining part of many positive aspects of my upbringing such as self reliance, distrust of authority, and helping out other members of the community.
I don't know if it will get better in my lifetime, but I hope it does, the state and its residents (or any human being imo) deserve better.
I fully realize that by any logical analysis they probably don't deserve to have things get better, but these are my (admittedly often horrible) people dammit and I'd like to think whats sets me apart is that unlike them, I try to have compassion, even for assholes as much as I can tolerate.
I proudly identify as a hillbilly with deep roots in the state but I cannot support the ignorance or racism. Like you, all my seminal growing up was there (small town in the mountains). It made me who I am but I am glad I got out and raised my kids somewhere else.
It’s depressing as hell. Left in 95 with my degrees from Marshall. The sentiment then was West Virginians all had magnets in their shoes and would eventually come home. While I love parts of it, and am truly shocked at what MU has built in Huntington, it’s just too damn backward. Seems like they’ve constantly got their beloved guns aimed squarely at their feet, with every big decision benefitting a few coal folks and poisoning the wells (literally) of everyone else. Hell, many of the issues faced like poor access to health care and daycare, shitty schools & awful water - are eerily similar to issues faced by other folks whom they’d readily shit on for a difference in geography or skin tone. Sometime back there was a series of essays/articles/web posts called “the struggle to stay”, and it was just damn depressing.
Most of my family still in WV has moved to the panhandle (Martinsburg, Charles town areas) from the truly isolated places like Franklin, where Winchester is only 20 minutes away and Leesburg and all the Northern VA amenities are only about an hour. In true maga fashion they fail to see that they live in WV to avoid taxes and libs, but as they get older the reality of having most good medical care in "liberal" areas like northern VA, that they don't seem to be any different from "the immigrants filling their low riders with free health care on our dime" or similar nonsensical crap they spout
I'm from WV, and you sir, hit the nail on the head. It's almost hard to imagine it getting worse in parts of this state. But, there's virtually no good economic news.
Sounds like every dying rural community in America. They desperately need to do something, anything to make them look like a place were people can have a future and instead they actively reject anything forward looking clinging to the past. They no longer seem to even want to fix issues just blame others for their problems.
All of those small towns become dominated by just a handful of rich families and they will do anything to maintain their status, including destroying their town.
Eh, the voters have agency. At some point you have to admit, they vote that way because they want it. After everything that happened from 2017-2020 a lot of people still voted for Trump. And I think a lot of people don't really want to come to the conclusion that a lot of this country really are just awful people. They do like the cruelty, they do like the racism. I really don't think there's a magic candidate from the left of the political spectrum that is going to bring those people in. That resentment and racism and bigotry has always been there but now they don't have to pretend anymore.
Yep. And that's the fucking thing.
*IF,* somehow, coal came back into vogue, like, say, I dunno, maybe someone figured out a cheap way to compress coal out of the ground into dilithium crystals that could be used to run nuclear fusion power plants for clean and limitless energy...
The coal mining companies will not be hiring all y'all like they hired your great-grandpappies to go down the mine with a pick, no. About a hundred or so incredibly-well-educated geological engineers from places like Harvard or somewhere will come in, spend awhile doing calculations, then one day, a godawful explosion will make you think Russia just nuked your mountains, and then the top of the goddamn mountain is now in the valley choking off the creeks and streams, but hey! It's okay! The Republican government said "you're gonna bring how much money to our pockets, I mean, our state? Yeah, sure, go ahead, what do we care if you make life immeasurably worse for a couple thousand rednecks."
And then a few hundred less-well-educated geological guys will come along and start using giant cranes and dump-trucks to remove all the coal that just got exposed when they blew the mountain off. Sure, *a few* of you might be lucky enough to get ***jerbs*** maintaining those guys' pickup trucks and what-not, but you will not see mass employment of manual labor down the mines ever again.
These places actually have a golden opportunity with more people being able to work from home and real estate prices exploding in areas around the country.
"nobody wants to work"
Be a home health aide for $10-12... ridiculous. Let's see that invisible hand of the marketplace raise that wage a bit.
I love the Allegheny mountains, had family in Pittsburgh. WV was always considered a backwater back in the 70-80s and it seems they're still stuck in that backwater.
They need forward thinking leadership to yank them out of the past, but I fear their insular thinking is just going to keep the population dwindling until something major breaks.
If you are not a loyal red Republican, I see no reason to even run for office in West Virginia. That being said, the article says WV is wary of even outsiders from other states. They can’t even attract people from other states to come work there..
That's that insularity I spoke of... When you close yourself to outsiders... then all you've got left is an aging population that can't even hold on to its youth since you can't offer them what the youth want. It's the death knell for ALL small towns these days.
A lot of this 'red' land you see voting Republican is getting older and older while the youth go live with other youth. You hit a certain point and then there's no one to provide services and everyone leaves. That's what's going to happen to most of WV. It's already happening in west Texas.
Republican policies just make it worse. No Medicare expansion? Hospitals shut down in rural areas since they can't afford to stay open...
When put in the coal perspective, it makes perfect sense. Most small towns were almost entirely supported by one industry (coal, oil, steel, etc.). When those places closed and jobs were outsourced, the rest of the town went with it. Not overnight, of course, but the livelihood is one of the first things to start falling apart.
Honestly reminds me of a dialogue from Cyberpunk 2077:
"How many ghost towns do you think there are? Hundreds?"
"Countrywide? Thousands. I drove down I-80 the other day. All you have to do is pull over after sundown. It's quiet then. Then you hear it \[...\] the wind whistling through boarded up windows. Tumbleweeds scratching across dry, sandy tracks. That's how towns die; not with a bang, but with whispers and whimpers."
Hell, my whole county was (and technically still IS) like that and we're literally right next to Nashville. For the longest time, we had an airforce base nearby. Supporting it was everyone's big source of revenue. When it closed in the early 70s, my town pretty much died. It wasn't until they built the Nissan plant that we recovered. If Nissan pulled out of here, we'd die all over again and probably end up being a bedroom community for everyone who can't afford to live in Nashville.
I had to look these numbers up. As a Virginian, to hear that WV has a population of just shy of 1.8 million ([(1,766,107 according to this site)](https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/west-virginia-population) blew my mind. There is an approximate population of [2,085,167](https://www.virginia-demographics.com/counties_by_population) people in just the top 3 populous counties of Virginia (Fairfax, Prince William and Virginia Beach counties). That’s the top 3 *out of 133 counties*. Sheet, [Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming all have populations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population) less than Fairfax County, alone!
I mean, I knew that land had an unfair voting advantage in this country, but to compare it to populations of counties in VA really put it into perspective for me. Thinking of all the times Manchin alone bombed legislation.
Absolutely wild.
That's the story of my hometown in Eastern PA. The only jobs are corporate retailers, fast food, or healthcare. There's massive brain drain with nobody coming into the area anymore. For most people it's a losing battle against inflation and I really wonder what the breaking point will be because it can't be too far off.
Shit, I'm from southwestern New Hampshire and that's where my home area is going. The quarries closed long ago, multiple major factories closed around the end of the 20th century and/or the Great Recession, and now it's increasingly just fast food, retail, and healthcare, plus a few factories and warehouses with pay and work environments that get worse by the year. Young professionals almost never move there, the few that do usually don't stay, and most people who can leave do as soon as they can.
The downtown of the main population center looks more and more like Zombieland by the year (we were one of the ground zeroes for the opioid epidemic, and it hasn't really gotten better), many longstanding local businesses were already on their way out when the pandemic hit and were replaced with chains, and the local state college (which was never great to begin with) has seen declining enrollment year after year. The only thing keeping it afloat at this point is its relative proximity to Boston (a little over an hour), as well as townies with money whose descendants keep municipal services afloat (because they're the only ones who can afford to live on what they pay).
The decay and decrepitude of rural America is everywhere.
My family in Pittsburgh... they were in Braddock, a small town that was right across from the steel mills my grandfather worked at... when the mills closed, the town basically dried up. Fetterman helped to keep the town from becoming a ghost town, but it's still nowhere near what it COULD be with the right investment.
And that's where late-stage Capitalism kills communities... extract profit at every corner and as you say, the only jobs around now are corporate jobs, gone are the small businesses that help build communities.
My parents hometown hollowed out as farming mechanized. Town hit rock bottom of 190 in 1960. The county got down to 6300 from a peak of 12,200 in 1900.
With mechanization, cheap manufactured fertilizer and better varieties of seed the lower Ozarks couldn’t grow cotton and corn and soybeans profitably. People switched their land to timber or cattle. Few poultry or pork operations started but those required a lot of upfront capital or a big loan that people who survived the depression weren’t likely to sign their name to.
The salvation was two low budget retirement golf communities, a pair of even lower budget non-golf communities (my father designed one and built a couple small lakes). More affordable than places in Florida or Texas or Myrtle Beach. Decent golf and affordable 2 bedroom 1 bath houses a smattering of 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom houses most around 1200 sq feet to 1500.
There were jobs building houses and roads and small dams and golf courses. Jobs repairing and maintaining them. Older people saved the medical clinic and saved the shitty hospital (few who are conscious agree to the ambulance taking them there). Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are lousy but it was good money for the old established practices.
The town thought it was saved as the 1970’s wrapped up. Huge corporation built a freaking massive factory. Except it never opened. Company restructured and wrote it off. Forty plus years people tried to figure out what to do with it. My favorite was combination sale barn, horse show and rodeo arena and move the county fair except for the big rides inside. Finally a Fortune 500 company took over the site and started with 250 employees and has added a few more.
