Even as someone that despises Kentucky “culture” and society in general in Kentucky, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment and I probably dislike Kentucky and most of the people I’ve met there probably more than most people. I had the opportunity to visit about 100 out of the 120 counties of Kentucky and while it sucks there is no slave trading and such. The problem is the economy in Kentucky, the poor educational system that keeps people dumb and ignorant of the rest of the world and of course they double standards and hypocrisy that is all over Kentucky from the smallest towns to cities like Louisville. The problem with Kentucky is that most of it is a toilet with just nice scenery. If it was based on scenery in Kentucky I would live there in a heartbeat.
However, the people are generally D and F grade people overall with very few A and B type people that makes somewhere a good place to live. The schools are generally horrid and the people that graduate from them have virtually little knowledge of the outside world. Even in Louisville, much of the population can barely get out of its own area of the city which is only about 25 miles from east to west and 15 miles from North to South in Jefferson County.
You wouldn’t believe the amount and percentage of people in Jefferson County that haven’t been to the other parts of their own city area to see how the other 1/3 lives as Louisville is a city of about 3 or 4 different cities. There is the West End which is primarily minority majority population of African Americans. Then you have the South End which is mostly white with a mix of African Americans, Latinos and Asians. Then you have the East End which is mostly highly majority white with a sprinkling of other groups that can live there because of their income and social status that allows them a certain amount of economic independence.
However, you don’t see a lot of people in Louisville intermingling with people of seriously different backgrounds as they stick to their own tribal areas and largely tribal boundaries. You’ve got people that live in South End who won’t go to the East End and vice versa. Most people won’t go to the West End because of crime of course but also a racial element as most West End areas are 90 percent black as well. Furthermore you can have people that live in Louisville all of their lives and don’t know how to get across the city to other businesses, cultural events, social gatherings etc because they never get out of the 10 square mile area of the city where they live.
I’ve seen this plenty of times in the South End and the East End because in both of those areas there are enough retail businesses and other businesses to meet demand of the people in those areas. So what happens is that people get in their little cocoon of an area and rarely leave it. The goes for people in Kentucky not really knowing anything about surrounding states or other parts of America much less other countries. They don’t travel much unless its to the Redneck Riviera of Florida and Alabama for vacation and then of course for UK basketball or other sporting events.
In many cases, its a challenge for them to even make it as far as Cincinnati or Indianapolis or St. Louis or Nashville not because they can’t go to those places but because they don’t interested in learning about other cultures or places. The whole mentality that somehow Kentucky is the end all be all of human society and no one should criticize it or offer even constructive criticism of Kentucky and people get deeply offended over the smallest comment about Kentucky culture. I’ve never seen the mindset of a place where people get so offended over someone making constructive criticism of their state or the values of the people in that state. Much less actually present the facts about Kentucky such as it being 47th in the USA in just about every major category from things like personal and family income to educational achievement to health outcomes.
Don’t criticize Kentucky though is the general mantra you’ll get from native Kentuckians and others that are Kentucky centric type of individuals as they really do think they live in some sort of a heaven even though its quite apparent that economically, socially and educationally Kentucky is severely backwards. I didn’t have a negative view of Kentucky or any real preconceived notions about Kentucky before I moved there but after seeing the trash of Kentucky society in my face for several years from about 2005 until 2013 I can say that I wouldn’t want to live there again.
On the other hand if you like the good old boy system, vast public and social corruption, deadbeats who abuse the system and their fellow citizens and people with skewed moral and ethical values by and large then Kentucky is the place for you. I certainly wasn’t raised the way that obviously most people in Kentucky were raised and thank goodness for that because their values that they state and what they do is totally opposite in fact. Its funny too because you’re made to believe that Kentucky is a moral and religious society even though its quite apparent that the churches are largely places of social constructs rather than actually practicing ethical and moral values that would be in line with its religion.
Another thing you’ll be badgered about is your religion or church attendance or have someone constantly nitpicking about how you need to come join their congregation even though plenty of their own types don’t practice what they preach. Hypocritical of course but outright meanness at the best that despite of their religious talk they treat a lot of people like crap including religious minorities, blacks, Hispanics and anyone different than them. Not to mention the little cliques that you find in Kentucky society in people that should know better but if you’re not one of them then you’re either dead to them or they are going to be outright hostile.
It’s funny that they talk about Kentucky family values but I’ve seen their family values such as adultery on a grand scale, outright lying, bending the truth, theft and just general white trash type of behavior that most people with any moral and ethical scruples anywhere else would find abhorrent. If you like that sort of thing then Kentucky would be for you, if you’ve been raised with some sort of ethical and moral truth or in a community where such behavior is frowned upon then Kentucky is someplace that is foreign and alien to your ethics and morals.
Some of us especially in rural America and the Northern states weren’t raised that way and while we have our own problem with people misbehaving or being total leeches on society we also don’t smile upon it and look approvingly while some inbred yahoo shouts about Jay-Sus and either handle snakes or has some view that everyone that doesn’t follow their particular brand of hypocritical religion is going to hell.
