Nestled within America's once-thriving coal country, 87-year-old Ed Shepard laments a prosperous era gone by, when shoppers lined the streets and government lent a helping hand. Now, here as in one-fourth of all U.S. counties, West Virginia's graying residents are slowly dying off.
Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call "natural decrease."
Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a prolonged job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending.[emphasis added]
I'm sorry, but what does the Republican proposals have to do with this long standing demographic phenomenon? How are proposals causing anything to "spread"? The answers are, of course, absolutely nothing and in no way whatever.
Let's hear what the people who live in one of these areas has to say:
"There's no reason for you to come to Welch," says Shepard, wearing a Union 76 cap at a makeshift auto shop he still runs after six decades. "This is nothing but a damn ghost town in a welfare county."
That's right, because it is Republicans who are to blame for welfare dependency.
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