I was raised in a mid-size city and ended up in another one. My sister, however, moved to the country, where she and her husband earn a decent living in service and construction jobs. They are also very self-sufficient, raising much of their own food and even selling some of their products. We've spent many vacations on their land, where my kids learned about cheese making, sheep shearing, and maple tapping, while their classmates have headed to the Keys for snorkling or Vail for skiing. I have often thought how great it would be if the US had a tradition of rural tourism (like in many European countries), allowing us city-fied people to learn about the people and plants and animals that inhabit the fly-over zone. While it might contribute only a small amount to reviving rural economies, it would go a long way to healing the cultural divide, while easing pressure on overrun and environmentally fragile tourist destinations. But how to convince people that it is more fun to operate a tractor and harvest green beens than to stand in line under the sweltering sun at Disney World?
17
The author fails to mention that Tech Giants, like Amazon are setting up their HQs in places like Queens, not for "the best talent" but for access to cheap labor; armies of South Indian and Chinese Software Engineers here on H1B and Student Visas.
10
Two companies I worked for employed India Software Engineers living in India. No Visa required! With virtual meetings and the internet, in many cases its is practical to use remote S. W. engineers. Since the equipment for SW development is little more than a P. C. and some S. W. tools (programs) it is often easily exported.
9
America has shifted from manufacturing to services and rural areas are losing residents. I believe that an investment in infrastructure (e.g., broadband) can fix the tech divide from city and rural areas but that won't happen overnight. Until all rural areas are fully integrated into our technology infrastructure, there is a service that can be provided in rural areas, and it's called immigration resettlement services. If there is one thing Americans know how to do and that we're good at, it's turning other people into Americans. The Office of Refugee Resettlement states that we're taking less than 100,000 refugees in each year. We need to take 10 or 20 times that many each year. Let's jump over the problem of you're here illegally and you didn't wait your turn, to how fast we can turn you into an American. Turn immigration into a manufacturing problem and making new Americans into a commodity. Sell that service to other countries, and maybe ask for a subsidy from global companies to support the service. I don't think this is a new solution. Isn't this how we built America in the first place?
9
Who remembers when "WIRED" magazine and other techno-utopian cheerleaders rhapsodized about how the Internet would abolish the constraints of space, that anybody could live anywhere and still work anywhere else, how cities would disperse as people moved out to the woodlands and did that "Symbolic Analyst" job from their home office while waving at the deer out the window?
Funny how it's the tech companies, where everybody is just at a computer screen, after it all came true and you can facetime any meeting from your phone in Mogadishu, are leading the charge into the densest cities?
6
This grim article offers little real help. There is one alternative strategy that I would suggest. I grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, one of hundreds of small cities in rural areas (pop. 60-70,000). Thousands of people work in the John Deere factory there but live in rural areas where they prefer the lifestyle. True rural areas are not amenable to revitalization unless they have a special asset, such as beautiful scenery. Re-investing in the Waterloos of the Midwest and South has a better prospect of creating jobs to which rural residents can commute.
One other unrelated point: the article overlooked the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who live in the rural South. The disillusioned white voter is not the only one to suffer from current trends.
12
Aside from resource extraction and most recently cheap labor, rural areas are resource poor. People living in rural areas often like the low population density, and the opportunity to enjoy outdoor recreation. For that they give up the things that go along with urban living, including arts, education, and good jobs. Otherwise they'd live in urban and suburban areas. I have no sympathy for those who want it all but can't have it all.
5
It's an old story that started right after the Industrial Revolution of some four centuries back---the rural unemployed crowding into the cities to find work. That we do not train inertia-laden town dwellers to find new skills enabling them to survive in the non-productive areas where they were born and remain only exacerbates their poverty and passes it along to their children. As productive methods change and concentrate in high population areas,jobs disappear from the country and move to the city; only government restructuring of the economy and retraining intervention for this altered economy might work. For example, if we moved out of coal mining and set up alternate green energy manufacturing as replacements in the rural areas, training the unemployed coal miners in this new enterprise (I believe Hillary Clinton suggested this approach in the 2016 campaign)---we would have health, climate, and economic benefits --which would only harm the already wealthy owners of mines (who have the money to lobby and support the politicians who would oppose this approach). Unfortunately, the public believes that it is possible to keep the past alive and avoid tiring and painful change even when the past is not sustainable.The public yearns for the impossible dream of immediate change and deceitful politicians make their false promises, get elected, and have no sustainable plans for these deluded supporters.
8
In my view, the solution is economies of scale and higher tecnology in farms. Land ownership concentration is the key or rather the first step to a structural, positive change. The outcome on employment levels would not be great, but jobs will be better paid as farm workers are retrained.
I really eye-dance the interactive Photo Statistics Graphics - The way the fade in escapes the page layout box is cinematic and poetic, data like passing birds.
2
As others have noted, the free market of employers and employees with better options has consistently chosen locations other than the rural America you describe. Many commenters who grew up there have eloquently said why. For more insight, I recommend the book "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance. This article doesn't discuss another impact of free market capitalism on rural America -- the utter destruction of its small businesses by chains like Walmart and McDonald's. Instead of a thriving small downtown with several stores, owned by independent business owners, most small towns now have a regional Walmart and shuttered storefronts. Instead of local diners downtown, they have a string of chain fast-food outlets along the closest highway.
The small business owners of rural America and the jobs they created are an endangered species, while the Waltons are billionaires who avoid paying either taxes or livable wages. Up to half of all Walmart employees are part-time, with limited access to benefits -- up from about 20% in 2005. Many of them rely on the "entitlements" that are always in the cross-hairs of the GOP and the billionaire class -- that is, the rest of the country's taxes are subsidizing Walmart's profits. Meanwhile, the evangelical and fundamentalist churches that dominate rural America preach against social change and progress. I'd like to see more articles delving into the other economic and social forces dragging down rural Americans.
23
Reading many comments, especially the Appalachia comment and Detroit response - I think there is one "IF" that needs to be explicitly said and spelled out when discussing saving any area. Yes, let's find ways to 'save' areas, IF they want to be saved, IF the majority of people there are willing to work and make the changes needed. When the majority of the people in an area are racists looking to run off anyone different than themselves, with violence or corruption, when the majority are supporting the criminals who burn and loot - you can't expect a lot of support. But in many areas, the majority are good people who need a chance, and will take the chance. There are some areas that are toxic, and only people who like that type of living stay there.
I think chances exist - we have many programs. I'd personally advocate just for more awareness - there's not nearly enough where we tell people of programs that exist, options they have. I live in southern California, on a cross-border radio station, there are numerous commercials telling the people of Mexico what their government is doing for them. We need that. Both to help people and to inform them of what their tax dollars are doing.
6
Its not just a rural problem. You should ask yourself, "What if [Name main local employer] were to pick up a leave or shut down? If your response is anything more than "it would sting, but not kill" then the outlook for your future is dismal.
3
“After World War II, small town prosperity relied on its contribution to the industrial economy.”
What happened to rural America?
The investor class destroyed U.S. manufacturing in the search for profits. They offshored factories to China and other low-wage countries and brought the products back, tariff-free via free trade agreements. They destroyed communities while the Koch Brother/Chamber of Commerce Republicans cheered and the Democrats watched and did nothing.
Meanwhile, the social costs of providing food, housing, education, health care, and cash assistance to the globalization “losers” falls to U.S. taxpayers.
I’m a 100% capitalist and globalization “winner”. I frankly never cared much about the “losers”. I blamed them for their own problems and said they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Then I spent time in several communities destroyed by offshoring manufacturing.
Now I’m woke. Unfortunately, Trump is the only politician who is woke…and even he is half asleep sometimes.
9
One size does not fit all. Calaveras County towns boomed because of gold mining -- in the mid 19th century. Since then it's been sleepy.
6
"Nobody...seems to know quite how to pick rural America up" -- this the main question that Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang attempts to answer with his proposals.
3
Yet rural America reliably votes Republican, a party that will play to their, religious, racial and fear of the “other” biases but do nothing for their economic plight. We should, in fact, buy out and move out the sparse population of the prairie in the middle of the country and return it To the bison and antelope who could resume historical migratory patterns. An American Serengeti that could develop a photo safari tourist industry. The educational and social programs needed to provide opportunity to rural residents will never be initiated by Republicans. Given the concentration of population in urban areas we also must have urban planning that provides public transportation, housing opportunities with shopping access that does not require everyone to drive a car. Safe, livable urban areas will never be a focus of the current Repuplican party who only cares about power and their mega rich donors.
8
Agglomeration is rather necessary in tech. Companies and jobs don't last for entire carers any longer. Even successful, high-earning people living in these clusters of talent and innovation work in one place only for a while before moving on on their own accord, or forced via layoffs.
Perhaps some comparatively rural areas (like Boise, Idaho) become more attractive, but is a bit of an outlier. I think for rural areas to be more successful long term requires expertise (perhaps specialized manufacturing) that isn't so ephemeral. You're not going to train 40-something folks to suddenly become productive software developers (at least no many). You may be able to guide a region to something new that takes advantage of their base experience and expertise. Renewable energy is one sector that may help (assuming Trump ceases his fetish about fossil fuels).
Regardless, all this technological change does begin to beg the question of a universal base income. And as the cycle intensifies, I think we'll all be suffering the tyranny of the minority for years to come, with the rural voters being tools of the über-rich donor class which abuse them further.
12
Due to imports, automation and market volatility, Oregon has lost 60% of it's logging jobs since the peak in the 70's. Currently, the remaining workforce is holding firm at approximately 30K jobs. If the demand for lumber tanks, or imports increase those jobs will be at risk. Despite Trump's promises these jobs will never come back and the communities that have disappeared over the last 40 years will never be what they once were. The children of logging families come to Portland and other cities in the Willamette Valley or leave the state to secure long term employment opportunities in new industry. That's just the way it is. On the flip side, with automation logging is safer and more efficient. And modern forestry management practices have made the industry more sustainable.
9
I'm an archetypical East Coast elitist Liberal: raised in a well-educated, upper-middle class Jewish family on Long Island; went to college and grad school in top-tier universities; I now work in the arts and as a college, prof; I'm gay; etc. I lived in Boston, NYC, and the Twin Cities.
But I now live in the very rural North Country of NY; and I previously lived in very rural northeast Missouri; and I married into a family from rural Minnesota.
From my experience, there is no singular "rural America." All three of the rural places where I've lived had some similarities; but they felt different in a lot of ways. And they also shared some similarities/differences compared to the cities I lived in.
Everywhere I've lived, I've found:
- Some aspects of all communities are welcoming; others aren't (or at least appear to be).
- There are close-minded and intolerant people everywhere (and not always correlated with education); conversely, some people will embrace you regardless of your background or theirs.
- There are varying degrees of economic, educational, and cultural opportunities. Some people take advantage of them; some don't.
- Life can be happy, boring, or stifling anywhere, due to a combination of factors of the place plus one's personal circumstances, preferences, and mindset.
Rural Missouri felt a lot like the bleakness of this article. Rural Minnesota and rural New York don't. But I attribute that more to the people who live there than to the place itself.
13
I'm glad we're finally focusing, here, on the root of the problem. The rest is a lot of distraction.
1
This is a dog eat dog system - everywhere - companies cut older employees loose to save on accrued benefits and profit is almost always the main driver of any business decisions. Since this society, pays such lip service to INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY - especially when it applies to someone else, there will continue to be resistance to an inclusive approach - yes a we are all in this together approach - based on dreaded socialist principles. The republican party offers nothing to rural America and yet those people continue to vote against their self interests.
7
The snide comments from urban dwellers to this article gives me so little hope that they learned ANYTHING from the 2016 election. Those attitudes are what gave us President Trump. Sneering at 1/5 of the country as you fly over their towns and counties without ever coming into meaningful contact with their inhabitants or communities or understanding why they choose to stay put rather than move to cities where they're priced out of homeownership is a recipe for the middle of the country to remain deep shades of red and more authoritarians to gain purchase in our crumbling pseudo-democracy.
Consider that the structure of half the U.S. legislative branch was designed to favor rural representation. Are their entrenched social and economic issues in rural America? You betcha. Is it in the best interests of Democrats and urbanites to contribute considerable energy to offering cogent policies to address rural issues? Absolutely if regaining any semblance of meaningful political power is the goal. The history of urban Americans stereotyping and maligning rural Americans is a storied one.
Continuing to write off a disproportionately politically powerful chunk of your countrymen and sneering that the sole solution to structural decline is to give up and move plays into the hands of the plutocracy whose interests are best served when a country's people divide themselves willingly by class, race, and geography.
11
There are a lot of thoughtful and insightful comments on this article. Yet the top of the "Reader's Picks" are comments that portray rural white people as corrupt, lazy, uneducated drug addicts who deserve to have political power stripped from them because they're not "productive" enough. Similar language can be found in commentary coming from the right. If these comments had been made about urban minorities instead of rural white people, would they have been so highly recommended? Would they by "NYT Picks"?
14
There is no one solution to this problem. The small mindedness, the lack of education, the racism and the contempt for elites (people who are none of those things) are all a problem. But government is also to blame. Trump is right in that free trade has screwed the working class. What's best for big business isn't necessarily best for working folk. Neither party has come to grips with this fact and so we get Trump. That said, the change has happened and those that adapt will survive. By adapting that means getting an education and moving to where the jobs are. Perhaps the best programs would combine incentives to move and get an education so these folks can thrive. Oh, but those are liberal ideas of the elites, and the rural folks vote republican. What to do indeed.
8
"Made In America" is the answer. If Elon Musk can get us to Mars - we can certainly build rocket ship parts in rural areas, setting up training facilities and assembly factories. California is going to build a bullet train, right ? Build it here in America. Stop making faux Levi's in China !
4
Business people, who are mostly Republicans go where the labor force has the necessary skills, California for example instead of the rural South where they workers lack those skills. The South uniformly backs anti-union laws that keep wages and benefits down. The South's education systems are notoriously sub-standard. Why would any skilled worker chose the Deep South over the West Coast?
5
I have lived in a rural California town for 35 years.I migrated here from a large city years ago and have not lost contact with it.Pundits have pointed out that even though California is dominated by Democrats,the saving grace is that the smaller cities are governed by conservatives.Saving grace....I don't think so.The political issues here are the 2nd amendment,welfare,keep the government out of my life(except when I need it),proposals to succeed from the union and building football stadiums instead of hiring teachers.Add in a little racism to complete the picture.What young,educated person n with a family would ever consider moving here?Big businesses,doctors,lawyers etc, will not locate here because of the decaying schools.Ignorance(not stupidity) is the problem in my town.While this may seem condescending,sometimes the truth IS condescending.Trump has only made matters worse.....giving us rural folk hope while actually screwing us over with his tax policies and healthcare stance.You've provided a lot of statics to prove what we already know.I'm tired of reading the same descriptions of rural America over and over again. Where are your solutions?
10
The solution lies not with the Government but with the people in rural California. They need to get off their butts, get education and job skill and most of all be willing to do the hard dirty jobs available in rural California.
1
Farming, mining even manufacturing are becoming highly mechanized, using robots and A I. Check out the farming bots being used to harvest lettuce the NYTs reported on this about 3 weeks ago.
Reality is large volume farming, soy beans, lettuce corn is dieing as a job.
There is a massive and radical reallignment of jobs.
Mechanization
Offshoring
Its done folks, if you want these jobs they will be 8 bucks an hr . Reality.
The scary part is what are we going to do with the lost and abandoned?
Reading history, we used to have continuous wars that wiped out 10 to 15% of the population, focusing on males.
Greece, Rome, one war sfter another.
Crusades
Peter the Great
Charles the 12th of Sweden
English conquests, Richard, multiple Henrys.
Napoleon
Ww1 and 2
What do we do now?
Know I sound very negative but the logical conclusions are scary.
will some of these rural folks who work for themselves continue to support the trump crime family/administration when their health insurance goes away? if they're not working for a major company or factory, how will they pay for their health care?
1
I lived in a rural county for 11 years; it's population was below 20,000 and dropping. One thing I've often thought they should try is refugee resettlement - imagine even 100 refugee families hitting that county, if not more; housing would need to be built, which creates jobs; the schools would be growing again; the refugees would provide workers for brush clearing, tree cutting, health worker services, and so much more; and with any luck refugees not only would shop locally, but would start businesses of their own
Aside from the racism which would try to block this plan (based on what I've heard when I propose this around the locals), I think resettling large groups of refugees in rural areas could be an economic benefit to those areas. AND it would be a huge benefit to the refugees who are fleeing wars and disruption in their countries.
3
But the refugees would join a new war, as they'd be seen as invaders, and the racists would attack them. Which then invites the refugees and the locals to see America as the enemy.
And if the problem is a lack of jobs, more workers who will work for minimum wage isn't the answer.
1
Two observations:
1) the way this piece is written feeds an illusion that urban areas are dense, uniform agglomerations of elites - they are not; the economic conditions in large cities and metro areas are far from uniformly prosperous, the populations not well educated and affluent across the board
2) the region I grew up in (central Pennsylvania, town of 4,000, 60 miles from the "large: city of Harrisburg) is reliant on government employment (education, social services, legal system) or government spending (healthcare), despite the propensity of its voters to vote against government services, for lower taxes, and against the ACA; without looking at the role of government (local, state, and federal) in rural and small-town economies, the author adds another dimension to the distorted view he gives.
5
I grew up in the rural heartland and yes moved to keep my family afloat it worked out for us and for others that did the same to survive, it was hard to give up that chapter to start a new one. As for the friends and family that still live there farmers for the most part are wealthy this of course is not a blanket statement the others who are not farmers who are smarter and driven are doing just fine and my other less sharp family and friends are just getting by they will not change so I see no hope for any change! My ancestors had the grit to move from Europe that had to be tough but here I am. All can not move but change is a must.
2
As someone who has spent most of my life in poor, rural areas of upstate NY, I have seen up-close the problems described in the article as well as the comments, and I feel compelled to make a few comments and ask a few questions: (1) Everything is more complicated than it seems. Even in very poor, "red" areas, there are typically thousands of very intelligent, highly educated people who choose to live where they do for a variety of reasons (proximately to family, loved ones, etc.). (2) If all of these people were to take the advice of most commenters, who would run the local schools, hospitals, community colleges, etc.? (3) The are a lot of angry, resentful people in poor rural areas - just as there are in most other areas. (4) Would the Times and/or it's commenters "blame the victims" to the extent many have done here and/or advise them to just leave their homes, cultures, and loved ones as fast as they can if this article instead was about the same intractable problems of intergenerational poverty in urban areas inhabited largely by minorities?
6
Top tech companies are always going to look abroad for talent, because they want the best of the best, and there are only so many Americans in the top 1% of students going into high tech. There are plenty of people trained in IT who are not top tier talent and the Googles and Amazons are not interested in them. And there are plenty of jobs in IT that don't pay the kind of salaries that make places like Silicon Valley affordable. More affordable housing in cities would help people who already live there, but find it difficult to live anywhere near where they work, but is that really the solution for rural America?
Let's stop pretending that everybody wants, or is suited for jobs in IT - or a desk job, for that matter. Not everybody wants to live in a city. Not everybody will go to college.
It's time to level with rural Americans and tell them that the majority of Americans are not willing to subsidize their jobs by allowing them to destroy the environment, and breath the dirty air and eat the mercury laden fish that are the result of coal burning power plants, deal with the antibiotic resistance we are seeing as a result of our farming practices, and giving them free reign to destroy our endangered environments so they can plunder finite natural resources.
We need wide open spaces. Let's pay rural America to build wind farms, upgrade the energy grid, build a communication super highway. We have shortages of people willing to work with their hands in MA. Forget IT training.
