Reflections on Two Americas

[Analytics]

I live in Overland Park, Kansas. If you Google “High Income Zipcodes”, an article by CNN/Money comes up, and my zipcode made the top 10 list with 74.5% of the households making over $100,000 a year. Even though Kansas is considered a very conservative state, my Congressional representative is female, brown, queer, and Democrat. Politically, the people in my circle are very concerned with climate change, infrastructure, jobs, income inequality, minority rights, human rights, renewable energy, etc. My friends and I tend to read the Kansas City Star, the Wallstreet Journal (but not the editorial page), and the New York Times. We don’t really watch much TV news, CNN or otherwise. We are way too busy working to listen to AM talk radio. We see the world as an incredibly complicated place that requires sophisticated thinkers providing intricate solutions to complex problems. That is where I spend my days.

The Katy trail is a rail-trail that stretches across Missouri from right outside Kansas City all the way to St. Louis. I finished riding the entire 420-mile trail earlier this week.

This trail goes through small town America. When you are riding your bicycle across small-town America, you see things and people in a different way. Everything is going by slower, and the logistics of the trip force you to stop and interact. You really get a chance to look at what things are like. Here are a few observations.

In Small Town America That I Saw (STATIS), things are run down. The roads, stores, houses, occasional Coke machines are all in bad shape. But nobody really seems to notice or care that much, because things aren’t busy enough or crowded enough to put stress on the system. Or maybe people do care, but they know complaining won’t help so they don’t. You get the feeling that things used to be new and the towns were growing and there was opportunity. And you get the feeling that isn’t true anymore.

In STATIS, there are very few jobs and very little opportunity. Agriculture is going on all around, but it is done by big corporations who employee very few people to grow GMO corn or soy beans with trademarked seeds from Monsanto using giant John Deere farm equipment. Those are fine jobs, but there just aren’t that many of them. If you are lucky you could get a job at the post office or as a school teacher or school bus driver, perhaps. There are a few other jobs at the occasional convenience store, gas station, junkyard, or diner, but those jobs aren’t great. There just isn’t that much going on.

The people in STATIS were always very nice. Once I was riding my bike on the Katy trail on a very hot day. According to the map, Chilhowee Missouri (population 325) had water and a general store, and I was relying on that for some water. It turned out the store was closed. It was like a ghost town. No cars driving around. No pedestrians. No kids at the park. Just one scary-looking guy in his 20’s riding a cheap old bicycle around town. He saw me and invited me to go back to his house for a glass of water. How nice is that? 100% of the locals out on the street invited 100% of the thirsty travelers back to their homes for some water.

It turns out he had spent most of his adult life in prison and was trying to recover from meth addiction and rode his bicycle to the church to pray several times a day. That is when I saw him.

He should have been homeless—he had no family or resources whatsoever. But an old man invited him to live with him in his tiny run-down house in Chilihowee. The old man had two such would-be homeless people living with him. The old man’s tiny run-down house used to be on about 5 acres, but now it was on about a quarter of an acre because the government kept on taking away parts of his land because he couldn’t pay his property taxes.

In STATIS, big city problems and global problems seem foreign. Hypothetical. Irrelevant. The relatively few people who have incomes and pay taxes see very little in return for them. The government doesn’t create any jobs whatsoever. It doesn’t fix the potholes in the roads around town. It doesn’t do anything. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like it necessarily should do anything. The small population and low density make problems seem simpler.

If something needs to be done it is done by volunteers, not the government. Last Monday night I camped out in Marthasville Missouri (population 1,100). Several years ago some people thought the town needed a baseball park, so some volunteers built one with donated resources. It collects some revenue from concessions, renting out a hall above the concession stand, and charging cyclists $5 to camp there for the night. It’s a fine asset of the community, and no tax dollars were required to create it or maintain it.

[Morley]

Nicely done, Analytics. Thank you for sharing that.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

That was awesome. Moar.

