The thing is, people <i>do</i>. That&#x27;s part of the problem. Who leaves? The most able, the most motivated. Those left behind? Less able, less motivated. Which makes it worse.<p>This was my own father. He came from a little west of that belt, the tobacco farms of south central Kentucky. He got up and left as soon as he could. He never even graduated high school. When I was a kid, we&#x27;d visit my grandfather&#x27;s farm. I thought it was heaven - Kentucky is extraordinarily beautiful. But they didn&#x27;t have electricity or running water. Not really something a five year old notices, but an adult remembers.<p>Incidentally, the exact same problem has happened to inner city black neighborhoods. In the pre-civil rights era, blacks simply weren&#x27;t allowed to live in white neighborhoods, so the doctors, lawyers, business owners, and other talented and determined black leaders lived in the same neighborhood as the poor. Once they got the ability to live somewhere nicer, they left, leaving ghettos full of addicts, gangs, the uneducated, the disabled, basically people unable to leave.<p>It&#x27;s really difficult for people who have grown up with the privileges of middle&#x2F;upper class to comprehend what it&#x27;s like to live in poverty. It&#x27;s not just that you&#x27;re poor. It&#x27;s that you&#x27;re surrounded by losers, because all the people with talent have already left. When I was a kid, I didn&#x27;t know <i>anyone</i> wealthy, except those men my father worked for, whom he hated. I didn&#x27;t know anyone well-educated, except teachers. The most successful adult I knew owned a motorcycle dealership, and not a very big one.<p>And as soon as I was old enough to live on my own, I left. I went to a great college and met a whole new class of people. But mostly, I was running. I got up and ran, and kept running until the stupid racist redneck bikers were long behind me. Because when you have talent and you live in crap, that&#x27;s what you do.