5
I lived in Columbus, OH for many years, then in '98 moved to Houston where I've been other than a brief 3 years in Lexington, Ky. Of all of those places, Lexington is by far the best place to live, because it is human scaled, affordable, and much friendlier than bigger cities. Columbus and Houston are too congested, most of the jobs are in the city where homes are now too expensive for most. That means longer and longer commutes, or living in tiny spaces--no thank you. As we see more and more new jobs getting created in these large cities, things will only get worse. I grew up in rural Ohio and still have many relatives who live there. They don't want to live in congested, overpriced cities like NY of SF. I don't blame them. I don't want to live there either. If I could move from Houston to a smaller city (Columbus isn't one), I would. It would help for more businesses to hire workers to work from their homes--in the internet days, many of us don't really need to physically be together in one place to work. Where I work I find that it largely the older leaders who old meetings and expect everyone to be there, instead of providing online options. Even that is changing. Once the luddites die out, I suspect this will change even more. Of course, this only helps knowledge workers who are likely to need higher and higher levels of skill to make a living wage. At some point, after more and more automation, we will need to change our economic system or face major unrest.
3
Urban planners with the help of state governments should experiment using the same kinds of factors that draw people to cities -- public transportation, affordable housing for artists, restaurants (where there's an abundance of local produce this is the easy one), cultural hubs, jobs. Rural areas are a great resource for clean energy production. Tech centers are just one thing that can draw people to small towns in rural areas. The small city where I live now is surrounding by rural communities. There are wind farms and solar farms in surrounding upstate NY. While Kingston experienced some real low points over the past 25 years after IBM moved its manufacturing facilities out of here there is a noticeable rebirth going on now, encouraged by our local government. People who can no longer afford to live in New York City are moving up here and to other towns in the Hudson Valley. There is plentiful affordable housing. Transportation into the city is easy. The city government is encouraging the arts. Restaurants are thriving. The public schools are not bad. There is shopping galore. It is possible to live here without having to own a car. The area is physically gorgeous. What is required is political support and creative thinking. The lack of both is why I believe rural areas around the country are dying.
3
My grandparents were part of an earlier generation of rural flight in the late 1930s. One set came from coal mining in Appalachia. The other from the dust bowl in Oklahoma. There were no job prospects in their home communities other than relentless, grueling labor. (Despite the nostalgia for coal in Trump world, mining is a brutal, dangerous job that shortens your lifespan). The communities they left are now ravaged by addiction. By leaving, they were able to lift their families out of generational poverty. Their children and grandchildren mostly have graduate degrees and professional jobs. When I visited the rural communities they came from, all I can think is "there but for the grace of God go I." I don't know what could be done now to "save" these small towns that have been in steady decline since the early 20th century.
2
Having taught in a small rural high school for twenty years and having witnessed the exodus of the most engaged and curious young people, I suggest the following: rural communities are often unwelcoming. The young independent thinkers, the artists and poets, the gay and lesbian--they are not welcome in those small towns. Without the positive energy of the independent thinkers, a critical mass of reactionaries gain power. People in those small towns have big extended families that provide a plethora of intimate associations, which means recent arrivals find themselves isolated and alone. In a constant state of reaction and with a shared sense of a way of life under attack, rural people find themselves appealed to by fear-based messages by opportunistic politicians. There are exceptions to this situation, but it entails a willingness to share power and to welcome new ideas and cultural differences.
12
"When all the world treats you wrong - look to yourself, not the world. " - my grandma's favorite saying - and my mom's least favorite thing to hear.
Hans: And I don't see those people changing until they want to change. They'll stop rejecting all their most creative and intelligent people, their innovators, when it hurts enough that they see a need to change. But it's so much easier to blame everyone else. To say the problem is with the world, not themselves.
2
What about helping rural Americans find innovative technology and methods to create and maintain sustainable, small-scale agriculture, so people will stay on farms and help produce healthful food, boost local economies, and actually apply our technology to helping us create a more effective and efficient food system?
2
Amen! My wife and I bought our first home in rural VA and have since moved into a nearby small city. We just rented out the home to a bright young man with an MBA who is scaling up a hydroponics micro-greens operation and expanding rapidly to feed cities throughout the Mid-Atlantic. THIS is the narrative that the Times needs to cover of rural America! Hiring writers living in actual rural regions might be a good start instead of farming these pieces out to guys sitting in Brooklyn...
1
Tech hubs? Wasn't that Hillary Rodham Clinton's solution to employing people after she would complete the destruction of the coal mines initiated by the Obama EPA? Well according to this article turning rural America into a tech hub is not working! Setting up tech hubs reminds me of Northern carpetbaggers rushing into the South after the Civil War to take advantage of the ruined plantations and employing the freedman as contract paid laborers to remain on the plantations and pick cotton as they as always had. That worked only as long as Federal troops occupied the defeated Confederacy, then sharecropping took over after Reconstruction failed. The liberal do-gooders need to understand rural America before they rush in with quick fixes and then stick around to see that they work before they hop back into their limos and return to the city. Big City, Bright Lights! Yes, that lifestyle is more attractive to the city slickers, not the wholesome, God-fearing life, of hard-working rural Americans. Thank you.
3
Southern Boy - "wholesome, God-fearing" ... ? REALLY?
Check out which parts of our great nation have the highest teen pregnancy rates.
https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/alt-text/map-county-text.htm
"hard-working rural Americans" ... ?
Check out this map of unemployment rates -
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_040813.html
To press the point, which states receive more in Federal taxes than they pay?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/the_red_state_ripoff.html
4
@J Jencks,
The picture of Mr. Jory Geiser is one of a hard-working rural American, not an effete urbanite sipping a lukewarm latte in a corner Starbucks. Yes, unemployment is high in rural America. but much of that is due to the Clinton era NAFTA which sent jobs to Mexico where labor is cheap and corporations and Wall Street could cash in. Read Christopher Hedges, America: The Final Parade for the TRUTH about NAFTA and its devastation of the economies of rural American communities. Unemployed rural Americans are not sitting around because of any disdain for work, but because their jobs have either been shipped overseas or eliminated by EPA regulations which President Trump is taking down as he did with NAFTA. Please do not confuse rural America with the inner city. Thank you.
3
You do know that Trump had to put NAFTA back in place, as losing it hurt farmers and ranchers and other traditional rural jobs? And at a loss, giving away concessions Mexico and Canada had been seeking for decades. NAFTA helped us - as was made clear to Trump when he torpedoed it blindly, then hit the fallout. He had to crawl back to Canada and Mexico - and he did. They refused to even talk until he agreed to their concessions.
2
The way a lot of rural people sneer and scorn anyone not from a rural setting, I frankly don't see why the people of, say, the SF Bay Area or other tech hubs should cheapen and degrade their own living circumstances to provide cheap housing for snobs from the swamp.
2
"And if today’s polarized politics are noxious, what might they look like in a country perpetually divided between diverse, prosperous liberal cities and a largely white rural America in decline?" Is that not already the case?
3
If you live in rural America hunting and fishing are available in your "backyard". If you are a male it's natural to want to take advantage of that fact. If you are female there isn't much you can do about it. There is a mindset in rural America that "Redneck" is cool. A degree from the "College of Hard Knocks" is better than a BS or BA from the state university. There are big cities in those rural states but they are made up of people who moved there from the country. What is the answer? Given the opportunity, the female population will educate themselves and be the workforce to move rural America out of the "middle ages."
: Lots of women like to fish and hunt also.
Two very important facts about rural America. We create your electricity and we grow your food. To all the commenters here who have said “close down rural America and come to the cities,” what will we eat and how will we keep warm when rural America shuts down?
Your short sightedness is truly astounding.
4
Actually, the number of actual rural Americans who produce energy and food has shrunk. Technologies have removed many of these jobs. And don't forget how much of rural America is subsidized by all of those terrible "coastal liberals."
2
: they believe that they can get their food from the third world -- more exotic and also grown by "the poor brown skinned peoples of the world" (so it makes them feel good about themselves).
They can get Amazon to deliver it from ANYWHERE.
Electricity? they have literally no idea where it comes from….a little outlet in the wall. Run by magic? Just use solar! Problem solved!
Lefty libs work in offices and skyscrapers, and on college campuses. They have literally NO IDEA where anything comes from -- electricity -- natural gas -- oil -- FOOD -- water!!!
They live in hermetically sealed environments, air-conditioned and "safe" and insular.
This is why they think illegal immigration is so swell -- they do not feel any impact from it, but benefit from low-paid illegal labor in the form of nannies, landscapers, and food service workers.
2
Actually, rural agriculture is not inevitable. Bearing sustainability in mind it is probably on its way out.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-skyscraper-farms/
As for generating energy, rural areas WILL continue to provide some wind and hydro energy. But urban areas will eventually have solar panels on every single roof surface.
1
Great article, but the conclusion that higher density zoning would be the most helpful policy is off-base. The real issue is education and broadband access. This has already been proven in India, where millions have been lifted out of poverty because if you have the digital skills you can live anywhere. Yet, in the American heartland there is widespread disdain for education and science, in favor of "religious truth" and "common sense".
By voting for Republicans who cynically exploit social issues like immigration and religion, rural voters continue to vote against their own economic interests. Democrats have pushed for inexpensive universal education and broadband, but these initiatives are continually thwarted by the representatives they send to Congress and into the White House.
Until rural voters stop lining up behind Conservative hucksters they will continue to suffer.
3
It's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that modern capitalism and its implications has greatly outpaced our ability to control its displacement of millions economically. This has always been the case to some degree, the gaps are widening and accelerating. There is an ever growing gap between the number of jobs we need to support a modern economy and the number of people in that same society aspiring to a certain standard of living. There are now 7.7 billion people on this earth and our current forms of government and economies are not equipped to deal with it, let alone an environment on the verge of collapse.
No one is talking about this but a place to start is just less of us and a serious attitude adjustment on lifestyle. Politically, socially, and religiously we refuse to even acknowledge this let alone talk about it.
5
At the risk of sounding like a (small d) democrat, I'd like to emphasize the point made about the numbers here. Some 18% of the population of the country is rural, yet their senators -- 70% of the Senate represents 30% of the people -- manage to block progress for the 82% who live in cities, except to reward trillion dollar companies who locate there with massive tax breaks.
Clearly our politics, our economics, our national identity does not suit the situation. We are a people whose government caters to a tiny fraction of us who have managed to amass obscene wealth at our expense.
Despite such urban/rural differences, the nation thrived after the war. We built highways and a space program and topflight universities and great factories -- mostly with union labor -- while the top marginal tax rate was north of 90%.
Manufacturing was permitted to move offshore for cheaper labor. What did our national leaders think would happen when the middle class lost its place in the world?
That money corrupts our politics. We need mandatory campaign finance reform that strictly limits the flow of money to politicians. Once we remove the 30 pieces of silver, our public servants will understand who they work for.
6
This is about money, greed, and community. Always has been.
$: Imports. US workers can’t compete with low wage/cost imports until we start counting/addressing the real costs for these goods. This starts with adding environmental tariffs to imports manufactured, shipped (boats = huge polluters); or, packaged in environmentally detrimental ways. In our “lowest price period” culture, these costs are not considered. This costs all of us big time. Account for human rights/international business violations too and you’re getting somewhere.
$: Living wages. US workers have struggled against the disconnect between real wages and living wages since the 1986 immigration reform. This, and NAFTA, has hurt a generation of American manufacturing, service, and trades workers who lost ground to imports and illegal immigration labor. We need immigration reform (badly) and to institute living wage regulations nationally. With local wage initiatives, businesses will simply move. This will level the playing field for all workers.
Greed. Americans want low costs and don’t care how this affects others. So, to really turn this around, get ready to pay more.
Community. If we can get past greed, we need to embrace community in ways we have not for years. Citizens and businesses, it’s all of us…or none of us. Period.
The alternative, I’m afraid, is economic deflation and/or social unrest that have not been seen in this country since the Civil War.
4
I spent 20 years splitting my time between a small rural town in VT and Manhattan. I vastly prefer the former.
A great deal of this "hard truth" is absent from the article. Here are some hard truths:
Most of the "productivity" in urban areas is relatively useless. Several million people in New York City are engaged in making money by moving money around and charging for every small transaction. Others are sitting at computer screens developing clever algorithms that create more financial transactions in which the former group can intervene for a fee. The "economy" in Manhattan makes very little.
I'm quite familiar with Tumblr, for example, where hundreds of eager young women and men manipulate 0's and 1's for no discernible purpose, other than to monetize the entertainment of other young people who have never developed a callous.
Our society and economy are overcome by transactions, known in the economy trade as FIRE. Finance, insurance and real estate. 350,000 New Yorkers work in finance, producing nothing but gains on others' work.
We have shifted from an economy that valued making things into one that rewards selling things and accumulating wealth from the various enterprises that accompany selling: Banking, finance, advertising, insurance,
I don't suggest a solution, but we must accurately acknowledge the problem. Most of the people I know in rural America don't have any interest in entering the other world. It's not because they're ignorant.
4
Good expose of a class that instead of berating & insulting the producers, as well as former producers of tangible wealth, should content itself to be tolerated. Guilt free consumerism believing that milk comes from cartons.
2
This is not a new problem, nor was it caused by so-called 'globalisation', although the growing importance of trade with the world market for the home market has accelerated the accumulation of capital as well as the misery of the wage-labourers. This is getting attention because the crisis of bourgeois society, the crisis of the social authority of the industrial capitalists and big landowners, is driving home some hard truths to the rulers: that to rule 'democratically' they must keep the petty-bourgeoisie on side, as well as that essential by-product of capitalism, ie. the relative surplus population. Hence why the bourgeois literary representatives are using a rustic analysis. This surplus mass vegetates in the countryside, as well as in the cities, and has done so for a long time! The class struggle however has drawn sections of this population into the arms of the petty-bourgeois right. Trump is the public authority for the petty social authority of the small masters. Naturally, the big capitalists can reconcile themselves to this compromise, because despite what the bourgeois press says, the 'left-behind' or 'white-working class' is not leading this democratic revolt. The right of the petty-bourgeoisie is, as opposed to the workers.The only way the capitalists can 'save' the petty-bourgeoisie is by redistributing some surplus to them, to support their middling position. Society is thus 'saved' and like a sleight of hand, the exploitation of the wage-labourer carries on
The last three paragraphs of the article are very important. Those paragraphs address the issue of telling rural people to move to cities. 1. There is a tremendous waste of talent in rural America and it is wrong to continue to gloss over the fact by saying..just move. 2. Political polarization is bad but will just get worse if urbanites continue to tell rural folks how to live. 3. We are talking about 30 million people. You do not just tell 30 million people to move.
2
Mr. Porter wonders what can be done to "save" rural America, and suggests that the answer is nothing: that the best thing urban Americans can do for their rural counterparts is to provide them with an escape route.
I'm a product of the urbanized East and its elite universities, and about as far from a Trump voter as it gets, but condescending pieces like Mr. Porter's stick in my throat. These days I train young family physicians to work in rural America; these physicians see value in rural places that can't be measured in business productivity. Mr. Porter's reductionist approach to assessing the worth of a community belies a more fundamental problem: the innovative companies that Mr. Porter lauds have driven accelerated income inequality and stagnating quality of life, in exchange for -- Facebook? Urban jobs in the service industry, catering to the tech-wealthy, are unlikely to appeal to Mr. Porter's imagined rural migrants, who in real life are motivated by more than the economy's bottom line.
I think that rural people who vote for Trump are more likely to be responding to the steady stream of fundamentally offensive articles like this one, in which outsiders pass judgment on a way of life without ever having experienced it, and form opinions of communities based entirely on how much money those communities make. For future pieces about rural America, the Times would do well to look to writers located there, and who think outside of the late-capitalist box.
3
Mr. Porter ends with a suggestion that NY and San Francisco loosen building regulations to include more "affordable" housing so that people can move from elsewhere, to here, into those units-- units which will help crowd already crowded areas.
I don't know if Mr. Porter has taken the R train from Queens into Manhattan at morning rush hour recently, but it's pretty horrible. Basically a sardine can. It is agreed by everyone that NYC's transit infrastructure has passed the breaking point, but people (and developers) still push building more housing. And transit is just one problem. Are schools keeping up with all the new developments, which we've had a lot of-- no!
My point is, people already living here (NYers) have trouble enough trying to find places to live that they can afford (which I would posit is more of a stagnant wage crisis than a housing crisis, but anyway). It might be very nice of NYC to invite underemployed rural people into fresh, newly-built housing, but what of New Yorkers and our ability to live in a city that is not even more soul-crushingly dense?
Have you seen the pictures of the Far East's pod or capsule dwellings? Is that what we aspire to now? Not for people of Mr. Porters class, of course, but it would be good enough for us regular folk, right? Let's do that.
3
A solution would be to create a modern public transportation system that would serve the rural and semi rural suburbs around city centres. The rural communities would be linked to city centres and have access to new jobs, to museums , theatre and the other benefits if city life without having to move. This would also give city workers access to an alternative life style in rural settings without having to deal with traffic and congestion.
If the mountain won't come to Mohammed then Mohammed can go to the mountain
2
Move government agencies to heartland/southern states - for example, the CDC is in Atlanta, that's a source of jobs, income and investment. Move some or all of the functions of Interior, Energy, Commerce, etc., to Ohio, Denver, Nashville etc. It's not a silver bullet but it would help and it could draw more investment to towns and communities in, around and between these places. Fund big government R&D that trickles down into those new locations and surrounding communities. Then layer in high-speed broadband, high-speed rail/transport. In essence, do what has been done in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston-Conn-NYC, Atlanta to a lesser degree, Dallas Austin-San Antonio - with gov't agencies, universities funded by gov't laying the foundation and developing tech foundations that the private sector can leverage. For example,move the Dept of Energy's Sci & Innovation group (https://www.energy.gov/science-innovation) to Pittsburgh and/or Cleveland and connect those two cities and its edu/gov't/private sector resources, with Columbus, link them and the areas between high-speed broadband, high-speed rail/transport and re-create San Francsico Bay area, Boston-Conn-NYC in that area. Give tax incentives for biz, gov't talent to relocate.
3
Hey, we have seen it over and over, rural voters voting themselves into a corner they can't get out of. As long as they keep voting against anything that improves their lot they will continue to suffer the rewards of voting down education, healthcare, clean energy, and so on. This small government anti tax movement is killing the people who support it not really understanding the consequences. There will be a lots of ghost towns soon.
2
For all of the moaning and groaning many of the historical jobs will never return to small towns especially those that were once centered around one business or industry that has left for other parts of the world. Often these towns have little or no appeal to others when they confront racial and religious bigotry and the town has little to offer in the way of natural beauty, recreation and entertainment. Some of these small towns located in more scenic areas and within several hours drive of a larger city could be repurposed to welcome and serve our growing senior citizen population many of whom cannot afford the cost of living in metro areas especially that of housing. That in and of itself would provide economic stimulus for businesses that would serve their needs.
3
Through the history of civilization, economic and political might has centered around cites. The concept of a prosperous rural areas has no historic basis. In reality rural America has and will never be a prosperous place. For example it is not financially viable to run a ride hailing service or a pizza delivery service across most of rural America. Service economy will almost never be viable outside of cities. Manufacturing sectors in rural places will thrive only if, for the most part we enact protectionist policies and could possibly give rise to rent seeking behaviors from the protected. Depression era policies of building roads, sewage and power plants in many of these places made them inhabitable in the first place. Unless similar grand schemes are implemented, rural areas will always be economic backwaters
1
Over and over people fail to understand why others would not wish to move to crowded, noisy apartments in cities where there is little in the way of nature: No quiet, birds, trees, solitude, animals. Add to that, public transportation is poor, sidewalks uneven, and costs are high. Nice when you are young but veers from unfriendly to dangerous when you start aging. Ever tried to get on a bus if your balance isn't good? Get on a train if you use a walker? Walk down an uneven sidewalk if your eyesight is failing? Get across a street when the light changes too quickly?
