[eigenstuff]

Oh, honey, no, Appalachia absolutely suffers from the resource curse as well, to the point you often see scholars describe the region as an "internal colony." Big Coal came in, forced people off their land, extracted all the wealth, sure as hell didn't pay its fair share of taxes on it, bought the local governments all the way down to school boards and sherrifs to squash any opposition, and then left behind nothing in its wake except horrific environmental atrocities and poverty on par with inner city black neighborhoods, Native reservations, and the rural Deep South black belt. The negative stereotypes of Appalachians still perpetuated to this day were largely invented by industry to justify their exploitation and disenfranchisement. Negative stereotypes about blacks couldn't apply to a mainly white region so they just became "white trash" instead. The explosive growth of the American economy in the 20th century was fueled by the blood of over 100,000 coal miners who never saw a dime of that sweet sweet American dream money. And this shit is still going on to this day.

The poorest state in the US is Mississippi. That is the legacy of slavery. The second poorest state is West Virginia, which ironically shares a border with Maryland, the richest in the country. That's not an accident nor a testament to the allegedly poor character of Appalachians as a distinct cultural group separate from the rest of America. That was completely by design, because you can more easily manipulate a group of people if you force them to fight for scraps. That is the legacy of extractive industry in Appalachia. And so the cycle of rural poverty continues. Don't let them fool you with the "Trump Country" narrative or "Hillbilly Elegy".

[Retric]

West Virginia is worse off than most of the US. But, it’s not on it’s own the way a country would be.

So, it’s doing well compared to most of the world. The median household income is still $43,469 which is better than say Japan at least in nominal terms.