I want thank you cards from rural folks

[Zor Prime]

Oh Christ. You are a sad sack. And probably full of shit.

What's the matter, maga white trash real American white women don't don't do it for you? Walk the walk, even if you are probably an incel.

Bruh, I ain't never gotten laid just because some other dude permitted it unlike you. You bring up incel and trash when ... need I say more? Should I? Maybe it starts with an L. I'm fishing for it ... looo -- s ... ee rrrr .... OH! It's l-o-s-e-r. Hot damn, my rural edumacation finally paid off!

 

[pmv]

It's about time. Rural folks have been subsidized by the urban and xurban areas for so long and they are so damn ungrateful. Therefore they should be required to send folks in the cities at least one thank you card per year. A thanks for us subsidizing their lifestyles. I don't expect everyone to live in a city, but goddamnit, if you are going to be out in the sticks you need to give thanks to your providers. Instead they simply attack us and vote for the most horrific people and ideas. It's just so inconsiderate. Maybe if these regressives had to write a detailed thank you letter to us every year listing all the things our money makes possible for them, they'd start to get some sense into them, cause they ain't got much now.

We can shorten the list by only requiring Republican voters in the sticks to send thank you cards. They are the ones that are really unappreciative of the hands that feed them.

I feel similarly in this country, except rather than cards I want boxes of fresh, unpolluted, air and packages of silence and birdsong.

 

[pmv]

I would settle for them not bitching about city life online.

Yeah, that, and drop the racism (which is what complaints about the awfulness of cities often boil down to).

 

[Moonbeam]

Self hate is always looking to create a donkey to kick because, as we know, donkeys love to kick. You see that worthless piece of shit over there? By golly, it’s me.

 

[Zorba]

These arguments are so dumb, like farmers are giving away their crops out of the kindness of their heart. We literally pay them for their crops and livestock. Like a farmer could survive without selling what they produce, lol.

Some of the rural subsidies are actually food subsidies that lower food prices for everyone.

 

[zinfamous]

Alright, boys. Time to wrap up and close down all the farms throughout the countryside, MrSquished has got this and is serving sewer rat this evening at dinner.

non-rural corporations own those farms. the local "farmers" mostly lease all of what used to be their family land, and just maintain it for animal feed and energy production.

How much of the actual farmland in the middle of the country, which is basically monoculture, produces food for direct human use? Most states outside of these places have their own farms and they produce actual food that humans can eat.

 

[Zorba]

Who's going to make it if the world turns upside down, a farmer or (insert hundreds of other professions?) Take a guess who has an irreplaceable commodity.

I'd like to see the notion put into actual practice. Farmers stop selling their shit to anyone or anything to do with a large city and sit back and see what happens. Fun experiment don't you think. You know what would happen, right? It would be such a crisis that the government would intervene, that's how bad it would be.

I don't know about you but I'm so comfortable in knowing what the outcome would be that I would be willing to see it begin before the day is out. I'll be on the last plane out the local airport here tonight in California back to my property in West Virginia and watch the fireworks. I've got a cellar that doubles as a bunker with approx a year of canned goods. Let's do this for about 6, 8 months and comb over the results a year out and see what you have to say afterward.

This happened during the dust bowl. The city folks ended up owning the farms. American cities will always be able to find a source of food, because they are rich compared to the vast majority of the planet. With no customers most farmers would be behind on their mortgage after the first harvest.

 

[zinfamous]

I would if I could if not for primo California pussy. Imagine a guy being dictated by pussy. We all have our weaknesses. I do what I can to find loopholes and work around it. But it is on the radar.

JFC

 

[nOOky]

We live outside of the city limits of a small town. We have a well, septic, and LP for heat. City slickers have better internet, city sewer and water, electrical heat, the works. We can't run to the city council when we have to dig up our septic or drill a new well, and we still pay property taxes on yer damn school referendums and educating yer spoiled brats. Bite me, send me a card.

 

[pmv]

Some of the rural subsidies are actually food subsidies that lower food prices for everyone.

Do they, though? Maybe partially but it seems very complicated to me. At least in Europe it is (was, depending on what's happened with the CAP post-Brexit). Some subsidise exports only. Or they are paid _not_ to grow food, to keep prices high.

 

[pmv]

We live outside of the city limits of a small town. We have a well, septic, and LP for heat. City slickers have better internet, city sewer and water, electrical heat, the works. We can't run to the city council when we have to dig up our septic or drill a new well, and we still pay property taxes on yer damn school referendums and educating yer spoiled brats. Bite me, send me a card.

Well we get all those 'better' things because we enable them to be provided more efficiently, by living closer together. And put up with all the downsides of that, like noise, less personal space, and pollution.

Country people seem to want to keep to themselves all the upsdies of low-density living, like fresh air, nice views, lack of noise, etc, yet demand city people pay to remove the downsides, like the greater expense of providing services like the ones you mention.

Though ironically, the right-wing free-marketeers those country people tend to vote for, seem to end up undermining the very subsidies they demand, e.g. subsidising rural postal services. The response is usually "when we said we wanted people to have to face the cold winds of free-market competition, we didn't mean _us_"


I mean, it's complicated - there _are_ poor rural people. I think the types I most dislike are those who won't pick a side, who have two homes, one in the city and one in the country, and drive their oversized 4x4 and annoy everyone around them in both places.

 

[Brainonska511]

This has actually been shown true. A good example is looking at what would happen if you removed the Chicago metro from Illinois. Why would that ever happen you say? Because we have 20+ rural Illinois counties represented by Republican politicians who actively campaign on such a separation and claim that the rural areas are subsidizing liberal elites in the city. In reality, removing Chicago from Illinois would make Illinois one of the poorest states in the nation.