3
My 91 year old aunt managed to live independently in her own apartment (until dementia claimed her) -- despite being frail and using a walker.
WHY? she could still drive (not very well, but still). It mean she could go to the doctor, the dentist, the supermarket, the drugstore….on her own.
She could take the elevator into her garage, and then directly to her car without getting out in the snow or ice or rain. Then she could do the same in reverse. She could use handicapped parking (she had a legal sticker) to park right next to the businesses she required.
If she had had to walk for blocks -- in bad weather! -- or wait in a bus shelter -- or walk down 2 flights of stairs to a subway -- and WAIT for buses or trains that may or not be on time -- she would have likely had to move into some sort of Assisted Living a decade or more earlier, giving up her personal freedom & autonomy. And at an immense cost -- Assisted Living (the lowest level of care) costly about 4 times what an apartment costs.
The implementation of single-payer health care and thus the strengthening of the social safety net will make things better for the country, including rural folk. Since they apparently will not stop voting against themselves by voting Republican, I hope that their votes can be overcome by a 'blue wave' of progressives who have been trying to help them.
1
I grew up in Upstate NY at a time that it was a manufacturing juggernaut. Westinghouse, A&P, Bendix, Remington-Rand, GE, Ward LaFrance, American LaFrance, American Bridge and there were many smaller shops doing contract work for the majors. RR left first in about '63. Most of it is gone today. My parents raised me to leave. They knew. Horatio Alger said, "Go West, Young man!" Today, go anywhere, if you are not making. It is a part of the American Way. You go first. You bring others along afterwards, you build, you work. It is what built America.
Why wouldn't tech and telecommuting help, alongside some creative job design. Maybe people could live halftime on a mountaintop, and halftime in a tech hub, though I suppose all that flying or driving is not great for global warming.
Or, yes, let it go back to the bison.
one policy change that might be effective is to retool government tax policy support in favor of small business. I was visiting rural WI last year with a friend who lives there and out of mutual interest, he took me to visit several small manufacturing businesses (artisan cheese maker, designer and fabricator of chiropractic tables...). Having owned a small business (restaurant) in a big city, I was so impressed with the dedication, ambition, community connectedness, toughness in the face of globalism and just overall precision of the businesses I visited. They exist without any of the benefits ladled on entities like Amazon, etc. If one were to aggregate all of the similar type rural businesses in any particular state, they would no doubt equal if not exceed the size and economic impact of any of the large "name brands". But do these smaller businesses, which employ locals, spend their corporate money in local businesses, provide tax dollars to local gov'ts, etc, get any gov't tax incentives? I would guess not.
The way gov't tax support functions today is rigged in favor of the large and therefore powerful (no news here). Change this paradigm by instead supporting and incentivising the small businesses embedded in localities and we might see a renaissance of rural entrepreneurship and a stronger overall economy.
Just a thought from one who is not the sharpest blade in the drawer.
3
I see the lack of broadband and adequate internet in these places as the biggest hurdle. With the advent of cloud computing, many workers could be part of the "tech boom" yet still live in these more affordable areas. Instead of trying to make housing cheaper in big cities where the tech companies are headquartered, make the rural areas accessible. My wife and I both work from home. contrary to what some may think, we are both very productive and often provide more time to our work than inner city commuters because we don't spend two hours a day commuting. The tools are available. I'm not sure the will is.
10
Let's talk about education- where it all starts. My weekend house is in a rural community. My neighbors homeschool their kids and complain about the taxes that go to support the public school system. The high school has a leaking roof and the textbooks are way out of date. Since our area is almost entirely white, I don't think homeschooling is about race. Instead, it is about religion and keeping a tight control over what their children are exposed to. The view of the "outside" world is very narrow and it breeds on itself.
8
The short answer to how to revitalize rural areas is to quash mega-farming, and get back to independently owned, smaller farms. Better for the communities, better for the environment, better quality of food produced.
2
Around here (NorCal) the industrial alfalfa growers control all the good water and land. Can't build much of a local food resource from a crop that humans cannot eat.
1
To a point, hasn't a similar thing been happening in China? The rural inhabitants have made a massive migration to the cities which have seen explosive growth, much more so than our cities have seen. I'm not proposing that we do as China has - growth that fast is unwisely chaotic. But somehow in China a significant portion of the rural population has moved to the cities and China will continue to reap economic benefits from its cities. There are probably a variety of factors that allowed this migration: low skilled manufacturing jobs, less hesitation among the rural folks to follow the money, more willingness or desperation to make the difficult transition. More affordable city housing is probably a significant factor in China, and would likely be key here in America to promoting this migration, and promote it we should.
The populations of Maine and San Diego are each 1.3 million. I'll bet more innovation and prosperity comes out of San Diego.
You haven't kept up with what is going on in China. They are now forcing those farmers who flocked to the cites out, tearing down their urban neighborhoods and 'encouraging' them to move back to their rural home or smaller cities built to house them.
1
I’m wondering if the answer is right in front of us. Technology has shifted our work environment from the office to your home. In fact the remote workforce continues to grow substantially. Manufacturing cannot be the catalyst to revive our rural communities. We need to leverage the trends that are dominant in our work environment today. Rural communities need people to move to them. But what would draw them. Lower cost housing, slower pace of life, no highway congestion, smaller everything. It is the power and flexibility of the remote workforce that can change all of this. Look at the reclamation of our inner cities, like downtown Denver. I grew up here and it always wasn’t as nice as it is today. Growth creates growth and opportunity. But people willing to change and move must see opportunity for themselves and their families. Small towns need to sell themselves to a generation of Americans who may never be able to afford homes of their own. Investors need to upgrade and refurbish homes with technology capable homes, that supports this way of life. This brings money, energy and opportunity, both for those living in the community and those moving in. Americas strength is in our innovation. This is the next great oppportunity. This is the opportunity for young people with heavy education debt, who have families and cant find an affordable home, to find a new start. Our rural communities offer this opportunity.
A county is a land territory = dirt. That's not what has income or health problems. It's people who do.
Unlike a geographic territory, people are mobile. Or not. That's the real difference. Falling population is a solution, not a problem.
"Mobile" can mean driving to a big town daily or regularly. But it can also mean being open-minded through books (plural: not "the book") and electronic media, while you sit alone on your mountaintop.
Not being mobile, including people in either urban or rural areas, tends to mean the things summarized by words like "parochial."
1
Yes, 'Saving the Rural Economy' is a work in progress but will never have the kind of results we'd all like. The 'rural economy' just isn't made up of what we'd need it to be if that notion is to succeed. Time simply marches on.
A pretty good analogy is how 'mom and pop' stores succumbed to the grocery store chains and the struggle in place right now to keep 'big box' stores around as the ever evolving 'shopping on line' continues to take hold and its toll on 'big box and Mall shopping.'
Add the notion Millennials are rejecting, for one reason or another, buying automobiles-relying on things like Uber and Lift instead. Couple that with the burgeoning effort to support this lifestyle by the overnight emergence of 'Free Shipping' for practically everything and toss in Apps to get a full week's groceries delivered to your door, even something like Grub Hub popping up to deliver a single sandwich to one's door-and that's a 'Wow' moment as you calculate the resulting 'carbon footprint' to getting a sandwich made and delivered to your front door. Simply amazing.
The times they are a-changin'.
1
There is a limit to this shift to suburbs and cities. If 99% of people live in cities and suburbs, I expect there would be a lot of money to be made growing food or making manufactured goods or creating "tourism" experiences in rural areas for all those people in cities. Just like with cities, there will be winners and losers, but the overall trend will eventually stabilize.
2
Many of these distressed rural counties, especially in the Rust Belt, are less than an hour's drive from middle-size cities like Cleveland, Ft. Wayne, Columbus, Toledo, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Wheeling, etc. Many of these cities have considerable cultural and educational institutions which, along with cheap housing and easy mobility, should make them increasingly attractive to well-educated young people who find coastal cities like Boston, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, too costly. It makes sense to re-direct efforts to revive outlying rural communities toward the mid-sized metropolitan areas that are readily accessible.
4
Living in a rural area and working in the tech sector I've seen the challenges people face and the very real heartache of families. It's especially difficult for families that have lived 5+ generations on a farm that's now failing. Families that work multiple part-time jobs to stay afloat. Land rich families being devastated by property taxes to keep schools afloat with a shrinking tax base. The reality is that in the economy we now have of Amazon, Google, Oracle, IBM and all supporting industries a high school education is almost a guarantee of poverty. The areas Greene County that comprise former resorts look like decaying ghost towns. I've seen parents who are so afraid of their children leaving that they actually actively sabotage their educations - even discouraging them from going to college. The idea that the ones that stay behind will survive is laughable. They can't all be plumbers, electricians or carpenters. Education and a willingness to go where the work will be the critical success factors in this economy for my children.
1
Perhaps we really have to approach this problem as a guaranteed income issue. Gradually let the country become country again and subsidize those who either choose to remain or have to remain. It is probably more cost efficient and allows people who have been left behind through no fault of their own with a life of dignity. If we do not I suspect it puts democracy at risk.
3
What's missing in the discussions around saving the rural areas in the developed world are the same things missing in the discussions around climate change, sustainable economic practices, and the future which is looming.
We are dismantling our rural areas at a most critical time, assessing their potential as they pertain to current economic models, completely ignoring what they could contribute to the future we need to embrace.
Take Japan, a largely urban nation whose rural areas are populated with old people living in quaint little villages nestled in the mountains while the young flee to Tokyo where they increasingly cannot afford to live. But this is a digital age and Japan is a digital country. It doesn't matter where you live if you're connected, have a developed a community around sustainable agricultural and economic practices. The advantages of a slow economy are manifold.
Of course Japan has a proper rail system and modern infrastructure, not crumbling relics. It has a social conscience, a public health care system, a professional class which earns a wage commensurate with its contribution.
America has a winner take all social structure and has not invested in its own country. The rich don't ride the rails. It is not limber enough to take advantage of the economic and social potential of its vast rural resource. It's abandoning them in favor of a soon to be relic. It's the wrong bet.
6
It's a conundrum all right and the problems are all laid out here. How can capitalism fix this, or can it? Once upon a time those centers of commerce were wide open rural spaces too, but people came, they built cities, and here we are talking about those centers of productivity as if they were just natural and had always been there. If pioneers mounted on horses could found centers of commerce in the middle of the wilderness while also fighting off the people whose land they were stealing, I think Jeff Bezos could go to Wyoming and start his own city. It would be a double win for both city and country. But it would cost Bezos. The problem is we're giving a free ride to the wealthy and the solution is to stop it.
4
I wonder what the effect of bailing out family farmers instead of foreclosing on them in the 1980s would have been.
We as a nation had a policy of bankrupting farmers due to interest rates , letting agribusiness consolidate that land.
There wasn't just protectionist literature for the sake of farmers around at that time. There were genuinely progressive ideas about how to transition family farms into coops, etc. Indeed, marketers way ahead of their time even floated the now luxurious 'farm to table' trend.
But Regan ignored the pleas of family farmers and tens of thousands of farms disappeared. Remember FarmAid?
And as usual, we never really had an industrial policy for all sectors of economy. It was about deregulating capital , eliminating protection for labor, and promoting a pro-market ideology.
Capital will commodify anything. Maybe land, as Wendell Berry has eloquently argued, is a meaningful piece of human life, like education, that is eviscerated when reduced to the logic of commodities in order to make money for investors.
Maybe this accounts for the spiritual side of the death of rural America in some small way as well. But let's not kid ourselves, it has always been an incredibly tough row to hoe to farm in America, and there never was a romantic age when rural towns were apogees of American values.
As capital unwinds itself, the best description is still Schumpeter's , 'creative destruction'. Profits are created, ways of life are destroyed.
2
In the 2016 election, Mrs. Clinton pretty much completely ignored rural America, and it paid her back by voting for Trump. After the election, in India, Mrs. Clinton expressed her contempt for the people in the counties who voted for Trump, saying they were "looking backwards". There's a big difference between looking backwards and having been left behind, partly by Democratic administrations.
In the 2020 election, Trump will have to defend a four-year record in which he has done nothing for rural America. The Democratic candidate needs to have a well thought out, easily explained plan to help the 50 million forgotten Americans. They've been ignored too long.
5
Rural areas are not about productivity, they are a slower paced lifestyle, and to be clear, productivity has been responsible for turning the ecology into the economy, hammer and tong, resulting in a fattened culture of unhealthy people with overstuffed garages and an entitlement to have everything their way because they deserve a break today: they want it cheap, fast and good.
To assume the only way to solve the perceived problems of rural America is to increase its productivity is essentially saying the only way to fix rural America is to make it urban. It's a shocking claim that rural areas suffer, by definition, due to their lack of density.
The rural areas historically were defined by the fact that rural activities occurred in them, farming and resource extraction. Those activities still go on there, its not like NYC residents would put up with open farm land and oil derricks on Fifth Avenue, but indeed, it is productivity itself that hurt the rural areas because now farms and resource extraction need only a very few workers leaving many people to wonder what there is left to do on the hinterland. To be clear, it is productivity that has made the generational poverty and rural isolation worse than it was ever before.
China is condemning hundreds of millions of farmers' lands through eminent domain, and in the place of those farms they are erecting modern cities. They pay the farmers fabulously to afford the new consumer lifestyle: voila! problem solved.
3
I am not sure if the entire rural economy of the U.S. can be saved, but there are some fairly obvious things that could help. One thing that was brought to my attention when I visited the small town that I grew up in recently was the fact that many businesses that exist there have trouble finding reliable employees because many people lack or have lost their driver's licenses. Sometime it is because of a minor traffic violation or problem with their vehicle and they just can't afford to pay the fine attached to it to get their licenses back. There has been a lot written recently about how small towns in rural areas subsidize the cost of their police departments by exacting outrageous fines on people for small infractions. When you live in a rural county, the only available job may be miles away. If you can't drive to it, you can't work. If small towns in rural counties are going to make an effort to develop industrial parks, they should think about providing shuttle buses for their employees. Employees might even consider working for slightly reduced pay if they don't have to worry about the cost of maintaining an often old vehicle and buying gasoline to get to work.
5
Moving tech firms to rural counties? What a dumb idea. The reason WeWork and other tech cluster type office spaces work is because tech people want to be surrounded by other tech people. Not a bunch of pigs and cows. Add in that the people coming from these rural areas are uneducated, untrained for the new tech world to the point where some of them can't work a word processor let alone a computer these areas will become meaningless and extinct.
1
solve 2 problems: Move the unwanted refugees to underpopulated rural areas and provide them jobs. They will not use drugs or commit crimes, will work hard, will vote MAGA after 5 years and learning English.
Let me preface what I'm about to say with this; I'm about to leave rural America. I don't want to but I want broadband and I need doctors. So, right off the bat, there are the two things rural America needs.
There's no mystery about how to get them. Fiber optic cables can be hung on the same poles that FDR planted with the REA. Medicaid expansion would have kept many rural hospitals open but the folks left in the country don't have the good sense to demand it from their GOP governors. (Hint: Wake up Democrats. Rural America needs single-payer health care.)
Which brings me to my main point. Where do you think all these brilliant people staffing the tech sectors are coming from? Two words for you: Philo Farnsworth. The biggest problem in rural America is the brain drain. We'll *always* lose people to the city. Bright lights can hypnotize. But give rural America the tools and some of the smart ones will stay. And they'll compete.
If you can dream up television while you're walking behind a mule imagine what you can think of while you're riding in a tractor that steers itself.
Don Brown
6
There are no words adequate to capture the full stupidity evident in the concept of an entity like government and its policy trying to intervene in anything economic. The economy is the nebulous cloud of trillions of individual transactions and their after-effects and no one government, person or entity can possibly effect a lasting change upon its workings, governed as they are by the Invisible Hand described so exactly by Adam Smith...
2
I'd like to feel sympathy for these people, but since I grew up around them, I know better.
Yes, yes, they're not all closed minded, but the majority of them are; that's why DJT does so well out there in Trumplandia (it's call data). Some may not like DJT, but most hate liberals.
8
I am surprised this article makes no mention of the similar situation in France and to the Yellow Vest protests.
3
Heartless I am not. But my first reaction to this article is not worrying about the fellow citizens affected. Rather my primary concern that is that if the situation is not addressed in some fashion then we will see a succession of Trumps skilled at only one thing: effectively exploiting people's fears, bigotry and insecurity. We have already witnessed one torchlight parade.
3
Carbon tax to support local economies rather than polluting container ships of chinese junk going to walmart, now the only retail in small towns. Ban Monsanto who has destroyed water sources. Support small farms like Switzerland does
4
If rural economies are suffering, their residents should take their own advice and pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, no outside help for them. And if they're determined to maintain the self-inflicted wound of supporting Trump and the Republicans, they deserve their stagnation and decline, let them suffer.
3
This has been taking place in Europe too: https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/external-studies/2013/farmland-abandonment/fulltext_en.pdf#page87
Bison, wild horses and even newly bred aurochs are being introduced in abandoned areas. The animals keep the land fertile and partly pasture. A wise choice to restore nature and also in case humans need more farmland and grazing land in the future.
We all feel for the people in poor rural areas. But it’s not the good old days anymore, if it ever was. Offer to buy the people out, offer affordable housing in cities where their kids can get a decent start in life.
It is troubling that these vast tracts of land, with little population, have more political clout than a California, Texas or New York when the nation selects a president.
5
After reading the McKinsey article, and knowing so many of their "consultants" are ivy league recruited, as is the case at the Brookings Institute, I can't help but wonder if this breed of thinking has found a reasonable logic in which to permeate otherwise important Federal Reserve debate? Look at Amazon and Apple, building around city centers, organizing their infrastructure, delivery, raw material port of entry, around large cities with access to international ports, and the worlds most important brain trusts. These Ivy league dominated male CEO's, industries, think tanks seem to all be rowing in one direction. Toward their own investments and stakeholder community. Zero interest debt wasn't afforded to entrepreneurs in the mid-west to the same degree as a Bezos, Musk, or Kaepernick so they too could innovate their way out of depressed economic conditions. Nor did it go, in parity, to other rural locales. Think of it like a type of affirmative action curing. If you historically underrepresent and nourish one geography, in favor of another, as we did, don't we have to commit even more resources in the future, to curing deprivation caused by neglect? Like a noose around its neck, we starved these hollowed parts, and we must work together and in concert with the indigenous people in these communities, to decide their future. I know, a solution won't come from Brookings, Harvard, or any of the usual suspects that drive this discussion, right into their private equity pockets.
3
As can be seen in these comments, there i# rural and then there is rural. Rural norhteast is not like rural midwest or rural mountain west. There are 3 million people in rural Pennsylvania, a larger population than the total population in any number of other states.
4
The question that begins this article,"can rural America be saved," joins a number of questions I ask every morning: "can climate change be saved," "can healthcare be saved," "can public schools be saved," can....I could go on, but these are the kinds of questions which I expect our local and national political representatives would studying to ameliorate the human suffering that accompanies all dramatic shifts in social, economic, and political norms. But no, we have a political class, particularly in DC, who, when not on a fundraising break, dither away their time trying to sabotage all efforts to study and resolve "can we save" problems.
2
Oh, the GOP "knows" how to resolve them all: more tax cuts for the uber-rich, and Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security cuts for everyone else.
