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[Lord Shonus]

I was aghast because I thought you meant the author Steven King.  Anyway, I doubt anything bad is going to happen to him.  My friend on small town America: "They aren't actually against welfare because a lot of them are on welfare.  They're just against black people having welfare."

Actually, often as not, they genuinely don't understand that what they get is welfare. You see the same thing with public healthcare and insurance. The propaganda about muh socialism is genuinely that thorough. That's how you get situations like 'round here where tens of thousands of people insured through the state and ACA voted for a governor who promised to strip them of it, because they didn't recognized that their public coverage was "Obamacare".

They're not racist, just ignorant and stupid.

The racists are the well-off white folks going off about welfare queens &c., and believe you me, there's plenty of that behind closed doors.

This is correct. When a lot of folks demand welfare reform and cuts, they are doing so under the impression that people are refusing to work because not working gets them extremely lavish benefits via fraud. Very few genuinely object to poor families getting assistance with basic groceries - but are absolutely convinced that most of those benefits are used on luxury foods (prime steak and lobster are commonly cited) or are traded for money to buy cheap booze and drugs. They don't have a problem with somebody that can't walk getting money to compensate for not being able to work- but are certain that most people claiming disability are faking it, or have a "disability" that is incredibly superficial (like Restless Leg Syndrome) or "self-inflicted" (addiction). They don't see the cities themselves, so they rely on what they see on the news and what trusted politicians tell them - and don't want to admit that those sources are lying to them.

This is similar to why so many small-town folk oppose unions. Between smaller companies being much more common in such areas and a much smaller labor pool (despite high unemployment in such areas, finding a qualified worker for a lot of tasks is not easy), employees have considerably better personal relationships with their superiors on the one hand (if your boss went to the same school as you did and grew up two blocks over, they tend to treat you as a person more often), and more clout on the other (because you're much harder to replace). The notion of how powerless the ordinary worker is in a city environment where the labor pool is essentially limitless and employees are seen as nothing more than parasitical cogs in the machine is completely outside their worldview. So when the politicans tell them that people only join unions to get more than what is deserved, they believe it.

[Frumple]

... mind you, there very much is a very, very large streak of racism involved there. Living around here, you notice how oddly consistent it is when folks talk about welfare fraud and whatnot they don't tend to mention when their cousin is doing it, or fred down the street or some shit, but would you look at that just as you're driving by a predominately black neighborhood the subject somehow gets brought up. Weird how driving by the trailer park don't prompt the same sort of discussion.

Kinda' like how there's a hell of a lot of poor as shit white folk out here and weirdly enough it's at least a plurality of the drug busts and whatnot that involve them, but it's always ghettos and black neighborhoods that have the drug and poverty problem. Lenny or whoever the hell is just down on their luck, y'know? Good people, not like those folks across town (coincidentally, said folks tend to be black or hispanic or whatev'). And yeah, the trash collector's dealing dope from the garbage truck but it's the non-white feller walking down the street that has people talking about the latest trafficking trends. Not the city officials literally making drug deals from the front seat of gov't owned vehicles.

For what little it's worth, I'm relatively sure a lot of it is fairly subconscious. Not explicit, aware racism, but that insidious sort of shit that has you casually using racial slurs because it's normal for the local dialect (there's a fairly well known variant of jury rigging that it took me until my mid to late teens to notice what the hell I was actually saying, ferex), or looking at two areas with similar economic/criminal/etc. setups but notably dissimilar demographic ones rather differently because everyone around you has been doing it most your life. Lotta' people I've met are racist as fuck but will swear up and down they ain't, and even believe it, as near as I can tell. They just don't quite grok that all that other stuff they spit vitriol about happens to have a demographic slant, and lo' and behold the story's always different when the shoe gets on the other colored foot.

[TheDarkStar]

I've spent a few years in the Deep South too (luckily I'm far away from it now) and I saw pretty much exactly what Frumple described. Part of the problem is that corruption is entrenched literally everywhere and people are so used to it that they don't think it's worth the effort to fight it. Bureaucracy might be a nightmare, but corrupt bureaucracy is even worse because you have to pay 10x as much money for stuff to get done 10x slower. Important forms would be lost, DMVs and other important buildings were rare and hard to get to, and arbitrary charges were common. I've heard of school districts threatening to not admit students for arbitrary reasons. Basically, everything is set up so that someone can be consciously or subconsciously racist with no repercussions. (It doesn't do good things for people's view of government, either; if the national government were as corrupt as the local and state governments I saw I would lean anarchist.)

People I met said otherwise, though. They were very loudly NOT RACIST and would get really offended if you pointed out that the poor part of town was predominately black or that the town boundaries were originally set up to only include richer white people. Or if you pointed out that people would actively self-segregate themselves by only doing things that people of the same race did. Admittedly, my town was a bit weird because in addition to having tons of white and black people there were tons of South Koreans, but it just meant that there were three divisions rather than two.

