A modest proposal: Leaving

Torn down building in Shiloh Mountain area, Arkansas
© Lisa R. Pruitt, 2011

The Washington Post's 2017 article "Disabled and Disdained" tells the story of the McGlothlins, residents of Grundy, Virginia, who have fallen on hard times. The patriarch of the family is in jail after struggling with addiction. One of his sons shared the same fate. Sheila, the matriarch, lives on $500 a month in disability payments. Tyler, her 19-year-old son, lives in the household with his wife Morgan. Neither works. Tyler panhandles to supplement his mother's income. The article wants the readers (or at least that it is my impression) to feel sympathy for Tyler. Tyler did things right. He graduated high school, stayed clean, avoided unwanted pregnancies, got financial aid, enrolled in community college, and bought a car. Then, he lost his license as the result of a car accident, and as a result was unable to keep going to school. The article also describes a man named David Hess. Hess is an almost absurd character. He crossed paths with the McGlothlins when Tyler's father was out on the streets panhandling. Hess offered McGlothlin a job, but the McGlothlin patriarch refused on account of his work injuries. Outraged, Hess proceeded to chastise him (both in person and online) for his idleness. And yet, by the end of the article, I found myself sympathizing with Hess more than I did with Tyler.

Being 19 years old

In 2018, I was 19 years old, just like Tyler. I had been in the country for a couple of years by then. I rented the living room floor of a relative's apartment for $350 a month. I say floor because I slept on the floor. I did not have to, but doing so was more comfortable than sleeping on the couch, and so that's what I did. In those days, I worked full time as a shift leader at Carl's Jr. (although, due to my coworkers' chronic absenteeism, I often worked overtime), and I was simultaneously enrolled full time at Sacramento City College. I took the bus to both, spending several hours a day on it. I met a lot of curious characters on those buses (e.g. a man, who by my best guess was from Panama, who had made it routine to tell me he was going to kill me). I thought life was pretty good. One of my classes that semester was English Composition II. The class was taught by a professor whose name I have unfortunately long forgotten. The professor was a South African woman, advanced in years, and clearly well read. She taught us how to make proper use of the English language. She taught us about how we were not supposed to say "terrorist," since "freedom fighter" was the correct term. When asked whether Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist or a freedom fighter, she said he was a terrorist. English is a complicated language. The overarching assignment for the semester was an essay on a book titled Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.

Shepard's job of choice in Scratch Beginnings
© Aim 2 Please Moving

Ehrenreich and Shepard

Nickel and Dimed follows journalist Barbara Ehrenreich as she goes undercover working a variety of minimum-wage jobs. In the book, Ehrenreich describes her experience in those jobs as difficult, injury-inducing, and soul-crushing. The wages she earned were not enough to cover her basic needs, and Ehrenreich, despite her best efforts, ate into the modest amount of savings she set aside for the experiment. The book's conclusion is grim: the American working poor are trapped, with very little-to-no hope of escaping despite their best efforts.

I was not convinced. My task that semester was to write a four- or five-page essay on the book. On account of a flare up of chronic contrarianism, I set out to find a book which was the antithesis to Nickel and Dimed, one which I could wield as a club against it in my essay writing process. I did not have to look for very long. Scratch Beginnings, by Adam Shepard (who, according to his LinkedIn page, is the co-founder of a brand named "Practice Empathy"), is a direct response to Ehrenreich. Shepard, a 23 year old recent college graduate, started from scratch in Charleston, SC (a city he was unfamiliar with) with nothing but $25 in his pocket. He deliberately avoided using his degree, his connections, or any advantage not available to the general public. Ten months later, he had bought a truck, saved over $5,000, and by his account made friends and even gotten physically stronger. I echoed Shepard's criticisms of Ehrenreich in my essay and got a B. Curiously, I was not docked for the blatant contrarianism or lack of effort, but for using male pronouns a bit too much (such as when saying "if he did so..." instead of "if she did so..."). I explained to the professor that I only wrote that way because my own inner voice was male, and that was being reflected in my writing, but such an explanation was not sufficient. My core criticism of Ehrenreich, then and now, is that her experiment was unrealistic. Sixty-year-old women do not spawn into the world with nothing. In sixty years, a person accumulates skills, connections, and at least the opportunity to save. Her starting point was not a true starting point. Almost every story is a tragedy when the only thing you write is the final chapter. 

Who keeps Tyler home?

Tyler is the opposite of a 60-year-old woman. His story has really just begun; at 19, he has just entered the "agency" part of the human experience. And yet, throughout the article, I couldn't avoid the feeling like I was reading the last chapter of a story, not the first. What exactly could be the reason for that? My main suspect is the town of Grundy itself. Grundy has a population of 875 residents, distributed among 300 households and a bit under 200 families. Of these households, only about one-fifth have children at home. In the last decade, Grundy lost almost 15% of its population. With such conditions, it is not entirely unexpected that there is a lack of good jobs there. Explaining why there are no good jobs is harder. It certainly is at least partially caused by a variety of policy choices made by people far away from the McGlothlins (deindustrialization, climate policy, trade, and many more). Maybe it's just bad luck.

