Quote:
Originally Posted by SportyandMisty
It certainly is reasonable for you to raise this issue with your city & county & state economic development departments. What are they doing to attract higher value-add companies?
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They don't want to, that is a problem here.
They have the "not in my back yard" attitude.
Once out major manufacturing left, only minimum wage service jobs were left.
Coupled with employers nation wide not caring about their employees enough to want to provide benefits, it's a problem.
Why are we still here? We consider it out duty to look after our 83 and 90 year old father's, who lived here, benefiting from the manufacturing structure that allowed tgen to amply raise a family on their single salary. A situation thst no longer exists.
There was also a tremendous amount of sub contractors who worked for the major employers, who paid well, but not quite as well as the major players, but a family coukd be supported by one earner. A part of that is that we no longer manufacture much in the USA.
As soon as our fathers are gone, though we'll be out of here. Hopefully to retire as,well.
This area has continuously turned down opportunities for both manufacturing and other things such as a mall to compete with the one in Branson, and a couple companies wanting to set up a headquarters for the north east region of the country. Nope as long as they get their state, county and city pay with full benies paid by the minimum wage based community here, they don't care about bringing jobs that do pay in.
A good portion of the county is also farming community, but due to the "hardships" of farming, even that is disappearing.
But that leads to the " picturesque country side here the leaders "don't want to change". But even tourist dollars don't come in to enjoy this "picturesque country side "!!
The NIMBY attitude is alive and well here.
Also the area, when it does gain a new employer, doesn't bother to train a workforce beneficial to the future employers , so they hire/tramsfer people from outside the area to run the facilities.
There is also no " promotion from within", it's we'll hire an outsider.
Even the real estate market has been stagnant for 2 decades, largely because wages have been stagnant. Those from the outside can easily afford a house here, but since 2015 it has,risen. We bought our house in fall 2015, just at the upswing of the competitive market enjoyed here today.
It is true that a minimum wage based job earner can afford a house here if they both work 2 two minimum based jobs full time, but our minimum is waaaay above the federal minimum.
And for someone like me who is physically disabled, any old job is not available to me, or I'd be mowing lawns for the town/county like I did when I was a teenager and early 20s.
As someone mentioned before and someone backed them up, NIMBY doesn't help matters.
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