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December 25, 2005
Last modified December 24, 2005 - 8:02 pm
Barbed Wire: Rural poverty not always acknowledged
Jim Gransbery
BARBED WIRE
There are things we know intuitively, and, for the most part, we keep that knowledge hidden in a mental closet somewhere behind our right ear.
Like family skeletons, these insights are locked out of sight, out of mind because we know that running them up to the frontal lobe and into the daylight causes discomfort and pain for ourselves and our neighbors.
But once in a while, a reckoning is forced by an outside observer, who by sheer mustering of facts, serves up a large helping of reality - cold reality much like this winter.
Such is the case with a recent article in The Economist datelined Judith Basin County, Montana.
Regional poverty has moved out of the South to the Northern Great Plains, and eight Montana counties are at the bottom of the national list for average wages and salaries. An important element of the analysis is that none of these counties is home to an Indian reservation.
The residents of the eight counties are white and poor, though most would deny the latter.
Meagher County, named for the Civil War general who became Montana's territorial governor, is at the top of the inverted list of 10. Next comes Petroleum, Carter, Judith Basin, Garfield, a county each in North Dakota and Nebraska, then Golden Valley, Liberty and Wheatland. The average annual personal income in these counties runs from $13,485 to $14,441. The federal government sets the poverty level at $18,400 a year for a family of four. The criterion for the ranking is average wages and salaries as reported on federal tax returns filed for 2003.
The commonality of the counties is that all are east of the Continental Divide and agrarian - cattle, sheep, wheat and barley. They are depopulating by attrition.
Several years ago, a feed, seed and fertilizer supplier in Harlowton, county seat of Wheatland, described the dichotomy that is Montana.
John Lammers opined that if you lived in the "Golden Crescent," you had an economic, social, cultural and political life. If you lived outside that quarter moon of vitality, you had none of those elements and it was bound to worsen. It did, with seven years of drought.
The Golden Crescent is that area of Montana west of the Divide beginning in the Flathead Valley running south to the Bitterroot and then eastward to Yellowstone County that includes Billings, the "only one decent-sized city" in a four-state region, according to The Economist reporter.
Lammers was both realist and prophet, and the article alludes to a continuum that is sure to deteriorate in the short term.
The common denominator of federal farm subsidies links these counties.
The federal government spent an average of $10,200 per person in Judith Basin County in 2003 and $9,000 per person in North Dakota, according to the article.
The state office of the Farm Service Agency, which manages federal farm programs, last week released a report on how much money it distributed in Montana in fiscal year 2005, which ended on Sept. 30.
The numerous programs injected $405.1 million into the state's rural economy last year. It included $332.4 million in farm programs, mostly for grain subsidies, another $66.5 in farm loans and $6.2 million in other price support and conservation programs.
The eight counties listed above received a total of $23.8 million in farm program payments in FY05.
This week, in a tortuous dance of the mongoose and the cobra, the U.S. Senate and House made much ado about trimming the national budget by $40 billion over five years. Congress went home for Christmas without a final vote in the House on the spending cuts that focus on Medicare, Medicaid, student loans and farm programs.
This bill is just the trailer for the horror show being scripted by another cold reality. The combination of national debt, federal deficit, balance of trade deficit and international trade treaties is going to hammer rural America, especially the Northern Great Plains states of Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska as cited in The Economist article. That is the long view from London.
It's the short view out our own backdoor
Last modified December 24, 2005 - 8:02 pm
Barbed Wire: Rural poverty not always acknowledged
Jim Gransbery
BARBED WIRE
There are things we know intuitively, and, for the most part, we keep that knowledge hidden in a mental closet somewhere behind our right ear.
Like family skeletons, these insights are locked out of sight, out of mind because we know that running them up to the frontal lobe and into the daylight causes discomfort and pain for ourselves and our neighbors.
But once in a while, a reckoning is forced by an outside observer, who by sheer mustering of facts, serves up a large helping of reality - cold reality much like this winter.
Such is the case with a recent article in The Economist datelined Judith Basin County, Montana.
Regional poverty has moved out of the South to the Northern Great Plains, and eight Montana counties are at the bottom of the national list for average wages and salaries. An important element of the analysis is that none of these counties is home to an Indian reservation.
The residents of the eight counties are white and poor, though most would deny the latter.
Meagher County, named for the Civil War general who became Montana's territorial governor, is at the top of the inverted list of 10. Next comes Petroleum, Carter, Judith Basin, Garfield, a county each in North Dakota and Nebraska, then Golden Valley, Liberty and Wheatland. The average annual personal income in these counties runs from $13,485 to $14,441. The federal government sets the poverty level at $18,400 a year for a family of four. The criterion for the ranking is average wages and salaries as reported on federal tax returns filed for 2003.
The commonality of the counties is that all are east of the Continental Divide and agrarian - cattle, sheep, wheat and barley. They are depopulating by attrition.
Several years ago, a feed, seed and fertilizer supplier in Harlowton, county seat of Wheatland, described the dichotomy that is Montana.
John Lammers opined that if you lived in the "Golden Crescent," you had an economic, social, cultural and political life. If you lived outside that quarter moon of vitality, you had none of those elements and it was bound to worsen. It did, with seven years of drought.
The Golden Crescent is that area of Montana west of the Divide beginning in the Flathead Valley running south to the Bitterroot and then eastward to Yellowstone County that includes Billings, the "only one decent-sized city" in a four-state region, according to The Economist reporter.
Lammers was both realist and prophet, and the article alludes to a continuum that is sure to deteriorate in the short term.
The common denominator of federal farm subsidies links these counties.
The federal government spent an average of $10,200 per person in Judith Basin County in 2003 and $9,000 per person in North Dakota, according to the article.
The state office of the Farm Service Agency, which manages federal farm programs, last week released a report on how much money it distributed in Montana in fiscal year 2005, which ended on Sept. 30.
The numerous programs injected $405.1 million into the state's rural economy last year. It included $332.4 million in farm programs, mostly for grain subsidies, another $66.5 in farm loans and $6.2 million in other price support and conservation programs.
The eight counties listed above received a total of $23.8 million in farm program payments in FY05.
This week, in a tortuous dance of the mongoose and the cobra, the U.S. Senate and House made much ado about trimming the national budget by $40 billion over five years. Congress went home for Christmas without a final vote in the House on the spending cuts that focus on Medicare, Medicaid, student loans and farm programs.
This bill is just the trailer for the horror show being scripted by another cold reality. The combination of national debt, federal deficit, balance of trade deficit and international trade treaties is going to hammer rural America, especially the Northern Great Plains states of Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska as cited in The Economist article. That is the long view from London.
It's the short view out our own backdoor