1
Rural America has less and less participants, because industrialization of farming has simply cut across the generations with vicious precision.
There barely is the ''family farm'' any longer, and even if you are one, you might be sued out of existence by a large conglomerate, when some of their patented seeds blown over the fence onto it. THAT is the reality for many.
AS for the industrial or ''rust'' belt, the hollowing out of unions across America has left too many parents working longer for less (with no security or benefits) and being ''downsized'' in middle age at the drop of a hat.
OF COURSE the kids are going to move away when they see that.
2
I am disappointed in the moral smugness of those commentators who look down on rural America and argue that they should just move to the cities for “opportunities”. For well over a century, the United States has pursued policies that reward bigness in industry, retail and agriculture. These policies have gutted opportunities in rural America in the name of “progress”, read concentration of wealth and power. Rather than connect the consequences of those policies back to the policies, we individualize the consequences and make them the responsibility of the individual. Someone below asked why would Amazon move to Columbus instead of Fairfax County and Queens. That is the wrong question in my mind. The questions for me are: Why did we ever let Amazon get so big in the first place? What values does such bigness promote besides cheap products? Must we sacrifice all other values to a model of economic growth that concentrates that growth in the hands of a few and that makes most peoples dependent on those few individuals?
I have spent my teaching career in or near some of the poorest parts of the country. Currently, many of my students come from native reservations where there are few “economic” opportunities. Many, if not most, will return to the rez after graduation. Why? Family, a way of life, natural beauty, etc. All things that American policies have worked hard at destroying over the last century.
4
I see a contradiction in what you wrote at the end. If your students "return to the rez" for "Family, a way of life, natural beauty, etc.", then I see nothing wrong with that for them. But don't destroy that way of life by throwing money at it. That way of life is that way because there have been no economic opportunities to develop that natural beauty and make it look like Manhattan. For instance, protect the great national parks, national forests, primitive areas, and wildernesses in Arizona by leaving them alone.
I am puzzled by the recommendation of the article to relax zoning rules. It is much more beneficial to build up public transport so that people from a wider area can access the big cities.
1
Attracting manufacturing has worked quite well in South Carolina and other southern states. Most of it is in urban areas, but there has been a fair amount of development in other areas. Most rural counties here have at least a stable population and some are growing. This is a unnecessarily negative and defeatist article.
Globalization has taken it's toll on rural America with flight of raw material extraction to low cost labor & production in foreign countries. The irony is that with the advent of China, India & others, the USA could become a source for the same minerals & forest products; facilities & sites that were abandoned decades ago as capitalists fled to the third world. Only this time mechanization has reduced the need for labor. Treason has been in vogue for quite some time.
3
Restorations or re-imaginations? Most of what I hear and read about "rural America" contains a desire to return to "The Way We Never Were" - a mythologized, romanticized picture of the past that is a combination of "The Waltons" and "Little House on the Prairie" without any discussion of why people left in the first place.
Of course the obvious was totally ignored - there are thousands of people not born in America that would like the safety of living in America in exchange doing a lot of hard manual work. Of course their children would get educated and move into the modern economy.
Yes, we need farmers, extractors, and others but those jobs can no longer be the exclusive province of White America. We are going to be hard-pressed to find native born Americans who want this kind of life.
Despite the efforts of those who want to return to the glorified past, the majority of people know and want to move into the future.
2
What we need is to take care of our rural places with their biodiversity and ecosystems that are critical for our planet and our survival. Why not support people in those places when they engage in sustainable agriculture, maintaining healthy ecosystems etc. ? People could get paid by the private sector and government sector for education programs to support environmental literacy, sustainability and sustainable agriculture. Academic programs for that already exist. Why not start paying the attention these lines of research and innovation deserve? People don't need to move out of rural areas. They just have to start living in ways these areas require, and we as a society need to start supporting them when they do this. Time to wake up to climate change and the social change that demands.
1
Probably the most obvious possibility isn't even mentioned in this article: renewable energy. No, it's not going to make rural America into a land of unlimited opportunity, but it's where the space is, and it's where the economic stimulus is most needed.
A Green New Deal is absolutely essential for the USA and the world, and it should be focused on rural America. An example from my Rocky Mountain state: a slug of the dirtiest coal plants in the country sits out in a rural part of the state, poisoning groundwater and streams the rural ranching community relies on, with a massive, high-capacity transmission line already in place that delivers most of the power to coastal states, whose utilities are adamant about cutting their exposure to coal. and increasing renewable energy. No-brainer, right?
Nope, the deadenders -- almost all of them Republicans -- won't hear of converting to renewable generation. They'd as soon watch that area of the state die than retool for the current century. That kind of conversion, with state and federal support, is exactly what is needed for the nation and the world, and to support rural communities. But it ain't happening with the GOP at any level of influence. They've got to go into the dustbin of history for any progress to be made.
3
There are so many things to be done, if capitalism weren’t the bottom line. By the way, the cities are also sinking, as non-tech young people can’t afford housing in places such as Seattle. There is no real effort being made to build affordable housing: developers sit on all the boards, even the non-profit ones, and the ptiorites are clear. Yes, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
4
Why is it up to the government, the very same government the rural areas of the county reject, to provide opportunity to people in those areas? The defenders of rural America in these comments seem to be saying it is the responsibility of the rest of us to solve their problems. They seem reluctant to exercise their sacred self-sufficiency, use those miraculous bootstraps, and do something about their individual or collective circumstances. If you can't or won't leave, raise your kids to look outward, insist on higher education and training, and instill in them the ambition to go elsewhere to make a better life. The rest of us do have a responsibility to make the transition easier through government-supported incentives and policy, but we don't have the responsibility to preserve the way of life they cling to in places that progress has left behind.
3
Certainly in some measures, people from rural areas with less education fare less well than their suburban (but probably not inner city) counterparts. However, as highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article this week ("The Loneliest Generation:Americans More Than Ever Are Aging Alone"), women with college degrees in suburban areas are far more likely to be alone due to divorce, childlessness, or distant children as they grow older than women without college degrees who are more prevalent in rural areas. This problem with suburban women with college degrees is far more prevalent than a generation ago and is now a major health concern as loneliness is a major predictor of depression and is up there with hypertension and heart disease as a predictor of health problems and poor quality of life in aging.
So in important measures like this that predict quality of life as people grow older, rural areas still come out well ahead.
3
There is an old song which asks: "How do you keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paris?" There is a similar dynamic here: Some will choose to stay in rural areas, but the majority (and, younger) will not.
Short of draconian, communist-style central planning, I don't see any plausible scenario where reversal of these trends occurs It's a reality thing..
1
The key to this is that manufacturing is dead. The Trump administration refuses to admit it and is walking back all its policies on dead industries instead of the putting it's energies, quite literally in the future. Likewise, we are dismantling public education. The key to rural America and all future employment will be met in highly educated workers. America isn't even trying to meet this challenge. Right now it is rural America that is being left behind, but the policies of today are ensuring that ALL of America will be left behind tomorrow.
4
At present, rural areas, when then do attract industry, seem to attract industry that utilize noxious substances in their processes, potential pollutants that would not be permitted by residents of high population areas. They attract industries that ruin the landscape, destroy the water supply, and poison the air. Rural residents, over a barrel or too few to raise an audible complaint, are powerless to protect the natural areas and the small communities to which they are drawn. These industries leverage their contribution to the communities to avoid close scrutiny and regulation. Rural citizens are truly at the mercy of economic forces beyond their ken.
5
Why do we feel we need to save family farms when we did not feel we needed to save mom & pop retail establishments from big-box and Internet merchants?
America will not starve without family farms; corporate agriculture will fill the void, and at a lower cost.
Stopping farm subsidies will also benefit other counties, such as Haiti, who have seen their domestic agriculture suffer from American products, purchased by the US government, and then dumped into their market.
1
The movement from the farm to the city continues. It's been happening since the invention of the gasoline-powered tractor, and it will not stop. Each time an improvement in technology causes an improvement in labor productivity, that impact travels out to the farm and again lessens the need for workers there even more.
3
As someone who lives in rural communities by choice but was brought up in the suburbs, let me offer my thought on what might be done. The deficiency that matters most in rural America is equal access to education. Deficiencies healthcare and nutrition options and limited infrastructure compound that.
Young people may leave, they may return. That is a choice ...but the schools in many rural areas are not the equivalent of their prosperous suburban counterparts and kids. Having a high quality educational opportunities, equivalent to what kids in the suburbs have helps to level children's life possibilities.
What I see in rural communities is a kind of socio-economic ghettoization. Those who have the means and interest send their kids elsewhere to school, private options --or try to homeschool. The public schools are for everyone else; their culture and standards start to reflect that.
Employment opportunities in large part are up to employers. The investment I would like to see is in equalizing educational opportunities and the concurrent healthcare and nutrition options for young people. The quality of education should not differ whether I live in a prosperous Boston suburb or rural Vermont.
Living in rural Vermont has many positive features. It should not entail diminished educational options for one's children. That may entail things like vouchers and increased school choice. We should be open to those.
5
Charles, I found your comment very interesting.
My nephew has just become an MD and he faces a choice. He can get a position in a large city that pays well ... or he can earn DOUBLE the income if he chooses to work in an under-served rural community hospital. He will very likely choose the latter, do it for 3-4 years, pay off his student loans, then move back to the city.
In short, there is a compelling reason for him to work in the rural community. Perhaps teachers need the same. Perhaps richer urban areas need to be subsidizing education through high school in rural communities, as a way of attracting more and better teachers. This would be a profound stepping stone in helping those communities and the children towards a brighter future.
6
Yours is an excellent plan, JJ. One aspect of any school, however, is a stable staff. If the teacher works for five years and then leaves, there will be fairly constant turnover. Another aspect is that while the doctor can go and get employed in the city afterwards, the teacher will be expected to start at the bottom of the scale if he or she relocates. Throw into the equation that the organized effort to demean teachers and torpedo their reputations, now you have fewer people going into teaching in the first place. The only group of people who do not need any saving is the shareholders. Let's ask what the major shareholders are willing to do for other groups.
1
Kindred Spirit - Teachers should not be expected to start at the bottom of the scale just because they've relocated. As far as turnover, that depends on the incentives to stay versus leave.
That's essentially my point. There are major DIS-incentives to teachers right now, including bizarre social notions, such as an amazing disrespect for education in general. These disincentives, of which you mention a few, are what need to be addressed.
1
I read and commented on this article once, arguing that rural America is not as bleak as Mr. Porter contends. As I have thought more about the problems of rural America, I cannot help but argue that my little community is still much better off than most, especially urban communities. For instance, read "Housing Shortage will Bite California Economy" in the San Jose Mercury News, which details that not only does California have extreme poverty, but has roadblocks to curing suffering. I have lived in rural America for almost twenty years, and while the economy is certainly not booming, the quality of life is fantastic, housing is affordable, and few if any people live on the streets. A growing economy is not always the hallmark of success. We have numerous people who give to charity and we have three separate complexes of low-income housing in a town of just 5,500. Just because jobs are hard to find in some areas of rural America, that does not mean that rural America is necessarily suffering.
3
Several points that come to mind:
1.People living in the cities/burbs leading extremely busy lives crave for human connection, nature, unique experiences and products that are not run-of-the-mill.
2.Big business are not going to save small towns, and not all small towns can be saved- due to local factors.
Keeping these things in mind, can small towns build self-sustaining and eco-and socio friendly economies, even seasonal? In fact I believe that, these small towns are the ones that can emerge as models for sustenance - in the face of climate change and other challenges.
2
Tacking a little away from the subject, one can see how Brexit came about. The counties mentioned in this article voted overwhelmingly for Trump, in an attempt to find someone to save them. A parallel can be seen in the UK vote to remain in or leave the EU. London voted 60-40 to stay in. Voters in non-affluent areas of the UK voted to leave, in an attempt - no matter how potentially misguided - to improve their lot.
We are seeing a similar phenomenon behind the current Paris demonstrations. The issues raised in this article affect all Western nations and, as has been noted by Brookings, there are no easy solutions.
3
Part of the problem with rural areas is that the "tech hub" concept is as dishonest to a large city as it is to a small town.
Economists make the argument that automation and outsourcing create opportunities for workers to move into more sophisticated jobs. While this is probably true in the academic sense, it has become a badly distorted piece of propaganda the corporate class uses to justify not paying unemployment, funding job training or education. The reality is most people over 35 aren't going to retrain for the "high tech future" and are mostly going to sink to lives of poverty and quiet desperation.
The other reality is that tech firms don't want to hire older workers who have retrained, they want to hire eager 20-somethings or H1B visa holders who will work for peanuts and pay the upcharge to live in technology hubs that already exist, like Silicon Valley.
That this is true in major rust belt cities with the populations, political influence and at least the basis of a an infrastructure means its doubly true in small towns. There is no high tech future for you.
10
Mobocracy- Makes sense. Excellent point. Overlooked factor? Few likes.
1
There is no free lunch. Artificially low prices now, defer costs to the future. This is nothing new, examples are abundant in modern history. Communication is the greatest advance technology has created, a thorn in the side of the cluster hypothesis expounded. Perhaps it would be beneficial to examine the subject more throughly in the search for causality, the answers and solutions lie there.
1
The rural area stretching fro Upstate NY through to Maine, the Northern Forest, absorbs more carbon from the air each day than is released by the entire eastern seaboard of the US.
This forest is also a place people come to to escape the rigors if life in the city; has been for a long time. Humans need contact with nature to remember they are part of it, not apart from it. We need forests that absorb carbon; but also that provide wood for our homes (and newspapers!), food from our farms, and the wonderful, clean water here, gravel for road and foundation building, and more.
I'm not sure of any of the answers, but I'm 100% certain that the critical supports of society that flow from rural areas to urban areas often get left out of our calculations; particularly when the only obvious answer is to tell rural folk to move where the jobs are. You don't want us to stop maintaining and managing the important resources urban areas depend upon.
It's really disturbing to hear writing that suggests all farming can be done with giant machines. Much of the back-breaking labor can be done that way, but human hands are always necessary in some ways; right now, there are strawberries unpicked because they can't find workers in CA, even at wages over $20/hour.
Perhaps if we haven't found solutions, it's because we haven't understood the benefits of people living in rural areas that flow to urban dwellers.
5
People have to adapt to a changing business and jobs environment. Federal policy still favors supporting family farms, when the country would be far better off encouraging consolidation into corporate farms which could invest in technology to become more efficient, allowing the taxpayers to stop spending billions in farmer welfare payments in the Farm Bill. We would all be better off not opposing the tide of history and help these people migrate to where the jobs are and giving them the training they need to develop new careers.
Alternative Energy. Solar and wind farms. New training for new technology could possibly be the answer. We can't go back but we can look forward
This very thoughtful article makes many salient points and one in particular resonates with me. It is the fact that technology talent needs to cloister together to feed off of each other and to spawn innovations. This is how technologists truly learn and grow - colleges can't keep up and even if they did the half life of the knowledge they transfer is measured in months. Far more is learned working in a start-up in San Francisco or Boston.
Unfortunately, another requirement is necessary to play this game: an IQ of 120 and 140 is obviously even better. There has been a rural exodus for a century depleting the counties cited of their most intelligent and ambitious people. The despair among the remaining is a tacit acknowledgement that they can't win, which is also the source of the visceral resentment.
See the map "Poputlation density by county". That is a beautiful and informative map of the US.
Why do we have a Senate?
Two representatives to every state?
Who are they representing?
When the House and Senate systems were designed it was probably a reasonable idea. Almost everywhere was rural back then and prosperity and jobs could be had in the city or the countryside, I bet. But in today's United States the Senate is a distortion of democracy.
6
During his election campaign your president was very good at identifying peoples problems, both economical and social, and I must admit that the rallies I watched were entertaining and very funny, but most performing clowns are.
This one has continued to entertain, but what has he done to help resolve the issues of rural America. I live in a former coal mining and steel producing area, which 40 years after the Thatcher Era has not recovered. The world turns and cannot be put back to how it was. I escaped by joining the British army and much later graduating with a degree in politics. I see escape as the only option, but the countryside has recovered.
Gerrymandering and the U.S. Senate stand for the proposition that rural America still has a voice and as time progresses those voices will have disproportionate voting power that will undo our Democracy if not checked.
1
"The most helpful policy for people in small towns could be to relax zoning rules in dense cities like New York and San Francisco, so that more affordable housing could be built..."
Interesting article but I'm sorry to see it's mostly a cover for advancing the interests of high end developers who want to cut red tape so they can build more in places like San Francisco.
As an SF native I assure you, zoning rules are NOT the cause of high housing and relaxing zoning rules will not result in more low cost housing. It will result in more HIGH cost housing and drive the livability of the city even lower.
There are physical limits as to how much population a piece of land can support. It's not just about numbers of apartments. It's about water supply, sewage, transportation. Getting around SF now is an absolute nightmare. It's sewage infrastructure is antiquated. And most importantly, it is constrained by water on 3 sides, making upwards the only way to grow. Incidentally, construction costs rise faster the higher you build. Result - high housing costs.
Perhaps the solution is not to try to encourage inappropriate jobs in distant rural areas. But moving some of the economic activity to outlying areas that are still within the sphere of influence of important cities would help to ease the burden and spread the wealth. Towns like Fresno, Madera and Bakersfield could have tremendous potential, if they were developed to be more than bedroom communities.
2
Saw a guy yesterday at the gym, hadn't seen him in a year or so, he said he moved back to El Paso, to be close to family, but in the end there were no jobs. He had to move back to New England. I asked him how it is? He said, he missed home, and not much for him here, but there was a job. The housing and life costs of living near jobs is so insane, we need to try and open up these other markets to create healthy economic ecosystems, or we need to add housing and transportation to the markets that are prospering. The ones we live in now are not healthy.
2
Why no mention of the the archaic infrastructure in the USA? E.g., while much of Europe, China and Japan have modern high speed rail, the USA has next to none. Morgantown, WV is about an hour from Pittsburg by car, it would be minutes via a train travelling at 200 mph. Washington DC is only 3 hrs by car to much of WV, what if there were high speed rail heading from DC through West Virginia into the big cities of Ohio. Merge this with vastly higher public investment in education - simply smaller class size, higher teacher salaries etc... more innovative teaching (e.g., Finland) and maybe simply by moving people around more efficiently and faster the USA could expand the reach of our urban centres into rural communities? The real problem is that the Republican Party for decades has brainwashed Americans that the richest country in the world cannot possibly spend money on such things, better to give it all back to as tax breaks rather than investing in anything that actually much improve the backwardness of US infrastructure and improves the potential for economic development. Imagine - fast, efficient travel to work, much lower housing prices than urban America, good schools - people would move to connected rural areas IF the country only actually ever invested in the necessary infrastructure - and whatever became of Trump’s promised ‘infrastructure’ program? Too busy handing out self-serving tax breaks to those who need it least.
14
The author raises a lot of good points but didn't discuss several other important factors. One is the outrageous price of land which prevents people who might want to get into farming from doing so. Land, generally has to be inherited in order to make farming viable. Climate change is also becoming a factor. As I speak, the farmer next door is finally harvesting his corn---in mid-December. It used to be that it was all over in October. The rainfall patterns have changed dramatically in our area with wetter springs that last longer making it harder to plant or forcing farmers to plant multiple times when the first crop gets drowned out. The harvest is also being delayed by chronically wet conditions. Several local farmers who grow hay had their cut hay rained on 6 times because the rain just wouldn't stop. They had to bale it just to get it out of the field but it was useless for feeding to animals---its intended purpose. And, of course, the pests are changing their habits making it harder to predict when to initiate control measures. It is nothing for the farmers to lay out $500,000 for a new tractor. It will be equipped with impressive technology such as the ability to detect underlying soil conditions and adjust fertilizer applications accordingly but it often requires going into debt to buy one. The rapidly developing local food movement may help keep people growing food but all of this will change dramatically over time. We are in uncertain times.