Furthermore, rural counties in Illinois get between $1.70 and $2.88 back in taxpayer dollars for every $1.00 they pay in. Urban and Suburban counties receive less than $1.00 in tax revenue for every $1.00 they put in.

Study: Chicago splitting from Illinois would be economic disaster

What would happen if Illinois split from Chicago? That's the question researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) are asking in a new study. The conclusion from researchers is that a breakup would cause an economic disaster for downstate, as the Chicago metropolitan area...

khqa.com

Not only are cities subsidizing rural areas (and that's fine), the denser areas also subsidize the suburban sprawl. There are some nice 3D maps of revenue and cost per acre showing how downtown and denser areas subsidize sprawling suburban infrastructure too.

 

[IronWing]

The vast majority of people living in rural areas are not farmers.

 

[Tsinni Dave]

Personally, if I could live the rest of my life without stepping foot inside a city I would be perfectly happy. I have to go work in a city next week for the first time in 13 years so I'll let you all know how much I despise the average human when I get back after being forced to interact with you for the duration.
As an aside, during the pandemic we worked overtime cutting down our trees to make sure people had those N95 masks and toilet paper you were all fighting over.
Our forests say "fuck you ungrateful fucks." Those 300 year old cedars deserved better than wiping your asses.

 

[pmv]

Personally, if I could live the rest of my life without stepping foot inside a city I would be perfectly happy.

I'm sure a lot of people would. Unfortunately it's not possible for the vast majority to do that - society would collapse.

Being able to live in the countryside is a luxury for a small elite and an unavoidable fact of life for an equally small group of the very poor.

 

[repoman0]

Personally, if I could live the rest of my life without stepping foot inside a city I would be perfectly happy. I have to go work in a city next week for the first time in 13 years so I'll let you all know how much I despise the average human when I get back after being forced to interact with you for the duration.
As an aside, during the pandemic we worked overtime cutting down our trees to make sure people had those N95 masks and toilet paper you were all fighting over.
Our forests say "fuck you ungrateful fucks." Those 300 year old cedars deserved better than wiping your asses.

The self righteous nonsense in this post is really funny considering rural resource use per capita is significantly higher than urban in the US.

 

[MrSquished]

Personally, if I could live the rest of my life without stepping foot inside a city I would be perfectly happy. I have to go work in a city next week for the first time in 13 years so I'll let you all know how much I despise the average human when I get back after being forced to interact with you for the duration.
As an aside, during the pandemic we worked overtime cutting down our trees to make sure people had those N95 masks and toilet paper you were all fighting over.
Our forests say "fuck you ungrateful fucks." Those 300 year old cedars deserved better than wiping your asses.

you don't wipe your asses out there? I'm guessing you didn't wear masks for other reasons, but that's your problem.

this explains a lot.

 

[MrSquished]

We live outside of the city limits of a small town. We have a well, septic, and LP for heat. City slickers have better internet, city sewer and water, electrical heat, the works. We can't run to the city council when we have to dig up our septic or drill a new well, and we still pay property taxes on yer damn school referendums and educating yer spoiled brats. Bite me, send me a card.

I don't think you understand the flow of money in this country, how it works. from urban to rural, not the other way around. all I'm saying is be grateful. Why bite the hands that feed you?

 

[Tsinni Dave]

you don't wipe your asses out there? I'm guessing you didn't wear masks for other reasons, but that's your problem.

this explains a lot.

Wow you're an petty asshole.

 

[MrSquished]

Wow you're an petty asshole.

You are bitching at us for wiping our asses and killing the trees, so I'm wondering what you do differently to be able to hold that position. Seriously. What do you wipe your assess with? If it's still toilet paper, then how the hell do you think you can criticize other people for ass wiping?

I don't mind if you don't want to live in a city, that was never a point here. Just be grateful for those that do and provide the money to subsidize rural areas.

 

[Tsinni Dave]

The self righteous nonsense in this post is really funny considering rural resource use per capita is significantly higher than urban in the US.

Rural resources are resources used by everyone as well as urban resources, and I'm not american.

 

[pmv]

Rural resources are resources used by everyone as well as urban resources, and I'm not american.

That doesn't address the point though - providing services to rural people takes more resources than it does for urban dwellers, because of the greater distances involved. Not sure it matters if you are American or not, the same pattern plays out in much of the world.

 

[nOOky]

I don't think you understand the flow of money in this country, how it works. from urban to rural, not the other way around. all I'm saying is be grateful. Why bite the hands that feed you?

In our situation my wife owns a business in the city, and I guarantee you she pays plenty of federal, state, property, and local taxes. Most rural dwellers have great jobs in the city, but we can only tolerate the mess during our working hours.
I want my card.

 

[brycejones]

We live outside of the city limits of a small town. We have a well, septic, and LP for heat. City slickers have better internet, city sewer and water, electrical heat, the works. We can't run to the city council when we have to dig up our septic or drill a new well, and we still pay property taxes on yer damn school referendums and educating yer spoiled brats. Bite me, send me a card.

You don’t pay for city services and you are in the school district which means you get to vote on school referendums so what are you whining about?

 

[MrSquished]

In our situation my wife owns a business in the city, and I guarantee you she pays plenty of federal, state, property, and local taxes. Most rural dwellers have great jobs in the city, but we can only tolerate the mess during our working hours.
I want my card.

Congratulations on contributing.

But the simple fact is that all studies about this show money goes from more densely populated areas to sustain life in rural areas. Well that is a completely fine concept except it seems a lot of rural folks these days are very ungrateful.

Appreciate your personal situation but it doesn't change the facts and the numbers. No amount of micro anecdotes changes the macro economic picture here. Good luck with that!