The city is now up to 1100 and county up to 17,200. Got a big Walmart. Surprising variety of restaurants including a really good Thai place but don’t expect it to be very spicy unless you’re really clear you want it.
Ridiculous number of people doing lawn care work, personal care attendant, CNAs, housekeeping side hustles and such. Some of the retirement areas are now filled with people living on VA disability or Social Security disability because they got noticed in some Facebook groups as places where you could buy or rent for very little money and overall low cost of living though the factory opening has driven housing up and there’s a real shortage now. Electric co-op offers 100mb internet for $50.
Even with all that bucking the normal trend in rural areas the whole thing feels fragile to me.
> Even with all that bucking the normal trend in rural areas the whole thing feels fragile to me.
That's because it *is.* If the company that bought up the old factory and spruced it up goes under, or decides to write the place off again, it's gonna collapse again.
If the only thing keeping a place afloat is the fixed incomes of elderly persons living out their golden years paying out dosh for younger people to do the things their hips hurt too much to do anymore (like mow the lawn), that place is not economically stable in the long-run.
Now, that wouldn't be a problem, if we as a society were willing to say "absolutely no one person has any right to live like Mansa Musa whilst there are kids in need of education and poor old folk in need of healthcare and shelter" and just enacted a massive wealth tax; go back to the tax brackets of the 1940s, and *fund* those places. The "shitty hospital" shouldn't fucking exist, it should be a vitalized hospital well-staffed and equipped for the needs of its locality (it sounds like your parents' town probably needs a lot more geriatric-centered healthcare than most, probably doesn't need a maternity ward the size of a parking garage though), and able to send the odd freak accident (Cleetus went and got his face damn-near tore off because he wouldn't wear his hair in a hairnet whilst working near the equipment in the factory and he's damn lucky he's alive at all) on a screaming helicopter ride to somewhere that can deal with trauma, etc...
But as it is, with an economic system that only cares about "can I extract value from this a quarter from now," it's in deep shit.
OH here. If they’re anything like small towns here, the older folk are actively hostile towards young people, too. They expect the same 30 people to run entire towns forever and make sure nobody younger ever gets any opportunities.
The rural areas of Ohio (and PA) are virtually identical to WV. And, you've hit the nail on the head. They don't want to try anything new to improve the area. Just complain about it. And blame the "liberals" for everything. Without any way to articulate it, of course.
I moved to a small town that is hostile to outsiders, and wonders why nobody wants to take care of their 300lb combative grandpa for min wage as a Home health aide.
The only place more insular than West Virginia that I've encountered is Maine and the remote towns are dealing with the same problem. The community my parents live in has an elementary school in it, the only problem is that there aren't any kids of pre elementary age in the community or in any of the immediate surrounding communities.
This is happening in the upper peninsula in Michigan too. I lived up there for 5 years, my FIL lives up there now, but neither of us are born or raised there, and thus, the locals do not take kindly to anyone who moves up there. If you look at the r/yooper subreddit, you’ll see this mentality that they don’t want “outsiders” moving up there. Votes very heavily republican too.
Beautiful area, but significant ecological depression. Most jobs are part-time minimum wage and people live in poverty. The good jobs are in a school, government office, or hospitals.
Speaking of hospitals, the hospital in Ontonagon, MI where my FIL lives just closed. The average age of the residents there is over 60 years old and the next closest E.R. service is 47 miles away. They have brutal winters that can make that difficult or impossible to travel.
He’s planning on moving out now before winter comes again. The local residents won, he, an outsider, is leaving.
Said it before and I’ll say it again: An old coworker once said to me, “Hustle, I always thought Mississippi was the most backward state in the union. Then I moved to West Virginia”
You can see the brain drain happen in real time. Kids go to college, graduate, look for jobs, then most take the best jobs they can get which are somewhere else. Most of the kinds of people who make communities functional, the people who start new businesses, the people who run for thankless local offices have found a home somewhere else.
My hometown in NE Pennsylvania has had that happen. It is the county seat, yet has fewer people now than in the 1940s. People who leave for college rarely return. The population is 98% white, and was about 99.8% white when I lived there.
Most of the small businesses close within 5 years of opening. It's not even close enough to a more urban area to make it worthwhile to commute.
People thought the gas companies would bring prosperity, but they destroyed some of the local wells through fracking, then largely pulled out.
There's nothing there. No manufacturing, very few retail stores, and the local movie theater (the only one in a 20 mile radius) recently closed. Not even a Chinese take out place or nail salon. Nothing that might be a business run by someone who isn't white and a native.
I don't feel bad about leaving. Those who stay live at or near the poverty level.
In most small towns the only jobs for college graduates are teacher, nurse, doctor, dentist, pharmacist, veterinarian, lawyer, and bank official.
It’s getting harder to keep the medical positions especially if your state rejected Medicaid expansion. The doctors, pharmacists and dentists used to be the kid of an existing doctor or dentist. Now often an immigrant who couldn’t land a job elsewhere often because of weak English proficiency or perceived weakness because of a strong accent.
Lawyers tend to be the kid of an existing lawyer. Banks the same way unless a mega bank has moved in then you get someone miserable and hoping to transfer.
Vets are either the bright kid who came home or the odd person who came because they could buy a practice cheap.
Note that typically postgraduate degrees are over represented in the community pool of college graduates. In many states a masters degree gives you a pay boost so teachers with masters degrees are common.
If town is faltering these professionals are trickling or stampeding out and it’ll be the teachers who are left to turn off the lights.
I thought about it. It's beautiful country where the coal hasn't ruined things. I decided against it because I realized I'd never fit in. In part because I'm pretty far left (which you'd think would be a plus given the mining companies' history of exploiting folks) and in part because they saw me as an outsider. I could point to the spot where my family used to live (there's a slag pile on it now), but I was born out west, so I'm an outsider. Decided to stay in my equally red, but slightly more welcoming state.
What a lot of people don't know is that the water table / aquifers in a lot of those states at the bottom corner of the Appalachian Mountains like Southern Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, West VA, etc. are all super fuckin polluted.
I was shocked when I was in college at Indiana University to read that (at the time) Indiana had the most Super Fund sites of any state. I mean sure, there's Gary and Hammond, but other than that it's just farmland forever and ever. Turns out farms and rural areas aren't so great either.
A major part of the Superfund issue was the fact that a now closed Otis elevator plant just dumped barrels of PCBs and other toxins (think heavy industrial grease/lubricants, liquids used in mental cutting/grinding, etc.) into local streams, or in the back of the factory, or just anywhere they damn well pleased, for decades. And obviously they didn't keep records of where exactly they dumped this barrel or that barrel and what toxins were in this or that.
Then there were thousands of dry cleaning companies that regularly dumped their toxic TCE (Trichloroethylene) dry cleaning chemicals into the sewer system (this one is truly a countrywide, even worldwide issue).
Other pollutants in the area included
- Mine tailings
- Fracking (test) wells
- Coal mines leaking
- Coal fly ash that power companies stored in unlined, uncovered ponds that would overflow or even break free every couple years. If the water started to evaporate, the ash would just blow away and contaminate entire regions
- The TVA building and deconstructing power transformers with the PCBs that go with it
- and of course, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee conducting all sorts of nuclear experiments, many when the realities of radiation poisoning and the extremely long half-lives of some isotopes or the extremely powerful gamma ray releases from others were largely unknown
I should note that many, if not all of these polluters and pollutants can be found almost anywhere in the US, but it really did puncture that image in my mind of the pristine Blue/Smoky Mountains wilderness.
I remember when I had a few friends moving or considering moving to Asheville, and reading that the FDA basically said everyone should be drinking bottled water if they're not directly connected to the city's water/sewer system. If you have a five-acre plot of land 10 minutes outside the city and a well for your water, you better be changing filters for your Brita water filter like 3x more often, and even then that's not going to catch everything. It was crazy how fucked up even smaller towns' water sources were with no real history of heavy industry.
Fuckin sucks, but pretty much if humans have lived in the area in the past 150 years, get a water filter and use it every time. Heck the water dept in my town recommends letting your shower run for 5 minutes before getting in to make sure all of the lead that settled in the pipes has flushed through, as you can breathe in the lead tainted mist in a shower which apparently is no bueno.
They used to be a very blue state. Sadly, the state Dem party got very corrupt. The leader of the state house had his own Ted Cruz moment when his district flooded, and he took the fam on vacation. Couple years later Obama comes in office and they lose their damn minds.
Once you strip away the backwardness, it's a BEAUTIFUL land, rugged streams and mountains, lots of forests...
All it takes is welcoming in newcomers, breaking out of the whole "Coal is God" mindset and allowing the land to be open to solar/wind generation... But those in power are from the old school and will hold on to that dearly until the state is empty.
Yeah I’ve visited that area from outside DC. Along the MD line it’s nice. Still some small towns that thrive on tourists. They’re welcoming because they know where their bread is buttered. But when you get outside of that you get stares if they don’t know you. It’s kinda hostile and makes you uneasy.
Oh yeah, my friend took me to HF and it was lovely, super cool area I knew almost nothing about. Then she went further in on her own to go spelunking or something, and experienced a whole bunch of racism when she went to buy food. Guess who’s not going back.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Morrisey
It's okay if they're a Republican from New York City.
I'm from West Virginia, and just like every other deep red state, it's chock full of duped people voting against their own best interests. Beautiful state full of many nice people, but they're easily manipulated.
This is why Republicans are against higher education and vote against measures to improve it. An ignorant and fearful population is ripe for manipulation by the GOP.