The problem ties back into the fact that the educational system in Kentucky is so poor and backwards not because of lack of funding but the type of people in the state and the education system itself. Actually, school spending in Kentucky is about 11,000 dollars a year which is actually more than my current state of Indiana yet Kentucky regularly ranks anywhere from 41st to 47th in education for K-12 students not to mention 43rd in the quality of its post-secondary educational activities. Not to mention that Kentucky is 47th in the country in educational attainment.
Even worse is that Kentucky does such a bad job in educating its citizens that about 50 plus percent of Kentucky high school students actually fail to meet the standards of reading, writing, comprehension, math and science at grade level. In 2018, Kentucky students were proficient to excelling in English composition, vocabulary and spelling and writing at a 52 percent level. Which means that about half aren’t capable of reading, writing and communicating at a 10th to 12th grade level when these tests are given.
The same goes for math but its much worse as only about 44 percent of Kentucky students are proficient at 12th grade math skills as well as only about 37 percent are proficient at high school level science.
That explains a lot of things to me including the fact that Kentucky has about 900,000 people considered as functionally illiterate and incapable of doing basic tasks, basic jobs, filling out job applications, inability to write and reason intelligently to the point that the state knows this and it comprises about 20 percent of the population.
However, its much worse than that because I would say that as much as 35 or 40 percent of the people I’ve encountered in my travels to Kentucky and about 100 out of 120 counties were that way or you could tell that something was quite off mentally and educationally. I mean, the personal anecdotes and stories that I could tell you about my dealing with Kentucky society is just mind blowing in so many ways.
It’s not even based on emotion or arguments its based on facts and Kentucky is short on facts or at least the average Kentuckian is short on facts, figures, logic, reason and or common sense in many cases. What would go for common sense in most places in Kentucky would be considered as something not very intelligent people would do elsewhere. Yes, its really that bad that Kentucky seems to have serious problems using common sense, logic and reason to solve problems After most of that I just had to leave because I couldn’t tolerate in general such mind blowing stupidity in my everyday dealings with people from Kentucky.
I don’t find that to generally be the case in the North with most people having at least enough common sense to see through stupidity for being what it is. In Kentucky, its acceptable and celebrated to behave in less than dignified or often stupid ways and then act as if the other person has a problem. Of course, when you have a limited amount of intellect and common sense like so many in Kentucky have you’re not dealing with rocket scientists here. That is acceptable in Kentucky but it wouldn’t be acceptable in most other states in the West, Northern tier states and Northeast US. Maybe in some places in the South it would be acceptable but that’s much of the US South for you.
Add in the fact that Kentucky ranks so poorly in healthcare being one of the worst states, worst state for retirees, worst government state in the country and 3rd worst pension problem. You can also notice that Kentucky infrastructure development is about at 3rd world levels with thousands of bridges that are structurally deficient and gets a D grade from American Society of Civil Engineers.
Kentucky has a lot of issues with how they run government as well. For example one of the stupidest things is having the county clerks office issue drivers licenses and personal identification but then having to go to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to register your vehicle so you have to go two different places to get an ID and the paperwork and then go to the BMV to register your vehicle, boat, or motorcycle, etc.
That’s plain stupid to have a system that has multiple redundancies of government. Add in that Louisville is one of the most taxed cities in the country being 4th highest in taxes and its no wonder the Louisville economy is backwards and underdeveloped in many ways. Their mentality is to create more low wage jobs and low wage warehousing positions because that is the only thing that most of the people can actually handle by and large.
Not to mention Kentucky is economically and fiscally busted in many ways without having money to fix its increasingly collapsing infrastructure and broken roadways and bridges. Not to mention having the 3rd worst funded pension system with huge billions of dollars shortfalls where the state legislators both Republican and Democrat have kicked the can down the road for decades and not funding pensions and allowing double dipping. The only two other states that are worse funded pensions are Illinois and California being the worst states for funding state pensions.
Add in the fact that Kentucky income tax for a family making between 8,000 to 75,000 is about 5.8 percent which is much higher than neighboring Indiana and its 6 percent for anyone making over 75,000 whereas Indiana pays half the taxes at just over 3.2 percent of total income. So you get twice as much of a tax burden out of Kentucky yet about half of the services and more inefficiency and stupidity when it comes to Kentucky government and society. No thank you.
Louisville is one of the highest taxed cities in the country rivaling places like Chicago, NYC etc when it comes to overall tax burden. In fact, the average Louisville resident pays state and local tax burden of about 8 percent and that’s just on income and property taxes are increasingly eating up more of ones income as well. In Indianapolis, Indiana at 110 miles away the average local tax burden is about 5 percent with the state taking 3.1 percent and the local city Unigov taking about 1.9 percent and property taxes are just about equal.
All so you can deal with Kentucky and its archaic laws, backwards society and equally horrible school systems.
Those are the real problems with Kentucky which no one wants to really acknowledge and talk about which is why Kentucky remains in many ways in the dark ages as far as US states perform and work.
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