People would talk about "poor people" as a kind of euphemism for black people (since blacks in the area were generally poorer) but really did not seem to understand what it was like to actually be poor. Or what's actually useful for helping those people not be poor. Hint: funding education and other public services from sales tax, setting sales tax really high, and then drawing county boundaries so that everyone in a county has roughly the same socioeconomic status is not effective. Rich counties stay rich or get richer (as more people move to them) and poor counties stay poor or get poorer (as people leave and there are fewer resources from taxes).

[smjjames]

When was the last time that county boundaries were redrawn? Probably the last time a new state was born?

As attractive as redrawing counties might seem, there's a whole HOST of things that would be affected by those changes, so, it's not really logistically feaseable.

[EnigmaticHat]

You don't need to redraw county lines to fix education.  You just need to make more of the school's funding come from higher levels of government.  State > County > School District.  I don't know if Federal > State, that's a huge discussion.  But funding schools out of school district level poverty taxes does nothing but perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

Edit: When I say "more", my ideal is that all K-12 public school budgets should come from a state pool.  School districts shouldn't gather taxes and if county/city level government gathers taxes for education they should transfer it up into the state pool rather than down into local school districts.  Even if you mandate equal funding per student at the county level you open communities up to a Detroit situation where one area has its schools gutted.  And replaced by charter schools lobbied for by Betsy Devos but that's another conversation

[Lord Shonus]

In Ohio having the schools funded by sales tax would be an improvement. Here the funding comes from property tax, which not only greatly upsets homeowners who feel that they are unfairly sharing the burden, but also completely fails to provide the schools in the greatest need from funding. Half of the schools in this city can barely keep the lights on, and have half as many teachers as they should have, because the inner city slumlords that make up the district won't pay their taxes (since the county doesn't want to go into the real estate business they won't confiscate property unless it can be disposed of very quickly) and the dwindling number of homeowners can't afford to. Meanwhile the schools in the wealthier districts have funding falling out their ass, far more than they could ever use.

[smjjames]

Maybe an idea would be to have the excess money in the rich schools be directed to those that need it? I know it's not exactly a radical idea and theres also the question of reliably enforcing it, especially in a county that apparently doesn't mind letting 'slumlords' not pay taxes and not get into real estate.

[EnigmaticHat]

Oh and since we've been so down on southern states lately, something good done by the state of Texas.  They're in the southwest but I think its fair to count them as southern.   Anyway, in Texas they have the Robin Hood laws which are meant to equalize funding between all public schools.  I don't know if they were successful but I've anecdotally heard good things.  The change happened because Texas was barely funding schools at the state level (which is normal) but their state constitution says that the state itself is responsible for an efficient education system.  Someone sued them over it and they lost, so they had to make a new system.  From the wikipedia article:

Passage came in 1993, after the Texas Supreme Court threw out two attempts by the Texas Legislature to write a constitutional school-finance system. The Legislature finally passed a funding plan that was accepted by the Court, in 1993.
The goal of the system was an attempt to prohibit wealthy districts from being able to raise revenue to provide benefits which poorer districts could not. Two provisions of the legislation would seek to implement this:
First, school districts were strictly limited to a $1.50 tax rate per $100 assessed property value for maintenance and operations (M&O). School districts already over the limit could continue at that rate. The tax rate was not capped for additional taxes assessed to pay for bond packages for facility construction or renovation.
Second, notwithstanding the rate cap, districts were limited to M&O revenues which did not exceed a statewide rate per student. Any revenues in excess of the statewide rate were "recaptured" by the state and given to poorer districts. The wealthy district could, in lieu of state recapture, enter into an agreement with a poorer district to transfer funds. It is this portion of the legislation which earned it the "Robin Hood" name.

[Egan_BW]

Texas is pretty conservative at the state level, right? And "Robin Hood" seems pretty synonymous with "taking from the rich and giving to the poor", which is an idea that usually seems to get Republicans screaming about socialism or whatever. Hmm.
Perhaps if we dress up socialized healthcare as "Robin Hood" healthcare Congress will pass it?

[Frumple]

It's more purple than it's been at roughly any point in my life, but yeah, on the net it's still fairly red. That said, texas isn't so much southwest as south, period. The thing's bloody huge. Chunks are southwest, south, (barely) southeast (I'm about as southeast as you get without actually being in south/central florida, and the far east bits of texas are a day trip for me if I'm feeling real frisky), probably midwest... seriously, texas may be pretty empty on the whole but it's friggin' gigantic.

People would talk about "poor people" as a kind of euphemism for black people (since blacks in the area were generally poorer) but really did not seem to understand what it was like to actually be poor.