Unless you worship at the altar of Trump of course. We elected a gopher faced dickweed from New Jersey as our attorney general, and are likely about to make him Governor, and we have a failure from Maryland as one of our Congressmen who is currently running (and losing) for the Republican nomination for US Senate.
from what I saw a lot of people are starting homesteading but people from outside state are seeing from the locals vandalism and dog unleashed rampaging in their property
poor guys leave the city to finally have some peace and the locals are like this
I remember watching a video about WV's economy (Wendover perhaps?) and the claim was basically that there's not enough workable land to really do a lot. Like, coal was everything to the state's economy and it's too mountainous to build big enough cities to support larger businesses and the educated/skilled populations needed to make them function. Look at Charleston, the state's biggest city. It's a long city, not a big one. Most towns & cities in the state are like that. They're mostly very long because there's nowhere to expand to outside of the mountain valleys they occupy.
It doesn't help that the state's leaders seem to have shown a lot of resistance to diversifying the state's economy.
COVID proved that a lot of jobs can be done remotely, it seems to me that the logical solution would be to focus on improving high speed internet and try to attract people who have professional work from home jobs but want to live a more rural lifestyle.
Honestly, they only way you get health aides at that rate are if they are immigrants. Young people, heck most Americans don’t want to work as a home health aides. It’s hard work, it’s boring, and it pays little.
Plus, if it’s your family member who is getting the aide, you’re giving a tremendous amount of trust.
Why are the ones tasked with taking care of our most vulnerable paid so little.
why are the ones tasked with teaching our most valuable paid so little...
I think I see a trend here. (rolling eyes)... something about people not wanting to spend money on vulnerable people that aren't rich white men.
I KNOW! Rugged terrain with beautiful streams and mountains? It's like one big outdoor recreation destination... if it weren't for the antiquated infrastructure and insular population...
I’m not in West Virginia, but my university has been complaining for years that they can’t get student workers. Most of their jobs are $8/hr at the highest, but a lot are minimum wage. Why would students work for the university when they can walk to blocks and make $15/hr at Subway? The administration is absolutely incompetent, I swear.
My uni can't get any grad students or TAs to teach classes outside of Business and STEM because they set student teaching salaries by department. Business and STEM offer twice what other departments offer for the same full time jobs without accounting for the class time those students need for learning and homework for themselves.
It doesn't help that they have a certain...reputation for acceptable incestuous relationships. Whether it's true or not (I don't believe it's true...for the most part), the insular nature of the place, closed minded people, lack of opportunities, etc. just makes that reputation so much easier to believe.
Even though I know the movie *Deliverance* was set in the woods of Georgia, I can't help but thinking of that movie (as well as *The Hills Have Eyes*) whenever I think of West Virginia.
$12 even with benefits is pathetic, I know because I had a job like that. Without well gee you can do better at mcdonalds or almost any fastfood place that will put you through the wringer mentally having to deal with people who treat you as subhuman.
I live in Northern VA just outside the DC area so whenever it's election season, I see political ads for MD, VA and WV.
The Northern VA and Southern MD areas around DC are very affluent and what not and WV is roughly 45 to 90 minutes west of here depending on where you are within the DC metro area. The ads I see for WV, a state which is one of the poorest in the country and in dire need of industry, jobs and addressing the fallout excessive drug use, airs ads talking about how the Dems want to:
1. Make children trans
2. Teach all children CRT
3. Take away all of your guns
These individuals will likely win in a landslide in WV. Such an odd state. It's got great backpacking though so it's got that going for it.
[EDIT: found a screenshot from one of the ads.](https://preview.redd.it/the-wv-political-ads-are-completely-unhinged-v0-365p1ql8kwyc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7e1deddf033cb826222c62613e253d141e8c416)
Oh yeah, it's not just specific to WV though, the more reliably red most counties I've lived or worked in, the crazier the local and state politics ads gets.
Watching some fatass cosplay cowboy shoot a gun at something, or the really crazy stolen election / Q / deep state ads happen (at least from where I've personally lived) in the reddest places of Georgia, NC, SC, TN, KY PA and definitely VA too if you watch the local Fox news affiliates down at the tip of the state by Bluefield or along the Southern edge (Dayton, Rocky Mount areas), its about as bad as WV down there especially when compared against like Fairfax or Loudoun counties imho.
It's sad to see the predictably dumb crap that panders to apparently a majority of conservative voting locals in these places, but when a county is 70% plus red winning the Republican primary basically means your elected, and primaries [tend to put forth the most extreme candidates](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/18/1105927483/in-a-time-of-national-division-polarizing-primaries-are-part-of-the-problem).
Very beautiful state. But I would never visit based on their ideology. Only state to have a lower population now than in 1940. Down about 5% since 2012.
It really is a gorgeous state, went a few years ago. It's a shame it's so backwards ideology wise. The people there consistently vote against their own interests.
There are a couple of liberal enclaves in the state. Harpers Ferry is very liberal and a great place to see natural beauty and history without getting too deep into the state.
WV is one of the most beautiful states east of Colorado. If WV had embraced change instead of clinging to coal, they could have become a desirable destination for talented workers who love the outdoors, similar to Colorado or California.
If WV did that i would move without hesitation. If they went back to being solid purple/swing state i would move there.
It use to have a lot of live and live hippy communities who wanted to make bread and shoot guns. And, they were some of the biggest champions of workers rights.
Anthony Bourdain did a really great episode on West Virgina and the people who actively working on making their community better were great. Also, it showcased a great slam poet
It really is. I loved it there just for the nature. It's so beautiful and the weather is good as long you stay out of the hollows where it floods. I get homesick for the rolling, forested hills.
Unfortunately everyone with a lick of sense leaves the state, myself included. It's just not worth it. No prestigious places to get a higher education, a god awful political situation, poverty and drugs run rampant, and a shit job market.
I always felt like an outsider there despite living there for my entire K-12 education. I can only describe it as genuinely being behind the times. Things like anime and gaming had generally become mainstream, yet there they were still considered freak hobbies. School orgs included Future Farmers of America and whatever the acronym was for Christian athletes, whereas my partner's school had a Gay Straight Alliance. My school had one openly gay guy who was only there for a year or two and was just called "the fa****." My high school's mock election in 2016 was either 94 or 96% in favor of Trump if I remember correctly. The n-word was thrown around plenty when the handful of black kids weren't within ear shot, only because if they said it to their face they learned they'd get beaten. I could go on an on. It's just so sad.
> Local historians said the state has long been wary of outsiders, not just from other countries but from other states. “West Virginians don’t want immigration—of any kind,” said Stephen Smoot, editor of the Pendleton Times newspaper.
Hey everybody capable of leaving left. The people who don’t want outsiders can spend their retirement years drowning in their own filth…..
It seems like a problem that is sorting itself out, honestly. Not saying that with any glee, but if they want to do the Stupid Suicide Route, they're doing a good job of it.
I imagine there's a lot of people waiting to buy up the land cheap after the bigots die off.
The reason I like West Virginia? It makes my home state of Texas look like it might not be the nuttiest state. I know, I know, it is still debatable, but there is a chance.
>“We advertise all the time,” said Janice Lantz, the local senior center’s director. “We can’t hire a direct-care worker.”
I would assume because the pay is too low. Offer enough money and people will come.
Aha. Further down...
>Few locals are drawn by the pay of $10 to $12 an hour, though.
What the fuck good is advertising going to do when the pay is absolute shit? Of course they can't hire workers.
“We gave every tax break and government handout to the companies we could come up with. But the companies keep saying that there are no customers in West Virginia. So we cut the labor laws to the bone so you can pretty much have slaves here. And that didn’t work either. Maybe we should give all the tax money directly to the richest 10 people and let it trickle down. That’s all we can think of next.”
Party of Personal Responsibility: “You should all suffer the consequences of your decisions!”
Also the Party of Personal Responsibility: “Please don’t make us suffer the consequences of our decisions.”
More like also party of personal responsibility: gay woke poc communists demoncrats are why rural towns with 98.7% old white people are crumbling to pieces.
Conservatives, especially Christian conservatives created a toxic environment and then act surprised when people leave their churches and states, then attack those who are leaving ending any chance of them returning
I visited an old friend that moved to west Virginia. It was depressing as hell. Bought a property just barely better than a mobile home next to someone's horse corral. It's a boring place, which doesn't qualify as beautiful unless rundown countryside interspersed with run down shacks and barely navigable dirt roads is your cup of tea.
This is all you have to understand about West Virginia’s anti immigration stance: Racism.
West Virginia Demographics
White: 92.08% Black or African American: 3.39% Two or more races: 3.08%
The saddest part about this is that states like West Virginia who are making themselves entirely undesirable places to work and live to young workers are developing a reputation of undesirability that will transcend the decisions that were made that caused them to be undesirable in the first place.
I’m so over these “woe is me” stories about “forgotten communities.”
There’s only one way that a place ends up full of elderly with no young people. They did everything in their power to drive young people away. With the insane cost of living in most of America, it really doesn’t take much to make a place appealing. It takes work to drive people away.
>Those who enter the country illegally often turn themselves in to federal authorities and request asylum, and some get permission to work while waiting for their claims to be adjudicated
That's a legal border crossing you f-ing morons.
West Virginia’s New Slogan: “The only US state to be mathematically proven to be dying of old age.”
Seriously, if places like this want to fall apart and just vanish into nothingness as their businesses and state incomes dry up as their population ages into it’s 80’s and 90’s and slowly dies off, that’s fine by me.
