We have been heartened by the recent upwelling of local community members doing good deeds — be it the group organizing food for families in need every Sunday in Triangle Park, the basket raffle which aided the family of Coy Shade, or the various groups ranging from Kiwanis to Elks to local political parties who have been taking a lead in providing aid to local people and organizations.

As always, we love sharing these tales with our readers — and, crucially, we hope that they do not dry up now that the federal shutdown has ended and the state budget is signed.

We understand the temptation.

The job is done, the gap has been bridged, and now it’s time for the authorities to take over…right?

Unfortunately, probably not.

For one, do not forget that people have long been struggling already. It’s just worse now, and the near-future trends aren’t much better if things like healthcare premiums, utility bills and groceries are to be believed.

For another, though, it is far from certain that government — any government, not just our current rogues’ gallery — can adequately fill the need at this point.

According to figures from the United Way, 12% of Pennsylvanians are below the federal poverty level, with another 28% of residents making too much for poverty but too little to afford their expenses.

For Clinton County specifically, federal data from the Census Bureau shows a 9.7% poverty rate, with 943 families below that level.

Perhaps more horrifyingly, the data also has a column ranking the county out of a national list of 3,143 total counties.

Our rank is 1,757 — meaning that roughly 1,400 counties have it worse than us.

The scale is mindboggling.

It’s easy to forget just how massive the United States is, let alone the world, and how every second of every day, practically anything you experience in a day is happening somewhere else, to someone else.

But, we digress.

For as much as we, as Americans, collectively puff out our chests and prattle on about being the greatest and richest country in the history of the world — whether that’s factually true or merely patriotic — it sure seems like more and more of us on the ground level are falling behind year after year.

It doesn’t matter who is in office. Prices increase just the same, and the amount of money you make never seems to keep up.

In a world where our conditions were relatively static, perhaps the government superstructure that had buttressed our middle class since World War II could have continued to effectively do so.

Our conditions, however, are not static — and neither are those across the rest of the world. We no longer reap the benefits of being the only significant manufacturing base left unharmed by conflict. Most nations have industrialized or otherwise specialized their economies for the modern day.

While politicians and pundits tout replacement theory and rile up anti-immigrant sentiment, they remain generally silent about the sheer number of American jobs which have been offshored by our corporations — upwards of five million in manufacturing alone since 1998, according to a report on the Economic Policy Institute.

Of course, that same report points out that, during the same time frame, American service industry employment expanded rapidly, with around 28 million new jobs generated.

Here’s the catch: service jobs are generally lower pay and offer worse benefits. On top of that, many of them are also in the crosshairs of AI, assuming that nascent industry can live up to its promises.

This subject goes deep — people have degrees in economics for a reason, it turns out.

But here’s a simple summary: as a collective, most Americans, especially in our demographics, are falling further and further behind.

That effect will snowball — build on itself — as conditions get worse.

And as broader swaths of the country are affected, we cannot count on our government to be able to effectively disperse meaningful aid.

It falls on all of us to pick up the slack wherever we can, which maybe isn’t the fairest thing in the world.

But it is the right thing to do.

Here, in the mountains of appalachia, we are used to being left behind and forgotten about. It still stings and aggravates our regional trauma, but we are used to it. We are practiced in community aid, and we are no strangers to helping our neighbors.

Perhaps, in a better world, we would be better cared for, be it by corporation or government: higher wages, lower costs, a healthcare system that wasn’t broken beyond belief, more equitable (and lower) taxing…the list goes on and on. There are so many things that could help.

But history shows that no help is coming.

Still, we have hope that a better future is possible. This is in no small part due to the efforts of people within the community who give freely of themselves to help those less fortunate.

Until that future, then, this is the world we live in and the hand we have been dealt.

Our community will get through these tribulations as we have always done: side-by-side.

The keys are duty, care and kindness.

And in these resources, as least, our region is wealthy beyond measure.

Keep it up.