Jackson Jambalaya

I hope a lot of money wasn't spent gathering this "data". Some whole counties in Mississippi are built around a plantation or two and not enough has changed in 200 years to alter the basic status quo. Like he says at the very beginning, it's a capitalist system and income inequality is a natural consequence. The real point, not discussed in his article, is mobility, the ability to get out and move up. That's something relatively new for many people but it's very real. Even in Holmes County, there is the opportunity to do better. It may not be easy but it exists. That's the important thing and that's what makes capitalism continue to exist even in places like Holmes County. Once mobility is gone and people are predestined to poverty as the article suggests our capitalist system will be rejected by the majority and thrown on history's trashpile. But not yet.

Those rich people need to pay their "fair share!"

//progessive/socialist mode off//

Some of those counties have a very low population, thus it doesn't take many so-called wealthy to spike the stats.

BTW, it's those people with money who employ the rest of the population. However, the progressives want to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, without the free-loaders lifting a finger. Hello AOC and Bernie.

I'll just pick one example from the list. Holmes County. I'm very familiar with that county and have been for sixty years. At one time it was Mayberry. Everybody who wanted to work, worked. It was a railroad town during the depression and anybody working for the RR had financial security for the family. Through the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, the town thrived. Downtown was bustling. Women walking shaded sidewalks. Thriving car dealership, drug stores and funeral home. Busy post office and bus station throughout those years. Active library. Several lumber companies.

Then the place went to shit. But it had nothing to do with income inequality.

Tornado hit the town two years ago and tore it up good. Blue tarps still everywhere. Everybody who got a check spent it on things other than the roof. Only one factory left, Hunter Engineering. Others closed. Piss quality work force was unsustainable. Drugs and whiskey. Package stores abound. Two most active businesses are both Double Quicks on highway 51. Beer and chicken.

Black sheriff department. Black police force. Black city administration. Even the churches have EBT Accepted signs on the doors.

But, just a stone's throw from Holmes County is Kosciusko where not a single boarded up window exists. Just across the Big Black River. Same people for the most part and many, many of them moved from Durant in Holmes County. Figure it out.

Looked up my current Rankin County address, 78.6. OOPS, don’t have much time left. Looked up my previous address in Austin. Guess I should move back as it was over 87. My conclusion is that these numbers are based solely on the economics of the area as my Austin address was in the top three affluent zips in Austin. While I understand that is a factor, better access to health care,etc it certainly is not the only one. I think I’ll just tough it out in poor old Rankin and hope my genes outweigh economics.

"Income inequality" could only be real if incomes were doled out by the government and these were different for individuals based on variables chosen by the government.

The phrase "income inequality" was created by the liberal left to somehow insinuate an unfairness in incomes. Differences in income can never be equal because of the immeasurable differences in talents, performance, opportunity and a million other factors.

Its just a liberal bell cow for "we'll give you more" , which of course means taking from someone else.

Income inequality does not exist.

But Tate says we don't have any problems and that we just need to brag on Mississiopi more!

Guess what. If you do not get an education and live in an area where there are no jobs you will be poor and have a shorter life. Who could have guessed that.
Get an education. Move to a place that has jobs available. Problem solved.

11:07 I'm also very familiar with Holmes County, as my mother and her family escaped that County over 60 years ago. I emphasize "escape". It's obvious which side of the street you lived on if you think that place was ever Mayberry. Not for the thousands of Black people who found a living hell in your heaven. My family moved out and prospered outside Holmes and Mississippi. That was our good fortune, what was left was a poor uneducated
majority who elect leadership from their own ranks to find but they do so without any economic underpinning and little or no support from those who got rich off their past labor. There were many such "Mayberrys" around Mississippi before and after the civil war. Share your opinion with people who haven't been there.

11:01 am Your understanding of math and statistics is deplorable.

In this case, the "sample" is 100%. The stats can't be "spiked".

The way statistics is misused is with samples that deliberately omit part(s) of the total population being studied or include samples that are not part of the total population.

note: the " population" is 100% of that being studied. For a study to be indicative requires only that the sample is a smaller slice of what all the variables of the total population would be.

Think of averaging your grades in school. You have a grade in subjects and you have a total grade point average.The only way to " spike" your total grade point average" is to find a way to omit your worst grades from the total.

And, as for the liberal vs conservative mantras, neither of you seem to know you are being "suckered". It won't help anyone to be money or anything else unless they know how to make the money work for a better future. And, it doesn't help to give the rich money that makes them richer by allowing unfair advantages. Nor is it rational how we have allowed those in government to enrich themselves by letting the ultra wealthy enrich them. Follow the money and you'll see the " swamp" continues to enrich themselves while you party loyalists fight with one another.

"The data makes it possible to understand how much our health is influenced by conditions where we live,"

No it doesn't. Learn science, math, economics and statistics.

It's Mississippi, it's PWT

@ 12:27 PM - Agreed! The real life Dilbert cartoon character that we have in Tate Reeves thinks Mississippi at 50th in everything good and 1st in everything bad will keep Mississippi as the great state that he sees.