1
This trend could accelerate greatly if lab grown meat becomes a thing. And it could.
2
Soylent Green is people!
The lack of housing policy in the US is definitely a problem. The past was about closing the gaps between the haves and the have-nots, but the future is the same struggle between the cultural haves and have-nots. But there's no way of bringing culture to communities with the population of a marching band.
The country needs cities, and the barriers to entry (i.e., to move) have to be lowered through appropriate housing policy. Not vouchers either that just throw away money on high rent in a tight market. Actual building, to address the artificial scarcity of housing that drives up prices, and building for density with multi-family units in urban, walkable spaces. We're never going to address climate change with people in cars.
The realization that even strong middle-tier cities can't attract companies like Google or Amazon should put to rest the pipe dream that tech is going to revitalize anything. The 2,000+ bookstores that went out of business while the Congress showered Amazon with exemptions from sales tax is unspeakable. Here in France, where politics is about more than mere economics, publishing is sheltered from competition over price, so Amazon can't discount books. And they have more bookstores now than when Amazon started.
It's not hard to create good policy.
3
When reading the article, I could not help but remember an interview published by NTY titled “Wendell Barry’s Right Kind of Farming” by Gracy Olmstead dated Oct. 1, 2018. In it Mr. Olmstead states “The farmer, essayist and poet Wendell Berry has long argued that today’s agricultural practices are detrimental to ecology, community and the local economies that farms once served.” I believe Mr. Barry’s ideas, if implemented, would go far to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy.
Also, in December 14, 2018 NYT’s Opinion section there is another article “The Farm Bill Ignores the Real Problems of U.S. Agriculture”, again written by Gracy Olmstead, that highlights many of the issues brought up of in the preceding two articles.
Sadly, our current leaders are more interested in serving the rich and powerful instead of advancing the common good for all of us.
10
There's also natural selection. If members of a species cannot survive on their own, why would we think that giving them money is what will save them? These people need a lot more than money!
You're talking about "Social Darwinism" when the problem is Capitalism.
2
The resistance to repopulation via increased migration is, like
most of trumpican ideology, self defeating and absurd. Nothing
can save people who don't see an obvious gifthorse straight on. The
energy of new immigrants can easily merge with the work ethic
of rural america that isn't consuming itself on opiods.
The fact that congresspeople, mostly if not entirely trumpicans, from these areas is not pushing
for a repopulation agenda via increased immigration is another example
how the ignorance and bias that is at the core of trumpican ideology and appeal is preventing too many people in this country from extricating themselves from the ruts they're stuck in.
Personally, I just don't get it. It seems completely baffling and mystifying.
2
"The distress of 50 million Americans should concern everyone."
Nonsense. Such people just don't care for the challenges of life. They retired the day they were born.
3
The author mentions the possibility of rural residents migrating to the cities, but largely dismisses it because older people and their families don't want or can't afford to move. Well, there's a way to have the best of both worlds. Connect rural counties to the cities with high speed (>200 mph) rail lines, cutting commuting time by more than half. It won't help every remote community, but it will expand the umbrella of benefits that come with having job opportunities in a city.
5
My father grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota, and unlike many of its neighbors, this town survives, but only because it is home to a company whose owners have a great deal of community spirit.
The surrounding towns were founded during the heyday of the timber industry, and once all the trees were chopped down in those pre-environmentalist days, there was no more reason for the towns to exist.
When I was a child, I enjoyed going there because of the lakefront park and the inexpensive ice cream treats available at the drug store soda fountain, but as I grew into my teens, I began to understand why so many people had left and came back only for vacations.
I think the attitude that annoyed me most was the automatic rejection of the unfamiliar. "That isn't how I was brought up" was considered a valid reason to dismiss an idea. The Twin Cities, which most of the town's residents had never visited, were considered cesspools of iniquity and danger, not a place anyone might like to go. This was before the advent of far right talk radio, but I'm sure the genre found a receptive audience there.
What can you do with people who not only don't know but don't want to know?
4
We have a huge demographic bulge of people--my generation, the Boomers--who are aging and many are ill prepared for retirement in any place that is expensive. This is a very large segment of the U.S. population and many are in the expensive hub areas. Why not direct resources to various areas around the country to create livable appealing places for elderly retirees? Other than medical personnel, these places can develop thriving economies which do not require exceptional levels of education. At the same time, under-resourced retirees can live better than they might otherwise AND housing in the expensive hub cities and suburbs can be freed up for younger workers actually participating in the new economy.
8
Do you want to help people or help places? I vote for people -- encourage their departure from non-viable towns. Or open the gates to Syrian refugees and let them move into those towns. Bet they would appreciate the chance.
4
The author leads with a bold claim that productivity of rural workers is lower than that of urban workers. There is no explanation or references given - and I doubt that it is true. How "productivity" is defined will determine differences between rural and urban environments. Also, demographic differences and other parameters could easily account for such differences. Furthermore, it is likely that the "output per worker" values are averages/means and NOT median values, i.e. there are fewer opportunities in rural settings to be highly productive (and highly paid), compared to urban settings. Lastly, I doubt that regional economic differences or differences in employment opportunity can be attributed to (population density-dependent) differences in "productivity", i.e. if the productivity levels of rural and urban workers were reversed, the economic differences between the two environments would be largely unchanged. Without references, such loaded statements should not be made in a paper like this.
4
Although cogent, this analysis, like so many others, misses the most important reason for rural population/investment/brain drain -- the "sticks" are terminally boring and feature a lifestyle firmly rooted in a Norman Rockwellesque past. For the most part, well educated youth flee as soon as possible after college graduation. The siren song is not jobs, but cities' 'visceral excitement -- restaurants, clubs, boutiques, art films, people actually waking on the streets! "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm After they've seen Paree' How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway, Jazzin around and paintin' the town," is still poignant 100 years after Sophie Tucker belted it out.
7
Universal basic income would really help. It would free up many to seek out rural areas to live, secure in the knowledge that they will be able to survive. That would lead to more money being spread out over the country, which would lead to more small businesses in more rural areas.
I bet there are lots of people who would be happy as larks in rural areas, if they could live decent lives there and not be in poverty.
5
I always ask myself what jobs are going to be left in the future that cannot be automated, that will be available for people with no education, at any age, that will pay a living wage, that will be viable is smaller areas of the country. A degree is no longer necessary for tech careers, but even AI and algorithms will displace tech careers in the future. It won't be a matter of rural or urban, many jobs can be phased out eventually, sorry for the grim news folks.
4
True in the long run, your observation does not point out that the services people need, whether they work 40 hours or 0 hours a week -- food, shelter, energy, communication, transportation, health care -- are more efficiently provided in densely populated areas.
According to the signs, Virginia City, NV was the "riches place on earth" 150 years ago when the gold and silver mines were booming. Almost 30,000 people lived here. It had its own opera house and railroad, the V&T. Its wealth helped the North win the Civil War and built San Francisco.
Today 5000 people live this Republican county outside of Reno. I retired here from NYC 20 years ago for the same reason corporations like Tesla, Apple and Goggle are here: lots of land, the fresh air of the Sierras, nearby airport and university plus less than 5 hours by car from San Francisco. Oh, no state income tax and low property tax, too. Rural living isn't bad. Virginia City has no bank, food or drug store but it does have a gas station. Things are looking up, though: Viasat just made unlimited high speed broadband available!
3
I confess to being a Class A hypocrite. I am a member of Amazon Prime, and I greatly enjoy the convenience of shopping without going out in the cold in my car. But I really disapprove of the way that Amazon decided to locate their new facilities. In NYC (of all places) and northern VA. They are motivated by sheer greed. I don't believe for a minute that they couldn't make a profit and help America out at the same time by locating in an area that is in desperate need of jobs. Of all the places that doesn't need Amazon, NYC must be one of the top ten. More traffic, more congestion, more gentrification, fewer vacancies. Nice going, Mr. Bezos.
6
While the economics of the situation may explain the plight of rural flight, most of the people I know who have left these areas did so because of the intolerance that dominates life there. It could very well be that through their intolerance of the LGTB lifestyle, these counties drive away the creative and cultural kids - just as their bigotry might be driving away would be Hispanic workers or small business families from Asia. Some of these places would rather die out than let the outsiders in - and it looks like they are doing just that.
4
Why anyone would vote for Trump? Look no further. Some people voted for Trump because they saw no help coming from Democrats. And some voted for Trump because they knew it was hopeless and talk radio had stoked them with so much anger they wanted to throw a Chinese-made wrench in the works.
if you look at this from the viewpoint of someone who's middle aged and not a computer genius, a guy like Mitch McConnell, getting the coal mine re-opened is a hero.
It may make more profits, but concentrating the decent jobs in a few small regions will lead to even more ugly and unproductive "us versus them" resentment that keeps the Republcan party afloat.
5
JR, and yet the tide is turning. From a long-time carpenter with the same unsolicited message, as the hard-working farmer in the village post office with unconcealed thoughts, the above are looking clear-eyed. 'The guy has got to go'. The more urgent message is 'Business is slow'. Do not mention the word 'Liberal'.
When boxed into a corner, I mention the kindly interview Ross Perot unwittingly gave this now retired cleric, after he stepped down from the presidential elections on a final interview with NBC. Listeners smile with a tinge of nostalgia, and when having the visit of a 'progressive' at the door here, it comes with a reminder that some Trump supporters did not want the 'same-old, the same-old', but voted for our sitting president, much as the Lotto winning ticket. Therein lies the self-defeating 'Progressive'.
Whether newcomers or late ones to the rural regions of America; those of decades with families in transit; we are willing, those of us, fit and capable to apply for a job called 'Work'.
A reminder to The Democrats, never term the poorest in our midst 'deplorable'. Demeaning, and the cause of seething within the community.
Some fine Americans are to be found in the rural region, with low tolerance for arrogance and urban air, while remaining Republican-spirited where the veterans have turned into gardeners, Norman Rockwell recognizable and the cost of living continues to rise.
Mend the broken gap between the Urban and the Rural once linked.
2
THis article has the stench of coastal snobbery. It took more fly over country bumpkins to elect Donald Trump a good deal of the electing Trump was done by uppper middle class white suburbanites. As far as moving many more people from flyover country to the major cities, many would prefer to stay where they are - the scenery is better, houses and travel are cheaper and it's easier to get to work. What we need is invetment in nationwide infrastruture and a coversion to electric cars that can be manufacatured where land is cheap and there is plenty of it for solar fields and wind farms. What we don't need are self driving cars that are expensive and put peopole out of work. I know this require sacrifices by the top 10 percent, but it would be more equitable. And as far as intelelginece, genetics would tell us it is pretty much evenly spread around. You don't have to be born in New York or SanfFrancsco to inherit it.
5
Add to this a couple of other unpleasant truths affecting American workers:
1. Real average wages for workers in general is stagnant since the 1960s (Pew Research).
2. It is not a matter of productivity of workers, but where the gains go. Our present tax system encourages it going to the 1% who control production. And we have allowed the destruction of unions that would give workers bargaining power. (The bottom 50% earned just 20% of pre-tax income, with the top 1% getting 10%.)
3. The country is pursuing policies that both encourage moving production overseas and importing temporary workers ranging from illegal migrants to H1B visas.
6
Jobs cluster naturally; Hollywood is the best example. Writers, technicians, producers, financiers all gravitate to L.A. because the existing eco-system makes it "the place to be" to be part of the industry. An endless series of tax credit programs for location shooting in States and Cities around the U.S. hasn't done anything to change that.
The underlying forces - and solution - is evident from this article, and straightforward: education, education, and more education is needed to give people the tools and skills they need to compete in today's job market.
Unfortunately, much as the rest of our national infrastructure has been left to rot, with the solutions hamstrung by "no new tax" pledges and political paralysis, so too has meaningful reform of U.S. education, which slips further and further behind other nations as we argue over teacher's wages, standardized tests, the value of summer vacations, and the "right" to home school children.
We're going to pay for this declining system one way or another, either to pick up the economic and social pieces, or by investing in ourselves.
4
What made America great at its inception, and greater still over the years that followed was the willingness of first Europeans, but then Asians, and Central Americans, and Africans and Middle Easterners of all stripes, who said "I am not satisfied with my life here," and despite tradition, or nostalgia or any of the other reasons to stay in their home countries, took what was a great and dangerous risk to come to America to make a better life. Those in many parts of rural America must be willing to show the same courage that their ancestors did who struck out from the known toward the unknown. And the cities must welcome them, the way the promise of America welcomed their ancestors. Rural Americans cannot let pride get in the way of that and urban Americans cannot let prejudice get in the way either.
4
Evan- What do you think a rural person looks like? How do you imagine a rural person behaves?
The truth is that young people who attend schools in Upstate NY look and act just like their peers in metropolitan areas. They are also capable of moving to those metropolitan areas and competing for jobs there. That is a major part of the problem rural communities face.
As the promising young people leave, those left behind are often damaged in some way. They may not have a work ethic. They may be ignorant or unintelligent. They may abuse drugs or alcohol. When they have children, many of them are destined to follow the path of their parents.
In some rural communities, this picture is an exaggeration, but where I live it's already happened and it will be hard to stop the downward spiral.
1
Not one mention of the loss of family farms? Our federal farm policy has all but killed small family farms-- and it's leaving the land to waste as agribusiness plants monoculture crops and drenches them in bee killing pesticides. This isn't ho nature intended. Almost one half of our food in the groceries comes from California-- on land that is experiencing extreme drought. We can solve many problems by tipping the scales in support of family farms.
6
Yes! Maybe if a state that is NOT dominated by large-scale agribusiness, like Iowa, led the election process we could move toward sustainable agriculture and sustainability, in general. A more heterogeneous state like ours, Missouri, or maybe Indiana, might help get Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Brazilian agribusiness, etc. out of our politics. I think we should use state rankings, in terms of sustainability, carbon footprint, carbon sequestration or just some measure of long-term SUCCESS, to set the order of our state primaries/caucuses.
4
So who is saving whom?
Long-term sustainability should be considered. And from what I can tell, most of the social problems in our rural community result, partly, from the "virtual urbanization" of the internet. NOT that I believe this cosmopolitan pipeline should be turned-off - on the contrary. (But maybe we should consider regulating it more for the sake of both rural and non-rural people.)
1
A measure to stop the hollowing out of rural communities is ... relax zoning laws in urban areas?!? How does that work again? Surely such a measure would just hollow out rural communities even more.
3
Rural America. Where the residents believe their values are much better than those of us who were raised and live in big cities I pose this question, "Hey. Got work?
1
Most of Tennessee is rural and the economy is booming but that growth is in or near the 3 big cities. This is Trump country in the hills. We are leaders in opiate deaths/abuse. We continue to be historically low educated. And our rural folks stay in their communities for a life time. That is a prescription for failure in a technology driven world.
So instead of getting a great education, move to where the jobs are and stay off the opiate pipe we complain about things like immigration even though we are over 1,000 to the Mexican border.
You cannot fix what wants to stay broken.
13
INCENTIVIZE TELECOMMUTING. that's what to do about it. i just moved my tech job to a rural county, and i'm thrilled. affordable housing, no more traffic ... my income stayed the same and my standard of living skyrocketed. yes, urban zoning should promote increased density to lower housing costs there, but easing urban concentrations would be a boon to the environment and pto ublic health.
7
The US Department of Agriculture got rid of Rural Development in the reorganization after Trump's election. Guess what that department did? Handed out tax dollars to rural towns so they could have clinics, libraries, start businesses, etc. Often, the local politicos and recipients didn't want to hear or know that the money came from "the government." So, all those rural folks who voted tRumpy in helped their own demise.
8
Interesting piece that, like most articles on this topic, avoids one particular hard truth: that as much as we talk about red states and blue states, the voting divide in America is actually a nearly perfect rural/urban split, as the detailed map the NYT published in July reveals. Even "conservative" cities like Lubbock and Colorado Springs went at least partially for Hillary Clinton. As the article makes clear, socially conservative politics did not get rural America into this mess. But being proudly anti-liberal will make it impossible to get out, since it's much more difficult to get educated young Americans to consider living there. Economically, rural America wants to catch up with urban America, but culturally it's running as fast as it can in the opposite direction.
4
Yes, the 2016 election results, by county, really show this well. But finer-scale maps of urban centers, by precincts, show that Trump had great support from urban (post-industrial) working class. It's not a rural/urban divide - it's a "halves"/"halve-nots" divide.
5
This is an amazing article: its premise is that residents of NYC will devour the "news" that millions of residents of rural America, most of whom are perfectly content to stay where they are and do as little as possible to improve their lives, need "saving."
America was built by people constantly on the move--first from Europe--the Netherlands, Spain, England, France; then, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; then once more from Europe; then from Asia, then from Africa, then from the Mideast.
I don't know enough to agree or disagree with the premise (or data) in the article, but I do know enough to say when it comes to saving people who show no interest in being saved, count me out. If they like their lives, let them live their lives. If they don't like their lives, let them change their lives. Nobody is stopping them.
5
As long as rural, red state America keeps voting against it's own interests the problem will continue. I have read numerous articles lecturing the rest of us that we should be concerned and engaged in trying to solve the problems of rural America. How much do those citizens living in these places care about urban America? Look at the voting patterns. Asked and answered.
8
And two.... in terms of cultural evolution, rural cultures have a far better record of sustainability and protecting the environment than do more metropolitan cultures. If you want to REDUCE the earth's capacity to care for itself, just move to the burbs - or even city. Even in terms of our country's capacity to care for itself, rural life can be quite socially responsible. For instance, our home-schooled family of seven living on a small, subsistence farm still outside of cell-service has a carbon footprint smaller than most urban couple's have. So far (and thankfully), our family has needed almost zero social services, including (lower) public education, and health care services (beyond minimal vaccinations). The cultural portal provided by the internet is, however, essential to us; we're non-religious. But there are Amish, Mennonites and others who eschew even this. All of our taxes help support less sustainable, metropolitan (and some rural) lifestyles. It's difficult, but far from selfless sacrifice. Beef, Lamb, chicken, rabbit, basic dairy products, vegetables... all better in quality than anything a restaurant in Manhattan has to work with. (I'm guessing cappuccinos started with frothy, bucket milk.) My point is, the idea that rural life is a net drag on society and its future may be wrong and that rural life should be represented in a fair way (if truth, rather than pleasing news consumers, is the goal).
4
Shouldn't we expect an article about rural America be written by a RURAL American? The author uses cosmopolitan values to judge rural America's utility and, not surprisingly, it scores high on the pathetic scale - in desperate need of urban and suburban help (definitely, a NYT feel-good article). There are at least two aspects of rural America that are important to our country though.
One, rural character, appreciated by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander de Tocqueville, is an important part of America's identity. One visit to Monticello shows how nature, science and democracy go hand in hand... in hand. Beyond more abstract, 'classical' values, 'dirt under the fingernails' simply has a way of building character strength, physical health and overall fitness (considering our evolutionary history). And two....
4
The businesses of the US today are information and technology, both of which are then exported to other countries, who are still in their "Industrial Age", to use in the manufacture of things that are then exported to the US for sale.
Information and technology tend to go to where the able/trained/educated workforce is, and those places are NOT in rural America.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton carried 472 counties which produced approximately 64% of America’s economic activity (GDP) in 2015. President Trump carried 2584 counties which produced approximately 36% percent of America’s GDP in 2015.