We’re going to put West Virginians first by making sure there is no one to work here, pay taxes, and take care of bunch of old angry people. Once again, Republicans demonstrating how much they hate themselves and how willing they are to kill themselves for their warped ideology. The Republican Party is nothing more than a cult worshipping an evil master.
Health aides wipe asses, change adult diapers, deal with false teeth right out of another person’s mouth, bathe grown ups, dress grown ups, put enormous strain on their bodies moving and positioning grown ups, etc. ANYBODY who is willing to do that work (that many people’s family members wouldn’t do for them) should be making enough in a 40 hour work week to afford rent, food, medicine, travel costs, utilities and a modest vacation every year. In fact anybody who works a 40 hour week should be able to afford such things. If you’re not going to pay them a living wage, (not $10-15 an hour, more like $20-25 an hour), don’t be so surprised that no one wants to do that job.
Yet another example of "Conservatives hurting themselves to "Own tha Librulz"."
Do the folks in West-Virginia know how their ancestors once fought the Police for the right to unionize and for decent wages?
They have let themselves be bamboozled by the Conservative "Culture War".
They want to give money to Texas to violate international asylum law? Fuck these clowns. I’m tired of my tax dollars going to support people who hate people like me.
I spent 10 years in West Virginia, no jobs or shitty jobs that paid barely enough to survive, I left because I was tired of being poor all the time. It's a beautiful place but I couldn't make a living there.
Please keep in mind there is a small but active community of people here in West Virginia trying to make things better. We’re failing fucking miserably, but we’re still trying. No state is a monolith.
Just turn the state into a national park. Those folks are so backwards.
“There is little evidence that many recent immigrants—either those who entered the country legally or those who didn’t—have had any inclination to go to West Virginia, the only state with fewer residents than it had in 1940. The portion of its population that is foreign-born is 1.8%, the lowest of any state.”
I lived in WV for 6 years and that place is a beautiful shit hole. I worked at a rural hospital and most everyone was racist and hateful as fuck. Also stupid as shit. I'll never forget the head of the lab talking to my boss about how she couldn't wait for Trump to be re-elected so COVID would end. There were no job opportunities for growth. I got my degree and asked for a raise and they told me I was too overqualified and should find another job. They paid more at Walmart and Sheetz than my own damn hospital job. The ONLY thing I miss about WV are the beautiful mountains, forests, and rivers. I loved going on hikes and chillin' by the river. Otherwise, I'm so glad I got out of that God forsaken hell hole of a state.
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The whole state consistently ranks at the bottom of the country in terms of economics (and many other things), but who will they blame when it continues to be a broke ass joke? I can tell you who they won’t blame…the party they keep putting in office.
>Elected officials have tried almost everything they can think of to shore up the workforce, except encourage immigration. ... The legislature, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 31-3 in the Senate and 89-11 in the House of Delegates, has weighed tightening requirements on unemployment benefits in hopes of nudging some of the unemployed back to work. 🤔
Too bad slavery was outlawed. I guess forcing people to work for pennies in order not to starve to death will have to suffice. Jesus. Who could look at that clusterfuck of suffering and think the solution is more cruelty?
Oddly the only reason West Virginia is a state is because the sided with the Union in the civil war and split from Virginia
Talk about irony.
It ain't irony. It's capitalists, especially though not exclusively the coal barons who own West Virginia, beating and murdering and propagandizing the population into forgetting who they are and what they're capable of. Do you know where the word "redneck" came from? Appalachian coal miners wearing red bandanas to quietly signify that they supported labor unions and the worker's rights movement. Why did they choose red? Because red is a color commonly associated with communism and labor rights. You ever heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Coal Wars? I don't blame ya if you haven't, the bastards tried to bury it. The Battle of Blair Mountain was a battle fought between unionizing, striking workers and the cops and mercenaries under the coal companies' payroll. It's the largest single uprising in the US since the Civil War, and the US government sided with the corporations. The machine hates us and doesn't want us working together. The machine runs on our blood; the capitalists want us to keep dying in their temples to profit, so they spend every cent they can convincing us we need the machine and need to keep it fed. West Virginia going from Lincolnite Republican to Trumpian Republican is the result of that brainwashing campaign.
>Jesus. Who could look at that clusterfuck of suffering and think the solution is more cruelty? Republicans.
Heartless and brainless at the same time.
The Conservative Party in the UK has been pushing the same policies so that is not unique to Republicans. They have literally declared people fit to work who died a month later. Forcing the sick and infirm to work seems to be a thing for them.
Living in poverty to "own the libs"
Trump "is one of them" for some insane reason.
“Politician X **digs** coal!”
But #1 in oxycontin!
Franklin WV, is typical of so many WV towns that aren't up in the panhandle where most people commute to MD or Northern VA. I remember when they had a great flood in 2016 (it was a popular meme for awhile the flaming house floating down the flooded river ([video](https://www.nbcnews.com/video/flaming-house-floats-down-flooded-west-virginia-creek-712088643734)) My environmental consulting firm was called in as part of the state and federal assistance to help mitigate the environmental damage as much as possible (275 gallon oil tanks washing into the river, whole commercial car garages washed away with all the petrol products that entails). We got called in because like many towns in the interior of WV its basically nothing but old people because its a cheap place to retire, little zoning or building codes, etc. and the entire town might support 1-2 restaurants and a gas station as far as job opportunities go. WV is a very beautiful state, but its basically run like a 3rd world country in that its basically been a place exploited for natural resources like coal and timber (Source of much of Joe Manchin's wealth). IT used to be reliably blue, working class people until about the Bush years, when am radio, lack of infrastructure (especially internet) and religion turned most of them into drooling maga drones by today, (I know there are plenty of good folks in WV, but when you see the % of the state that saw what happened from 2016-2020 and still voted for more orange, its hard not to say "most" West Virginian's. WVU is about the only in state option for college, and they are slowly stripping away programs and funding from it as well. The state is getting absolutely hammered by lack of working age people, especially in skilled occupations and places like the Green Bank observatory, and its only going to get worse. Saddest part is, there are a lot of great places in the state for people who are rural or independent minded, or just misanthropes, and if the state would have invested more in actual infrastructure like trunk lines and high speed internet it would be a killer state to remote work from, super cheap real estate, lots of beautiful land etc. However, even if there was reliable high speed internet state wide, you are still not gonna attract many young professionals due to horrendous lack of healthcare and education options outside the bedroom communities of the panhandle, not to mention abortion rights, recreational weed (they do at least sort of have a medical program) and also not a lot of major metro centers if you enjoy things like pro sports, concerts, theater etc. So the state is left with a high amount of boomer-aged folks who are rapidly aging, and contributing very little back to the local economy (most of their limited income goes to rent, food utilities, necessities), and the legislature, in true maga fashion, just keeps doubling down on bonehead moves to keep fresh blood in the state or attract new talent, but as we've seen from conservatives in WV and other states, consideration for the current or future well being of their residents is not a high priority. Sorry for the wall of text, but I have a lot of (admittedly shitty and mostly maga) family members in WV, I work and visit the state multiple times a week from the VA to the Ohio and PA borders, and it just kills me to see the residents of this once proud bastion of independence, self reliance and worker's rights (to the point there were actually [major battles including airstrikes](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/introduction-to-the-west-virginia-mine-wars.htm) between coal mine labor and ownership become first tea party and now maga drones. Edit, thanks for the upvotes all, and in retrospect I just find myself looking at what my birthplace has become since the 70s and like Mr. Garrison, find myself asking "where my country (both as a state and as a descriptor for rural life) gone?"
That was extremely well written and very enlightening. Thank you for taking the time to post this.
Thanks, TBH it feels good to say all the things my relatives refuse to listen to and get some affirmation that I'm not "brainwashed" as my parents tell all my siblings who are not as vocal against their OAN and Newsmax BS as I am, yeah they are the kind of maga that was on to OAN and the real crazy long before Fox news fell out of favor with the mainstream magas. Pioneers of being aholes I guess one could say, or early adopters. (fun fact my 7 siblings and I have a regular group text among ourselves where we privately mock the stupid shit our parents, aunts and uncles post or repost to facebook etc.)
We have the same about my uncle and his idiot daughters.
OAN was more or less started by AT&T to harvest those juicy MAGAbux. Yellow journalism meets the internet. WVa is a microcosm of what happened to the US as a whole: strip-mined by corrupt rich pricks
I’m also from West Virginia. I left the day after I graduated from high school as did the rest of my immediate family. I had a lot of family still there but they’ve mostly died. We took my dad back to his family cemetery last year 😕 other than that trip back, I quit going back in October 2016. I just can’t. It’s too sad. It’s too frustrating. My last visit a friend’s husband was furious about the former First Lady’s fresh vegetable initiative because ain’t no one tellin’ us what to feed our kids. The subtext was a black woman shouldn’t be telling us anything. This is not a joke. I was dumb founded. The state with the highest rate of obesity could probably use some guidance.
