Why West Virginia is so Poor 

But when the entire state relied on coal for so long and so heavily, it is not a surprise that their senator is a representative of the industry so many there are involved in.

@@pavuk357 It's not surprising insofar as American politicians tend to all be representatives of the upper class rather than working class, but a senator that was a coal miner would act far differently from a mine owner.

It has nothing to do with the Senator. There is just no financial incentive to transition. There is market demand for coal, and so coal shall be supplied. No amount of policy can change that. WV could elect Bernie Sanders and it'll still be selling coal, so long as it can do so cost-competitively with other States.

@@2x2is22 It kinda does have something to do with the senator. It's the senator that can obstruct bills until green energy initiatives are removed and more fossil fuel subsidies are added.

Make that Senator and Governor

lol "I was worried".

I’m from Florida, I understand completely.

@@joesickler5888I just moved from massachusetts to florida. I love being a florida man

California Nipple

I agree with you.

They could and should invest in other business sectors rather than coal mining. They could try to become silicon valley if they choose to.

Well said. I'm from Nebraska and we have the same problems. I personally have done it myself, had to do what I had too.

I think it really would be an unprecedented reality, for any major company to chose the rugged landscape of this mountain region, over far cheaper logistics. You would in fact have to not only build factories but entire cities to make it a worthwhile longterm play @@uykarl

Thats because the colleges in WV make a ton of money. Look up how many WVU staff make well over 5 million a year.

@@johnwalker5622 Umm... one. Wren Baker is the highest paid employee at 7.1 million. Followed by Neal Brown at 3.98 mill. Then Josh Eilert at 1.5 million. After that we get into administrators. Clay Marsh is just over a million and Gee is at 800 thousand. Then it's a bunch of coaches and administrators. Kellogg is the highest paid headcoach at 550 and Mazey at around 500. The football team has some assistants though that are in the 700 range.

Because you allowed your voters to be militantly turned against a political party by the current ruling political party, so there’s no longer any competition for votes. It’s no different than what happens in the ghetto, except you’re white people.

Stop voting for republicants.

They don't. WV is 98% demonrat, has been for decades. The corruption is from the left and they still vote for it for welfair. without welfair the state would starve to death. The left has WV trapped and keep them trapped.@@treflips2158

All prisons are for profit. Everyone who works there is making a profit, they get paid.

​@@treflips2158 Or, vote for moderate Republicans.

Yeah I was way more surprised that Slovakias life expectancy was as low as WVs than the reverse.

I agree. There are also some mistakes/misleading information here. West Virginia wasn't even a state till 1863, yet this video presents it as one as far back as 1854? (Using modern borders as well...) West Virginia became a state during the Civil War. A lot of critical information and context are very carelessly left out, not just regarding borders. Using those contrived comparisons to other countries is just the tip of the iceberg regarding all the things wrong with this video.

Its not its a bit higher in słowakia 79 i think i live in Poland

Hey, mentioning Panama without missing the cost-of-living erases serious nuance. Bet those West Virginians aren't paying Panama prices but are paying Dollar General prices.

A PPP adjusted figure would have been more appropriate there.

don't you get free college from your dad's military benefit? I thought dependents of veterans get free college?

@@NA-tu7nti wish that was the case

@@NA-tu7ntthere are some benefits you can get but a far cry from free college. Really only the person in the military can sometimes get subsidenced college

My grandfather was from Wales, he joined the British Navy for WW1 then migrated to Australia. He didn't want to go into the mines.

@@Joe__M I looked it up, in California it says they do, and 150 credits in Texas, maybe these programs werent around back then.

Kentucky relies less on coal economy than west virginia.

The resource Curse. Or Dutch disease is so real

In Australia the paradox is if you are right now a coal miner you are probably well paid, but former coal towns from decades ago tend to be very poor and filled with welfare dependent people and social problems

why invest in humans when you can make more money by abandonment?

@@radicallyrethinkingrailwaysina That's mostly because of the type of mine being used. QLD and WA today are predominately open cut mines using FIFO camps and workers, supported by regional centres. The older mines were underground and typically had mining towns attached to them, when the mines stopped being viable the workers moved on and the towns died. But if you look at the sort of building materials used for the town, it was corrugated iron and plasterboard. Not exactly made to last forever, and never really made for those places to be called home (especially because the gender ratios meant nobody settled their family there).

I didn't understand it until I saw it with my own eyes. There's plenty of poverty in Oregon & California that I had seen. Then I traveled through WV on a grant-funded trip to study history and culture of the region and realized that WV poverty is really on an entirely different level.