- Doc

[Atlanticmike]

I live in Overland Park, Kansas. If you Google “High Income Zipcodes”, an article by CNN/Money comes up, and my zipcode made the top 10 list with 74.5% of the households making over $100,000 a year. Even though Kansas is considered a very conservative state, my Congressional representative is female, brown, queer, and Democrat. Politically, the people in my circle are very concerned with climate change, infrastructure, jobs, income inequality, minority rights, human rights, renewable energy, etc. My friends and I tend to read the Kansas City Star, the Wallstreet Journal (but not the editorial page), and the New York Times. We don’t really watch much TV news, CNN or otherwise. We are way too busy working to listen to AM talk radio. We see the world as an incredibly complicated place that requires sophisticated thinkers providing intricate solutions to complex problems. That is where I spend my days.

The Katy trail is a rail-trail that stretches across Missouri from right outside Kansas City all the way to St. Louis. I finished riding the entire 420-mile trail earlier this week.

This trail goes through small town America. When you are riding your bicycle across small-town America, you see things and people in a different way. Everything is going by slower, and the logistics of the trip force you to stop and interact. You really get a chance to look at what things are like. Here are a few observations.

In Small Town America That I Saw (STATIS), things are run down. The roads, stores, houses, occasional Coke machines are all in bad shape. But nobody really seems to notice or care that much, because things aren’t busy enough or crowded enough to put stress on the system. Or maybe people do care, but they know complaining won’t help so they don’t. You get the feeling that things used to be new and the towns were growing and there was opportunity. And you get the feeling that isn’t true anymore.

In STATIS, there are very few jobs and very little opportunity. Agriculture is going on all around, but it is done by big corporations who employee very few people to grow GMO corn or soy beans with trademarked seeds from Monsanto using giant John Deere farm equipment. Those are fine jobs, but there just aren’t that many of them. If you are lucky you could get a job at the post office or as a school teacher or school bus driver, perhaps. There are a few other jobs at the occasional convenience store, gas station, junkyard, or diner, but those jobs aren’t great. There just isn’t that much going on.

The people in STATIS were always very nice. Once I was riding my bike on the Katy trail on a very hot day. According to the map, Chilhowee Missouri (population 325) had water and a general store, and I was relying on that for some water. It turned out the store was closed. It was like a ghost town. No cars driving around. No pedestrians. No kids at the park. Just one scary-looking guy in his 20’s riding a cheap old bicycle around town. He saw me and invited me to go back to his house for a glass of water. How nice is that? 100% of the locals out on the street invited 100% of the thirsty travelers back to their homes for some water.

It turns out he had spent most of his adult life in prison and was trying to recover from meth addiction and rode his bicycle to the church to pray several times a day. That is when I saw him.

He should have been homeless—he had no family or resources whatsoever. But an old man invited him to live with him in his tiny run-down house in Chilihowee. The old man had two such would-be homeless people living with him. The old man’s tiny run-down house used to be on about 5 acres, but now it was on about a quarter of an acre because the government kept on taking away parts of his land because he couldn’t pay his property taxes.

In STATIS, big city problems and global problems seem foreign. Hypothetical. Irrelevant. The relatively few people who have incomes and pay taxes see very little in return for them. The government doesn’t create any jobs whatsoever. It doesn’t fix the potholes in the roads around town. It doesn’t do anything. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like it necessarily should do anything. The small population and low density make problems seem simpler.

If something needs to be done it is done by volunteers, not the government. Last Monday night I camped out in Marthasville Missouri (population 1,100). Several years ago some people thought the town needed a baseball park, so some volunteers built one with donated resources. It collects some revenue from concessions, renting out a hall above the concession stand, and charging cyclists $5 to camp there for the night. It’s a fine asset of the community, and no tax dollars were required to create it or maintain it.

Very nice. But there's a lot more than two Americas where I live.

[ceeboo]

Hey Analytics

Cool OP - Thanks for sharing it.

The Katy trail is a rail-trail that stretches across Missouri from right outside Kansas City all the way to St. Louis. I finished riding the entire 420-mile trail earlier this week.

That's phenomenal!