Yes this sounds like a place that was shrugged. Someday we will have to be willing to address the concept that these problems can indeed be made worse by Government intervention.

@coaldigger: It's sad that people talk about leaving and not returning as success. It's nice to get off the plane, feel some cool air, hear your own rounded Os and nasal Rs, see the huge American-sized food/drink portions, and know you're back home with friends, family, jobs, organizations, and everything. My wife, who lived miles away from me in Madison, but who was poor as a child doesn't feel that way. She wanted to get to the East Coast. She went to DC for three years and worked at Arnold & Porter, but Wisconsin pulls you back.

While it's not Appalachia, our area is similarly downturned... unfortunately, what's hurting our local economy is the dotgov's decidedly un-business mindset, rules, laws, and regulations. It's cost-prohibitive to start an industry here, and if you DO overcome all the fees, licenses, taxes, bribes, at the state and local level, you run into a bureaucracy that regulates you into the dirt, shuts your furnaces and mills and shutters your windows.

When you look at 20+% unemployment (and some areas closer to 50%), and people who WANT to work, but are stuck on the government dole to keep food in their kids bellies... yeah. You want to scream.

The common worker - The entrepreneur - The person who has a dream, and a vision, and a plan - WANTS to work, WANTS to thrive, WANTS to excel... and wants a chance at that American dream, but is kept from it by the government he is forced to rely on. You would think... but no... it CAN'T be deliberate. What government would work that hard to crush it's own economy and its own citizens under it's collective thumb?

Welcome to the beginning of the current 5 year plan. ;-( John was right... If only they would get the HELL out of the way...

LBJ and his ilk back to Lincoln have actually done more to generate the current level of 'poor' than any other condition or situation conceivable. It used to be a normal part of life to move to jobs and opportunity, to abandon places and situations that offered no way to support yourself and your family in a way desired. We've also entered the realm of determining the quality of a person's life by his annual monetary earnings and taxes and fees generated into the community from that quality of life.

Without the influence of government, jobs that disappeared would result either in people moving or accepting a life with less that might still have benefit to them, less children born into lives of dependence and squalor, less supportive cost to the community or local government, increased pride in individual effort and choices, less poverty generated criminality, and improved value to those communities or regions that provide opportunity.

I sometimes imagine that the programs and ideologies that have generated these results were actually purposed for the results obtained in reality. No rational human can believe that taking care of people or giving them false measurements of success can be right for anyone in the society.

I agree, it's not the government's job to lift anybody out of poverty. That has to be done through hard work, and not assuming there's a safety net. There shouldn't be. It would mean a person had to work hard and put off having a family before they're ready. The unions just extort money from people who already have little enough of it. Sad.