@@christiangrand1625 I didn't have quite as thorough of an exposure to it, but I had to drive from Virginia through the entire width of West Virginia to get a friend out of a really shitty situation in Parkersburg (on the WV side). I was used to the Rust Belt poverty of upstate New York, I was used to the immigrant poverty of El Paso, TX, I was used to the rural poverty of the poor neighborhoods sandwiched between government contractor estates in Virginia. I was not prepared for West Virginia. Even Parkersburg felt less like Rome or Trenton and more like a someone trying to dramatize a movie about some abandoned Detroit suburb or some cartel-owned city in Mexico. Some of the hollows leading up to Paw Paw were really hard to see. It's part of why the "let's fix WV by merging it with another state" videos both make a lot of sense to me and rub me the wrong way tbh

Nah this guy is stupid fool, WV is richer than UK, and there is a reason for that .

Bluefield native here. You said it, this was the most clear-cut explanation I've ever heard. It's so sad to see the continued suffering of our home state. I hope that one day things will change for the better.

Where the FRENCHIE funny club was created ❤

my mom is from WV in Kanawha and ive been there a thousand and one times it really is sad to see all the poverty

6😂h⁵n ​@@You_are_probably_wrongu

What type of work do you do?

​@@stevechance150Fentanyl salesmen.

Another West Virginian here, fully endorsing this comment

True, but at least he pronounced "Appalachia" right.

Yep. My WV sister-in-law schooled me on that.

Japan is also surrounded by ocean and therefore has an easy out route to manufacturing exports. In addition, one thing this video didn't go over is how tied the state government has been to out of state coal industry and gambling throughout the years. In the 70s, where the writing was on the wall about coal, had a sober mind laid out a long term plan similar to that of Pittsburgh, it might be different. New Hampshire was not a one resource state either. In addition, WV is larger and not as accessible by richer states. Flying in is a pain too. This place is more remote than you think

Context is everything though: the US is genuinely blessed with geography and natural resources, so everywhere that *isn't* WV is would probably have a better place to build / grow a city, business, tourist destination, major university, etc etc Plus Japan's cities are mostly coastal (ish), and/or built around navigable rivers and water features whereas WV is absolutely not. Also you can iirc see the same exact issues in rural japanese towns now that are also depopulating, particularly mountainous inland and comparatively inaccessible areas with little to no economic opportunities like WV. The issues aren't as severe due to a way better social safety net, and a more collectivist culture in general, but there absolutely are japanese towns that are disappearing / depopulating for the same reasons that's driving mass poverty in WV. The critical difference, probably, is that many WV families are effectively stuck with paid off property / houses, that can't be sold (or has had severely depreciated property values) due to no demand, and so ergo can't easily sell / relocate elsewhere in the US (and have ties to the local community, families, etc etc). Comparatively cheap housing (that's NOT investment-driven) is one thing that Japan does comparatively well at (albeit with its own costs / downsides), and it's far, far easier to relocate easily (and without losing your entire life's savings, such as they are - and ability to eventually retire!!) in japan than it is in the US - particularly given that japan generally has far higher population density and ergo far, far better public transit / transportation, and ergo the ability to continue seeing friends and family on a (somewhat) regular basis even if you move around a fair bit. Overall very unfair to compare WV with japan, a country roughly the size of california and with over 3x the population (and thus productivity potential) in that same area. Nevermind that it was even on a trajectory to catch up with the _entire US_ GDP in the 1980s (however short lived), and with a _smaller_ / higher productivity population, to boot. Overall having tons of natural resources (or more specifically a *single* resource extraction based economy) tends to be much more of a curse than a blessing (or at least when autocrats and/or capitalists are involved), and WV is kind of a perfect case in point w/ that. Overall, the fact that its geography, infrastructure, and population is just... not great for building / pivoting to anything else might be a sad, but accurate observation w/r why WV is so cursed. Good news ofc is that it's maybe less cursed in the long run with climate change (ie. will have a climate that's not totally uninhabitable and/or catastrophically underwater both literally and financially w/r its property + infrastructure investments), but that's a pretty small consolation. It is at least a truly beautiful state - outside of mass poverty (and problematic / limited infrastructure), it certainly does have that going for it. Ditto rural japan. That said, yes, fully agreed that you can 100% blame WV's current economic state on capitalism + wealth inequality / wealth / ownership inequity - although coal mining has been an increasingly low margin industry and WV is genuinely uncompetitive at this point (albeit for some not terrible, and not really its fault reasons), so it's probably important to not overstate this point too much. Much of the whole problem now, obviously, is that WV coal mining families genuinely did do fairly well for themselves and every generation up until the last few were able to have fully paid off houses, et al - which was great until the bottom (gradually) fell out of the coal industry, and the house you now own + have paid off is comparatively worthless if no one wants to buy it

​ @vxathos I didn't compare WV to Japan, I compared it to NH. I used Japan to explain why geography isn't destiny. Rural Japan is depopulated for the same reason that WV is: failed social policies. The policies are different, but the effect is similar: there is little incentive to live in inconvenient areas unless something compensates for that. Unlike rural WV, which I've hiked through, the Japanese countryside has been carved up into tiny little plots (1/8 acre is a big piece of land, even in the countryside). That makes it difficult to recreate what north Americans would consider "a space of my own." High population doesn't equate to productivity. References: Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, etc.

