I have spent my life in the most important state in the most important area in the entire world. I have lived in south-central Pennsylvania since I was born. I have lived in a few other places during my 42 years on this earth, but this has always been home.

In living here, I have been at ground zero for every social experiment and every economic decision this country has ever made.

When I was born, this was a steel-manufacturing, heavy-industrial area that produced throughout the 20th century. All the rebar for the Golden Gate Bridge, all the rail lines for the entire country, the steel beams that built all the sky scrapers, the coal that fed the industrial revolution and to this day still adds carbon to iron to produce the steel we use, crayons, potato chips, chocolate, windows, doors, auto and truck springs, the bomber sights made by zemco, the switches for all the rail lines made by carlisle frog and switch, the machines in factorys, your school bus built by blue bird or birdsboro and so much else.

Add to this, Pennsylvania has been the population center that has decided every election in American history. Being the 5th most populous state has its advantages and disadvantages. When companies want to expand their footprint, they always try to come here to sell thier goods or build a new location. This often causes our ground to be overly valued and our local places to be put in jeopardy because some giant corporation wants in. On the same level, we are given leeway for our local cultures, and they are protected for political reasons.

We were hit hard by deindustrialization, and the nationally implemented solutions hit us especially hard. The problem became that people who had an expectation of a job after high school and a family sustaining wage thier sons became an issue when our fathers were ripped out of our homes. The solution, of course, was to take these male children, throw them into institutions, and force them to comply with the new agenda. This created an entire generation of young men who were either completely broken or institutionalized. Drugs and alcohol became a massive problem, leading to millions of deaths of despair. None of this was the fault of the average Pennsylvanian who just wanted to live their life in peace. The rise of libertarianism gave these people an excuse to say that the problem, of course, did not lie with them; it was someone else’s issue, and they deserved it for not being good enough at the game of life.

Our economic system outsourced, moved, or automated everything it could as oil and coal reached their limits of energy returns. To keep the products and services cheap at home, they needed a new tactic.

With the advent of mass refrigeration, transportation, and industrialization of domestic labor (washing machines, refrigerators, grocery stores, vacuum cleaners), women’s time had been freed up, and the economy knew just how to use it. Women were given birth control education and economic freedom. This, coupled with a feminist movement led by corporate advertising on mass media like cable and radio, destroyed the home completely. The jobs that hired these women didn’t just hire them to be secretaries; they adapted the job itself to make it more conducive to them. This included lowering the lifting standards, knowledge base, or responsibilities. This allowed companies to fight inflation and break unions that demanded higher pay as the government printed more money. This dropped pay across the board for service-sector or distribution jobs and froze wages for manufacturing jobs. The banks responded by creating new lines of credit, further expanding the monetary base and debasing already-shrinking salaries, while creating demand for goods and turbocharging the economy through demand.

I was born into the Reagan era and had about 6 years of being an adult before this entire system collapsed.

This structure, where women entered the workforce, also drove women into education because why stack boxes in the heat when you can work in an air-conditioned office and make better wages without breaking your back. Employers realized they could pay everyone less if they hired women at starting wages and hired them in droves. The math works like this. If inflation rises by 40% over 10 years and you can hire employees at the same wages, you just saved 40% per employee. This is why immigration works so well.

Most towns in the country had a reason why people moved there. Usually, you had a factory that made a thing. This factory sold goods to the rest of the nation, the state, or even the world. That factory had workers who needed a place to get food or a haircut, and they spent their factory wages on other things. The owners of these establishments needed hardware to run their businesses, and the workers needed their houses fixed, and the other businesses were all created for these purposes. So from one business, many others were created.

These business owners ran the local community and maintained the roads and infrastructure. They planted trees that they would never enjoy the shade of because, for a few generations, their people had prospered in this town. Their grandkids were expected to live out their lives here and grow the roots of these trees.

Once the factories were exported and the jobs disappeared, the downstream businesses closed down and suffered. The kids left because the family-sustaining-wage jobs disappeared.

