I know folks on the right screamed about the 'welfare queens' living on the tax payers' dime in the inner cities for generation after generation. In reality, this was a coded attack against blacks, and the majority of the claims were hyperbole.
But now the left has begun making the same mean-spirited attacks on uneducated whites from Appalachia, the Midwest, and the south.
Both types of stereotypes are annoying to hear repeated again and again.
If the residents refuse that sort of help and instead demand that the government somehow make the old mines profitable again, then one may indulge in some exasperated eyeball-rolling and mockery, but I'm trying not to do that preemptively.
https://thinkprogress.org/appalachia-used-to-be-a-democratic...
"Shame" is defined as "a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior." Teaching people to feel shame for conduct like lying, cheating, and stealing is an important tool societies use to enforce social norms in situations (such as with young people), where resort to legal action would be excessive and harmful.
It works at a macro level too. Consider this article: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25947984 ("Child Labor: India's Hidden Shame"). The word succinctly captures the international community's disapproval of certain practices that are common in certain places, with the implication that continuation of those practices will meet with continued disapproval from international peers. Again, that's an important social tool at the international level.
If you're living off of government assistance and vote Republican while Republicans are constantly talking about stripping away said assistance programs, you absolutely deserve whatever happens to you. I have zero sympathy for you. You made your bed, now you get to sleep in it.
The only people I will have sympathy for are the children who have parents that are too dumb to see through the bullshit spewed by Fox, InfoWars, Breitbart, etc, and people that vote Democrat because they know better, but end up getting screwed by the Republicans that don't.
This isn't a case of both sides do it at all.
This economic transition will eventually effect everyone. Everyone. These people are just at the front end of it.
Also, if you compare the rate of job displacement right now with technology compared to say the early 20th century where a majority of the jobs that existed 50 years prior were "destroyed", then it doesn't seem like we're at much of an inflection point.
More likely, because we have development policies that make it hard/expensive to move, we're not putting people in the new jobs like we used to--this has down the line effects of slowing growth because the workers who are also consumers aren't spending what they could have.
Say that in another thirty years, though. You're referring to billions of people in countries that haven't yet entered a post-industrial economic situation. Are those billions any safer than the millions in the U.S. who've fallen out of it?