@@ichifishIt’s not just social policy. Rural areas are inherently going to have less economic opportunities and and amenities. You simply can’t support them with such a small population. But you can support and anchor those areas with large cities that generate tax revenue and such, which WV doesn’t have.

@@ichifish There's a cultural aspect in WV too. WV is unique in that although it is quite red in opinion, it is very much a welfare state. One of the best explanations I've heard to talk about the perplexing combination of entitlements and independent spirit is "people here were taken care of by the coal mines that now left them, so they have a distrustful sense of entitlement." Every Governor does not touch entitlements, yet won't move past coal and gambling. Even someone pro business or with a heavy sense of social planning will find this state hard to solve. There are just no headquarters there. There's no economic run off from major manufacturing. It's just the state, some growing tourism, and some outside companies. Pre college education is a mess. There's a church every other block, half of which are probably laundering money. I would continue to assert that it is a state that has a deceptively unique situation. NH geographically might look similar, but WV has a lot of unlisted ingredients. Kudos to you for hiking through.

Yeah we know

West Virginia receives at least $25 Billion per year federal funding, nearly 40% of WV state revenues. I'm encouraged by the posts of those getting an education and successful jobs elsewhere. I left my own home state for better jobs also. What many do for themselves and their families. If some choose to stay as small farmers and shop keepers, etc. well, that is their dream and more power to them.

There are tons of places of desperation poverty in the US, ironic as LA in CA presented in media as glamour and glitz has a MASSIVE poverty/homeless issue. Granted W Virginia is very bad but there are many pockets nationwide: Gary Indiana or some areas of Detroit/Baltimore/Chicago/DC/NYC etc

Half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck

​@@lijohnyoutube101it's increasing. Look anywhere and you can see poverty taking hold My local city has a poverty rate of 33%, it's not quite as bad as Gary but it's still bad. People only pay attention to the worst without paying attention who don't make the 10 poorest cities list. Just cause they aren't like Gary doesn't mean they don't have a bad poverty issue

Duh. American Colonialism is applied to the U.S domestic population.

I believe the term is an “internal colony”

@@Praisethesunson I have a lot of respect for how obviously smart you are.

Did you forget slavery? @@Praisethesunson

@@jasonhaven7170 Slavery has never ended in the U.S.

This may be the best context anybody has added in the comments. the problems are more regional than he could cover in this video

Bruh I ain't readin allat

@@im_bad_at_picking_a_nameyour fault then. This is very well written context that is important to fully understanding this topic.

Wheeling is declining... but it has a promising future held up by its gorgeous architecture? Wait - are you serious? Or are you just writing nonsense to demonstrate your vast knowledge of the different characteristics of the cities of West Virginia? I'm genuinely curious how the gorgeous architecture of Wheeling (presumably "spectacularly large front porches" or something similar) is making Wheeling's decline likely to magically turn around into a promising future.

@@juggernautAA12 I find the regionality is often overlooked, as West Virginia is quite sparsely populated, it's assumed similar throughout, since it's a blank spot on everyone's mental map anyway. There's a north-south divide (Morgantown/Clarksburg/Wheeling/Martinsburg vs Huntington/Charleston/Beckley/Bluefield), an east-west divide (long mountain ridges and rural vs steep tight valleys and urban), and an urban-rural divide, with the rural areas divided again, into patches of either 'farm country' or 'coal country'. I find it telling that everybody focuses on McDowell County, Anthony Bourdain went there, whenever there's a long-form media piece about West Virginia poverty, its seemingly focused on Welch. Most of West Virginia isn't quite like Welch, it's so remote even by WV standards. Welch needs the King Coal Highway complete, better flood control infrastructure, and a re-establishment of literally any well-paying jobs and civic institutions. Welch has no grocery store. This is different from, say, Clarksburg, which has sufficient grocery stores but needs a healthy dose of civic pride and it's upper class to re-invest in it's downtown; or the state's true economic powerhouse, the Charleston and Huntington areas, which need to grow from their current stagnation by doubling down on their existing thriving industries in healthcare and education, connecting to surrounding regions by improving rail connections on the Amtrak Cardinal between Cincinnati and DC (which also runs directly through New River Gorge National Park with 3 stops in or next to park lands) and establishing themselves as a regional business center with a lower cost of living than Pittsburgh or Cincinnati (and better east coast connections than Cincinnati) as they have a ready supply of qualified Marshall, WVSU and UofC graduates who would love to stay in the area and establish themselves but leave simply because jobs are more plentiful elsewhere.

I have family that lives in Leesburg. It’s a nice area.

Hiii

Nice

Good

Nice

Good

Your comment helped me understand a conservationist biologist position I saw within the last month based out of WV. It focused on deer and their health. I was taken aback a little by the posting. Cab you explain to me what is going on with the wildlife as I am currently job searching and would like to understand WV more in this sector?

Further I’m interested what environmental crisis in WV you would recommend looking into.

Very well written.

Welcome to what republicans want for all of America.

