Comment by cosmic_cheese

My background is very similar. Grew up in a small, poor mountain town that once boomed with industry but today is crumbling to dust as the population becomes increasingly elderly and young people either leave for greener pastures or abuse substances in order to escape their reality and succumb to addiction.

The industry that once fueled the town is long gone and isn’t ever coming back, and as you say even if a new industry moved in the jobs it’d open up would be so grueling and abusive that it wouldn’t be a net improvement to anybody’s lives, thanks to all the worker protections stripped away over the years.

It’s not enough to “just” make jobs available. They need to be good jobs with proper protections and support that allow people to thrive.