KY-5 and Pikeville have suffered the perfect storm of globalization over the past forty years of neoliberalization. Because of offshoring, automation of coal mining in deep mines plus the mortal sin that is mountaintop removal, and the decline in union coal jobs, the people of KY-5 are poorer and sicker than in any other Congressional District in the United States. Over the past 20+ years the opioid epidemic has taken a further grim toll on KY-5. Thus, the people of KY-5 do generally believe "the government has let them down and are desperate for change." As well they should be, and they are not alone. In a poll taken 1964, 77% of the American people trusted the federal government to do the right thing. In 2023 that number had declined to 16% which is no surprise to anyone except, apparently, national Democrats.
The key to Stolen Pride is stated early and explicitly:
Just as Americans live in a material economy, we also live in an equally important pride economy. For while pride and shame feel personal, the roots of these feelings lie in larger social circumstances…I discovered many bases of pride – regional pride, work ethic pride, bad boy pride, recovery pride. But what happens when a community's primary source of pride – well-paid jobs – leaves, or when old skills and folkways become useless and devalued. What happens – in the absence of real solutions to real solutions – feelings of loss and shame become the "ore" for which politicians prospect? (italics in original)....With the loss of well-paying coal mining jobs in the KY-5 economy, "structural shame," which is beyond the control of the individual, has led directly to "personal shame." [1] As ARH notes, the invisible hand of Adam Smith "has been the hardest on the populations who believe in that hand," i.e., the working people of KY-5 and the rest of the nation who view their success or failure in personal terms, and "easier (for now) on populations (the PMC) that call (insincerely) for activist welfare policies as part of the mix" of an effective politics.
Structural shame leads to "personal shame." The loss of a good job (which one "never gets over" in the words of one Pikeville resident) leads almost always downhill, as the next job cannot support the worker's family, who then leaves for work elsewhere as a last resort. The worker most often returns as a failure and may begin using drugs. This exacerbates the sense of personal shame. S/he is then called a deadbeat because is not supporting his or her family. [2] And so it goes. But not always........the working class has not so much moved right as it has moved away from the feckless politics embodied by the current iteration of a Democratic Party that resembles nothing a pre-Nixon Democrat would recognize as their political party.....
This list is only for announcements, so you may not post. To contact the list manager, write to junez [at] njfac.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "goodjobs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to goodjobsforall+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goodjobsforall/CAPV%3DhmCarjEF3KfWrgABQv5-Kq7MB%3D-8w2L%3DkU2A-7464n97sg%40mail.gmail.com.
