Resettlement - Newfoundland

This is in response/discussion to something in the Trump Threads from @IronBrig4 and @AshburnerX from their comments:
They're broke, poorly educated, addicted to painkillers, and terrified that "those people" are getting ahead of them. http://www.nationalreview.com/corne...ral-responsibilities-defense-kevin-williamson

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.
I've been saying this for years and been called a monster for it. It's a huge problem in South East Ohio and by extension, West Virginia; all these old coal towns and farming communities can no longer self sustain and need to be abandoned. It would be saner and more economically viable for the government to buy them all out and offer to pay relocation costs to a town/city of their choice than to keep paying benefits to these communities for another 50-100 years when half of them can't even make a supermarket economically viable. The jobs aren't coming back, there is nothing left for you here.
I suggest that both of you look up the history of something in Newfoundland and Labrador (the province I've lived in for the last 2.5 years) called Resettlement. A short article at Memorial University (the provincial university) also provides information. And while the "big official" program stopped in '75, there have been other communities "resettled" since then too, though not under the same official program, but similar results.


But here's why it's worth discussion: it doesn't quite work out. There's LOTS of bad feelings about this around the province, and generally people moved... they're still in bad straights, and few are any better off. So it's as much a human problem as anything else. Forced (or near-forced) resettlements just don't work out very well in the end, at least from what I've personally seen.

So a tangent I wanted to bring out of those "rather charged" threads an into its own.

Anybody else from NL on the board that knows more? I thought there was a "native" Newfie or two on the board?
 
From the own article you linked:

Active government involvement ended in the 1970s as the programme became increasingly unpopular. There was a lack of jobs in the receiving areas, promised industrial developments did not occur, and many of those who moved felt that they had been forced to leave their homes - if not by direct government pressure, then by that of others in the community. Moreover, the government had let it be known that services would be discontinued if the population of a community dropped below a certain level. Nevertheless, studies have shown that most - but by no means all - resettled families were satisfied with the move, citing such factors as better educational opportunities.
Regardless, it's clear there really aren't any other solutions. As was pointed out in the other thread, some of these towns have been essentially dead since the Eisenhower Administration. The loosening of regulations regarding coal hasn't brought the Koch brothers back to save these towns, because there are still easier veins to tap elsewhere. Other businesses don't want to invest in them because they are too remote and the population doesn't provide enough income to sustain the profitability (or even maintenance) of even basic services. These are boom towns that should have folded up shop long ago.

They can resent it all they like, but economic forces have made it clear that these towns aren't needed. And if anyone had a use for them beyond tugging at the heartstrings of voters, they'd have been made use of by now.
 
I agree that it's been kind of "we're OK" but you have to understand the attitudes of people around here. "We're OK" could mean anything from actually OK, to "at least we're not dead." Brutal sarcasm in other places is par the course out here. We literally have 100kph wind here (over 60mph) and it basically isn't mentioned. So the whole idea of that they were satisfied runs on how you ask the question, and what the responses actually mean.

And from actually talking to locals, the overall opinion of anybody you ever talk to is that it was horrible to do to the people.



So while you're right that there's tons of places that are non-viable, you start getting into really weird implications of a lot of "what government should/shouldn't" do arguments. And a LOT of them come off as cruel to the individuals if taken to where you're advocating. It gets scarily close (IMO) to "if it's not good for everybody, stop those others from being a drain on us." That gets bad, FAST.
 
I don't agree with forced resettlement at all. But maybe it really is time to take those Rust Belt towns out back and hit them over the head with a shovel. I've visited similar towns on the road to Abilene and Waco (places like Marlin, Hico, and Cameron; look them up). Main Street looks like the set of Escape From New York. The sad thing is those towns used to be prosperous. They used to have classy train stations and monuments to their local baseball team and to their servicemen who signed up for the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Now the train stations are shuttered and stripped of copper wiring, the baseball teams have been defunct since the '70s, and their war memorials have fallen into disrepair. There might be a tiny plaque for the homegrown servicemen who got killed in Afghanistan but that's it. For Slocum, TX, its only historical significance is being the site of a massacre of local blacks during Jim Crow.

And yet politicians swarm into those communities for media events every election season. They attend worship service at a local church and make sure the photographers get the right angle so the politician looks illuminated with the stained glass behind them. Then they show up at the local diner and rub shoulders with carefully selected locals (the ones who aren't strung out). Or they pretend to volunteer at the local soup kitchen while the security detail keeps the smelly poors away from them. They'll cap off their visit at the local VFW hall and promise that they'll bring back jobs, get the town back on its feet, and preserve this piece of Americana.

But there is no culture to preserve. There is no legacy. There are just abandoned shops, crumbling roads, and seniors and disabled vets who can't get out. Their kids and grandkids take off as soon as they graduate from high school. It's done and they should just let it go already.
 
I don't agree with forced resettlement at all. But maybe it really is time to take those Rust Belt towns out back and hit them over the head with a shovel. I've visited similar towns on the road to Abilene and Waco (places like Marlin, Hico, and Cameron; look them up). Main Street looks like the set of Escape From New York. The sad thing is those towns used to be prosperous. They used to have classy train stations and monuments to their local baseball team and to their servicemen who signed up for the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Now the train stations are shuttered and stripped of copper wiring, the baseball teams have been defunct since the '70s, and their war memorials have fallen into disrepair. There might be a tiny plaque for the homegrown servicemen who got killed in Afghanistan but that's it. For Slocum, TX, its only historical significance is being the site of a massacre of local blacks during Jim Crow.

And yet politicians swarm into those communities for media events every election season. They attend worship service at a local church and make sure the photographers get the right angle so the politician looks illuminated with the stained glass behind them. Then they show up at the local diner and rub shoulders with carefully selected locals (the ones who aren't strung out). Or they pretend to volunteer at the local soup kitchen while the security detail keeps the smelly poors away from them. They'll cap off their visit at the local VFW hall and promise that they'll bring back jobs, get the town back on its feet, and preserve this piece of Americana.

But there is no culture to preserve. There is no legacy. There are just abandoned shops, crumbling roads, and seniors and disabled vets who can't get out. Their kids and grandkids take off as soon as they graduate from high school. It's done and they should just let it go already.
The Fast Car has killed small town Texas. And the internet will finish the job soon.
 
The Fast Car has killed small town Texas. And the internet will finish the job soon.
It's pretty much done that to large parts of rural Ohio. The only towns that are still around are the big cities (Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland), factory towns (Lima, Marysville), towns with big regional draws (Toledo, Circleville), and small clusters built around truck stops. Everything else is farmland, wild growth, and dying small towns.
 
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