People move to where there is economic opportunity, good climate, good infrastructure, schools, etc. If you live in a horrible climate with little economic opportunity and no resources for good schools or infrastructure, your best bet is to move to places with better opportunities.

After all, that's why the place you lives sucks in the first place. So many people have already left and taken their money with them. Can't blame R's or D's for that. Times change. Industries come and go. You can sit around and wait on some earth shattering to come to Sharkey County, but that's not a great bet. You can make $50,000 in the oil field as a high school drop out with no experience. But the oil fields ain't in the Mississippi delta. Learn to weld. But those jobs are on the coast, not the delta. Etc Etc.

@11:20 AM - Spot on! "Income inequality" is nothing but dog whistle politics, and a favorite term of socialists, progressives, and other such vermin who are working very hard to destroy our Republic.

I would rather live in the poorest leaking roof trailer in Holmes County than anywhere near the morally bankrupt racists who regularly troll this blog.

@2:27 MS has had both parties in power and nothing has changed. If you are waiting on a politician or the government to change your life or situation, I think you have now found your problem. There are plenty of examples of folks who did not like the circumstances they grew up in so they chose to take advantage of the many educational opportunities afforded them. They now no longer live in the conditions they grew up in. However, others have fallen into the victim mindset and CHOSE not to take advantage of the educational opportunities they have been given but rather await the government panacea that has been promised decade after decade by politicians looking for a vote. I am not a Tate fan and will vote for another candidate. That said, none of these folks running in MS or any other state will change the trajectory of your life for the better- that is simply up to each individual.

We have a chance to turn Holmes County around if we can get Steve McClellan on the Board Of Supervisors.

@6:31 PM - Well said. "Victim mentality" tells it all.

A few years ago I read a very good book about how the US economy has changed since 1960. I don't remember a lot of the details but will summarize a few points. A lot of income inequality is due to economic progress and is no one's 'fault'. Examples: (I'm not going to look up the figures. I'll just guesstimate. The book had accurate data. I'm just here to make general points). #1. In 1960 a typical branch of a business had a manager and six workers. The manager made perhaps 25% more than the workers. Today the real managers can be thousands of miles away managing hundreds of employees using computers and the internet. They are very well paid and should be, while the local 'manager' is not well paid because he's just taking roll and locking the doors at night. #2. In 1960's there were very few national chain businesses and lots of local businesses. The local businesses had local owners and many made a very good living. Whereas today you have the huge national businesses where the owners are very very wealthy. #3. These large businesses make a great study of how to dumb down their jobs so that they can train most anyone to be successful in them. They are able to employ people with few skills and a low IQ in a productive manner due to the great success they have in dumbing down the jobs. This allows them to pay lower wages. #4. A great number of middle income jobs no longer exist. A great number of secretarial jobs, factory jobs, etc. have been replace by computers and robots and aren't coming back. In the future we can expect to lose a huge number. For example, self driving trucks are coming. Truck drivers need to be reliable and careful, but they don't need to be educated, have social skills, or be team players. Some do heavy lifting but many do not. So what jobs are they qualified to do when trucks drive themselves? These things are happening and it's no one's 'fault'. I have much more faith in capitalism to adapt to changing conditions than I do in government.

12:44 - Guess what? I'm not responsible for your plight in life. Neither is anybody else. Don't try to hang a guilt trip on me for my memories of Durant. My people struggled, were uneducated, raised chickens and cows and vegetables and the men found railroad jobs. Ain't got shit to do with one or the other side of the tracks or racism. Everybody got along, black and white.

If you didn't work, you weren't allowed to hang around in town and suck off society. You stayed your ass out of town. Otherwise, you did some sort of work and were respected if you acted responsibly.

Your whiney-assed rhetoric has you claiming to be a victim of life due to those who lived on the other side of the tracks (code for white folk). Fuck that. Look at that town now. Nothing but government leeches walking around and hustling to get a chicken breast or a donut. Nobody has any desire to work. It's all about gimme. And it's YOUR attitude that fans that cultural model.

8:41 Hey dude, can't you understand that everybody didn't have the same experience you had, and just because they didn't kill you doesn't mean they were happy. Some smiled in your face because they were scared to do anything else. Many of those people did what your family did, they improved their lot in life too, they got the hell out of Holmes County. Some are doing the same thing right now. Nobody doubts your memories, or blame you personally for the hellish past they experienced, so unless you do have something to feel guilty about...lighten up when other people express their own past that's not like yours. I work hard for everything I've got and I expect the same from everybody else, but damned if I remember Holmes County as Mayberry. Get mad if you want. Take your medication and relax.

Meanwhile: A few lads on the wrong side of the income-equality spectrum decide to knock off a Dollar General in the wrong county. Perhaps Crawford will grab up his Bible and go witness to them at central-detention.

And this is all the fault of capitalism and corporate America. These boys simply wanted to wire some money back home and invest in a few CDs over to Wahl-Mark.

"It's Wal Mark(s) just like Belk(s).