Thanks for your contribution. It sounds like the government wants to force everyone out

That’s why we don’t want to leave. We love the beauty and simplicity.

I was pleasantly surprised to not see "poke a haunt us" on screen

Any channel that provides their own subtitles is just *chefs kiss*. Even though I'm not hard of hearing, reading subtitles helps me understand what was actually said.

Especially while eating a particularly crunchy snack @@chaygrice7612

❤❤❤

Yeah, but he willingly skips over details that go against the climate narrative. For example: he goes on about solar being better than coal, but ignores the fact that it takes more coal to produce a solar panel than it would to just burn coal for power over that panel’s life.

I was literally thinking the same. I have worked all over the Rhondda, Cynon and Merthyr Valleys and the similarities in terms of history but also geographic economic consequences is striking!

Believe it or not, the Appalachians are so old that those *are* the same mountains as the ones in West Virginia. The Appalachians formed on Pangea and separated as the plates did. The Atlas Mountains in Africa are also the same range.

A quick question, were these places populated before the economic incentive of coal. I know that the company town model comes from somewhere in the UK. A part of what allowed these West Virginia towns to even get established was the company currency of scripts which effectively lock them into the town, whereas a natural labor flow would probably leave the companies short on labor or have to pay much higher rates as coal would be saying as a job you do for a couple years save up money and go back to common society. The way they set it up led to multi-generational dependency and eventually you get my daddy was a coal miner, and his daddy and his daddy before him. We all just try and figure out how to exist in this world and a lot of times we follow the models that show themselves to be successful but the model never broke and just slowly withered. It's kind of like boiling a frog.

Coal is bad in every sense.

@@jinxtacy Yes, many towns in WV were founded before coal. Most of the earliest ones were founded as forts. There was also a great deal of logging before coal. But the area was very sparsely populated, as farming and accessing the regions were difficult (and still are). And you’re correct in your comment on company towns and scrip.

it’s a personal decision, but Forbes says housing activities will remain stagnant for the most part of the year, so maybe hold off a little.

well you could put a downpayment on a home and as well diversify as much as you can into Ai and pharm. stocks like Pfizer and JnJ. Certain Ai companies are rumoured to be overvalued and might cause a market correction, I’d suggest you go with a managed portfolio, but even those don’t perform so well, so it’s best you reach out to a proper fiduciary to guide you, that’s what works for my spouse and I.

this is all new to me, where do I find a fiduciary, can you recommend one?

Just google Sonya Lee Mitchell and do your own research. She has portfolio management down to a science

My fiancee is from Huntington too and its such a gorgeous state. She says the same thing, the politicians are all 80 years old and corrupt with no concern for their constituents but they somehow keep getting elected

I feel like a large problem in our area is that people don't treat it like a viable, real metropolitan area. From Portsmouth, Ohio to Ashland, KY to Huntington,WV there are hundreds of thousands of people. We need Interstate 73/74 to be completed so we have a direct route to Cincinnati or Columbus. I live in Ashland, KY and I see how the confluence of the three state area isn't just rural backwoods but a population center. Our local governments and entities need more cooperation and working together. If we could get interstate connection to the bigger metros near us and more crossing across the Ohio River it would help economically.

There appeared a whole lot of people who were opposed to Obama / Clinton due to their remarks/ policies regarding coal mining.

ok

zzz

Frankly, the mountaintop mines should be changed to solar farms. Its flattened already! The rest, hiking. Make it an outdoor activity mecca!

At least WV is better than living in one of the western states. People from your area have get more Real any any person I’ve ever met who happened to fly 500 miles from home to talk to me

@@mevans4953 I have no idea what this sentence says. And yet it still makes it pretty clear that you have no idea what you are talking about either, both in general and specifically regarding the west.

@@mevans4953 Seems you fine usa education is showing.

Here's a new idea: make it the new center for the film industry, concentrating on post-apocalyptic, dystopian genres. No need to build sets, you just get out and film.

similar story to the north east where the first steam railway was - now we're the most deprived area of england

A lot of Scottish and Northern English towns too. The town I'm in used to have a huge Scotch whisky distillery, world famous but the owner moved it away some years back. Carpets manufactured here were on the Titanic, they were that high quality. Likewise with a lot of heavy engineering and train stuff, mostly all gone now.

makes me fear the region i live in in Australia's coal country (hunter valley). Being anti-renewable and against anything that will lose their jobs as coal mines. We can see what happened in other countries coal areas and yet we aren't doing anything to stop it

Train is a Scottish invention

You can blame the local council as much as the government.

People really just don’t care, it’s terrible. So many thousands of people barely scraping by to no fault of their own and everyone just goes “damn, sucks to be them lol just move”

I remember an article from Vox or Vice asking the question, "Why don't these people just leave?" You can't just put all of your possessions onto a vehicle and travel to a different location hoping you will find both a new job and a new home ala "Grapes of Wrath". And both states and federal governments have done very little to help people find jobs in the first place.

