Into My Own Asks This Question: What is John Boehner Doing About Rural Poor?

The blog "Into My Own" has a very interesting entry up about rural poverty and the lack of Republican response to such poverty. The entry is based on a report about rural poverty that the Dayton Daily News published. The DDN article used a town in Ohio that suffered a tragic fire. It examined what is happening to that town, Greenville, in terms of job loss, family breakup, and crime. The author of the entry believes that Boehner is doing nothing because people who live in such towns don't give campaign contributions.

That may be one reason, but here is another possibility. The problem of rural poverty doesn't lend itself to market solutions which, since the 1980s, have been the preferred solutions to any social or economic problem. A declining work force, inadequate funding base for schools, and a migration out of such places by young people, means that such areas are not attractive places for private investment. Since they aren't attractive for private investment, it is difficult to attract new businesses to such areas or help the ones that are already there.

It doesn't have to be that way. Here are some ideas: (1) put Ohio's school funding on a equal basis so that quality of education is not so dependent on where a person lives; (2) invest in school buildings and other public infrastructure; (3) put up a system of cheap broadband communication so that all areas of Ohio are accessible to the Internet; and (4) put more money into law enforcement in these areas so that the crime rate is driven down. Come to think of it, those solutions would work well for urban areas too.

Such solutions, however, are dependent on having an activist government. Such a government is not compatible with the philosophy of the Republican Party and its elected officials.