For a comparison, in 2000 Al Gore carried 659 counties (54% of US GDP) and George W Bush carried 2584 counties (46% of US GDP).
3
It sounds so much like Britain in the Industrial Age, with the massive rise in urbanization. Sometimes things just cannot be saved. Sometimes the world moves on in major epochs in time, and holding it back is as useless as holding back the tide. If people can scrape out a living in the country economy, great. But if you're artificially trying to keep them in the rural areas for no other reason than you want them to be able to live in the country, well, that's not good enough. People will need to go where the work is, train where the work is.
What benefit is it to the children of those families who are being forced to stay, through economic and housing policies, in the interior? Will they be exposed to careers and industries that will bring them the ability to live a healthy and fulfilling life? Or will they continue to be stuck in a cycle of dependence on whatever company graces their town with a government-granted factory and low-skill work, ready to be cut away as soon as the funding ends? Why do that to your people? Why not set them up for long-term success?
Or get rid of all of your million-chicken farms and make more country-economy towns. Stop depending on whatever corporate scraps you can get to keep these places alive and start revitalizing the agricultural industry. You'll save yourselves a lot of food recalls and diversify your food supply.
The world is moving on. You need to catch up or be left behind.
3
Education is the key, absolutely; but education costs money. The medical technician training courses at the vo-tech school in the next town aren't tuition-free! This is just one reason why we as a nation need to support free post-secondary education or vocational training for all.
3
How to reverse the trend
1. Keeping the rural economy requires tariffs. The US has slapped
tariffs for 100 years on agricultural imports, to keep American Farming
afloat.
If it would be not for tariffs, hundred of thousands of corn production
to produce ethanol would fall fallow. Same for sugar, cotton, rice..
2. Robots are NOT the primary cause for the loss of manufacturing jobs
Germany has 309 robots per 10 000, the US 189. Yet Germany has
a flowering manufacturing sector. The primary reason that industry
after Nafta and admitting China the WTO could shift work to people
willing to work for 1/6 th. Or less. This is much more difficult
in Germany, as by law, half of the corporate boards seats are
reserved for labour
3. Tariffs have worked to protect agricultural production in the US
and in Canada (that uses tariffs to protect its dairy production)
Tariffs have protected the US automotive industry, that makes
money on pickup trucks and large SUVs, protected by a 25%
tariff, since 1964.
There is NOTHING tough about to reverse this trend. All that is needed
is to acknowledge that the free trade, no tariff, free movement of labour
theory has failed in the West - with terrible political consequences, from
Brexit to Trump.
And apply appropriate tariffs to level the playing field. Just like in agriculture.
2
People in rural areas may not have college degrees or be trained in the skills desired by high tech industries, but they're very good at making things, building things and tending things. It's insane to think the answer is bringing high tech jobs to rural areas or simply injecting money into them through earned income tax credits. What rural areas suffer from most are the feelings of hopelessness and uselessness, the lack of financial resources and the lack of an institutional infrastructure to re-create themselves.
What's needed is a massive effort to lend organizational development and business-building resources to help the people in the towns themselves to come together to find ways to revitalize themselves economically. It might involve pulling back into town some of their own children who have gotten degrees and left home to succeed in the big cities. Small towns could become incubators for all sorts of new small businesses. With the advent of 3-D printing and online ordering, there are many niche products that can be manufactured on a relatively small scale that can find a market. Rural areas need to be invested in, on a massive scale, to connect them to the global economic marketplace.
This will cost money and resources to help support these enterprises as they incubate, and not every idea will succeed (of course). But it is far better than to leave people to stew in misery, hopelessness and uselessness, which leaves them vulnerable to malicious demagogues.
3
the author's lack of familiarity with rural America explains much. Factories can be perfectly sited in many communities, and rural are workers before and after their educatoins if big city lawmakers don't try to stare non-urban public schools to death. The growth of the "gig" economy makes rural living a dream for extremely bright, driven, well educated workers; allows periodic "mental health breaks over a long lunch, time urbanites lose commuting. Rrural areas' unproductivity comes from lack of high-speed data connections--which should be universally available by satellite. I operate multiple highly successful businesses, but could employ and expand more with a proper electronic backbono. My office overlooks a vast lake, a year-'round Bald Eagle nesting ground ,more than 100 song-and other beatutiful bird species, rich hunting, and Oklahoma's best sailing.. Yet we're 30 minutes from the nearest International Airport. From that heavenly office I'm now working projects in Scotland, nationally, Hollywood, New York, and throughout Oklahoma . For those who seeking factory jobs, factories need land--and there many parts of rural America nationwide can support such facilities in complete harmony with the natural beauty nearby--with lower land costs & no massive urban traffic snarls.. As has been noted about industrial titans such as GE who think only big, "The bigger they grow, the harder they fall." When it happens, rural American will welcome you.
3
The article speaks to the high cost of housing in the metro areas which make it difficult for those in rural areas to move there. What the article does not say is that it is often times difficult to sell in the rural area to"get out".
3
Armchair economic policy makers out there should be aware of this important distinction. "Hi tech" industry does not require "highly educated" workers. It requires highly educated, high intelligent workers. Roughly half of all people have an IQ of 100 or less. Roughly 85% of all people have an IQ of 115 or less. Etc. Etc.
We cannot "educate" our way out of this problem. The economy does not need 100 million PhD's. And the only way to produce 100 million PhD's is to dumb down the degree to the equivalent of a GED.
While a proper PhD program does indeed "educate", it is also an obstacle course which filters off many or most of the motivationally and/or intellectually less qualified candidates. While mass education is desirable, and indeed also essential for a functioning democracy, it cannot solve this economic problem. Attempts to "educate ourselves out of this problem" will only produce degree factories and useless degrees.
2
I taught in a small rural town. Students grow up fearing the "big city" even though they've never been to one. It is very hard to get these kids up and out of a small rural community to get educated as their families don't want them to go away and change. We need more field trips for these kids and maybe their families as well.
8
Rural America desperately needs high speed internet service! Yes, NYT readers may not believe it but much of America can't access the internet at a usable speed. It took government action (money) to bring us electricity in the 1930's and 1940's and now we need the same action to enable us to work from our homes and get access to the modern world!
9
Absolutely! (I was just going to write a worse version of this.) Starting with Obama and continuing with Trump, there are subsidies in place for utilities to bring broad-band internet to remote regions, similar to the Rural Electrification Act (information is essential for both earning potential, culture, and democratic participation). Many smaller, electrical co-ops are taking advantage of this - and hopefully larger utilities, like Ameran, will also get on-board soon. This would be a significantly expensive rural subsidy if it involved buried fiber optic cable. However, from my understanding, it involves utilizing existing telegraph and telephone poles. Outside of extreme weather, hung optic fiber apparently works well.
1
> The most helpful policy for people in small towns could be to relax zoning rules in dense cities like New York and San Francisco, so that more affordable housing could be built to receive newcomers from rural Wisconsin or Kentucky, and they wouldn’t need the income of an investment banker or a computer scientist to afford to live there.
Oh man, why didn't any of the 40 million people who live in California think of that! /s
Just try to pass laws encouraging more high-density housing in the Bay Area, I dare you. Everyone without property wants that, everyone with property doesn't (at least not in *their* neighborhood), and the people with the property (and money, and influence) have been winning for decades.
1
One of the hard truths is that even if Apple or Google or Caterpillar wanted to put 1000 jobs in a rural area, there's simply no housing there for them, not to mention roads, schools, police, fire, and utilties. The housing stock is not there; enough people with trades skills are not there; and it would take 2+ years to get zoning, platting, planning, utilities and finished homes available. It's just not going to happen. Most rural folks are quick to point out how we are a capitalist free market economy yet somehow think all of these hard truths magically don't apply to their predicament. The free market has spoken: urban areas with excellent universities, skilled people, infrastructure, housing, and transport are where corporate America will continue to invest. Best thing I can suggest for rural areas is to remake themselves as retirement meccas for old timers who need low cost areas to live on their small pensions and social security. With a retiree population there's no need for jobs, schools, or much else other than groceries, medical services and some entertainment. Retirees bring "free money" to rural areas and should be viewed as a growth industry.
5
What is the effect of monopolization on these statistics?Aren't monopolies driving out businesses in rural counties? Perhaps monopoly busting would be good for rural areas as well as the country as a whole.
3
Obviously, the rural population has seen declines since the mechanization of agriculture early in the 20th century. One big positive has been Obamacare & the Medicaid expansion to improve the least healthy of our citizens. As of today there is doubt cast over the healthcare expansion. If Obamacare & Medicaid are eliminated without a replacement the rural population will suffer. Sadly this seems to have been the GOP's objective for the last 8 years.
2
Hey, those rural states and their Republican reps and senators opposed all of it.
As I read these comments (the "reader picks", i.e. sorted by popularity) I come to one very sad conclusion.
Trump has been extraordinarily successful in pitting one group against another.
Bye, bye, USA. It was a good run.
4
It's strange how remarkably similar the language that people on both the Left and Right use, as seen here in the comments. The only difference is the target. The leftists posting on these forums are using the same logic to define the rural poor that conservatives use to define the urban poor. And just like conservatives, they're sure that they're the ones in the right.
Seeing readers say that rural Americans have only themselves to blame because they refuse to move is frankly hilarious, seeing as conservatives say virtually the same thing about the urban poor. In both cases, the claim is that the poor folks deserve to be poor if they're too lazy to move or go to college, and that they don't deserve assistance unless they first help themselves. This is followed by the argument about the cycle of poverty and how no one is going to leave their friends and family to work minimum wage in a place where they don't know anyone. Depending on which scenario it is, said argument is usually accompanied either by the words "racist" or "elitist,"
As you said, if there's one thing we've managed to pull off by now, it's hating one another. What a miserable accomplishment.
2
Creating a "wild" north-south migration corridor through the midwest might be the best most highest use for an area that's been in economic decline for the last century. We forget how recently development is to much of the plains states. Electrical grids were extended in the 1930s, and Johnson finished the job in west Texas only in the 1960s. Yes, Corn Cattle and Soy beans may be the mainstay of some states today, but without Federal Agricultural Subsidies, where would they be?
5
Without Federal Agricultural Subsidies, who would raise the food that y'all eat? Oh, right, y'all would all have community gardens and share your bounty with your neighbors.
1
The hollowing out of rural areas is nothing new. It started a good 125+ years ago as farm machinery began replacing manual labor on family farms. Young people migrated to cities for work, and the truth is they were glad to get away from the backbreaking work on farms. Families no longer needed 10 kids to work the fields. This trend continues. Farmers in California now test new devices to pick crops vice using immigrant labor.
Steam railroads transitioned to diesel power in the 1950s and it put massive workforces out to pasture, in cities and rural regions. My dad was one of them, a steam locomotive blacksmith / boilermaker by trade. Dad said railroads "would never get rid of steam" but they did. In a heartbeat. Efficiencies of scale in the realm of a thousand-fold. Stunning efficiencies. Feeling sorry for himself, and drunk one night, he stuck his head in the oven. Mom found him in the morning, kicked him in the butt and told him "next time turn on the gas." He lived to 1986 but talked about steam to the day he died.
In the 1980s we started the PC revolution. In 1990-91 we went to war in the Gulf on PCs. By 1992 my Army agency sent its ancient mainframe computer to scrap. We cancelled contracts for all those techs to care for the mainframe. Out they went. Saved a ton.
The hollowing out will continue, I expect it to accelerate.
158
Your father was a smart man but like most of us understanding what is happening is by design not Divine Providence might be a little difficult. Here in Quebec the demographics of our largest city is not the same as that of our entire province and because we are still at the tail end of our quiet revolution the areas outside of Montreal are booming along with the booming global economy in Montreal.
From here in Quebec's hinterland reading about the decline of America's rural areas seems insane even as a trip across the border reveals the decline in rural America our farms, villages, towns and villages are thriving as our provincial government invests in Quebec's future. Every business has (we're hiring signs) and all our mayors are begging for new citizens.
3
But what about technological advances that are commercial winners, but are bad for people or their environment, short- or long-term? We don't HAVE to accept everything that comes down the pipeline. Our country is rich enough in resources to let others exploit risky technologies, if they choose to. Fanatical (and non-fanatical) Luddites are not the only ones wishing to EVALUATE new technologies.
3
In the late 80's I ran out of gas in middle Kansas, and pulled into a town off of I-70 there was this beautiful town, all grid pattern and wrap around porches. But no one was home.. there were two guys with overalls sitting on oil cans smoking cigarettes, watching the day pass and a family that owned everything on the outskirts of town. They were very nice and gave me gas from their big farm tank and wouldn't take money.
1
Babble and dribble about status quo and not about the policies that have gotten us to this point so blindly.
Monopolization of corporations and technology, the internet and the undermining of education.
Did address how small business was a building block and jobs creators for America. But now we have HUGE corporations that own everything and have become such HUGE conglomerate that they stiffle competition. The little guy can't compete.
A sustainable economy, a green economy with policies that do not let the already greedy/power hungry Wall Street and Vulture capitalist take over this new age. Policies that don't transfer all the wealth to these people. There are studies that show this solution would grow the economy put people back to work in all areas.
Get rid of big ag which includes animal harvesting, get rid of too big to fail banks, too big industries that really don't make life cheaper for us commoners. Get rid of the medical industrial complex, along with the MIC> I am worn out with all these idiots who exploit the planet and the people of the world.
5
And yet they always vote for the very opposite of your sane proposals
Very interesting piece from Eduardo on America's agglomeration century-old tendencies and just as I thought poverty and tyranny would be reversed in China by free trade and the internet likewise I thought America's small & rural city decline would be reversed by the internet and a greater dispersion of talent & growth would result from instantaneous communication. Wrong on both but maybe with strong-arm tactics presently being deployed against china, maybe more democracy will spring from the sidelined-free-loving Chinese. here in the US, rural America's great strength has been her amazingly productive ag producers...and maybe things like the farm bill should concentrate on supporting and assisting niche agriculture too...like organic, like more fresh vegetable production around city-centers, like more fruit & nut production. niche ag is more labor intense, as well as capital intense and there's no doubt that state GDP in states like Iowa improve when their Iowan farmers prosper. the son & daughter can then return to the farm and then maybe the grandchildren will be inventing something in the barn, just like suburban kids began internet revolutions in their parents. garage. or maybe I'm dreamin'!!!...PJS
2
Here on the North Coast there's plenty of areas you call rural. In reality, they're just empty.
No longer agricultural in any meaningful sense, too far for easy urban access, populated by people whose one wish is to have things the way they were.
Some-damn-body is always coming around trying change stuff, build things, 'give' people opportunity or income.
No thank you Mr. Stranger, it's not what they want. They want what they used to have.
Frankly, I agree. I like my neck of the woods the way it was better than fine. Its hard to drive around with memories overlaid on the waste and desolation more and more common around these parts.
That explains Trump. He didn't say scary changey things, except the parts about immigrants and Democrats and Hillary. What he said was he could turn time around, he could give them what they want. All they had to do was get rid of everybody who stands in the way. That is, everybody who isn't them.
That nice Laotian girl is fine. Two of them, too much to bear.
New jobs would be fine, they guess, but not if you have to tear down that old orchard that hasn't produced a marketable apple in twenty years.
Mostly its liberals who want to change stuff. They don't get it. The don't appreciate the aching ages of hard work, the deep memories, the buried family that make these places home. They want to rip it up and like it never was. No respect for people, none for the past.
Go for Trump, cling to his lies like gold...
4
Liberals may want to change stuff but it's capitalists who have actually effected big changes, quite often not for the better at all.
I'm wondering what North Coat you live in. And what it means to be "no longer agricultural in any meaningful sense". Just sitting there? No crops, no livestock? Any of that land for sale? Should be pretty darn cheap if it's just sitting there. Makes me want to set up an old time hippy commune. Need to find some young folks to do the actual manual labor...
The article asks what chance Amory, MS, has of attracting tech jobs? It skips the cognate questions: How many residents of Amory want the sort of transformation that comes with those workers, how many residents of the county and the state want to pony up for the sort of educational and other facilities that would make the region attractive.
Way back during the Great Depression, the most bitter opponents of rural development -- including the TVA, which services Amory's region -- were the congressmen and senators sent to Washington by residents. These attitudes continue in fiscal, educational, and racial policies. They continue in a preference for an increasingly untenable way of life.
What this story misses is the ways in which the fierce independence and hard-work ethic of these rural folk is underwritten by the very federal largess these folk complain about.
5
In "Diligence" (one of the sketches in "Suite Americaine," 1921), H. L. Mencken employed sentence fragments to evoke what he saw as the bleakness of early-twentieth-century small-town America:
Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna. . . . Women hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, frying tough beefsteaks. . . . Lime and cement dealers being initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen of the World. . . . Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa, hoping that they'll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren evangelist preach. . . . Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects. . . . Grocery-clerks trying to make assignations with soapy servant girls. . . . Women confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is all about. . . . Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.
For me, these fragments offer snapshots of a kind of sadness and disappointment I still see reflected in present day rural America, few inhabitants of which show any signs of giving up their self-defeating intoxication with Trump.
120
Thank you, A. Stanton, for the haunting words of Mencken. And for your pronouncement at the end that rural America's inhabitants show no signs of wising up about their "savior" Trump.
Just as biting as Menken's works is Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" portrayal of rural town life - and not in a good way.
Yet, there are as many authors and stories about the despair of urban isolation and dehumanization ("Last Exit to Brooklyn") and suburban sterility (most of John Cheever's works).
Sadness and disappointment, just like happiness and success, are all relative to the individual, first by what life has dealt them and then on how they play the hand they are dealt. Such is the human condition. Life is influenced by where you are physically - but even more so by where you are mentally and, most of all, spiritually.
Slightly off topic, but...The author uses Comanche County, Kansas as an example of dying rural areas, but this example is a bad example for this article. Comanche County is in the heart of the Great Plains an area that has been dying for over a 100 years or more. In fact, the population of Comanche County Kansas peaked in 1915 and has declined every decade since. This true of almost every county in the Great Plains. Comanche County and the hundreds of other Great Plains Counties have never recovered from the Dust Bowl era of the 1920's and 30's. Technology and globalization did not kill the Great Plains, the Great Plains should never have been settled in the first place, and has never held any promise for sustainable economies that would support a growing population. We should do nothing to save the Comanche Counties of this country and let them return to what they were in 1860, which is exactly what we have been doing for the past 100 years.
101
Sparky,
And if the farmers of America decide that Brookline never should have
been settled and thus draw up contracts prohibiting any food being
sold to anyone in Brookline, by what right would you object given
you feel you have the right to tell people where to live and where not to
live.
2
Thank you for taking the trouble to explain this obvious reality to the New York Times. Sometimes that famous old New Yorker cover of the view of America from New York rings true again. The thesis is valid, they just picked the wrong county to illustrate it. Harding County, Iowa would have served their purpose better. It still is home to the richest deepest top soil in the world and is some of the most expensive farmland one can buy. There has never been a crop failure in Harding County. Nevertheless, as the farms got bigger, the towns got smaller until now there is hardly anything left of Steamboat Rock where I was born and moved away from to find a job in California. I used to go "home" every summer to visit the old folks, and every summer there was one less small business in town, and a few more families that had moved away. They've always been Republican though, and Protestant and white, in good times and in bad.
1
What about the people who are being offered retraining and refuse to learn new skills because they think their coal jobs are coming back? You can't help people who won't help themselves.
3
Just started reading “Doughnut Economics”. This book basically proposes an economic paradigm based in the “space” between the sustainable limits of our planet and the minimal acceptable needs of the human population.