But yay capitalism, right? The market just takes care of everything doesn’t it? /s

@@TheFarix2723why won’t these poors leave so I can have this mountain state to myself?

@@TheFarix2723 There are McDonald's everywhere, starting wages are between $13-$15 an hour. Stop making excuses. If a person is living like this, they aren't too good to work at McDonald's.

It is always good to have a financial plan. I work with a professional planner and fixed-income strategist in NY. The fixed income portion of your portfolio won't simply serve as a buffer to the volatility of the equity portion of your portfolio, but will provide legitimate income.

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I found his extraordinary resume when I searched for his name on Google. I count it a gift that I went over this remark

It’s unfortunate most people don’t have such information, I don’t really blame people who panic cos lack of information can be a big hurdle. I’ve been making more than $65k passively investing with Samuel Peter Descovich, and I don’t have to do much work. It doesn’t matter if the market is crashing, I will always make good profit returns.

I have turned over more than half MILLION working with SAMUEL PETER DESCOVICH on a wide array of options and finally sticking to a few that have been favorable in the past 2 years.

You have to recognise the irony. A company moving to a place no one else seems to want to, helping the state and it's people. And the first thing you want to do is to use it to get out of there.

I’m coming out Tabler Station for an internship on-site, not sure if I want to go yet but this all gave me a lot to think about. Thanks for sharing your story.

Life long? That’s sad.

​@@Jeffcrocodile Actually, when companies place hubs in low-income areas, they do it primarily to help themselves by saving on labor costs. Same reason why Elon placed Tesla in the poorest county in California.

I lived in the Eastern Panhandle for a long time. I remember when US-340 was just a clogged two lane road going into Charles Town. My family moved to the panhandle from Loudoun County because it got way too expensive to live there. It's been wild seeing the panhandle grow over the last few decades. Farmland got taken out for highways and housing developments. Schools popped up all over Jefferson County to accommodate the influx of people moving there, and even a few more popped up after I graduated. But as soon as you go west from the panhandle and past Berkeley Springs, it's like I drove into a whole other country. It's astounding how much geography changes things. I never really considered myself an actual West Virginian because I never lived in what I would consider somewhat of a no-man's land. But I wonder what will happen in another twenty years. Property values keep climbing, and soon we might have another Loudoun Country situation where people are pushed further west. Or they could all just flood into Martinsburg. No offense to anyone living there, but that place is a shithole.

I was thinking the same, and I’m not even from your home. Peace and good luck

"OH you're from WV? I've been to Richmond!"

I go to west Virginia all the time, but I can’t even tell you the last time I was in West Virginia

People, particularly on RU-vid, like to point fingers at California. Its mainly for political reasons, or just farming views, likes and clicks if we're being honest (making those YT bucks). California, if it were a country, would be the 8th richest country on the planet next to Germany. Its the #1 tech/ag/tourism state and has oil and gas, biotech, etc. 12% of the country lives in 1 state, of course it'll have issues. Meanwhile.... WV, AR, MS, MO, AL, parts of TN, and parts of IL and so many other states have towns where 40% (2 out of 5 people) are living below the poverty line. There are literal semi-ghost towns in some of those states where there's no industry whatsoever, but people still live there. They're the ones that need help, empathy and compassion, and they're never in the news or they're drowned out by "look at California!!!!". I'm over seeing the same 5 blocks of the Tenderloin in San Francisco (the shadiest part of that city) and some "react streamers" making stupid comments, just to make some money and stir up a comments section. Nearly a dozen states have failed their citizens, and they never are in the news

@@atkaschaThe problem is that those states you have listed HAVE had people try to give them compassion. Time changes and industry changes. People have tried to bring trainings, education, etc, in order to help displaced workers pivot into more modern jobs. That and they continuously vote against utterly anything that helps them get out of the hole. Instead voting for a political party that wants to keep their “glory days” which just isn’t feasible in the 21st century. It’s really an epidemic of stupidity.

The political corruption alone would fill volumes. And then there’s the literal labor wars tied to that. I think Logan holds the world record for corruption per capita

@@encyclopath AMEN. The politicians have sold the people OUT. Anyone thinking this belongs to one party is sadly mistaken or blind.

Yep, similar

As someone who grew up in Appalachia, visiting Wales was a strangely familiar experience.

And as someone who grew up in a Welsh mining valley I found visiting West Virginia in the 1970-80's very familiar. Friendly communities, the declining mining industry and the narrow river valleys . One big difference though. The W.V. hills were tree-covered, those in Wales are comparatively bare. W.V.-- A great state and a great people who have come through a lot of hardships.@@thelight3112

I know you meant Wales, but I was actually thinking about whales and the whale blubber industry...

Also: West Virginia drawl and Welsh are both incomprehensible to outsiders.

I'm from West Virginia, many of the local highways are built on cattle paths. At one point prior to the Great Kanawha Flood in 1861, much of the waterways had been navigable. The means of transport to the ocean is navigation through Kanawha, Ohio, and Mississippi river systems. The use of locks and dams is critical to the state's economy.

