America is a sick society

[Eric the Green]

(12-17-2016, 10:28 AM)Odin Wrote: Technology is advancing too quickly for people to culturally adapt. A big reason for the angst in rural America and in the Rust Belt is people simply being unable to comprehend automation and it's ultimate end-game. Americans are raised to believe that one must earn one's money through hard work, and that ever since WW2 we have been raised to expect a good-paying job to be our birthright, even for those people who are not capable of higher education.

At the same time, a lot of these people are stuck where they are, their wealth is tied up in their houses and good luck trying to sell a house in a small rust belt town, nobody want to move to those places, which makes all the talking points about how they should just move downright tone-deaf and just increases the resentment against the "educated elites".

Then mix this together with people having chronic pain as a result of a lifetime of blue collar work, which then leads these people to end up addicted to opioid painkillers.

People might not tell them that they "should" move, that's their decision; but I still wonder why so many people stay in these places; enough to elect the new Liar in Chief who spouted slogans that appealed to them. Sometimes, if you have nothing, one would think it's time to consider moving to a place where there's more opportunity, and more life, and just start over. As Bob Dylan said in "Like a Rolling Stone," "when you got nothing, you've got nothing to lose."