[Sparkle-san]

Why not rural Americans? When helping someone in my community, I don't first stop and analyze whether my time/money could be better allocated to maximize some sort of utilitarian loss function, I help them because they're there, need my help, and I'm able to help.

[evanjrowley]

I don't disagree with you, but there is value in considering how money could be best put to use for the common good.

One perspective overlooked here is the purchasing power of non-Americans (i.e., not U.S. citizens). Dollars in developing countries can be worth multiple times what they are in the United States. For example, you could help 5000 rural Vietnamese for every 1000 rural Americans. There is also a higher potential for rural Americans to obtain dollars vs. non-Americans. In utilitarian terms you have the potential to do more good by sending money to rural communities overseas.

I'm saying this as someone who loves Appalachia.

[Sparkle-san]

There's a lot of value in helping out locally as well.

I don't have as much lived experience of someone in Vietnam as I do someone in my community. Nor do I understand the language or the culture. There's more overhead in making it happen and there will likely be a lot of things I'll never take into account or understand. On the other hand, I know what it's like living in a HCOL state where many jobs don't pay enough for a family to survive and have struggled in my own past. Could my money have more purchasing power elsewhere? Sure. And they're still people in my community struggling and I have the power to help them and a greater understanding of what they're facing. Community seems to get discounted a lot in the discussion around effective altruism and I think that's unfortunate.

[evanjrowley]

What I know for sure is, if I could, I would invest my money into clean drinking water infrastructure for both communities. Helping families pay the water company to distribute jugs of filtered drinking water is great, but infrastructure that's not contaminated would be so much better for everyone.

[bombcar]

We also have the reality that "American charity" has done horrible things to poorer nations - shiploads of free American clothing has decimated African textile industries, boatloads of free American food has destroyed entire nation's ability to feed themselves.

The further away you are from the recipient the harder it is to see the second and third order effects. Local and small means they can be noticed, and things modified to change the outcomes.

[bryanlarsen]

It gives me serious "steal from the poor and give to the rich" vibes. Rural Americans are richer than the majority of humans, and Stack Overflow was a fairly global website.

Rural America also has a government that is fully capable of taking proper care of it's underprivileged; most governments across the world are not.

[cosmic_cheese]

These statements paint with a rather broad brush. There are parts of the US that are so impoverished that it defies belief and more closely resemble pre-industrialization countries than they do what most associate with the United States.

They also ignore that even if other rural areas are technically speaking more rich than the rest of the world, still struggle with an extreme shortage of opportunity, upward mobility, and sense of purpose.

I speak from experience, having been raised in one such area. Had I not moved to a tech hub in search of greener pastures (which is not something everybody is capable of), my life would look so different now as to be unrecognizable. Instead of earning the upper end of the salary band for my line of work with numerous upward trajectories to pursue and a solid bit of retirement stuck away, I'd be working a job earning maybe ~20% as much that doesn't keep track with inflation with zero mobility and an even smaller fraction of retirement funds, and that's one of the best possible outcomes in that region and inaccessible to most.

I've not aligned with the area I hail from politically for a long time now, but clearly it needs help.

[bryanlarsen]

I grew up on a farm. I'd far rather be rural poor in America than middle class in the third world.

[cosmic_cheese]

I would be too, but I can also see how someone in such a situation could feel depressed, hopeless, and neglected, particularly with the sheer amount of wealth other parts of their own country are producing.

[OGEnthusiast]

Maybe they should try not voting for a fascist three times in the row if they expect sympathy from the "rest of their own country".

[GuinansEyebrows]

if we want a better place to live, we have to stop basing social welfare availability on political extortion.

positive change is slow and revenge politics makes it slower.

[codinghorror]

I strongly recommend you check out the book "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America". People -- in this country, not in the third world -- are regularly selling their blood so they can afford to eat. https://www.google.com/search?q=%242+a+day%3A+living+on+almo...

What difference does it make if the government is "capable" when it's not happening in practice?

A lot of areas in this country resemble the third world more than the rest of America. Don't take it from me. Try the book reference I provided and its citations.

[OGEnthusiast]

Rural Americans are responsible for the situation they're in.

[readthenotes1]

Aren't we all?