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Hillbilly Elegy

The New Memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" highlights the core social-policy question of our time

The site won't let me copy/paste - but it's a good review to read through.

Looks like I can copy/paste from there. Here is an excerpt from your link:

A lot of people like the book for its insights into what the white working class sees in Donald Trump and his promises to restore American greatness in the face of malevolent outsiders.

But what I liked best about the book is how it engages with what I see as one of the most important and difficult social-policy questions of our time: How do we unstack the deck and, at the same time, get people to take ownership over improving their own lives and communities even when they reasonably believe that the deck is stacked against them?

Vance has a few policy recommendations to improve the lives of the white working class — in particular, he thinks that child-protective-services departments need reform. But he's a conservative who believes that the government has limited scope to fix the culture, so mostly his prescriptions are about private behavior: Working-class whites from the Rust Belt to the South need stronger community institutions like churches, more positive attitudes toward work, and less defeatism that assumes their fate has been sealed by far-away forces.

Most problematically, he notes that even an accurate belief that forces beyond one's control are causing one's disadvantage can lead to hopelessness and greater disadvantage.

Looks interesting.
 
Looks like I can copy/paste from there. Here is an excerpt from your link:

:) Thanks

Looks interesting.

It reminded me very much of Charles Murray's emphasis on the impact of social institutions and decisions - I hope he writes a review.
 
The New Memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" highlights the core social-policy question of our time

The site won't let me copy/paste - but it's a good review to read through.

from the review:

I don't know what to do about it, but "Hillbilly Elegy" is a good book that does a lot to diagnose the problem.

Republicans have been espousing the problem since Reagan and some even before but just like this book(apparently) it falls flat where it really matters, A strategy to implement the change necessary
 
from the review:

Republicans have been espousing the problem since Reagan and some even before but just like this book(apparently) it falls flat where it really matters, A strategy to implement the change necessary

Hard to come up with a political strategy to answer the problem of "people need to take more responsibility for themselves, and stop blaming their problems on others".
 
Hard to come up with a political strategy to answer the problem of "people need to take more responsibility for themselves, and stop blaming their problems on others".

True but its hardly a new idea of what is causing our problems
 
I got to read a pretty thorough synopsis of the book, which was a solid analysis of what's happened to the white working class and their disenfranchisement from society. It helps understand their anger a lot better. It shows how the Democrats have lost them, the GOP never paid any attention to them, and then Trump stepped into that vacuum.

They're the forgotten class of Americans who used to be the backbone of the country and now they're second class. It's why the term "white privilege" angers them so much because they sure as hell don't have said mythological privilege. I just wish a more sympathetic candidate had taken up their cause.
 
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