Starting with this goal, all economic policies are upended from the classical “invisible hand of the marketplace”.
The author doesn’t call for communism or socialism.
Read the book.
( I am not associated with the author or book and receive nothing for this comment.)
2
Capitalism destroys communities, and capitalism builds communities. Think about the long term here. All those rural communities that are now "failing" were once built by a vast process of westward expansion (and conquest, which destroyed the previous civilizations). Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital (1913) decries corporate development's destruction of (white) rural communities in the United States in the mid nineteenth century! I don't think this underlying characteristic of capitalism--it's constant tendency, come hell or high water, to change what is into something else--is going to change, with or without renovation of the rural economy. One might remark these transformations, politically, are profoundly destabilizing. (The more I read the news, the more I appreciate Polanyi).
2
This is an extremely important topic, as urban/rural issues divide the country politically, culturally, economically. I've read many of the comments and there are some good ideas. Please, NYTimes, continue exploring this topic. A whole series of articles on the urban/rural divide would be helpful.
4
Its simple, people are poor because, for the most part, they and their families do not think that education is important. The age of finding well paying unskilled jobs is long gone. Mining is largely automated as is the Auto Industry and most other industries. People sit on their buttes in poverty stricken Appalachia because they are unwilling to move, like their ancestors did to find good jobs. But it is not just in the poor South. Even here in High Tech California there are a tremendous number of people, even the well educated who don't believe that a good education is important to getting a good job.
2
My sacrificing parents wouldn't take kindly to your statement. Education was number one in my house.
For starters, we could reverse some of the public policy that has contributed to the decline of not just rural areas and small towns, but also of the medium-sized cities in what the coastal elites call "flyover country." See "Bloom and Bust" by Phillip Longman in the Washington Monthly of Nov/Dec 2015.
The flip side of this coin is the total insustainability of the super-dence NYC/SF model, where a studio apartment costs thousands of dollars per month and the people moving there scarcely have the resources to get married, much less raise a family or buy a house. The answer to both problems is to build up the mid-sized cities, probably through a tax incentive that allows wages paid in a county or zip code of a certain population density or less to be deducted at a higher than 1:1 ratio. Companies will quickly realize that they don't need their call centers, accounting offices, or marketing teams to be all packed into a city of two million people, where even six figure wages only buy a modest lifestyle, and where political and social views are probably even more insular than in rural areas.
3
Two themes stand out in this article: the need for investment in affordable housing in the right places -- the smaller cities come to mind -- and in public transportation from rural areas to the smaller cities. Thirty miles is a long way to walk! However there are more subtle ways to grow rural demand. To support small, low-tech manufacturing, State procurement rules could be modified to reward "rural content". Counties can access State allocations of Treasury tax credits to attract investors. There is a vast, underutilized infrastructure of development financing in this country, and the Appalachian Regional Commission, for one, could try using it!
1
Interesting reading all of the comments by the elites and their wannabe imitators. People tend to forget why population centers. as in villages, towns and cities, were established. To provide a market and support structure for rural businesses, as in farms, ranches, and what not that provide the sustenance we need, literally, to live. No farms? We're in just as bad shape as all those starving people in Africa.
These same elites act as if factory farms and factory food are the solution for society. Anything but the solution. Having a global economy is a great thing, but like any double edged sword, it also has it's pitfalls.
Being dependent on other countries for our basic needs, like food and water, is a real national security threat. And one that will only get worse if we don't support these places by buying their products. Which means willing to pay more than bottom dollar Walmart prices for cheap factory food from other countries.
1
With the growth of toxic polarization goosed by a constant stream of propaganda from the likes of Fox News I wonder how many rural folks wold be willing to relocate to the hated urban areas which are routinely depicted as utter cesspools of moral depravity whose political leaders are all evil socialists.
Now it may be that many rural folks are not really affected by this. I have travelled a lot in rural areas of the west in recent years and on the ground the polarization is not nearly as salient as in the media.
But being willing to engage in civil conversation with a passing urbanite doesn't mean someone would be willing to relocate. It's also true that a lot of rural folks are gobsmacked by urban density; they feel quite uncomfortable to be surrounded by tall buildings or even single family houses on small lots, not to mention all the people.
Years ago in NYC a friend of mine worked construction during the summers (his father was in the Boilermakers Union). He encountered a fair number of workers from Appalachia who spent months at a time working in NYC and periodically returned to their homes. I wonder if this is still going on.
In far northern California as the logging industry was contracting a couple of decades ago (no more old growth logging since the remaining stands were protected) there was a concept of switching to a more sustainable rural economy: gathering mushrooms, catering to urban tourists and such. I didn't follow whether this was actually working.
1
My flour mill is in Lone Rock WI. I am an escapee from Potomac MD. A good place to grow a new business from the existing structure. I am not rich, but I am doing what I love. If I may offer a suggestion that I think is needed.
Today about 40% of US corn goes to make ethanol, about 10% of our transportation fuel. Ethanol from corn is a joke.
I would suggest growing biomass prairies to produce cellulose and genetically engineered legumes to produce the cellulase enzymes. This can break plants down to glucose. Rather than ethanol, I would suggest using Aqueous Phase Reformulation (J.A. Dumesic, UW Chemical Engineering) to produce hexane that can directly replace gasoline without modification. This chemical process is the reduction of carbohydrates to hydrocarbons. It would require hydrogen that can be made with photovoltaic panels.
An article explaining the process:
http://128.104.70.177/conversations/Conversations4Teachers/2006/Alkanes-Angew-Chem.pdf
This could work across the corn belt and could employ a new generation of eco-entrepreneurs. There should be a carbon tax to make this process workable. Fuel would not need to be over $3/gal, but it would all be a renewable American product. This new form of agriculture would do wonders for water quality in the Mississippi.
The company who has the patent:http://www.virent.com/
3
Disheartening read, but I don't think anything will save rural America or the people that live there except their own initiative, creativity, self-effort, seeking retraining as needed...and usually moving to where jobs actually are.
The links below outline a lot of relevant info. It takes a little time & effort to work through the info and data, but will be worth it for those motivated.
Figure out what field you want to work in and the approximate salary you want to shoot for, and find info on how many jobs are in that field in every region or state in the country here:
https://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm
Typical annual mean wages by occupation here: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
Find education and training requirements for hundreds of occupations here:
https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/educational-attainment.htm
Perusing this link makes it evident that many jobs typically require a Bachelors or Masters Degree, though many other careers don't. At least you know what you typically need to shoot for regarding education.
In my experience you can wait forever for politicians to fix your life, or you largely do it yourself.
Help with retraining would be the biggest plus of course, and gov should greatly expand help for citizens who need new training or degrees.
Good luck to all motivated and who really try.
Don't know what more one can do on a practical level but make it happen through self effort. You can't count on politicians for much of anything it seems.
2
And yet...people ARE moving to rural areas to get away from the high costs and cramped conditions of city living.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/realestate/forget-the-suburbs-its-country-or-bust.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Real%20Estate
So it would seem that some rural areas could survive. Not all is lost.
2
In the 70s and 80s, a big part of the appeal of '21st Century' jobs was that Tech was going to allow people to live anywhere. We were all going to disperse to our rural havens. The 'sell' and the allure of Tech was that you could have your small town family life, yet stay connected and work for some global powerhouse. Oh! And hours were going to be so flexible. Why would anyone work more than say five hours a day? ... and cars would fly!
Well, the jobs did move. Just not in the way we thought they would.
3
It really wouldn't hurt if more people in rural America valued post-high school education.
The following is an important quote from the article:
"If even medium-sized cities find it difficult to compete, what are the odds that, say, a small town like Amory, Miss., where 14 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree and a quarter of its 2,500 workers work in small-scale manufacturing, have a chance to attract well-paid tech jobs?"
Of course, the decision to not seek eduction beyond high school is a choice and it's a choice that causes people to be unable to effectively compete for jobs in the modern world. I mean seriously, the following is also a quote from the article:
"The costs of rural poverty are looming over American society. Think of the opioid addiction taking over rural America, of the spike in crime, of the wasted human resources in places where only a third of adults hold a job.”
How does someone effectively compete for a job when they don't take it upon themselves to develop the knowledge and skills needed to secure the jobs available in today's world? I guess one answer is to "Make America Great Again" by further rigging the playing field rigged such that they can effectively compete against those far more qualified than themselves.
2
The search for cheap labor is one of the hall marks of capitalism. This was a major feature of American global growth strategy from the late 80s. Its interesting that one of the most committed companies to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor was Walmart which has done more to destroy small town homegrown economic activity. It harmed small businesses with cheap products and provided poorly paid jobs.
3
c harris - agree about Walmart to a certain extent - they are surely a rich enough company to pay higher wages and better benefits. BUT....the small town jobs they supposedly destroyed sure didn't pay much either, and most small businesses weren't paying for health care benefits, or even much vacation or sick time.
Television and cheap efficient transportation have both been instrumental in destroying small towns. People sit at home at night and do little except bore themselves to death watching TV, thus getting a skewed idea of the world. Talk to most rural people and they will blame drugs use (and most all other problems) on liberals in the cities while they keep themselves going with meth and opioids, along with alcohol and pot.
Ease of transportation caused entire small towns to close up by making it easier to drive long distances to buy goods. Why go to a local store when in two hours you can shop at a Walmart a hundred and fifty miles away. I live in a rare prosperous small town along a major transportation corridor and can see hundred of vehicles from 100-150 miles away heading into the city with a pickup truck and trailer to same maybe $100 on some purchase. Not only are they total offsetting their out of pocket cost with their transportation cost they are wasting an entire day of their lives to save this $100. They have been doing this for so long that except of a business pumping gas every 150 miles or so there is almost no retail commerce going on over vast areas.
5
Instead of obsessing about small towns, we had better focus on how we deal with AI and bio engineering. How do we deal with a hundred million or more people who simply can't find a job. How do we deal with a very small elite, more so than now, who are very wealthy while the rest are very poor. How do we deal with a small elite who bio engineer themselves and their children into almost immortality. Many problems ahead and we can't even deal with climate change when we basically know what we should do.
2
I think the author, and many like him, are thinking too narrowly. Sure, it is not realistic to shift manufacturing away from large urban centers. But, expanding health care is a viable option that will generate huge amounts of employment.
I just came back from Tyler, TX, a city of a little over 100,000 in east Texas. It's a small city, but it has a branch of the University of Texas and two major hospitals. Those hospitals generate a substantial amount of employment directly. Not only are there doctors, nurses, and technicians employed there, but lots of employment through the suppliers and services that support the hospitals - foods, medical supplies, pharmacuticals, medical equipment, support services, transportation, and so forth.
Further, the local university provides training for many of those jobs - nursing, pharmacy, and medical technology (they don't yet have a medical school). Again, there is a substantial employment associated with the university and the nearby community college.
Then, there are the multiplier effects of that employment through expenditures by those employed in these two sectors - housing, food, retail, clothing, etc.
We need to start thinking about health care as an economic stimulus, and not just as a provided service. For rural areas, this will be the economic development strategy for the future. Obviously, not every small town can have a hospital. But, regionally, they can be spread out to generate rural employment and wealth.
1
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION - EVERYWHERE! and return the farming business to FAMILY FARMS. About needing big clusters of tech-savvy folks to encourage innovation -the internet is the biggest cluster. It is not necessary to live in someone's backyard - this is the digital age. The internet should be FREE and AVAILABLE to everyone everywhere... People are just as smart and innovative in rural counties as anywhere else. I live in a tech bubble, I would love to live where there is room to breathe easily and think clearly. It's not that complicated. Humans and our blue planet are the best investments in the long term.
2
And health care. Combining education with health care will generate lots and lots of employment.
2
i live in what has become a small retirement town in Alaska. has it occurred to anyone that many baby boomers would love a chance to get away from the pace of big-city living and retire to a more relaxed, more affordable environment? maybe investment in healthcare facilities in small towns could be the missing link to get older, self-sufficient retirees to move.
2
Agree about the health care, however, the health care industry must eventually get out of the business of making huge amounts of money off of sickness. Having been employed in the medical field (hospital administration) most of my adult life, I know very well how difficult it is to recruit physicians to small communities. Now we have regional medical centers and the small towns aren't able to compete with small, rural hospitals, many of which would be able to provide excellent care.
2
There are so many opportunities here, but we have to be willing to re-imagine the way we do things.
1
what's the point of an article bemoaning rural poverty and recommending as a solution -- those people should move? A more interesting take would be to note that American mobility is continuing to decline, perhaps just as it's most needed. Go west young man, used to be the motto, but no more. Taking that into account then, perhaps what we should do is offer the training that lets people move where the jobs are, and count on them then doing so. As the land then empties, I suspect new pioneers will find something to do there over time.
No mention of climate change by Porter. Our whole economy, including rural America, must transition to clean energy in the next 30 years. That's a huge challenge, but also a great opportunity for all of us. To quote Thomas Friedman in NYTimes:
"… clean energy and efficiency have to be the next great global industry … Does anyone — other than Trump — believe that America can continue to dominate the world economy and not lead the next great global industry …
… a zero-carbon grid, zero-emission vehicles, zero-net energy buildings, and zero-waste manufacturing ... Clean power, clean cars, clean manufacturing and efficient buildings make everything we want to achieve in our society easier. They can lower our health care costs, cut heating bills for the poor, drive 21st-century innovation, foster decent jobs, mitigate climate change, create more competitive export industries, weaken petro-dictators — and enhance U.S. national security and moral leadership."
For rural America, it's regenerative agriculture, reforestation, local clean energy, local energy efficiency. The imminent dangers of climate change require massive investments in both rural and urban America to transition to a clean energy economy.
3
Diversified farming designed to survive a radically changed climate are what is needed, though this is not what economists and think tanks offer. Almost nothing gets manufactured in office complexes of the sort Amazon or Google puts up as they are at the discharge end of a value chain emanating mainly from Asia. Rural manufacturing was enabled by infrastructure built mostly post-WWII and which Republicans now almost universially refuse to refurbish.
Tech started around great universities - public institutions which Republicans are intent on cutting support for. See the pattern anyone?
Climate resilience requires a complete rethink of the mega-farm and comodity approach. Periodic destruction of large scale agricultural productivity is a predetermined outcome in a radically changed climate. Think of Central Valley CA or the Northern High Plains states with production halved for several years running.
Everyone but economists seems to realize that young, educated people like cities because of a richened cultural experience there and also improved chances of finding a mate or partner. Young folks are not moving back to Columbus for dense housing alone, which brings us back to great universities. As falls Niagara Falls, so rises a sustainable future - built on renewable power, diversified local agriculture (not cash crops used to drive foreign policy).
4
It's very simple to explain where the problem lay in all this and it starts with the fact that the U.S. is no longer the manufacturing nation it once was, thanks in large part to the greed factor which has shipped a lot of these jobs overseas, the low taxes that keep them there, and the sad reality that we have become a nation of lazy consumers with quick resource to cheap and disposable products.
There once was a time, and not too long ago when it was possible to work with pride in communities that were held together by companies that had a vested interest in them -- now, instead of bringing employees up to speed with new and increasing technologies, companies just shut down and move to greener pastures, or let technology take over the jobs all together.
And no. Re-opening coal mines is not the answer. Nor is re-calibrating auto emission laws which will poison the environment before it increases auto production.
If those in the White House and Senate were really interested in getting Americans back to work, they wouldn't start by increasing tariffs and embargoes.
Face it. Globalization increases production. But only if you're in the game.
And at this juncture, the U.S. isn't.
3
Best quote I've seen yet: "the reason they support Trump is a simple one - he acts like they would if they had money." I realize not all reflect his values - but it appears the majority do. This value agglomeration feeds on itself.
2
This article should be required reading for all Americans, and liberal Dems should really focus on it. Rural America didn't vote for Trump only because of their concerns over illegal immigration, or abortion, or liberal judges - the primary reason was economic ills and what that has done to the social fabric of their lives. Without good jobs it will be hard to stem the scourge of the heroin problem, high suicide rates, etc. If those can't be tech jobs we need economic policies that allow things to be manufactured in this country again, rather than being imported from southeast Asia and Mexico.
3
There is no economic policy in the world that is going to compete with a Mexican auto worker that will gladly work for $5/hr versus an American worker that considers $20/hr a low wage job. Also robots are increasingly replacing human workers in manufacturing.
That's the stark hard reality when it comes to manufacturing
3
I live in Maine, a rural state, and in Winthrop, a small town of 6,000. Maine has suffered the way other rural areas have with the same results: opioid addiction, an aging population, low-wage jobs. State-wide, affordable high-speed, broad-band Internet connection would be a huge help, allowing people to telecommute or start up their own small businesses. However, it goes beyond that. In the area where I live, I am seeing the sparks of revival of small cities that were once on the skids. And they all involve one thing: direct investment in the cities. The investment comes in various forms---from the communities themselves or from a wealthy college or nonprofit. What has not worked is luring big businesses in with tax breaks. Been there, done that, and most of them left.
249
Yes, and yes. I live on the coast in Southern Maine. We have the good fortune to be near the ocean, have a robust tourist business, and good town management. But we lack growth in the age cohort between 20-44, since they tend to leave the state for better-paying jobs and opportunities. We are going to attempt to address that with more affordable housing, especially now that we have a Democratic legislature and governor.
6
Yes, I've seen that too in the Hudson region: Many small towns and villages reinventing themselves as tourist and specialty shopping destinations, with art galleries, shops selling artisanal products such as cheese, meats, jewelry, clothing, antiques and furniture, farmer's markets selling local produce, breads and cheese, music and theater festivals, etc., Peekskill, not so long ago a rather impoverished town, is undergoing a revival in that direction. It has is cons as well: Housing prices have soared. Not every community can do this of course, but alternatives are to make them educational and/or administrative destinations by building colleges and government offices there (as was done in the Netherlands in communities where the clothing and mining industries disappeared from the early 1960's on). It requires intelligent planning and the political will to nurture vibrant communities and a sustainable small-town lifestyle. High speed internet would surely help, as it does in France where the most remote communities have such access, as does affordable public transportation.
2
I very much hope this is really happening. Unfortunately I can't help but suspect that you're engaged in wishful thinking. Sparks don't always start a fire, sometimes they just fade away.
This article was pretty persuasive that there are huge structural disadvantages faced by rural areas. I do believe that rural New England may have much better chances than most rural areas. Appalachia and the areas it fed has always been a hotbed of anti-government sentiment. In a parts of rural Oregon the local libraries are closing because of strong anti-tax sentiment.
Good luck to your town and state!
1
Capitalism destroyed rural America. There is no need to dance around that fact. When faced with paying American workers to produce things, the Capitalists chose the workers of Japan & South Korea, then China and Mexico, and now Vietnam and India. Nobody hates rural America more than the Capitalists.
304
It's not these other countries that lure away the best of rural youth. It's the allure of the big city. How're going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree? Especially if the good jobs are all in Paree?
2
International financial capitalism aka "globalism" destroyed rural America. Fixed it for you Kyle.
1
America: the market giveth, and the market taketh away.
2
But often the heart of the matter is they will not move away from their rural communities even if housing is very affordable. There are many places where housing is quite affordable that are not SF or NYC. Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, and increasingly some of the older rust belt towns that are experiencing economic improvements - Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Columbus. Rural people often prefer to stay in a dead town rather than risk a chance in some place new and different. I grew up in one - I know it well. The key success factor was how quickly you left town and how far away you went. If they will not move to pursuit better economic opportunities in their 20's, they clearly will not be told to move in their 50's, when retraining becomes far more difficult.
