Linden TN –
Americans are deeply divided about the role government should play in their lives – but events can sometimes force people to think beyond their traditional political beliefs.
Take Linden, a small town in rural Tennessee. It’s a staunchly conservative place that at the height of the Great Recession took part in a rare US experiment in state intervention.
Facing an unemployment rate of 27%, the county used stimulus money from the federal government to directly pay the wages of almost 300 workers at private companies.
Today, the jobless rate is down to 6.7%. The stimulus cash only guaranteed those jobs for a just over a year, however, so there’s a debate over what helped save the town – and what has made it flourish since.
As part of the BBC’s week-long Divided America series in America’s South, Franz Strasser went to Tennessee to find out more.