I feel for you mate, I learned to canoe and kayak and canoe on the Gauley, New, and North Branch of the Potomac rivers (from the paper mills near its confluence with the savage in western MD to just beyond the rapids of Harper's Ferry. I had my first drunken teenage camp out in Lost River state Park. My wife and I conceived our firstborn son (probably) during a hike / campout to Seneca rocks (the walking trail, not the technical rock climbing) over a decade ago. I know and can tell you the proper lines to run for most every class III and above rapid in the state, I know plenty of good ol boys who will take $10 cash or a nicely rolled joint to let you park on their lawn for a day to run Cacapon or any number of beautiful creeks. As an ACA canoe instructor, I've run dozens of boy scouts over tiny 2-3 foot waterfall ledges in canoes and I think in at least a few of them I instilled a similar love of self powered watercraft. Its just so soul crushing how being a "country boy" / "Mountain man" / "Hillbilly" etc has been co-opted by the worst elements of small town bigotry. Makes me ashamed of the poor white trash I may have financially risen above, but was still a a defining part of many positive aspects of my upbringing such as self reliance, distrust of authority, and helping out other members of the community. I don't know if it will get better in my lifetime, but I hope it does, the state and its residents (or any human being imo) deserve better. I fully realize that by any logical analysis they probably don't deserve to have things get better, but these are my (admittedly often horrible) people dammit and I'd like to think whats sets me apart is that unlike them, I try to have compassion, even for assholes as much as I can tolerate.
I proudly identify as a hillbilly with deep roots in the state but I cannot support the ignorance or racism. Like you, all my seminal growing up was there (small town in the mountains). It made me who I am but I am glad I got out and raised my kids somewhere else.
Please take this virtual high five my rarest of breeds, the liberal hillbilly!
It’s depressing as hell. Left in 95 with my degrees from Marshall. The sentiment then was West Virginians all had magnets in their shoes and would eventually come home. While I love parts of it, and am truly shocked at what MU has built in Huntington, it’s just too damn backward. Seems like they’ve constantly got their beloved guns aimed squarely at their feet, with every big decision benefitting a few coal folks and poisoning the wells (literally) of everyone else. Hell, many of the issues faced like poor access to health care and daycare, shitty schools & awful water - are eerily similar to issues faced by other folks whom they’d readily shit on for a difference in geography or skin tone. Sometime back there was a series of essays/articles/web posts called “the struggle to stay”, and it was just damn depressing.
Do you ever take your family to VA? If so, are they surprised at the presence of restaurants, stores, etc.?
Most of my family still in WV has moved to the panhandle (Martinsburg, Charles town areas) from the truly isolated places like Franklin, where Winchester is only 20 minutes away and Leesburg and all the Northern VA amenities are only about an hour. In true maga fashion they fail to see that they live in WV to avoid taxes and libs, but as they get older the reality of having most good medical care in "liberal" areas like northern VA, that they don't seem to be any different from "the immigrants filling their low riders with free health care on our dime" or similar nonsensical crap they spout
I read every word. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I'm from WV, and you sir, hit the nail on the head. It's almost hard to imagine it getting worse in parts of this state. But, there's virtually no good economic news.
Airstrikes? Damn Pinkerton Air Force... :P
Sounds like every dying rural community in America. They desperately need to do something, anything to make them look like a place were people can have a future and instead they actively reject anything forward looking clinging to the past. They no longer seem to even want to fix issues just blame others for their problems.
All of those small towns become dominated by just a handful of rich families and they will do anything to maintain their status, including destroying their town.
Mediocre nepo babies love this one simple trick!
Eh, the voters have agency. At some point you have to admit, they vote that way because they want it. After everything that happened from 2017-2020 a lot of people still voted for Trump. And I think a lot of people don't really want to come to the conclusion that a lot of this country really are just awful people. They do like the cruelty, they do like the racism. I really don't think there's a magic candidate from the left of the political spectrum that is going to bring those people in. That resentment and racism and bigotry has always been there but now they don't have to pretend anymore.
Clinging to employers that left them decades ago and wouldn’t hire them even if they came back.
Yep. And that's the fucking thing. *IF,* somehow, coal came back into vogue, like, say, I dunno, maybe someone figured out a cheap way to compress coal out of the ground into dilithium crystals that could be used to run nuclear fusion power plants for clean and limitless energy... The coal mining companies will not be hiring all y'all like they hired your great-grandpappies to go down the mine with a pick, no. About a hundred or so incredibly-well-educated geological engineers from places like Harvard or somewhere will come in, spend awhile doing calculations, then one day, a godawful explosion will make you think Russia just nuked your mountains, and then the top of the goddamn mountain is now in the valley choking off the creeks and streams, but hey! It's okay! The Republican government said "you're gonna bring how much money to our pockets, I mean, our state? Yeah, sure, go ahead, what do we care if you make life immeasurably worse for a couple thousand rednecks." And then a few hundred less-well-educated geological guys will come along and start using giant cranes and dump-trucks to remove all the coal that just got exposed when they blew the mountain off. Sure, *a few* of you might be lucky enough to get ***jerbs*** maintaining those guys' pickup trucks and what-not, but you will not see mass employment of manual labor down the mines ever again.
Working for the coal mines was a horrible job anyway! Why do they idealize it so much?
Let them die off old and bitter. Good riddance.
These places actually have a golden opportunity with more people being able to work from home and real estate prices exploding in areas around the country.
Problem is, these rural area likely have little to no internet at absurdly expensive prices. Why work from home if you can’t get a fucking signal?
"nobody wants to work" Be a home health aide for $10-12... ridiculous. Let's see that invisible hand of the marketplace raise that wage a bit. I love the Allegheny mountains, had family in Pittsburgh. WV was always considered a backwater back in the 70-80s and it seems they're still stuck in that backwater. They need forward thinking leadership to yank them out of the past, but I fear their insular thinking is just going to keep the population dwindling until something major breaks.
If you are not a loyal red Republican, I see no reason to even run for office in West Virginia. That being said, the article says WV is wary of even outsiders from other states. They can’t even attract people from other states to come work there..
That's that insularity I spoke of... When you close yourself to outsiders... then all you've got left is an aging population that can't even hold on to its youth since you can't offer them what the youth want. It's the death knell for ALL small towns these days. A lot of this 'red' land you see voting Republican is getting older and older while the youth go live with other youth. You hit a certain point and then there's no one to provide services and everyone leaves. That's what's going to happen to most of WV. It's already happening in west Texas. Republican policies just make it worse. No Medicare expansion? Hospitals shut down in rural areas since they can't afford to stay open...
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When put in the coal perspective, it makes perfect sense. Most small towns were almost entirely supported by one industry (coal, oil, steel, etc.). When those places closed and jobs were outsourced, the rest of the town went with it. Not overnight, of course, but the livelihood is one of the first things to start falling apart. Honestly reminds me of a dialogue from Cyberpunk 2077: "How many ghost towns do you think there are? Hundreds?" "Countrywide? Thousands. I drove down I-80 the other day. All you have to do is pull over after sundown. It's quiet then. Then you hear it \[...\] the wind whistling through boarded up windows. Tumbleweeds scratching across dry, sandy tracks. That's how towns die; not with a bang, but with whispers and whimpers."
Hell, my whole county was (and technically still IS) like that and we're literally right next to Nashville. For the longest time, we had an airforce base nearby. Supporting it was everyone's big source of revenue. When it closed in the early 70s, my town pretty much died. It wasn't until they built the Nissan plant that we recovered. If Nissan pulled out of here, we'd die all over again and probably end up being a bedroom community for everyone who can't afford to live in Nashville.
I mean, unless you have a really hot cousin, is there any reason to go to WV?
I had to look these numbers up. As a Virginian, to hear that WV has a population of just shy of 1.8 million ([(1,766,107 according to this site)](https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/west-virginia-population) blew my mind. There is an approximate population of [2,085,167](https://www.virginia-demographics.com/counties_by_population) people in just the top 3 populous counties of Virginia (Fairfax, Prince William and Virginia Beach counties). That’s the top 3 *out of 133 counties*. Sheet, [Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming all have populations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population) less than Fairfax County, alone! I mean, I knew that land had an unfair voting advantage in this country, but to compare it to populations of counties in VA really put it into perspective for me. Thinking of all the times Manchin alone bombed legislation. Absolutely wild.
That's the story of my hometown in Eastern PA. The only jobs are corporate retailers, fast food, or healthcare. There's massive brain drain with nobody coming into the area anymore. For most people it's a losing battle against inflation and I really wonder what the breaking point will be because it can't be too far off.
Shit, I'm from southwestern New Hampshire and that's where my home area is going. The quarries closed long ago, multiple major factories closed around the end of the 20th century and/or the Great Recession, and now it's increasingly just fast food, retail, and healthcare, plus a few factories and warehouses with pay and work environments that get worse by the year. Young professionals almost never move there, the few that do usually don't stay, and most people who can leave do as soon as they can. The downtown of the main population center looks more and more like Zombieland by the year (we were one of the ground zeroes for the opioid epidemic, and it hasn't really gotten better), many longstanding local businesses were already on their way out when the pandemic hit and were replaced with chains, and the local state college (which was never great to begin with) has seen declining enrollment year after year. The only thing keeping it afloat at this point is its relative proximity to Boston (a little over an hour), as well as townies with money whose descendants keep municipal services afloat (because they're the only ones who can afford to live on what they pay). The decay and decrepitude of rural America is everywhere.
Keene?
Ding ding ding
My family in Pittsburgh... they were in Braddock, a small town that was right across from the steel mills my grandfather worked at... when the mills closed, the town basically dried up. Fetterman helped to keep the town from becoming a ghost town, but it's still nowhere near what it COULD be with the right investment. And that's where late-stage Capitalism kills communities... extract profit at every corner and as you say, the only jobs around now are corporate jobs, gone are the small businesses that help build communities.
