Hardest Places to Live in the US (NY Times)
New York Times sends courageous reporters on dangerous mission across the Hudson to investigate geographical income distribution in 'the country': cool map though.
Between the lines, the angle seems to be that rural areas are in fact poorer or harder places to live than many of the underperforming urban centers like Detroit or Flint or St. Louis. Quote:
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They are comparing all of Wayne County, which includes some of the wealthiest suburbs in the country. Of course median income is going to be much higher.
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Wayne County generally doesn't have large concentrations of wealth. Really the only two wealth concentrations in the county are the Grosse Pointes (mostly old money) and Northville (mostly new money). And Northville, while technically mostly Wayne County, is sort of an extension of Oakland County (straddles the county line and is an extension of the new money affluence in the western portion of Oakland County around Novi-South Lyon area). |
Justified!
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Grosse Pointe Shores $129,922 And that doesn't include areas like West Dearborn, with some 50,000 people, that would easily make the list if it were separate from East Dearborn. I'm not saying that suburban Wayne County is the example of wealth in this country, but I guarantee there aren't too many people in any of those communities that would find it particularly difficult to live. And as difficult as it is for many within the poorest areas of the county, those 21 communities basically cancel out the extreme poverty you'll find in certain areas of the county. Which is why Wayne County overall wouldn't come close to making a "hardest places to live" list. |
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And places like the Grosse Pointes, Northville, Canton, Plymouth, and Grosse Ile. are at least 50% above the national median, and among the wealthiest suburbs in the country. My implications weren't to say that x city is one of the x wealthiest suburbs in the country, but rather that these are generally high income suburbs, comparable to high income suburbs in other metropolitan areas, and essentially counter the extreme poverty in other areas of the county, signifying that the county as a whole would obviously not make a "hardest places to live" list, despite having areas that would obviously qualify.
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Cool map.
Interesting how rural areas where in the 19th century people had individual homesteads and society was relatively equal have to this day been ahead of the curve on most metrics. While areas that were full of slaves and poor white tenant farmers are still behind despite having areas where agricultural sales are pretty high if you look up a map of that. |
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But hey! Look, there's Jesus and Obama is a Communist. |
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Poor white rural areas tend to be conservative Republican, but black, Hispanic, and Native American rural areas are just as solid Democrat. It's race, not economics. |
It's race because of economics. People making money don't have time to be haters.;)
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The working farms that survive either look like small cities made up of grain silos, or are dream farms that can only survive by putting outside income into the farm- i.e., money loosing propositions. Many of the farmers are old, and, contrary to BS in the press, the old farmers don't have much energy anymore. Survival is contracted out to a few young entrepreneurs that own $1 million or more in fertilizer spraying equipment, combines, tractors etc., that charge a flat rate per bushel. When the price goes up everybody is happy, when the price per bushel drops only the young entrepreneur makes any money. Of course, the old farmer borrows more money, and, flirts with going bankruptcy for the "n" time. In order to see this in your area (even with the trees), get off the interstates. The old US highway system has roads that show the Country without the retail, food, and, lodging that the interstates bring. Much of it looks like "rural" Detroit, with huge areas planted in mono crop agriculture surrounding abandoned barns and farm houses. |
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yes, these areas were over-settled, and cannot support a dense eastern-midwestern rural agricultural based population, and the ogallala (and others) aquifer cannot support this kind of agriculture indefinitely. some of it is a brutally beautiful landscape that is unintelligible from a LGA to LAX flight, from the beginning of the plains in the flint hills to the smoky hills and beyond to the storied "staked" and high plains. last summer i photographed a lot of what appeared to be desertification (and the rural abandonment and the way that the imported midwestern timber has baked silver in the plains sunlight) in SW Kansas, unfortunately the heat of the sun in my car baked my camera...108 degrees outside with high dry winds, who knows how hot my car got. the watered, supportive land definitively ends somewhere west of topeka, although that line wavers considerably year to year. i've seen extreme plains style drought make it all the way to the mississippi river. it's amazing how oasis-like the front range seems after you have made the trek, camping and driving backroads all the way from the banks of the mississippi, reading the old plains literature and history (and the Heat-Moon stuff). |
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