The Poorest Part of America

November 19, 2009 9:35 AM

The Poorest Part of America "Virtually all of the 20 poorest counties in America, in terms of wages, are on the eastern flank of the Rockies or on the western Great Plains... There are two unusual things about the deprivation in this region. First, it is largely white. The area does include several pockets of wretched Native American poverty, but in most areas the poor are as white as a prairie snowstorm. Second, most people do not think of themselves as poor."

From Dale Maharidge Interview: Covering The Economic Pain Of Real Americans: "Four-fifths of us who work for salaries or wages make less than $20 an hour. This is a poor country. We're a nation of the working poor, and it's something that people don't want to acknowledge."

posted by shetterly (8 comments total)

... as white as a prairie snowstorm....
...Yet even if you look only at agriculture, the region has plainly failed to adapt to a world in which grain and cattle are cheap....
... little effort has been made to process foods rather than just grow them....
Montana and North Dakota are both trying to grow more organic crops.

Perhaps the foodie movement has found its new home!
posted by gurple at 9:53 AM on November 19, 2009 [2 favorites]

There are better articles, but this wikipedia entry about Buffalo Commons explains a solution that some are advocating to eliminate poverty in this part of the country. The "solution" most readily employed for poverty seems to be evacuation.
posted by jefficator at 9:54 AM on November 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

I would challenge the author's notion of "poor" if the majority of the folks there do not consider themselves poor.

For one thing, the cost of living isn't ever explained. Sure, the average income might be low, but if houses are cheap, and food plentiful due to farming, then how does measuring them on the same scale make sense? Yeah, a new Ford might cost the same in Wyoming as it does in New York, but making half as much in Cheyenne as in NYC might be a good thing if it costs only one third as much to live a similar lifestyle.

Secondly, what about lifestyle? Church and community fairs are a lot cheaper than plays and operas, but who's to say that "rural" activities are "poorer"? Taken to the extreme, if they were afforded otherwise equal healthcare, would people living primitive lifestyles, and obviously having an income of "zero dollars" be necessarily living "poorer" than those in a modern capitalist society?

TLDR: average wage is, by itself, a terrible metric to judge poverty.
posted by explosion at 9:55 AM on November 19, 2009 [4 favorites]

Hardly anyone describes themselves as rich, either. In America, everyone not homeless and not wearing a monocle is "middle class".

What I think is more interesting is the 80% of wage earners earning less than $20/hr. Pretty hard not to call that a plutocracy and/or wage slavery, particularly coupled with the legalized barriers in changing jobs (no public trans, no public healthcare, etc).
posted by DU at 9:59 AM on November 19, 2009

Also.
posted by jefficator at 10:02 AM on November 19, 2009

In addition to what explosion said, here's a link to an article on teh setting of the poverty line (paraphrased)
posted by infini at 10:04 AM on November 19, 2009 [1 favorite]

Not that poor Americans don't face dire problems but America is hardly a poor country compared to say, most of the rest of the world. Sure, there are places like Buffalo County, SD. but that level of poverty is not familiar to the vast majority of Americans. I would be curious to see how many people live in the 20 poorest counties, combined, but I'm too lazy to add it up.
posted by ghharr at 10:06 AM on November 19, 2009

In America, everyone not homeless and not wearing a monocle is "middle class".

What about the recent outbreak in American cities of homeless people wearing monocles? They are everywhere these days. How are we supposed to categorize them?
posted by flarbuse at 10:11 AM on November 19, 2009 [1 favorite]