EternalHoH
Posts: 791
Joined: 5/30/2010
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I was born & raised in rural upstate NY. Went to college in PA, worked in upstate NY, NYC, the bay area of northern California, and Washington DC (private sector) before relocating to eastern Tennessee. I traveled extensively to the lower 48 for the job, but it is my first experience with residency in a red state.
My first immediate observations of the area were
1) the nosey nature of the people here
2) the sweetness of the people here
3) the prevalence of the drug and pill problem among people of all ages (down here, granny gets busted as frequently as any other age)
4) the high percentage of young- and middle-age people listed in the obituary column in the newspaper.
Apparently around here, people reject government regulations, even if it kills them. They tolerate dying young as working poor from no insurance rather than accept government structured heralthcare.
When I went to high school up north in the late 70s, early 80s, my parents paid about $2,000 a year (1980 dollars) in a dedicated school tax, which was a percentage based on the value of their house. This was on top of a state income tax and property taxes. The school was well funded. Ample supply of school busses, so unless you lived within walking distance to the school, you rode the bus. Students were not permitted to commute to school via private automobile. Unless there was a family emergency or illness, there were few exceptions to that policy. One exception was that seniors were permitted parking passes and allowed to drive themselves (not their friends) to school only in the last half of their senior year and only if they kept their grades up. In four years of high school, I never had a reason to go to a funeral or group therapy session over the death of a high school peer. Things were well funded, highly structured, and tragic accidents simply did not happen. You could just tell that smart people ran the show up there.
Down here, there is no state income tax or dedicated school tax. School buses are a hit-or-miss proposition. Any new school buses are funded through a wheel tax, which is a $25 tax on automobile registrations. Most students commute to school via private automobile, either their parents drop them or the kids drive the family car to school themselves. Quite common for even 10th and 11th grade kids to drive themselves and their friends to school. There is literally a 'rush hour' in front of the high schools that require police assistance for traffic control. Down here, there is no annual vehicle inspection, so any death trap can roll legally on the roads. Main highway arteries are well engineered, county secondary roads are not (think of paved horse trails). Young-driver accidents that kill entire carloads of students on their way to school are quite common.
To me, I find it crazy that the people here hate government and regulations and taxes so much, they are willing to sacrifice their kids. Most of the parents of deceased kids (and the community) just sink into their religious beliefs, but fail to see that their tight wallet policies are partly responsible for their own kid's death. The adults down here have no idea what its like to pay taxes like my parents paid. And then again, I never went to a classmate's funeral.
The biggest employer in town is a chemical plant that was built as an offshoot of a manufacturing facility headquartered up north. This was a raw materials division of the yankee outfit. The second largest employer is the regional health system (translation - government funded jobs). As the chemical plant opened operations in South America, average hourly wages there has gone down to the extent that the healthcare system is surpassing it for having the highest hourly wage in the region. The healthcare system is also growing here, not because the natives are taking better care of themselves, but rather because many Florida retirees are abandoning Florida and moving to north Georgia, western North Carolina, and eastern Tennessee. The demand for Medicare services is spiking locally.
Many of the manufacturing employers that relocate here have a predatory bent, sort of a 'last stop before India' thing, looking for a cheap workforce willing to die for their boss's right to cut corners and avoid regulations. What employer is willing to pass that up? Industrial accident numbers are rather high, but at least that pesky government isn't telling their employer what to do. Freedom, baby!
I find it odd that here, in the land of tobacco plantation slave owners, a socially, politically and educationally stagnant low wage workforce has practically enslaved themselves. Their false sense of freedom amounts to the 'right' to move from one low wage job to another. And they seem not to mind. Its like the workers in China justifying their enslaved conditions by the job security from the endless supply of new ventures that show up because of the low wage standard.
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RE: the Burden of Southern History (apologies to C. Van... - 
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