The Daily Yonder has been documenting how the manufacturing sector in the U.S. collapsed during this recession — especially in rural counties in the Carolinas and Georgia.  The Washington Post reports this morning that the blame for the 15% unemployment around Hickory, North Carolina, is due to globalization. Peter Whoriskey reports: "The region has lost more of its jobs to international competition than just about anywhere else in the nation, according to federal trade-assistance statistics, as textile mills have closed, furniture factories have dwindled and even the fiber-optic plants have undergone mass layoffs." 

The federal remedy for jobs lost to global trade is retraining. But the Post finds that people can't afford to go to class. They have mouths to feed and insurance bills to be paid. One woman who lost her job in a furniture factory went back to school to learn how to work in a doctor's office. She lost her house and her health insurance. (See a good slide show on this.)

Free trade advocates say that as unprofitable businesses close due to competition from low-wage countries, workers will shift to more productive activities. The Post finds that reality is having a hard time catching up to theory. "The people in the think tanks keep saying we are going to become -- what's the term? -- an 'information and services' economy," said Allan Mackie, manager of the North Carolina Employment Security Commission office. "That doesn't seem to be working out too good."

We know that rural kids are more apt to join the military than kids in the cities. Where there is more opportunity (more jobs or better access to higher education), young people are less likely to join the armed forces. But how many young men and women really have the opportunity to join the military? Only one out of four, we learned this week. Three out of four young Americans (age 17 to 24) are ineligible to serve in the nation's military. 75 percent. The name of the report documenting this figure is "Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve." 

Here's the rundown on why three out of four young people aren't fit to join the military: One out of four young Americans lacks a high school diploma. If you drop out of school, you don't qualify. One in ten young Americans have a prior conviction for a felony or a misdemeanor serious enough to disqualify them from service. Twenty-seven percent of young Americans are too overweight to join the military. (In Pennsylvania, the percentage of overweight kids doubled between '87 and '07.)

There are other reasons kids don't qualify. They may have bad eyes or asthma or ADHD or drug problems. So when you get down to it, only 2 out of 10 young people even qualify for service — and another 5 percent are close enough to get a waiver.

Dairy farmers in Hungary placed the severed heads of 12 cows in front of the nation's Agriculture Ministry Thursday as part of what is a worldwide protest against low prices for milk producers. The farmers also dumped milk on the street and were promptly charged with defacing a public space. Farmers in the European Union, as in the rest of the world, are selling milk for considerably less than what it costs to produce. 

These kinds of protests and fights are happening all over the world, including Tasmania.  Here's a story from this week about a Pennsylvania family facing low milk prices.  Dairy herd buyouts have been held to try to reduce the herd in the U.S. in order to reduce milk supply. “The past year has been the most difficult since I began farming in 1973,” said Paul Toft, a Rice Lake, Wis., dairy farmer and president of the Associated Milk Producers Inc. “Some say these times rival those of the Great Depression.” 

What's bad for the producer on the farm, however, is good for the processor. Dean Foods Co. announced this week that its third quarter net income jumped 32% as the cost of milk declined. The company, the nation's largest dairy processor, increased its profit estimate for the full year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is looking into claims by U.S. farmers that a lack of competition in the milk market is keeping prices low. 

Justin Rowlatt is traveling the U.S. for the BBC network at the Ethical Man. He's been trying to cut his carbon emissions. Now he's back to "save the world" -- his words, not ours. He asks recently, "Can rural American hold the world to ransom?" 

Rowlatt is in West Virginia where he finds there is much coal mining. It's a place of poor people, but rich in the minerals that established America as an industrial power. Coal is king here and coal rules the state's politics. As a result, Rowlatt reports, the state's two Democratic senators will not vote for the climate change bill now pending in the Senate. The Democrats need those two votes to pass the bill and, as a result, Rowlatt writes, they will have to either cater to West Virginia or water down the bill in some other way that will attract a Republican or two.

"That, in turn, will dilute any deal done at Copenhagen," at the world climate change summit next month, Rowlatt writes. "It may seem extraordinary that a sparsely populated, rural state like West Virginia could hold such sway in international politics, but the logic here on the ground is compelling. 'What would you do if the mines closed?' I asked the miners. They shook their heads: There aren't any good jobs outside of coal here", they told me, 'West Virginia is coal.'"