1:58 pm It would have been more accurate to write " to begin to understand". It is asking you to think and have curiosity and want to understand the problem so as to effect a solution. It is not intended as a definitive statement.

I'm concerned about your reading comprehension skills.

But if you and others don't think being able to afford and having proximity to good medical care impacts your health, you are an idiot.

And, if you think that being born into an uneducated or under-educated and poor family carries the same odds of success as being born into a well educated middle class or upper class family, you are idiots. You have bought into the exceptions...the poor boy who is wildly successful and the little spoiled rich boy that blows the family fortune stories.

Children are taught many of the tools of success and few children are perceptive and observant enough to grasp those tools on their own without help. And, get real, if you are born attractive and don't have awful teeth when you smile because you got braces or a horrible complexion because your acne was treated, that helps too.

Some of us get that we were fortunate and others think they did it all by themselves. There were no others in the community that added in your success. BS.

Please read about the Romanian babies who were cleaned and fed but never held and touched and love while in the orphanage. When adopted into nice American families, those families were unable to overcome the child's early deprivation. The children were akin to what happens to feral cats...they don't tame very well. They don't know how to play.

And, you also can't see the disparity is getting worse not better as we isolate ourselves into tribalism more each day.

@10:59 - Hey Dude! Nobody cares about your past life in Holmes County. And nobody cares about mine either. I'm just reminding you of what turned the county into a shit hole and it was not your view of life in the fifties. So, there's that.

Let's recap:

Lack of work ethic
Lack of motivation
Absence of fathers
Comfort in dependency
Acceptance of sloth
Tolerance of slums, filth and disrepair
Lack of effort
No desire to achieve
No value placed on education
No demands placed on children
Community acceptance of bad behavior
Coveting the property of others
Inability to adjust to societal rules

That should hold you for awhile. Zanax is your friend.

The premise of the article is wrong. It does not matter where you live. It matters whether or not you are self-motivated.

Hey you forgot Teen Pregnancy rate........

9:39 Thanks for your "recap". I don't recall disputing the present condition of Holmes County if you are still focused there. You forgot to include in your recap your personal historical overview of Mayberry which WAS addressed in your earlier commentary. But as you said no one gives a shit. So there's that.

I do not disagree with much of your statements ("recap") regarding Holmes County and take comfort in the fact that we left a bad place for whatever reasons and improved ourselves many years ago. That's what I said earlier. Why you take such offense I do not completely understand...

"Why you take such offense I do not completely understand..."

Maybe it's a personal weakness of mine, but I always am offended (take offense) when people will not and do not own the problems rampant in their own community.

As to Mayberry and why you left Holmes County, at one time, six decades ago, even four, Durant was a beautiful, peaceful community as I pointed out to you above. Then the bullet points I just outlined crept in one by one and the cancer took control of the body. No, you didn't 'leave a bad place'. You left a place, a community which your attitude allowed to fester and turn to shit. The 'place' was not bad until folks like you, who should have snatched thugs up by their shirt collars failed to do a damned thing. The white majority in that town, at the time, had no control over the cancer. 'You People' did. You became a majority, created an all black police, an all black sheriff's department, an all black board of aldermen, a black mayor and one by one, virtually every shop window was boarded up.

Now, in retrospect, the only blame you seem to see is in some imaginary mass discrimination that you think existed sixty years ago that caused the area to collapse. Your anger will only let you ridicule my earlier thoughts of the place being a peaceful, quiet, orderly village, virtually absent of crime (Hello Mayberry). You have destroyed every Mayberry in America.

@1:28

I love these memories of Mississippi's great Utopias. It sucks that they all get ruined by black people and their evil ways.

Mayberry only existed in Hollywood and the minds of simple uneducated people in the south.

The real Mayberry had the same challenges that every other town in the south had after keeping a large part of their population down. Poor blacks in the real Mayberry did not find the town "quaint"

@ June 30, 2019 @ 6:31pm

@2:27 (Mississippi) has had both parties in power and nothing has changed.

Well, that's an incomplete statement. Because conservative ideology has run this state the entire time, it just switched parties from Democrat to Republican.

When Fannie Lou Hamer created the Democratic Freedom Caucus, that when the Dixiecrats came into play and began transitioning to the Republican Party. Henceforth, why so many Republicans, you know the party of Lincoln, are now running around trying to save Confederate monuments and waving Confederate flags.

So the ideology is exactly the same, just with a different label.

July 1, 8:33 Dang, an honest admission, "...as we isolate ourselves into tribalism..."

1:28 Yes it is a damn big personal weakness. It's called ignorant racism and as soon as you polluted this discourse with your reference to "you people" you finally showed your cards. I can't imagine a "Mayberry" populated with people like you being anything but a racist hellhole for Black people. You prove your adversaries' point. You know nothing about the individual you address except that he is probably Black but that's enough or you to blame him for the demise of your "Mayberry". You of course have no blame for anything...being white. Wow.

I think we see who bigot is here. Yet another nostalgia obsessed boomer who thinks everything was better when he was younger and that it was all ruined by blacks.