Poverty in West Virginia coal country

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Website owner:  James Miller

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I just watched the YouTube video

I went to the poorest county in America Nick Johnson

It was about people living in the town of Welch in McDowell county, West Virginia — coal mining country. A lot of the people there are on welfare and drug addiction is a big problem. So what is going on here and what is the problem? Well, the coal mines closed down and put everyone out of work. That was years ago. What keeps them from leaving the area and finding work somewhere else? I would say that a big part of the problem is welfare. People would just prefer to live on welfare than to work. Living off the government is a temptation they just can’t resist. And they learned that doctors would very easily prescribe for them pain medicines that worked so wonderfully and made them feel so good which were in fact highly addictive opioids. A very large percentage of the people are now hooked on drugs. And I suspect that a really big part of the problem is poor education. I suspect the schools there are probably very poor. The schools are perhaps so poor as to be mainly just doing babysitting instead of teaching. I have some perspective on this problem. I own a farm in the coal country of southwest Virginia. For about ten years we had a hillbilly family living rent-free on our farm. It was husband, wife, and twelve children. The older children were in their twenties and the youngest was a baby. Several were school aged but they didn’t go to school. Why didn’t they go to school? They didn’t like school and their parents didn’t make them go. I doubt that any of the children ever learned to read or write. I don’t know how much schooling their parents had but they obviously didn’t value schooling or appreciate how important it is to a good, happy and productive life in our modern society. It is my guess that the most of the children are now probably on welfare along with all of their children. One of the children, a young girl who was a teenager when we knew her, is now dead. She died of a drug overdose. The oldest boy was an alcoholic and I think I was told he was dead.

We live in a world of foolishness. Nothing is as it ought to be. The government squanders money as if it were water. Fools reign. The wicked and immoral rule.

I do think the orientals have one thing figured out. They understand the value of education and push their children to study and do well in school. Their children do excel in school and it is not accident.

19 Mar 2023