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Xanny t1_j7qxrp5 wrote

If you want something else to research look into how many dead towns there are throughout the Rustbelt now. They look exactly like the black butterfly of Baltimore and have similar rates of drug use and crime, just they are smaller and more dispersed so its not as concentrated a problem. Those places had the exact same pattern of white flight as resource extraction and factory labor dried up and left, the difference is they were isolated enough to just be abandoned and forgotten for the most part.

The people that lived there had kids that took opportunity to leave like my grandma did, and nobody else wanted to go there as opportunity dried up, so they turned into ruins too. Like they often still have a few people living there, just like the butterfly, but thats because the erosion of a place with capital flight is slow and drawn out.

Its why the opioid epidemic got so bad for white people. It basically took these dying rural areas and towns and beat them to death bluntly with overdosing. Entire states like Kentucky are scarred by it.

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