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Rich Men North of Richmond
I don't think I've seen this discussed here yet? I have to admit, the song has grown on me. It really feels authentic in a way that say, Try That in a Small Town doesn't.
My family's background is roughly speaking confederate descendants who roamed around after the war with about three separate main branches settling between Appalachia and Texas.
As other comments have pointed out "whiny"-ness, let me double down that - this song continues a long tradition of folk/country/bluegrass fatalism that I have little tolerance for. "My daddy grew up here and lived as a poor man, and so did my grandaddy, and so did his daddy...but we all grew up right, and I'm gonna stay here and be just like them!" .... Why / how is inter-generational poverty a virtue? If it's the case that your in such an awful economic situation that you can't advance your lot in life more than several generations before you, you have all of my sympathy. And that same sympathy disappears the second you turn that situation into some sort of battle cry of authenticity or moral superiority.
There's something to be said here about crabs in a bucket, and how it seems like - for more than a few cultures inspired by Southern Clanish / Honor cultures - the only way to prove authenticity and adherence to "traditional" (and, therefore, right) cultural norms is through demonstrated poverty and dysfunction.
Why is that the goal? Sure, I have a deep appreciation for stories about the dust bowl I heard growing up, but I have more appreciation that my Dad and Uncles used the G.I. bill to get STEM degrees and were also willing to move the family around for job opportunities. Law obeying, studious, industrious, and economically astute seems like a good rubric for "Rasied 'Em Right!" when compared with impulsive, prone to violence, substance abuse, obsessed with vague notions of honor but .... geographically consistent?
The unfortunate fact is that your suffering alone yields no accolade or social currency. No one cares. The best you can do, as this song tries to, is whip up some strong emotionalism and try to trade-the-currency for moral deference. But that exchange rate is never strong and that commodity expiry is measured in hours.
Why should smart people move away from small towns, especially now that the Internet has come? It’s not the dirt that’s dumb in rural communities, and it’s not the water which makes addicts of the townsfolk.
As for geographic consistency, their kin died for that ground within two or three centuries of folk memory. It’s a far more precious price than a mortgage. (I can’t say I feel that same drive myself, as my parents’ families are from Ohio and Michigan, yet we live in a huge modern city in New Mexico. I can, however, sympathize with Barney Google and Snuffy Smith over in the holler by the crick.)
They don't 'have' to move, but if they stay, complaining about a lack of jobs is questionable. The Amish stay in their small towns, but they 'make their own luck' and configure their economies to work for them. There is no reason why Appalachians could not theoretically pursue localized, autarkic economies that maintain their communities, but they don't, instead complaining when the large company in their town shuts down the factory or the mine and then refusing to leave.
And it has to be said that their ancestors, whom they venerate (eg. in the very song OP links) often moved for economic reasons. The Kevin Williamson argument is essentially that these small, economically unproductive communities can only survive because of welfare. Often in deprived communities, the main employers are the state (healthcare, government, schools) - all subsidized by state and federal government - and welfare, and that these are the only things keeping the economy going. Dollars only flow in through government. They are not self-sufficient in any way, but they preach a gospel of self-reliance, and that's hollow and hypocritical.
To elaborate on this, a town has to have an economic raison d'etre: Something they produce to export in order to get money to buy imports. A mining town might export minerals, a factory town might export manufactured goods, a farming town food, a tourist destination might "export" hotel and restaurant services. Everyone else earns money by by providing services to people who produce the exports, or by providing services to those people, and so forth. In principle you could have a small town supported by exporting things like software, but I don't know whether any such towns actually exist.
When a town no longer produces things to export, it no longer has a reason to exist. The sole service it provides to the outside world in exchange for money to buy imports with is qualifying for welfare.
People blame the government for not giving it a reason to exist, but if the government subsidizes unprofitable industries for the sake of propping up a town with no economic reason to exist, the residents are just LARPing at being productive. Maybe it's cheaper than just giving them straight-up welfare and getting nothing at all in exchange, but in the long run, this isn't good for anyone involved.
This has been eating at me since reading the ACX guest review of Jane Jacobs.
That review was incredible, and I've wanted to write a post on it since I read it. It suggests a lot of pointed questions about the nature of economics as a discipline.
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