What about Switzerland? It’s a country that is as mountainous and also not having access to the ocean.

people wanted to name it Vandalia, the region was reffered as that long before it was part of Virginia even.

And John Denver’s “County Roads” is probably more about west(ern) Virginia more than it is West Virginia. Despite practically being West Virginia’s state anthem. Logic being the lyrics of “(…)Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River” are far more synonymous with Virginia than West Virginia. As WV proudly considers itself part of Appalachia, not the Blue Ridge (which is the glorified hill range between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean).

100% of West Virginia is west of Virginia, and only a sliver of Virginia is West of WV, so i think the name is appropriate

@@benjaminwatt2436 how can West Virginia be west of Virginia when Virginia extends more west than West Virginia does?

@@ChuckThree the Shenandoah River valley was originally proposed to be a part of Vandalia (West Virginia) with the blue ridge being the border

​@@DontReadMyProfilePicture.104you're so creative 😂😂😂😂😂😂

​@@DontReadMyProfilePicture.104couple years too late for this crap

W Virginia is so unamazing in many other ways. Where does the buck stop ?

Pristine in the sense of very few humans, yes, but a lot of it is still young growth forest. A hundred years ago, the lumber industry cut down forests in damn near the entire state, some mountains were essentially barren moonscapes. Forests grow back, but we lose the old growth in the process.

@@drabberfrogpeople have been doing that shit for years

Ah yes, the ole OxyContin express.

I remember Washington Post mentioned that a few years ago back when opioids was becoming a national issue not just a regional issue like it only happens in major cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, Inland Empire, San Francisco and Sacramento areas.

when the communist takeover occurs, they will allow american patriots to be poisoned, while replacing them with cheap labor by means of border cessation. sound familiar? and while i do not agree with the tactics of Reagans "war on drugs", he was correct in the fact that we cannot allow ourselves to kill ourselves to the chagrin of the communist infiltrator.

drugs aren't the issue. capitalism is the issue. drug abuse and self medication (NOT to be misconstrued for one another) are symptoms of capitalism.

​@@the__void__spaghetti__girlWould it explain linkage between communism and vodka? Or capitalist countries that don't have US unique opioid problem?

Bramwell is still beautiful - I was just there recently!

Yikes.... I didn't know it was that bad.

Heh, not lying there. Both of our representatives are from prominent out-of-state political families. Carol Miller is Sam Devine's daughter from Ohio and Mooney probably hasn't spent more than a night or two in the state. When he realized he couldn't win office in Maryland, he bought a house in Charlestown and said he was West Virginian and voters bought it.

@@eksbocks9438 - yeah, you’re pretty much a third-world country when Doctors Without Borders is organising free medical care in more than one state.

@@alexwilsonpottery3733 I'll give you that one. They try really hard to mask it. And say that hospitals provide "advanced" care. But it's basically run like a for-profit business. If you're already established in life, it's easier. But if someone isn't: They still get the full bill. They just pretend like inequality doesn't exist. And continue to make their demands. Our country literally encourages it. While calling it "friendly competition."

@@alexwilsonpottery3733 That's true. They try really hard to mask it. And say that they provide "advanced" care. But it's run like a business.

Yeah there is definitely a lot of untapped potential here. I don't see why vineyards/wineries wouldn't do well in WV. Beekeeping and mushroom farming could probably do well too. And I don't see why some theme parks couldn't be built there too. (Especially with Disney coming under a lot of public ire the past few years). Entrepreneurs could seize upon the opportunity to try new theme park concepts. And WV's small, dense cities would be great to experiment with vertical city-building rather than suburban sprawl. Abandoned/dilapidated buildings & vacant land could be sold for dirt cheap to developers who want to build supertall skyscrapers. The WV government could also reform the marriage laws in the state to protect men from getting screwed over by the divorce courts, and use those laws to attract weddings to the state. Also, human cloning is legal in WV. With some 30% of young men being single, once that technology becomes more sophisticated, they could create such a surplus of attractive women there that even the bottom-of-the-barrel nerds can get laid. Embracing *that* technology could make them far richer than coal ever did.

Then vote for better people. There's like twenty people in the state. If you can't figure out someone to actually lead you, that's kind of on you.

@@ASDeckard The comment you replied to: _explains why more people aren't voting_ . You: "People should just vote. It's so obvious!"

Land value tax would probably solve this

@@Hotshot2k4it was probably intended as a pointed fact that not voting doesn’t help and disregarding it entirely is going to further harm the state.

Trying to blame even some of the problems of West Virginia on land ownership 250 years ago is pushing things a bit too far. But I guess blaming Britain is far easier from confronting problems caused by what happened in more recent centuries.

Glad you enjoyed your visit. I was born and raised there.

Snowshoe is amazing!!

Pocahontas is so much better off than most of the state is too. Nothing like the southern coal fields.