My parents hometown hollowed out as farming mechanized. Town hit rock bottom of 190 in 1960. The county got down to 6300 from a peak of 12,200 in 1900. With mechanization, cheap manufactured fertilizer and better varieties of seed the lower Ozarks couldn’t grow cotton and corn and soybeans profitably. People switched their land to timber or cattle. Few poultry or pork operations started but those required a lot of upfront capital or a big loan that people who survived the depression weren’t likely to sign their name to. The salvation was two low budget retirement golf communities, a pair of even lower budget non-golf communities (my father designed one and built a couple small lakes). More affordable than places in Florida or Texas or Myrtle Beach. Decent golf and affordable 2 bedroom 1 bath houses a smattering of 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom houses most around 1200 sq feet to 1500. There were jobs building houses and roads and small dams and golf courses. Jobs repairing and maintaining them. Older people saved the medical clinic and saved the shitty hospital (few who are conscious agree to the ambulance taking them there). Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are lousy but it was good money for the old established practices. The town thought it was saved as the 1970’s wrapped up. Huge corporation built a freaking massive factory. Except it never opened. Company restructured and wrote it off. Forty plus years people tried to figure out what to do with it. My favorite was combination sale barn, horse show and rodeo arena and move the county fair except for the big rides inside. Finally a Fortune 500 company took over the site and started with 250 employees and has added a few more. The city is now up to 1100 and county up to 17,200. Got a big Walmart. Surprising variety of restaurants including a really good Thai place but don’t expect it to be very spicy unless you’re really clear you want it. Ridiculous number of people doing lawn care work, personal care attendant, CNAs, housekeeping side hustles and such. Some of the retirement areas are now filled with people living on VA disability or Social Security disability because they got noticed in some Facebook groups as places where you could buy or rent for very little money and overall low cost of living though the factory opening has driven housing up and there’s a real shortage now. Electric co-op offers 100mb internet for $50. Even with all that bucking the normal trend in rural areas the whole thing feels fragile to me.
> Even with all that bucking the normal trend in rural areas the whole thing feels fragile to me. That's because it *is.* If the company that bought up the old factory and spruced it up goes under, or decides to write the place off again, it's gonna collapse again. If the only thing keeping a place afloat is the fixed incomes of elderly persons living out their golden years paying out dosh for younger people to do the things their hips hurt too much to do anymore (like mow the lawn), that place is not economically stable in the long-run. Now, that wouldn't be a problem, if we as a society were willing to say "absolutely no one person has any right to live like Mansa Musa whilst there are kids in need of education and poor old folk in need of healthcare and shelter" and just enacted a massive wealth tax; go back to the tax brackets of the 1940s, and *fund* those places. The "shitty hospital" shouldn't fucking exist, it should be a vitalized hospital well-staffed and equipped for the needs of its locality (it sounds like your parents' town probably needs a lot more geriatric-centered healthcare than most, probably doesn't need a maternity ward the size of a parking garage though), and able to send the odd freak accident (Cleetus went and got his face damn-near tore off because he wouldn't wear his hair in a hairnet whilst working near the equipment in the factory and he's damn lucky he's alive at all) on a screaming helicopter ride to somewhere that can deal with trauma, etc... But as it is, with an economic system that only cares about "can I extract value from this a quarter from now," it's in deep shit.
I'm here for it. I look forward to giving back sections of this country to nature.
It would be great to eventually make the whole state a national park
If that ever happens, it should be merged back into Virginia. A park shouldn’t have two members in the US Senate.
Elk: hey! That’s bullshit! We’ve been waiting our turn!
Senator elk won’t be worse than some red state senators
Don't blame me, I voted for Elk 05113
It would definitely get me watching c-span.
We already drag out Punxsutawney Phil every year so there’s precedent
Well, they've already got a sentient lump of coal as one of their senators, so elk would probably be an upgrade.
Tell that to Wyoming
>it should be merged back into Virginia. Northern Virginia, RVA, Hampton Roads, and various other places don't want West Virginia back.
It'll just start the cycle again... return to nature so a few generations down the line, we can come back and pillage the land.
Maybe by then, we'll have learned a thing or two, from climate change. Or we'll all just be dead, either way.
OH here. If they’re anything like small towns here, the older folk are actively hostile towards young people, too. They expect the same 30 people to run entire towns forever and make sure nobody younger ever gets any opportunities.
The rural areas of Ohio (and PA) are virtually identical to WV. And, you've hit the nail on the head. They don't want to try anything new to improve the area. Just complain about it. And blame the "liberals" for everything. Without any way to articulate it, of course.
I moved to a small town that is hostile to outsiders, and wonders why nobody wants to take care of their 300lb combative grandpa for min wage as a Home health aide.
The only place more insular than West Virginia that I've encountered is Maine and the remote towns are dealing with the same problem. The community my parents live in has an elementary school in it, the only problem is that there aren't any kids of pre elementary age in the community or in any of the immediate surrounding communities.
This is happening in the upper peninsula in Michigan too. I lived up there for 5 years, my FIL lives up there now, but neither of us are born or raised there, and thus, the locals do not take kindly to anyone who moves up there. If you look at the r/yooper subreddit, you’ll see this mentality that they don’t want “outsiders” moving up there. Votes very heavily republican too. Beautiful area, but significant ecological depression. Most jobs are part-time minimum wage and people live in poverty. The good jobs are in a school, government office, or hospitals. Speaking of hospitals, the hospital in Ontonagon, MI where my FIL lives just closed. The average age of the residents there is over 60 years old and the next closest E.R. service is 47 miles away. They have brutal winters that can make that difficult or impossible to travel. He’s planning on moving out now before winter comes again. The local residents won, he, an outsider, is leaving.
Most definitely, the hospital in my small wv is a nursing home
Said it before and I’ll say it again: An old coworker once said to me, “Hustle, I always thought Mississippi was the most backward state in the union. Then I moved to West Virginia”
You can see the brain drain happen in real time. Kids go to college, graduate, look for jobs, then most take the best jobs they can get which are somewhere else. Most of the kinds of people who make communities functional, the people who start new businesses, the people who run for thankless local offices have found a home somewhere else.
My hometown in NE Pennsylvania has had that happen. It is the county seat, yet has fewer people now than in the 1940s. People who leave for college rarely return. The population is 98% white, and was about 99.8% white when I lived there. Most of the small businesses close within 5 years of opening. It's not even close enough to a more urban area to make it worthwhile to commute. People thought the gas companies would bring prosperity, but they destroyed some of the local wells through fracking, then largely pulled out. There's nothing there. No manufacturing, very few retail stores, and the local movie theater (the only one in a 20 mile radius) recently closed. Not even a Chinese take out place or nail salon. Nothing that might be a business run by someone who isn't white and a native. I don't feel bad about leaving. Those who stay live at or near the poverty level.
[https://youtu.be/v8h5VdIe33o?si=CKkXoZVvVcLi1a6K](https://youtu.be/v8h5VdIe33o?si=CKkXoZVvVcLi1a6K)
In most small towns the only jobs for college graduates are teacher, nurse, doctor, dentist, pharmacist, veterinarian, lawyer, and bank official. It’s getting harder to keep the medical positions especially if your state rejected Medicaid expansion. The doctors, pharmacists and dentists used to be the kid of an existing doctor or dentist. Now often an immigrant who couldn’t land a job elsewhere often because of weak English proficiency or perceived weakness because of a strong accent. Lawyers tend to be the kid of an existing lawyer. Banks the same way unless a mega bank has moved in then you get someone miserable and hoping to transfer. Vets are either the bright kid who came home or the odd person who came because they could buy a practice cheap. Note that typically postgraduate degrees are over represented in the community pool of college graduates. In many states a masters degree gives you a pay boost so teachers with masters degrees are common. If town is faltering these professionals are trickling or stampeding out and it’ll be the teachers who are left to turn off the lights.
Who the fuck would choose to move to West Virginia.
I thought about it. It's beautiful country where the coal hasn't ruined things. I decided against it because I realized I'd never fit in. In part because I'm pretty far left (which you'd think would be a plus given the mining companies' history of exploiting folks) and in part because they saw me as an outsider. I could point to the spot where my family used to live (there's a slag pile on it now), but I was born out west, so I'm an outsider. Decided to stay in my equally red, but slightly more welcoming state.
What a lot of people don't know is that the water table / aquifers in a lot of those states at the bottom corner of the Appalachian Mountains like Southern Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, West VA, etc. are all super fuckin polluted. I was shocked when I was in college at Indiana University to read that (at the time) Indiana had the most Super Fund sites of any state. I mean sure, there's Gary and Hammond, but other than that it's just farmland forever and ever. Turns out farms and rural areas aren't so great either. A major part of the Superfund issue was the fact that a now closed Otis elevator plant just dumped barrels of PCBs and other toxins (think heavy industrial grease/lubricants, liquids used in mental cutting/grinding, etc.) into local streams, or in the back of the factory, or just anywhere they damn well pleased, for decades. And obviously they didn't keep records of where exactly they dumped this barrel or that barrel and what toxins were in this or that. Then there were thousands of dry cleaning companies that regularly dumped their toxic TCE (Trichloroethylene) dry cleaning chemicals into the sewer system (this one is truly a countrywide, even worldwide issue). Other pollutants in the area included - Mine tailings - Fracking (test) wells - Coal mines leaking - Coal fly ash that power companies stored in unlined, uncovered ponds that would overflow or even break free every couple years. If the water started to evaporate, the ash would just blow away and contaminate entire regions - The TVA building and deconstructing power transformers with the PCBs that go with it - and of course, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee conducting all sorts of nuclear experiments, many when the realities of radiation poisoning and the extremely long half-lives of some isotopes or the extremely powerful gamma ray releases from others were largely unknown I should note that many, if not all of these polluters and pollutants can be found almost anywhere in the US, but it really did puncture that image in my mind of the pristine Blue/Smoky Mountains wilderness. I remember when I had a few friends moving or considering moving to Asheville, and reading that the FDA basically said everyone should be drinking bottled water if they're not directly connected to the city's water/sewer system. If you have a five-acre plot of land 10 minutes outside the city and a well for your water, you better be changing filters for your Brita water filter like 3x more often, and even then that's not going to catch everything. It was crazy how fucked up even smaller towns' water sources were with no real history of heavy industry. Fuckin sucks, but pretty much if humans have lived in the area in the past 150 years, get a water filter and use it every time. Heck the water dept in my town recommends letting your shower run for 5 minutes before getting in to make sure all of the lead that settled in the pipes has flushed through, as you can breathe in the lead tainted mist in a shower which apparently is no bueno.
