Here is an interesting artist that's new to me, and I wanted to share his music.

So Orpheus 10,  I usually read your posts, but I read a lot of posts and rarely comment. I do believe you explained both "there's no most important instrument" and poverty vs affluent very well. Doesn't mean there aren't any thugs. But thugs come in every race, nationality and shape. And yes the whole country is falling apart. But we don't seem to care. 

@rok2id 

"When jobs were lost in the north, they didn’t follow the new work"

Where exactly was that new work?

@rok2id 

"St Louis has suffered the fate of all large cities."

An incredibly gross over-simplification.  Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Denver, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, San Diego - need I go on?  Stick with music rok - your understanding of American sociology is wanting.


BTW, I've driven I-70 across Kansas.  I felt like I was on a treadmill, with the same desolate landscape punctuated by a town with a grain silo on the north side about every 11 miles.  I'm glad we have Kansas, and I'm glad people live there and farm.  But I have no use for driving through it again, and I'm not sure I get your affinity for it.

@orpheus10 

"In one word, what took St. Louis down was "JOBS"; when the going got rough, the tough got going and left, leaving the majority of neighborhoods to those least able to fend for themselves, and crime was for some, the only viable way to make a living."

Bingo - here's someone who gets it.

Here in Baltimore, we lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs between 1950 and 1960, and you don't need 3 guesses to figure out which race got laid off first.  Whites stayed employed and used their money to move away (after housing discrimination was outlawed) - leaving the unemployed in the crappy city housing that was all they could afford.

Capitalism moves on to the next best thing wherever it's happening, sometimes leaving millions of the least skilled (and intentionally marginalized) behind.  Whether it's steel or coal, ex-employees and their families are left in the vacuum with little means of moving with the investment capital.

***** Where exactly was that new work?*****

Well, a major source of the old work was Auto, Steel, Coal, Major home appliances and the industries that supported them.

A lot of this work went to third world countries with slave labor wages, and some of it went down South.  Corvettes in Kentucky, Ford Fusions in Mexico.

And for some inexplicable reason, we gave a large slice of the auto industry to that parasite called Canada.

We now have BMW plants in South Carolina, Mercedes in Alabama, Nissan in Mississippi, Toyota in Mississippi and Kentucky.  GM in China.  VW is also in this country.  Not sure about Honda.  The list goes on, but these are the major players.

That's the old work.   The new work?  Whatever replaced those jobs.  I am retired and no longer in the job market, if I were I could be more precise.

So maybe the smart thing to do would have been  to recognize that although great grand father worked at Ford, and grand dad worked at GM and father worked at Ford, all in Detroit and the Midwest  just maybe, those jobs would not be there for you.   Remember youth unemployment is the problem

You do not have to be a weather man to know which way the wind is blowing.

And to please the OP, there are white folks in KY and WV waiting on coal to come back.   The prez said he would do it.   Forget for a moment, that the entire world is going away from coal.

Inertia is a bitch!!!  Required reading : "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance

Cheers