But a lack of good jobs cannot be the end of the inquiry. Tyler's life was more or less on rails before a few events derailed it. He lost his job at McDonald's after missing a shift due to a snowstorm, and he lost his ability to go to school after losing his license as the result of a car accident. Perhaps I am being a bit too cynical, but I doubt that a simple snowstorm and a "car accident" is all that happened. To be clear, I am not accusing Tyler of anything. However, these descriptions do not match at all with my lived experience. What kind of employer fires an employee over missing work once because of a snowstorm? I have worked a variety of jobs in food and retail, and I cannot remember even a single instance of someone being fired due to one episode of (justified) absenteeism. In all the jobs that I have had, when a person missed work due to other commitments, forgetfulness, or just being too busy doing drugs, nothing happened. At worst, they got a write-up. Businesses generally don't like to get rid of  good (or even mediocre) employees for minor absences or tardiness. Training new employees is a cost that most businesses would rather not bear too frequently. Similarly, it seems unusually harsh to take away a person's license over an accident in which they had little fault. Virginia is perhaps harsher than California in this regard, but this is still suspect. Here we come to two policies that could help a person such as Tyler, but which I am unconvinced would do the trick: (1) more stringent laws against wrongful termination, and (2) more lenient penalties for traffic infractions that result in accidents.

But even the lack of any jobs and a driver's license cannot be the end of the inquiry either. If the idea is that rural areas have a high density of acquaintanceship, was there truly not a single person in Tyler or his family's entire social network who could get him closer to a bus, or to school, or a place with jobs? Is Grundy really so far from everything? A quick search reveals that the closest metro area to Grundy is Kingsport, TN (population ~55,000), about a 2-hour-drive. This is a significant (but not insurmountable) distance, and it may explain the lack of opportunities. There are seemingly no public transportation options that would cover that trip either. Here we arrive at yet another policy that could help Tyler's situation: more extensive public transportation options. Admittedly, I have not seen a "commuter" route that stretches as far as the one Tyler would need, so its feasibility is debatable.

Rural people, immigrants, and subsidies

Venezuelan immigrants in Ecuador.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that there isn't a single job available in Grundy; and, assuming also, that Grundy is simply so remote that it is literally impossible to commute by any means (whether public or private) to any other place where a job might be found, that raises the final question: why not move? How could things be worse anywhere else? I have looked for a satisfying answer to why people in economically depressed areas resist moving, and I have not found one.

As an immigrant, I find the resistance to moving genuinely difficult to understand. If life is so bad where you are and economic prospects are better elsewhere, why stay? I understand loving a place. Most immigrants from my country to the United States that I have met have expressed that they would like to go back some day. Many have expressed that, even if not possible during their lives, they would like to at least be buried back at home (it almost never happens, but it is a really nice sentiment). However, even with attachment considered, isn't leaving and returning with more resources a more productive approach? From my perspective, the McGlothlins' situation resembles something close to the natural, baseline state of things. What historically propels families out of such circumstances is a willingness to take risk, usually when things cannot get any worse. Usually, one member, often male, ventures somewhere harder and less comfortable, lives cheaply, saves aggressively, and slowly creates a foothold for others to follow. It is usually not pretty, but it's also a practice not unique to international migrants.

What I cannot relate to, in terms of my own lived experience, is the $500 in disability payments. Sheila's disability payment is also a policy choice. So is every other federal and state subsidy or program that flows into a place like Grundy. I want to be careful with my words, lest the spirit of David Hess fully take over me. I am not arguing that the government should abandon people in hard circumstances in order to force a sink-or-swim outcome. If the government did, a lot of people would undoubtedly just sink. I am asking whether support sometimes functions as an anchor. Tyler is not facing a choice between certain misery (staying) and possible misery (leaving). He is facing a choice between possible misery (leaving) and a small, predictable share of $500 (staying). There is a Spanish refrain which roughly translates to: "A bird in your hands is worth more than 100 in the sky."

Conclusion

Which brings me to a question that has loitered in my mind for the entire time I spent writing this post: at what point does subsidizing rural and remote areas just become subsidizing misery? Maybe the "death" of places like Grundy (or in less scary terms, their transformation) would benefit everyone, especially the people who live there. And maybe, what is slowing that transformation down is the accumulated weight of everyone's personal share of $500. I did not mean for this post to sound so negative. I do not think the McGlothlins are contemptible people. But perhaps there is something to the contempt that the David Hesses of the world display.