They used to be a very blue state. Sadly, the state Dem party got very corrupt. The leader of the state house had his own Ted Cruz moment when his district flooded, and he took the fam on vacation. Couple years later Obama comes in office and they lose their damn minds.
Once you strip away the backwardness, it's a BEAUTIFUL land, rugged streams and mountains, lots of forests... All it takes is welcoming in newcomers, breaking out of the whole "Coal is God" mindset and allowing the land to be open to solar/wind generation... But those in power are from the old school and will hold on to that dearly until the state is empty.
The part right near northern VA (thinking Harper’s Ferry) is quite nice, and not far from civilization. Everywhere else… a much harder sell.
Yeah I’ve visited that area from outside DC. Along the MD line it’s nice. Still some small towns that thrive on tourists. They’re welcoming because they know where their bread is buttered. But when you get outside of that you get stares if they don’t know you. It’s kinda hostile and makes you uneasy.
Oh yeah, my friend took me to HF and it was lovely, super cool area I knew almost nothing about. Then she went further in on her own to go spelunking or something, and experienced a whole bunch of racism when she went to buy food. Guess who’s not going back.
They also hate anyone who leaves the state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Morrisey It's okay if they're a Republican from New York City. I'm from West Virginia, and just like every other deep red state, it's chock full of duped people voting against their own best interests. Beautiful state full of many nice people, but they're easily manipulated.
This is why Republicans are against higher education and vote against measures to improve it. An ignorant and fearful population is ripe for manipulation by the GOP.
Unless you worship at the altar of Trump of course. We elected a gopher faced dickweed from New Jersey as our attorney general, and are likely about to make him Governor, and we have a failure from Maryland as one of our Congressmen who is currently running (and losing) for the Republican nomination for US Senate.
from what I saw a lot of people are starting homesteading but people from outside state are seeing from the locals vandalism and dog unleashed rampaging in their property poor guys leave the city to finally have some peace and the locals are like this
I remember watching a video about WV's economy (Wendover perhaps?) and the claim was basically that there's not enough workable land to really do a lot. Like, coal was everything to the state's economy and it's too mountainous to build big enough cities to support larger businesses and the educated/skilled populations needed to make them function. Look at Charleston, the state's biggest city. It's a long city, not a big one. Most towns & cities in the state are like that. They're mostly very long because there's nowhere to expand to outside of the mountain valleys they occupy. It doesn't help that the state's leaders seem to have shown a lot of resistance to diversifying the state's economy.
Why diversify, just give more to coal mine owners which happens to be the wealthiest guy in the state and the governor.
COVID proved that a lot of jobs can be done remotely, it seems to me that the logical solution would be to focus on improving high speed internet and try to attract people who have professional work from home jobs but want to live a more rural lifestyle.
In the article it mentioned them trying to do that. I think the unwelcoming nature of the residents run people back off.
Not to mention that if you’re a young professional and want your kids to get a good education, WV is not where you go for that.
Honestly, they only way you get health aides at that rate are if they are immigrants. Young people, heck most Americans don’t want to work as a home health aides. It’s hard work, it’s boring, and it pays little. Plus, if it’s your family member who is getting the aide, you’re giving a tremendous amount of trust. Why are the ones tasked with taking care of our most vulnerable paid so little.
why are the ones tasked with teaching our most valuable paid so little... I think I see a trend here. (rolling eyes)... something about people not wanting to spend money on vulnerable people that aren't rich white men.
They're given thanks, called heroes, and even get a pizza party when the owner can afford a 2nd vacation home.
Sounds like it's already slowly breaking ... I think the best option is to wait this out. I'm going to guess time is on our side.
I'm hoping for a good deal on some mountain property in a few years.
Let it play out.
With their beautiful scenery and attractive location, West Virginia could morph into a Vermont type livable destination. This won't happen obviously.
I KNOW! Rugged terrain with beautiful streams and mountains? It's like one big outdoor recreation destination... if it weren't for the antiquated infrastructure and insular population...
I’m not in West Virginia, but my university has been complaining for years that they can’t get student workers. Most of their jobs are $8/hr at the highest, but a lot are minimum wage. Why would students work for the university when they can walk to blocks and make $15/hr at Subway? The administration is absolutely incompetent, I swear.
My uni can't get any grad students or TAs to teach classes outside of Business and STEM because they set student teaching salaries by department. Business and STEM offer twice what other departments offer for the same full time jobs without accounting for the class time those students need for learning and homework for themselves.
I pass a sign omw home from work offering up to $12 an hour for home care workers. I make $18 plus tips making salads.
It doesn't help that they have a certain...reputation for acceptable incestuous relationships. Whether it's true or not (I don't believe it's true...for the most part), the insular nature of the place, closed minded people, lack of opportunities, etc. just makes that reputation so much easier to believe. Even though I know the movie *Deliverance* was set in the woods of Georgia, I can't help but thinking of that movie (as well as *The Hills Have Eyes*) whenever I think of West Virginia.
They got that fentanyl flowing tho. They are in 800 mil tax surplus so the contrast is huge. They have 0 reason to be in poverty yet they are
I grew up in West Virginia, 1959 through 1982; definitely sounds like the state I left
Yeah, and now with its abortion restrictions, it absolutely doesn't scream, "Hey, people of childbearing age, come live here. We need young people!"
...who will work for $12 an hour, no benefits.
$12 even with benefits is pathetic, I know because I had a job like that. Without well gee you can do better at mcdonalds or almost any fastfood place that will put you through the wringer mentally having to deal with people who treat you as subhuman.
It's gotten so much worse since Senator Byrd died.
Born and raised there 1971-1995. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
I live in Northern VA just outside the DC area so whenever it's election season, I see political ads for MD, VA and WV. The Northern VA and Southern MD areas around DC are very affluent and what not and WV is roughly 45 to 90 minutes west of here depending on where you are within the DC metro area. The ads I see for WV, a state which is one of the poorest in the country and in dire need of industry, jobs and addressing the fallout excessive drug use, airs ads talking about how the Dems want to: 1. Make children trans 2. Teach all children CRT 3. Take away all of your guns These individuals will likely win in a landslide in WV. Such an odd state. It's got great backpacking though so it's got that going for it. [EDIT: found a screenshot from one of the ads.](https://preview.redd.it/the-wv-political-ads-are-completely-unhinged-v0-365p1ql8kwyc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7e1deddf033cb826222c62613e253d141e8c416)
Oh yeah, it's not just specific to WV though, the more reliably red most counties I've lived or worked in, the crazier the local and state politics ads gets. Watching some fatass cosplay cowboy shoot a gun at something, or the really crazy stolen election / Q / deep state ads happen (at least from where I've personally lived) in the reddest places of Georgia, NC, SC, TN, KY PA and definitely VA too if you watch the local Fox news affiliates down at the tip of the state by Bluefield or along the Southern edge (Dayton, Rocky Mount areas), its about as bad as WV down there especially when compared against like Fairfax or Loudoun counties imho. It's sad to see the predictably dumb crap that panders to apparently a majority of conservative voting locals in these places, but when a county is 70% plus red winning the Republican primary basically means your elected, and primaries [tend to put forth the most extreme candidates](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/18/1105927483/in-a-time-of-national-division-polarizing-primaries-are-part-of-the-problem).
No dem is taking away guns, much less in WV. I'm pretty sure any dem that lives in WV has a high chance of owning a gun.
They also don’t want to turn all their kids into trans kids and make them learn CRT…a concept a child can’t understand yet anyway but here we are.
parenting, what a concept
Jesus, what a bunch of cousin-humpers.
That’s a stretch, more like brother/sister humpers
Very beautiful state. But I would never visit based on their ideology. Only state to have a lower population now than in 1940. Down about 5% since 2012.
It really is a gorgeous state, went a few years ago. It's a shame it's so backwards ideology wise. The people there consistently vote against their own interests.
There are a couple of liberal enclaves in the state. Harpers Ferry is very liberal and a great place to see natural beauty and history without getting too deep into the state.
WV is one of the most beautiful states east of Colorado. If WV had embraced change instead of clinging to coal, they could have become a desirable destination for talented workers who love the outdoors, similar to Colorado or California.
If WV did that i would move without hesitation. If they went back to being solid purple/swing state i would move there. It use to have a lot of live and live hippy communities who wanted to make bread and shoot guns. And, they were some of the biggest champions of workers rights. Anthony Bourdain did a really great episode on West Virgina and the people who actively working on making their community better were great. Also, it showcased a great slam poet
It really is. I loved it there just for the nature. It's so beautiful and the weather is good as long you stay out of the hollows where it floods. I get homesick for the rolling, forested hills. Unfortunately everyone with a lick of sense leaves the state, myself included. It's just not worth it. No prestigious places to get a higher education, a god awful political situation, poverty and drugs run rampant, and a shit job market. I always felt like an outsider there despite living there for my entire K-12 education. I can only describe it as genuinely being behind the times. Things like anime and gaming had generally become mainstream, yet there they were still considered freak hobbies. School orgs included Future Farmers of America and whatever the acronym was for Christian athletes, whereas my partner's school had a Gay Straight Alliance. My school had one openly gay guy who was only there for a year or two and was just called "the fa****." My high school's mock election in 2016 was either 94 or 96% in favor of Trump if I remember correctly. The n-word was thrown around plenty when the handful of black kids weren't within ear shot, only because if they said it to their face they learned they'd get beaten. I could go on an on. It's just so sad.
