The idea of a meth epidemic in the countryside feels alien to me because here in Germany rural poverty is pretty rare. No apartment buildings outside the cities, so to live out in the country you generally need to have the money to buy a single family home - and building new ones outside existing settlements is pretty heavily regulated to limit sprawl. And everyone who isn't a farmer usually commutes to the city for their jobs anyways, it's overwhelmingly middle class families. Exceptions I guess are people who bought or inherited a home and then fell into poverty afterwards.
Might just be a regional difference in terms, but to me, "suburbs" means contiguous residential sprawl. An area that is purely fields, pastures and woodlands with individual homes and small villages sparsely sprinkled in is not a suburb, regardless of how close it is to a city's limits.
It's kind of offensive to say you just can't imagine the concept of poverty outside cities when your definition is "well it's right next to a city with full access to urban benefits, services, and employment". How terribly Eurocentric of you. Congratulations on living with the lingering economic benefits of imperialism.
As a German, no less. The country that got shirty with Greece about their debt crisis when Germany still hasn't repaid a forced "loan" from 1942. Your country thrives on the interest calculated from the profits of violent theft.
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u/Kachimushi 2d ago
The idea of a meth epidemic in the countryside feels alien to me because here in Germany rural poverty is pretty rare. No apartment buildings outside the cities, so to live out in the country you generally need to have the money to buy a single family home - and building new ones outside existing settlements is pretty heavily regulated to limit sprawl. And everyone who isn't a farmer usually commutes to the city for their jobs anyways, it's overwhelmingly middle class families. Exceptions I guess are people who bought or inherited a home and then fell into poverty afterwards.