This, though... I'd say a lot of it isn't really not understanding what it's like to be poor. Again, poverty and demographics being what it is* in a lot of these areas, there's very much a sizable white population that is entirely ruddy aware of what it's like to actually be poor, full on dirt floor poverty (seriously, I've had family in the education system help out the occasional white student living like that over the years), because they've been living it often enough for generations. The realities of what poverty entails are something rather intensely felt by a great deal of non-minority southerners, heh.

More what's going on there, imo, is just some kind of... disconnect? Like, you question individual things regarding a person's economic status, and everything will come up poor as shit, and either no better or outright worse than conditions in the more worse off predominately black/etc. neighborhoods in the region. Try to get folks to acknowledge they're in roughly the same situation as a ghettocritter or dealing with effectively or literally the same problems as the local black areas and you get stonewalled. It's normalized for 'em, for want of a better way of putting it. The stuff involved with that are either no major issue or outright virtue when a white feller's doing it, but spat on when it's not. That conditions and issues shared are near enough to identical it barely makes a difference is danced around at best, but that they're shared isn't really questionable. Right down to the bureaucratic corruption white people around here like to accuse black gov't staff of, heh.

You kinda' get the feeling that richer folks seem to think that poverty is some kind of equalizer or somethin', sometimes, I guess? That racist pathos would be less when people are getting shat on to the same-ish degree. And like, heeeellllllll naw. You might be rotting in a trailer park and on five different kinds of government assistance but at least you ain't black and you ain't admitting you're on the dole even if it's the only thing keep your kids fed and sheltered. Buncha' stuff like that. Hard to articulate much better at twenty 'til five in the morning, ahaha.

* Town I've spent much my life in is like 40% below the line, and had a census a few years back memorable for finding a black population of 1, ferex. Not 1 percent. Literally one dude, out of a population of a few hundred. Something like maybe a dozen anything else non-white. Plenty of folks 'round these parts that make an idle hobby of pissing on poor people that are, in fact, themselves poor people, and just have a great deal of trouble quite making the connection that they're pissing on their own foot in the process.

E: It's a representative example, but I had family (finally, they kinda' needed it pretty badly) get on food stamps in the last few months. Discussion among others basically amounted to, "They got it." and nothing else. No comment on virtue, no repudiation, no etc., so forth, so on. Just a fact, basically. Thing that happens, no need for anything else said. Meanwhile you talk about a local non-white family getting the same thing and the discussion likes to end up rather differently. System exploitation and abuse, trading steak for drugs, etc., etc. The usual passel of shite.

[origamiscienceguy]

I live in Texas, and from what I know, I think it's allocations of Tax money is pretty well handled. For example, the gasoline tax pays for the roads, and there is no income tax (Just a high property and sales tax.). It's obviously not perfect, and the Robin Hood laws have been taken advantage of several times already, but I think it will be dealt with.

[Frumple]

... would have to look into it to be sure, but I'm not sure two (gas, sales) of the immediate ones that come to mind being prime examples of regressive taxes is a good sign, heh.

[origamiscienceguy]

Having gasoline taxes pay for the roads means that the people who use the roads the most are the ones who pay the most for it. Why is that regressive? Even the hillbilly's that don't normally pay taxes still pay for the roads.

[scriver]

When you yourself is stuck in the mud, it's more important than ever to still have your dignity. The easiest way to feel like you have dignity is to look down on another group. Even if they have it just as muddy as you, if you draw a line between them and yourself you can act as if they are worse off so you can feel better. I wouldn't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if poor black people act the same way against "the white trash".

The problem is the lack of solidarity over the racial lines in the US. I don't know ML King much off-hand, but from what I remember, he also identified this rift as an obstacle to a better future. If I remember correctly, when he was assassinated, he was just about to embark on another March march on Washington as part of a campaign to create a unified movement of all poor people, regardless of race.

[Criptfeind]

Having gasoline taxes pay for the roads means that the people who use the roads the most are the ones who pay the most for it. Why is that regressive? Even the hillbilly's that don't normally pay taxes still pay for the roads.

I believe a regressive tax is essentially a tax where you pay proportionately less the more you have. Which would mean gas tax is hugely regressive, because you always pay the same no matter how much money you make. IE: You could be paying 20%* of your income in gas tax, or 0.000000000000000000000000000002% your income in gas tax. Of course, actually driving more or less changes the amount you pay as well, which seems fair on the outset, but lot of people have required amount of driving they need to do, to get from their job and back.

I spent like 20 minutes writing a cute parable here, but basically I'm going to delete it to say that although it seems like everyone benefits from a road equally, they get to drive on it, the reality is that roads are a requirement for our economy, and part of the cost of said economy. Which means that when everyone pays into them equally, but then the outcome of the economy that requires them is unequal, that means you're asking people to pay into the roads in an uneven manner, even though it looks fair on the outset.

*I think the gas tax is like 17% or something, which means you'd have to be buying over 100% of your incomes worth of gas to be paying 20%, but in capitalist America, anything is possible!