The women who stayed were not like their mothers. They were raised on MTV and BET. They didn’t date men in the town; they brought in other races and immigrants. The people who once made up this town changed.

The factory workers aged and hopped on Social Security. Of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, only 18 have Social Security as less than 20% of income. Three counties where Social Security is 30% of income or more. These numbers are from 2005 by the way.

 

These are 2025 numbers, with $72 billion sent to 3 million people in the state. The total population is 15 million, roughly 1/5 of the state’s population (20%). So 10% of the state’s entire inflation-adjusted GDP of $800 billion is just money from Social Security. Take these numbers with a grain of salt, of course, because, according to the Social Security Administration, the over-65 cohort in Perry County, PA, is only 673 people, whereas the actual number is 10,000. Not sure what is going on there. The real number is probably closer to 20% of GDP. I know for sure there are entire towns and cities where the main source of income is Social Security.

I spent way too much time researching this section. Rabbit holes.

Anyway. There is a particular area where I spent time because I was one of these guys who, once the internet hit, was invited to come through to see these females. This town I started to hang out in back in the early to mid 2000s, and I go back up often.

This is an old coal region where I was amazed by how it operated. When I showed up way back as a younger man, it was full of meth heads on bicycles with natural ice boxes duct-taped to the front handlebars. They plowed their roads with ATVs, and the kids all had metal teeth from their mothers feeding them Mountain Dew in their baby bottles and from mercury in the water from coal runoff. The women were all single moms with multiple baby fathers in their mid-to-late 20s, listening to hip-hop, driving foreign cars, and talking with a Pennsylvania Dutch/Appalachian accent. There were Italians from the northeast, Mulengeons, strange Scotch-Irish built like old cowboys from westerns, and Germans everywhere. The houses had 2X4s holding up second floors, grocery stores with dirty floors, and trees leaning on power lines. The thing is, though, everyone thought they lived in the suburbs. It was the weirdest thing. Today, it is still the same way. You drive up, and the traffic is horrendous. There are Teslas all over the place and boats for a bay in people’s yards that are 5 hours away. For my southern readers, I should explain that 30 min in the northeast is a day trip. I know you all drive 1000 miles on a Friday to go pick up your kids for the weekend for a visit, then drive back, but here you can have family 20 minutes away, and you may only see them once every 5 years. The lawns are manicured, and they munch on Takis. There are 6,000 residents in an area that stretches 25 miles along a 2-lane road called Route 209, with a population density of around 90 people per square mile. That is like Missouri or West Virginia. Lower than Wisconsin.

This place, which lost most of its coal mining jobs and manufacturing jobs, somehow seems to be becoming more economically viable. Midway through this valley, Walmart, Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s, and the state police set up shop. There have always been pizza shops and a local grocery store, but this caused a massive change. The people who lived there used this to live their suburban dreams and to commute an hour down to the city to work. The elderly who bought their house for (not joking here) $2,000 back in the 90s and 2000s, when the place collapsed or before, have made out like bandits as the local real estate has gained value through the urban sprawl. The locals have reached the point where rents in this insane place are forcing them out. There are 1-bedroom apartments for rent for $1200 a month. Amazon put in a facility about 35 minutes away and brought in its own workforce from Honduras and Belize. The city has been moving its poorer residents out of the city to gentrify the area and dumping them here using Section 8. People I deal with who have kids who are mixed race have begun saying this place is getting bad. The Indians have come in and bought all the local shops and gas stations.

You would expect white Christians when you see Amish horse and buggies tied up at Walmart. What you get is Pakistanis, blacks, and Hondurans stocking the shelves. The local men are all reserved pussies, too afraid to speak up. The women are covered in tattoos, having sex with their drug dealer. Things are insane.

I am thinking of buying some land and just holding it until it gains triple or quadruple in value because America does what America does. It commodified an entire town of normal people and turned it into an economic zone that the descendants of the people who made it can’t afford to live in.