Rural Towns Are Aging, Cash-Strapped and in Desperate Need of Workers
Rural Towns Are Aging, Cash-Strapped and in Desperate Need of Workers
With younger labor in short supply, aging workers often find themselves pulling double—or triple—duty to keep towns afloat
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Wow, a lot of assholes in the comments. Not everyone in rural towns is a right wing redneck. I'll take my small town of 12,000 people where my commute is 10 minutes by bike over a big city where my commute could be like 1-2 hours.
The small town a lot of my family lived in has literally nothing to do. Going to Walmart and teen pregnancy were basically the activities of choice. Now meth (and teen pregnancy, tbh) is the activity of choice because people are so fucking bored. You couldn't pay me to live there. Plus, the jobs that are available are almost universally garbage. It's great that you're happy there, but plenty of the people who live in those towns are miserable but don't have the ability to leave for some reason or another.
My town isn't big enough for a Walmart lol. People just hang out at Tim Hortons all day which I agree is lame as shit. But there's plenty to do if you like the outdoors and most of the stuff you can do in the big city you can do around here. It's just a longer drive. Like if want to see a movie it's about a 30 minute drive to the next town over. Laser tag and trampoline parks are like an hour.
I'd much rather have to travel long distances for recreational activities than for work. My kids actually get to play outside in nature, experience wildlife, eat fresh local produce, go swimming in beautiful lakes. I grew up here and in my teens I wanted to gtfo of this boring place to live in a big city. But as I grew older and spent time in those big cities I realized life was much better for me and my family here.
Lastly, your point about jobs is 100% correct. Jobs are shit, I'm just lucky we have a federal government office in our town where I can make a decent wage that's not adjusted for where I live.
Not everyone in rural towns is a right wing redneck
Not everyone, sure. Please post the name/location of your town so we can all have a look at it with Google Street View!
Why would anyone voluntarily doxx themselves on a platform full of angry extremists?
In a town of 17,000 people I don't think naming it will dox them. There's enough of a population there that they could be any number of hundreds of weirdos 🤣
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my town on Lemmy, but my town is much smaller than 17,000 people.
It's prejudice, plain and simple. They're ruled by their ignorant preconceptions based on the limited exposure they get online. Yes, there are shitty small towns, just like there are awful cities, but many small towns are amazing. These people wouldn't know, because they've never left their own neighborhood.