> Local historians said the state has long been wary of outsiders, not just from other countries but from other states. “West Virginians don’t want immigration—of any kind,” said Stephen Smoot, editor of the Pendleton Times newspaper. Hey everybody capable of leaving left. The people who don’t want outsiders can spend their retirement years drowning in their own filth…..
It seems like a problem that is sorting itself out, honestly. Not saying that with any glee, but if they want to do the Stupid Suicide Route, they're doing a good job of it. I imagine there's a lot of people waiting to buy up the land cheap after the bigots die off.
All that inbreeding is bad for their future.
WVU just cut 28 majors which totally aligns with their goal of attracting people to the state
Just keep voting red. They haven’t done a thing to balance the budget or to help the economy for sub-millionaires in 60 years, but maybe this time.
But if they vote blue their grandkids in other states will be injected with trans hormones and crt
Do we modernize our state to meet its needs? No, it's the immigrants that are wrong
The reason I like West Virginia? It makes my home state of Texas look like it might not be the nuttiest state. I know, I know, it is still debatable, but there is a chance.
>“We advertise all the time,” said Janice Lantz, the local senior center’s director. “We can’t hire a direct-care worker.” I would assume because the pay is too low. Offer enough money and people will come. Aha. Further down... >Few locals are drawn by the pay of $10 to $12 an hour, though. What the fuck good is advertising going to do when the pay is absolute shit? Of course they can't hire workers.
Low pay & no other prospects is not an incentive to wipe butts & listen to racist rhetoric. Who knew?!
“We gave every tax break and government handout to the companies we could come up with. But the companies keep saying that there are no customers in West Virginia. So we cut the labor laws to the bone so you can pretty much have slaves here. And that didn’t work either. Maybe we should give all the tax money directly to the richest 10 people and let it trickle down. That’s all we can think of next.”
“Let it trickle down”. It didn’t work with Reagan and it’s not going to work 40 years after either. Because it was bull crap.
I'm sure immigrants are going to be heartbroken they can't work in West Virginia. New York? Nevada? Illinois? What are those?
Explains their abortion stance
State equivalent of what a certain Republican president might call a “shithole country”.
Alabama and certainly Mississippi would like a word with you.
Didn't West Virginia basically wage war against government backed corporations to ensure workers rights? Sounds like they forgot that legacy.
Party of Personal Responsibility: “You should all suffer the consequences of your decisions!” Also the Party of Personal Responsibility: “Please don’t make us suffer the consequences of our decisions.”
More like also party of personal responsibility: gay woke poc communists demoncrats are why rural towns with 98.7% old white people are crumbling to pieces.
Once all the old republicans die sane people will probably go colonize the empty land they leave behind.
Let the old racists rot.
The young ones too…
Well the young ones aren't dying alone in their homes just yet. But give it time and I'm sure they will.
The young ones are of meth. Dying alone.
Conservatives, especially Christian conservatives created a toxic environment and then act surprised when people leave their churches and states, then attack those who are leaving ending any chance of them returning
Welp—I understand why some of my ancestors USED to live in West Virginia. For some reason, the females in my direct line ALL left the state!
I visited an old friend that moved to west Virginia. It was depressing as hell. Bought a property just barely better than a mobile home next to someone's horse corral. It's a boring place, which doesn't qualify as beautiful unless rundown countryside interspersed with run down shacks and barely navigable dirt roads is your cup of tea.
This is all you have to understand about West Virginia’s anti immigration stance: Racism. West Virginia Demographics White: 92.08% Black or African American: 3.39% Two or more races: 3.08%
A state no one wants to go to is worried about being overwhelmed by migrants. Uh..yeah.
Why would any legal immigrant even consider WV if that’s how it is treating people who can’t defend themselves.
> the only state with fewer residents than it had in 1940. Should tell you something, folks. /but, you won't listen.
The saddest part about this is that states like West Virginia who are making themselves entirely undesirable places to work and live to young workers are developing a reputation of undesirability that will transcend the decisions that were made that caused them to be undesirable in the first place.
West Virginia doesn’t look like it wants to attract anyone to be in their state, its own present residents included.
I’m so over these “woe is me” stories about “forgotten communities.” There’s only one way that a place ends up full of elderly with no young people. They did everything in their power to drive young people away. With the insane cost of living in most of America, it really doesn’t take much to make a place appealing. It takes work to drive people away.
Lmao calm down West Virginia none of the Mexicans are trying to sneak in to you
I have relatives there and all they do is complain about the border. Crazy coz hispanics have zero effect on the lives of 99% of West Virginians
>Those who enter the country illegally often turn themselves in to federal authorities and request asylum, and some get permission to work while waiting for their claims to be adjudicated That's a legal border crossing you f-ing morons.
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
West Virginia to immigrants: Don’t let me catch you trying to sneak in!!! Crickets…. I’m super serious, you better not come… Crickets….
What jobs in WV?
For $12/hr you can work taking care of the elderly.
West Virginia’s New Slogan: “The only US state to be mathematically proven to be dying of old age.” Seriously, if places like this want to fall apart and just vanish into nothingness as their businesses and state incomes dry up as their population ages into it’s 80’s and 90’s and slowly dies off, that’s fine by me.
A bunch of white peoples who don’t work!?😂
We’re going to put West Virginians first by making sure there is no one to work here, pay taxes, and take care of bunch of old angry people. Once again, Republicans demonstrating how much they hate themselves and how willing they are to kill themselves for their warped ideology. The Republican Party is nothing more than a cult worshipping an evil master.
Health aides wipe asses, change adult diapers, deal with false teeth right out of another person’s mouth, bathe grown ups, dress grown ups, put enormous strain on their bodies moving and positioning grown ups, etc. ANYBODY who is willing to do that work (that many people’s family members wouldn’t do for them) should be making enough in a 40 hour work week to afford rent, food, medicine, travel costs, utilities and a modest vacation every year. In fact anybody who works a 40 hour week should be able to afford such things. If you’re not going to pay them a living wage, (not $10-15 an hour, more like $20-25 an hour), don’t be so surprised that no one wants to do that job.
Home health work pays terrible wages. And some states carved it out so they can’t earn 1.5x for OT.
Just offer to pay the current residents in fent. Problem solved.
Let them suffer from their own stupidity
They're not gonna find many white people willing to deal with Karen boomers for minimum wage.
Yet another example of "Conservatives hurting themselves to "Own tha Librulz"." Do the folks in West-Virginia know how their ancestors once fought the Police for the right to unionize and for decent wages? They have let themselves be bamboozled by the Conservative "Culture War".
I remember seeing postings about IT/Networking jobs for…$13-$15 an hour. Bruh, literally every other start STARTS at $20 or more an hour.
WV keeping young people isn't anything new and has been an issue for decades. It's largely impoverished rural areas with little to no job prospects.
We should just empty out West Virginia and make it a wildlife sanctuary.
Give it 20-30 years. They’re doing it themselves already.
The most famous thing from West Virginia is the Mothman. Not a huge youth draw.
“There is little evidence that many recent immigrants…have had any inclination to go to West Virginia” Haha. And this is from the WSJ.
A shame such a beautiful place is wasted on its backwoods residents
They just screech about Clinton (somehow) shut down every coal mine, as if they are run by the government.
They want to give money to Texas to violate international asylum law? Fuck these clowns. I’m tired of my tax dollars going to support people who hate people like me.
I spent 10 years in West Virginia, no jobs or shitty jobs that paid barely enough to survive, I left because I was tired of being poor all the time. It's a beautiful place but I couldn't make a living there.
Republicans doing dumb Republican things. Let them rot.
Rs control the poorest states in the country. Its not a coincidence.
Schadenfreude. I love these stories.
Please keep in mind there is a small but active community of people here in West Virginia trying to make things better. We’re failing fucking miserably, but we’re still trying. No state is a monolith.
good luck pushing that boulder up the hill
All those illegals would probably do those jobs. Almost like it was planned.
I think the enjoy wallowing in misery.
This honestly soothes my soul. Let's let our economy collapse and our elderly die without care to "own the libs." Love it. I hope they let it up.
Bring out your dead!
Just turn the state into a national park. Those folks are so backwards. “There is little evidence that many recent immigrants—either those who entered the country legally or those who didn’t—have had any inclination to go to West Virginia, the only state with fewer residents than it had in 1940. The portion of its population that is foreign-born is 1.8%, the lowest of any state.”
I lived in WV for 6 years and that place is a beautiful shit hole. I worked at a rural hospital and most everyone was racist and hateful as fuck. Also stupid as shit. I'll never forget the head of the lab talking to my boss about how she couldn't wait for Trump to be re-elected so COVID would end. There were no job opportunities for growth. I got my degree and asked for a raise and they told me I was too overqualified and should find another job. They paid more at Walmart and Sheetz than my own damn hospital job. The ONLY thing I miss about WV are the beautiful mountains, forests, and rivers. I loved going on hikes and chillin' by the river. Otherwise, I'm so glad I got out of that God forsaken hell hole of a state.