What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

by Elizabeth Catte

They are often presented without acknowledgment that corporate welfare runs Appalachia. Corporate welfare allows business to shirk their tax burdens, hoard land, and wield enormous political influence while local communities suffer.

Private businesses and out-of-state landowners do not carry anything close to an equitable local tax burden, making it impossible for communities to survive, let alone thrive.

Many Appalachians are poor, but their poverty has a deep and coherent history rooted in economic exploitation.

The theory, quite accurately, presented unchecked capitalism as the root of Appalachia’s problems. Following the priorities of the radical Left, it also called for an anti-colonial movement in Appalachia.