After the check is gone: The underground economy of rural America
That is so depressing.  No wonder suicide rates are up.<p>You know there&#x27;s a difference between &quot;give a man a fish&quot; and &quot;teach a man to fish&quot;, but what do you do when the fish are just <i>gone</i>?<p>It was mentioned in the article, but not extensively discussed.  I think maybe the largest distinct segment of the economy in ex-coalcountry regions is now pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal.  There&#x27;s the legal root and mushroom hunting, which go into supplements, but a large fraction of the people are growing marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, collecting sassafras root bark for MDMA cooks, and reselling their prescription opioids, in addition to the older traditions of moonshining and tobacco cigarette smuggling.<p>And <i>everyone</i> is on social security disability.  If all you ever knew is coal mining, <i>that&#x27;s</i> your condition that prevents you from finding gainful employment.  If you need to see what happens with bare-bones basic income, that&#x27;s it.  The whole community barely scrapes along, and everyone has to do some niche hustle to earn their gas money a dime at a time.  If you threw out the penalty for working, most of those people would be doing something productive, even if it&#x27;s manufacturing ugly tchotchkes to be sold in a tourist trap, because whatever it is would give them beef in their stew instead of just barely enough gas in the tank to keep going.