That's a big reason I'd find it hard to leave, if I'd lived in the area growing up. I spent a lot time in the Shenandoah Valley, which is similar (at least in my family's town), and I used to think that if I could find remote work, I'd be happy to move there. The beauty is almost worth it.

Was it camp hidden meadows? Went there and there were a lot of international folks

being from massachusetts you know Raytheon is big company. when people come from states like California, Florida, other states outside of northeast they get a different thought of here. I live east of Central massachusetts its 2nd wealthiest state. and construction development everywhere.

It's a good idea but the state historically votes against public transportation because it's controlled by big carbon.

Average train brain comment. Something as insignificant as passenger rail which would only be used by wealthier people commuting to white collar jobs in DC would do next to nothing for the West Virginian economy.

​​@@jon-michaelsampson1120it would also open up an entire market of better paying jobs to the locals. Right now they've got just about fuck all opportunity wise. Obviously transit isn't free though, and not everyone could/would be able to/want to commute. So no, it's not train brain, just basic understanding that better public transit leads to better job markets. You can look at most of Europe if you don't believe it.

The town of Welch had an Amtrak stop until 1977 and both Greyhound and Trailways stations.

I don’t know how well that would work. WV has a lot of very small towns that are hard to access on foot. A line to Charleston may work, but that isn’t the area of the state that needs development.

That’s US inequality for ya

time to wake up and see what the US is really like. take the high earning areas out of the equation and the rest of the country is beyond 3rd world. the disparity is shocking

​@@SirZanZabro does not understand what a 3rd world country is

@@ethan12345678923the US is literally a third world country with a Gucci belt

@@SirZanZa lol, you have clearly never step foot in a third world country

totally agree

Too bad they’re trying as hard as they can to destroy most of the mountains

I'm still mad they made the wife want to leave him in the movie. In the book, she said she wanted him to quit the mine because it was killing him. When he said where would we live if I had no job, she said I'll live under a tree if if means I get to stay with you. In the movie, she was mad and threatened to leave him. He said, oh yeah, where you gonna live? She replies, I'll live under a tree to get away from you. They took a pronouncement of love and fidelity and turned it into a hurtful shrew epithet.

The titles "October Sky" and "Rocket Boys" have the exact same letters in different orders.

I worked at that mine at coalwood in 75

And this is why I scroll comments. I was trying for the life of me to figure out where I’d heard McDowell County WV before. That would be it. Homer Hickham & October Sky. GREAT movie!

@@Peacewind152 there's also The Glass Castle set there and also based on a true story

The state is trying to court tech companies to build facilities in WV. Bill Gates just got to build a nuclear reactor in the state, and a state politicians have visited Seattle to visit Amazon, Microsoft, etc. I think it's a hard sell, though, when the majority of the state lacks the infrastructure (high speed internet, decent roads, etc) and skilled workers needed to support major tech developments. If anything I could see them settling in the eastern or northern panhandles since they're close to larger metropolitan areas, but that will hardly help the rest of the state.

people don't want to admit what we all know: cities drive innovation and jobs, that is a fact, mining and such don't provide a steady job environment, WV is unfortunately stuck in a bad cycle, there's no real industry for other jobs

ok

@@greenhouseghostie Debatable as there are many remtoe workers who don't seem to see the benefits. May have been true for some time when in Silicon Valley they had combined both the Data Center and HQ but now they are scattered across entire US for latency and each office building is being tested.

@@greenhouseghostie Gates is going to build a nuclear reactor here??? Do tell. Please post anything, anything that proves what you said. Please.

It is lovely. The sad thing though is the same. Isolation means that new ideas are not very welcome here so people continue to vote against their own best interests because it's the way that things have always been done. I live in West Virginia now and have lived here since 2013 and I'm determined to stay here

Not just culturally distinct we are also a bit ethnically distinct as well. Lot of Scottish and Irish settled in the western part of Virginia, the English settled the east and the coast. There was always going to be some clashing on culture and ethnicity. West Virginia is pretty unique culturally, the dialect spoken is distinctly different than to that of the more aristocratic southern accent or the broadly southern that is used as the stereotypical southern accent, there’s even a bit of a sub language that is a bit like Gaelic and some Welsh although it’s largely gone away some phrases and pronunciations still exist from the “mountain speak” or what I like to call “appalachianese”. More strangely is the cultural cuisines, they are heavily Italian based as many Italians migrated here a lot of the stone buildings that have been erected had been constructed by Italian stone masons. The biggest reason why many remain is because it is beautiful and it’s our home and homeland, many of us are from the mountains and valleys of Scotland, if you trace a line from the Scottish highlands to the US it’ll connect to the Appalachians. Ancestors stayed here because it reminded them of home and despite what is commonly believed we never had serious interactions with the Native Americans, the Clan structure of the Cherokee and Shawnee were shockingly similar to the Clan culture of the Scots and disputes were handled accordingly, while we might be a salt of the earth people and not looking for trouble and don’t start fights, it doesn’t mean we don’t end them, West Virginia fought the closest thing to a 2nd civil war in the US in the 1920s over the fight for the creation of the labor movement, it was “Rednecks” that made the US government reform wages and working hours in the US. I hope you visit and enjoy the beauty of the state

I noticed that the video left out the episode in West Virginia history of the mine wars,Mother Jones,the bombing of the coal workers' camp,the Baldwin mine guards,Governor Hatfield,Sidney Hatfield and his murder. @@loganbaileysfunwithtrains606

as a northern virginian, i agree

It is beautiful, but often destroyed by industry.

is colorado similar to wv with the land features?

@@waldronaviation7725 The Appalachian mountains are much older than the rockies, so more time has weathered them to be not as striking visually as something like taking a drive through rocky mountain national park. BUT areas in wv like Dolly Sods, Summersville, New River Gorge, and much more have so much beauty unique to west virginia, I could totally see open air venues coming in an making a killer. Especially for niche markets like blue grass and the folk circut. There is a lot of beautiful nature that remains unseen to many in the US that WV has to offer :)

West Virginia is the best kept secret 🤫

Resource curse. Oftentimes resource less nations end up doing better due to human capital. Take a look at japan and Hong Kong for example. Should have planned for the future when coal was going to reach it's peak. Currently oil rich nations are investing in other projects for the same damn reason. I would say the blame goes to local government in power for not seeing this coming. Blaming businesses for even providing jobs as "exploitation" is easy to say and simply shifting the blame instead of owning it.

Its never the WV's fault. Always someone elses fault.@@gabbar51ngh

I am disappointed in WV's leaders.....where are they?

Slovakia won’t go anywhere if it keeps electing leaders who want to tie Slovakia’s fate to declining pariahs like Russia. The future is to the west, not the east

I'll pray that Slovakia gets through this as well. These areas need more development.

@@blankityblankblank2321 It is only a small part of Slovakia and we have worse off regions in the central southern part of Slovakia than the upper Nitra region, where things are improving, contrary to those "hunger valleys" as we call them - mostly Rimavská Sobota and Revúca, where unemployment is around 20%. Those regions are hard to develop, there is nothing besides hills, but not as great hills as other hills (little tourism potential). Infrastructure is poor as well.

He didn’t even get his facts right. Slovakias life expectancy in 2023 is 78 years. Only one year less than americas 79 years.

Where the FRENCHIE funny club was created ❤

Unfortunately, it seems like the real takeaway from the video is leave WV and move where the jobs and money are.

amazing books!

Always great to see people in the comments who actually know what they are talking about on a technical level. Interesting stuff

Alternatively, dissolve the area as a State. Create a huge national park(s) from the unused mountainous areas. Bordering States could annex populated border towns.

People try to do that but they call it socialism and vote against it.

Same ancient mountain range as the Scottish highlands actually.

Yeah, a lot of Scottish towns were set up to service the coal mining industry and various other heavy manufacturing. It's all gone and is a wasteland now.

@@veeeks2938 yeah, there’s parts of Appalachia that I’ve been to that remind me of the pictures I’ve seen of the highlands. It’s my favorite part of Appalachia.

@@chiefderpawhere is that?

Huh

Most countries with resources are poor. The money will go to a few owners and just increase inequality and incentivece conflicts. In Virignia a major problem has always been governance. If the Mine owners loot the country there won't be any wealth left once the mines run dry. Germany, Japan, Swizerland, Sweden, Finland don't have resources but knowledge and hightec.

@@merzto This video was about West Virginia, not Virginia. It surprises me that so many people seem to think it’s still one state. West Virginia separated from Virginia during the Civil War. VA was a confederate state, WV was union.

West Virginians elected politicians that sold residents out to Frontier, effectively leaving the state economy to wither in the digital age. Could’ve had reliable, high speed municipal internet access long ago.

I don't think Starlink is in WV, they were not in West Maryland 1 mile away when I was looking 2 years ago.

We "WV" got starlink last week @@lizardjoel

@@lizardjoel They have it now if you go with the non-mobile RV option. Not as good as Starlink’s full residential but still leagues better than Frontier or HughesNet.

@@ScoutSniperMC nice. I really like West MD which juts into and culturally plus economically is very similar to WV except weed just got legal to homegrow. I hope WV legalizes recreational weed and homegrow I would very much consider moving there buying a house and paying taxes etc if they don't I'll buy a place in West MD or Western VA instead all good.

See Disney World's Union. Without it, I doubt it's the "happiest place on Earth".

Let's be real, the vast majority of hospitality workers in Honolulu are not enjoying a middle class lifestyle regardless of the union. As the video states, the hospitality industry might bring some economic growth and opportunity but it is a double edged sword that drives increases to cost of living.

Which is sad because WV has history like Battle of Blair Mountain

​@@kashtreyYou sure? The cost of living was going up a lot in 2019 and 2020 with few new unions created. Corporate greed is the main driver of inflation.

@@nukeputin420 am I sure that hospitality staff doesn't make what is necessary to live a middle class lifestyle? Yes, I am.