267
When the recommendation is to abandon the place you grow up, we really are toast. Abandon your family, your parents and your relatives? Desert your friends? Leave behind your teachers and schools, the cameraderie of youth sports, whatever church you attended, to live among strangers? Leave the beautiful places that shaped you, everything that supports you socially and emotionally?
For what? Oh yeah. For money and social isolation, the joys of dating strangers, of not knowing or caring about your neighbors, of having gig job after McJob after temp job.
That's a terrible solution. While I personally deplore living in one of those small-city to rural areas (eastern Idaho) that exports its resources AND its brightest (or best-funded) children, I also note that the quality of life is very high for those who manage to remain (or retire) here to be surrounded by family, friends, activities, and a huge network of supportive social relationships.
The trick will be to find a level of economic and educational support that allows people to stay in - and move to - rural counties for all that they DO offer. Clean air, great local food, affordable housing, and safety, for starters.
11
Education is the great liberator. Get a degree, and start out where you can get a good job. That's what people do.
3
It isn't that retraining is difficult, it's that age discrimination means it's harder to get a job.
3
I was born in a tiny central Illinois town and in 3rd grade my parents made the decision to move to Champaign-Urbana so that my brother and I would have the opportunity for a much better education and go on to college, which we both did. Both of us settled in major metro areas as adults. It is ironic that small-town and rural folks take so much pride in self-sufficiency and yet won't move to improve their prospects. Immigrants make huge and often dangerous journeys to improve their chances and those of their children. Small town America is unlikely to have a boom and the longer you wait for it to happen the fewer chances your children and grandchildren will have to succeed. You don't have to move to the biggest cities -- their are so many medium and smaller cities that will offer much better educations and job opportunities. It's scarey but you owe it to your kids to be brave and do it.
323
Since you mention it, how 'bout them immigrants, legal or il-?
You're looking for people to bring vibrancy and hope to declining towns?
You'd be hard pressed to find a more positive and dynamic population. Obviously, they would not be taking housing, schools, or jobs from Americans who want them...
I agree, I left a small coal mining town in WV many decades ago just by hopping in my car and turning the key. I few years later the unemployment rate in the county I had left reached 90% even though about 75% of the residents had over several years followed my lead and left. Pretty much two entire generations of young people whose families stayed have come of age since I left have had little in the way of job opportunities, but still many have continue to stay. The county recently voted very strongly for Trump because of his promises and as others have said because of his bigotry, something that blossoms in idle minds.
With its empty housing the town I lived in could have become a retirement mecca, but instead they sat back on their heels and waited for king coal to come back, forty years is an awfully long time for a town to wait.
3
Ironic, isn't it? If only those rubes would move into the big city the "rural problem" would be solved! Perhaps the problem is that the young people are doing just that. No good jobs, no future and they leave. So the rural people who can build a future do leave, often longing for home. Advocating emptying rural America as a "solution" lacks creativity and is extremely unlikely to occur because some of us love it here. My husband and I have chosen to retire in a very rural county in Ky. The peace and natural beauty is priceless.
American addiction to cheap food (requiring cheap labor) and Walmart has contributed to the loss of jobs in rural areas. Good luck weaning Americans from that!
Life is complicated and “survival of the fittest” is not some trite phrase. There were reasons for the ghost towns that cropped up after the veins ran out. Some have come back as havens for artists but it took at least a century. Eventually things will sort out but, realistically, a lot of suffering will be the lot for many, unfortunately.
5
"Survival of the fittest" is an interesting question. What would urbanites do if the power grid went down? Urban areas are entirely dependent on what many tech security experts say is a house of cards. Who would survive? Those who have manual skills, who are resourceful, frugal, resilient, who know how to "make do", who can build and repair things, who know how to live off the land. The generation that lived through the Great Depression had grit. Generations since have become more and more effete. When it comes to "survival of the fittest" it's rural people who very well might inherit the earth.
1
Been there; done that.
On October 30, 1975, the headline of the New York Daily News read: Ford to City: Drop Dead. New York was about to default on its financial commitments, and President Ford let it be known that the Federal Government wasn't going to help.
Rural America was feeling pretty good about itself, then.
New York rolled up its sleeves. It’s no longer the New York of the 30’s, or the 50’s. It’s no longer the New York that our immigrant forebears built with their hard work. New York didn’t look back to what it had been, waiting for outside help to restore that. It moved forward.
It wasn’t easy. New York was pretty precarious in the 70’s and 80’s. But the risks taken paid off.
Of course, the Stones said it best: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time you just might find you get what you need.
3
You don't really think that one solution is to move people from a rural county in the middle of Nebraska to the sprawl of San Francisco, do you? First of all, that is such a significant change of culture and way of life that few rural Americans would embrace it. Second, places like San Fran cannot take any more people! I don't know why call centers, for example, aren't in Nebraska rather than India. Wouldn't that be ridiculously easy?
2
Rural folks have been electing all Republicans to office for how many decades now?
How's that going?
But they blame Democrats for their problems, minorities, immigrants, gays - anyone but themselves or their elected officials.
You can't teach people who aren't willing to learn.
Unless rural residents make a decision they're ready to ditch the hate and help themselves they really are toast.
7
The problem is, thar's Gold in them thar vastnesses. Wall street gold. The $306,000 per worker profit goes to Wall Street. It is too late to abandon the spaces back to the Buffalo.
This article mentions driver-less tractors so I decided to look them up. They're coming, yes, but they don't seem to exist yet. Does this author know what he's talking about?
This article beggars looking more closely at the Universal Basic Income.
1
Many of the comments here illustrate why rural Americans are often so opposed to the Left in the first place. Much like how Republicans alienated their Hispanic base through conservatives' insistence on them being illegals, criminals, job-steals, and "bad hombres," white liberals have done the same to rural Americans through a similar lack of compassion and stereotyping. If you consistently tell an entire group of people that they're ignorant, bigoted, degenerates (or, famously, "deplorables"), then they are not going to vote for your party, regardless of its policies. It's basic human civility: people are not going to support someone who looks down on them or views them as inferior.
If Democrats truly want to be known as the party of empathy, then they need to practice what they preach. For all of Sanders' flaws, there's a reason why he won a number of rural, conservative states in the Democratic primary (and why a number of rural communities supported Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2016). People are suffering, and to mock their plight, rather than extend a hand, will only work against you in the long run. If you truly want to change someone's mind, try treating them like human beings first, not lepers.
4
“Think through the political consequences of saying to a substantial portion of Americans, which is even more substantial in political terms, ‘We think you’re toast.’ ”
On the other hand, hasn't rural America and the Rustbelt been screaming for the past 20 years: "Hey, you socialist elitists in your welfare-ridden coastal cities aren't REAL Americans like we are! We don't care about you; you're ruining OUR country!" And didn't they elect Trump to be the triumphant savior of rural America? (Oh, the irony of that!)
Meanwhile, rural Americans show no remorse while accepting all the social services that urban and suburban taxpayers provide them with. Subsidized air service to regional airports; money to maintain highways; trained doctors to work in their health clinics; Silicon Valley technology for their cellphones and satellite TV; special welfare payouts for miners with Black Lung Disease; foodstamps and WIC programs; funding for VA benefits; etc., etc.
At some point, urbanites and suburbanites will get angry enough of hearing ungrateful ruralites continually calling them unpatriotic and unAmerican, and start to say back to them: "We think you're toast; and we don't care." That response won't be totally undeserved.
(And before people call me an East Coast urban elitist, I happen to live in a rural county, with only 40 people per sq mile.)
10
I just don't understand articles like this. In 20 years, 50%—50%!—of all Americans will be living in 8—that's E-I-G-H-T!—states! That doesn't mean anything? It signals no change?
I am so sick and tired of reading articles about how rural communities USED to do after WWII, etc. That time is dead and gone!! It's not coming back! Adapt. Or die out.
Americans, by-and-large, don't really care. We'll commiserate with you in columns until the cows home; but when all is said and done, our children will attend elite schools while yours sit stuck on a tractor in the middle of a field.
Get the H out of rural communities! If not, quit whining about it. Die without making a noise. No one is coming to the rescue. You see what Trump is doing for you, don't you? Nothing.
When I read these articles, they never talk about education or any path forward; just, in effect, let's bring back coal. It's tiresome. The people in rural communities are clinging to a life style that is fast disappearing. They're like manufactures of buggy-whips at the advent of cars. They just won't stop talking about horses!
Dinosaurs didn't adapt; they looked up at the sky, blinked, and continued doing what they were doing. That isn't a bad thing necessarily: some of us need to be weeded out.
3
The one thing I fear is that when the next big catastrophe hits, all you high-minded city-slickers who don't seem to know where your food comes from are going to head to the rural areas expecting us or your government to take care of you. Don't bring your iPhone X. We have no internet or cell service here because we are too lazy and stupid to know what that is.
3
My confidence in this entire article is tainted by the fact that Columbus, OH was characterized as "medium sized".
Columbus is the 14th largest city in the US, genius.
1
Completely missing from this is a discussion of how our single-minded drive to keep taxes (and thereby public investment) low has contributed over the past thirty years or so to the problems outlined here. The truly sparsely populated areas out west are a special case, but I live in a rural area that is three hours from two major cities. If we had modern rail capacity, or even adequate roads, bridges, etc., those cities and their suburbs would be within reasonable commuting distance. If we had broadband, this would be a terrific place from which to telecommute while raising kids, and perhaps pop in to headquarters once a week or once a month as needed. Conglomeration is good, but it isn't everything, and it can be at least partly achieved through technological means rather than physical proximity. Failing to invest in all of our communities has led to a pattern that is very familiar in the developing world, where migrants from rural areas swamp urban areas, leaving large parts of the country depopulated and population centers overwhelmed. But we have the resources to do things differently. We just won't. Because "no new taxes".
2
"Still, there are compelling reasons to try to help rural economies rebound. Even if moving people might prove more efficient on paper than restoring places, many people — especially older people and the family members who care for them — may choose to remain in rural areas. What’s more, the costs of rural poverty are looming over American society. Think of the opioid addiction taking over rural America, of the spike in crime, of the wasted human resources in places where only a third of adults hold a job."
This paragraph makes no sense. The idea of moving people is that, in their new surroundings, they would be less likely to become addicted and more likely to have a job. I'm not saying that this is true, just that this paragraph takes as a given the rural problems and numbers whether or not people moved.
1
The single biggest mistake any of us can make in thinking about this issue is to characterize the people in these rural areas as "left behind." We didn't do anything to them. They chose to stay behind, and are now living with the increasingly negative consequences of their choice. Trump has taken this problem and made it worse: 1) in reinforcing the sense that someone else is to blame for their problems; 2) in convincing them he cares about them when other Washington politicians didn't; and 3) in lying to them that he has a solution ("I alone can fix it"). The out-of-work West Virginia coal miners who won't move to where abundant jobs are, and won't take job training classes to learn new skills because Trump has lied to them in saying he's bringing coal back, these people are the masters of their own fate - they were not "left behind." These are (mostly) white adults who, faced with choices, made bad ones. I believe we should try to help them in whatever sensible ways Mr. Porter puts forward, but an effective solution starts with an accurate description of the problem - and that is that these people chose to stay behind. "We" didn't "do" anything to them.
7
These might be ideal places to begin training and development of technologies and projects for a 'Green New Deal.' Industries like these would draw upon abilities from highly technical/engineering to manufacturing and management/upkeep.
Of course to do anything like this, one would have to have vision, focus and put down Twitter for a while...
1
Nicely done article. The writer, however, fails to note that a lot of the issues are self inflicted. Rural America has been belligerent to concerns of climate change, gay rights, long term investment in education and infrastructure, and political compromise. These decisions are coming back to haunt them. Amazon is looking for people with the needed talent where people are. The ability to attract that talent continues to be the prime mover. And when you behave divisively you loose the ability to make a cogent argument.
4
More questions: how does a declining birthrate fit into this picture? Is this a logical and helpful response to the decline in jobs? And also, migration - I have come to realize in the past couple of years that migration is the normal human condition throughout the millennia - e.g. the migrations from Europe to the Americas, the migration of black Americans from the rural south to the north, the short distance migrations in the 1910s and 1920s to work in the small factories in county seats that now have vanished.
2
Freshman economic students learn that economic growth takes place in cities.
China has 300 plus cities with more than a million residents. Most were built from scratch in recent decades. Nearly Connecticut has a 169 towns and cities. None are major modern cities. No wonder Connecticut’s economy has stagnated over the past decade along with employment and population growth.
The real question is why the country should support rural or small towns. One answer is that they often are fine places to retire and far safer than than big cities so essential to our quest for economic growth. Another is that small towns often represent the best of Amrican character and responsiblity. Without its small towns and small cities what would America look like ? China ?
Very thoughtful article. It is so hard to believe that horribly expensive and congested areas such as Long Island and Northern Virginia are still more economically viable for Amazon than a couple of major cities - St. Louis and Indianapolis, for example, with so much room, major airports, universities, etc. Are such places really so barren of educated workers?
1
It's not that they are barren. Tech companies looking for areas of the country where there are a critical mass of the types of skilled workers they need. Those types of areas tend to have a combination of two factors; strong academic institutions with reputations for technical innovation and producing highly capable and skilled graduates, and a base of companies that have technically skilled workers.
Whatever strong incentives a city or region may offer if those two factors don't exist, they tend to be seen as less desirable by tech companies.
1
LOCATION INDEPENDENT JOBS ARE THE SOLUTION
Jobs that can be performed remotely, as online or on-phone tutoring, programming, call center work, and the like can address the problem of rural joblessness. A huge investment in online tutoring could, conceivably, be a cost-effective way to address the failing performance of our schools, if the talent could be found.
While the cultural issues highlighted by Peregrinus can raise major hurdles to any solution in certain rural areas, there are others where call-center jobs, for instance, have proven doable.
Research focusing on location-independent jobs and unmet needs for educational, healthcare, or other physical and social infrastructure improvements would be worthwhile.
1
Until the 1960s a typical family farm spanned less than 1000 acres and supported 6 to 10 family members and workers. Crops and livestock were diverse and generally sustainable. Now one man with a battery of high tech equipment (and a heavy debt) can harvest corn and soybeans on thousands of acres. Wives take jobs in dwindling retail outlets. Older family members and farm hands are gone and so are the small town businesses that their wages and profits supported. Only the grain elevator survives. The American farm and small town face a similar dilemma to vanishing Midwest manufacturing sites and their workers: How to live in the post-industrial world.
1
I've lived in a rural county for 50 years. We have problems like any community, but we are one of the sweetest places a person could live. The reason: Higher education.
We have a major university, a strong college and a robust community college. Once we also had a large manufacturing base. When it left, higher education remained and became the major employer. Almost everyone works for one of the three. And everyone, from triple-PhD professor to groundskeeper, benefits from a kind of trickle-down of knowledge and a habit of critical thinking.
Employees pick up an AD's worth of information from cleaning white boards, overhearing conversations in the hallway, chatting with young professors. Faculty members with kids push the area school districts to up their academic game.
Years ago I was a reporter and my neighbor was a lifelong Baptist and resident of a tiny, isolated town. He was also a police officer for our small city. One day I saw him on duty at one of our many local protests. The protesters bore radical-lefty t-shirts and signs, sported shaved heads and beards. Their demands ran counter to what I knew wee my neighbor's beliefs. I asked him, off the record, what he thought.
"As long as they stay peaceful, they got a right to say what they think," he said, smiling.
Not every rural county can have colleges and universities. But as we look for answers, let's consider the power of education in improving the lives of rural populations.
1
It wont work for every place but some communities have embraced specialty and organic farming, bison ranching (read Buffalo for the Broken Heart), green energy generation and tourism initiatives.
Most places have amenities and assets that can be nurtured through creativity and some targeted investment. It won't solve the bigger problem that most of these areas can't support large numbers of new jobs, but it could be "one" of the answers. For instance, hunting and fishing and nature related sports and activities; skiing, hiking, birding, wild river canoeing and raftling, exploring historical site, etc., accounts for billions of dollars spent in Pennsylvannia every year.
Not every hamlet is going to be a tech hub. Look to nature for some answers. Even city people crave contact with nature and unspoiled places.
Our family farm, founded in the 1860's by my Irish immigrant geat-grandfather, is in rural Upstate NY nearer Montreal than any other big city. We do have the advantage of border trade/business.
Most farms have been sold off to the few industrial ag farms who have managed to survive by getting huge.
We have managed by diversifying big time, working in other business, even across the planet, to pay the taxes (federal and state mandates make them huge).
A few small farms exist, included many start-ups doing CSA's and specialized products, mostly organic. They survive but often members have some outside income. Few are not owned by the bankers as are the huge farms, a reality that is not often talked about by the press. Even when small farms were doing relatively better after WW2, it was this way. My mother taught school full time as well as helped my Dad and all of us run the farm.
It takes people who want to and know how to work which is hard to find except with immigrants. Farm families are small now making cheap labor rare.
The way forward is not clear to anyone without govt. policies that value small rather than huge. The public does not want to pay the real cost of food so the government subsidizes it producing industrial ag.
We need real farm economists who come from a farm background to figure this out.
I am an ex-New Yorker who moved South. Along the way, I lived in Pike County, PA 90 miles from NYC. I have the perspective urban, suburban and ex-urban/rural. The writer missed an opportunity right in her own backyard . . .how did the 287 corridor become the booming industrial area it became? Tax policy. Roads. Good schools. Taxes were lower. Universities that fed the machine. For Pike, for example, that could mean NJ promoting along Route 15. In my current town in NC, Asheville, years ago, the town was dying but came back with an emphasis on tourism and hospitality, an active Chamber of Commerce working to draw business here, expanding an airport from 1 to 2 runways for commuter flights to hubs.
The formulaic quality of this piece hits the mark for urban readers. We are better. They are through. Folks, people are living in rural areas and working online, just like you. You want power and plants exist in these areas to bring power to you whose NIMBY attitudes force them on rural communities. I remember the plan to run pipe and power lines along the Delaware that would have destroyed tourism and pristine land. I don't remember any New Yorkers marching to protect Pike County.
You folks don’t care that fracking has risks to these rural communities as long as you get power and gas. You cared about a pipeline running from Canada to New Orleans and were oblivious to fracking 120 miles from New York.
America wasn’t always this crowded. How did it grow before and update the model.
There is a trend that has lasted centuries, as far back as we know, in which a proportion of young people leave their rural homes for bigger places or activities (such as the army and wars), then when they've discovered what they are going to discover, some go back home. Hence, rural people have been somewhat older than people in big cities and in the big things like the armies.
How many leave? How many come back? That has varied, and not always in one direction. After WW1, the expression was how young men could be brought home after they had seen Paris. That was not then a new idea.
Roman times saw a drain of young people to cities and Legions, whence some settled elsewhere after a lifetime in the Legions, and some came back.
The British Empire has a tradition that the oldest son inherited and stayed home, the next went into the Army, the next into the Church, then the rest into the Navy or something else. Those who went into the Army or Navy would often come home after a time, as for example Admiral Nelson did in mid-life. If the oldest died (often in those crude medical times) others moved up to go home.
So now some of the brightest go off to school and demanding jobs. When they can, will they go back to seek a quieter life, a quieter place in which to be creative? We know of many who do.
This age shift, of young people seeking elsewhere, is not at all new.
Many cities and towns were built for a particular economic purpose: A river port, a rail stop or depot, a mine, a factory. There comes a time, though, when a one- or two-purpose place loses its reason for being, economically speaking. The heavy, labor-intensive industries with jobs that required little education that once propped up many parts of the heartland are all but gone. It might be time to let those places that have outlasted their reason for being go, too. The country as a whole might be better served by showing compassion and helping people there make a transition to somewhere else.
1
Grew up on a farm in a rural county surrounded by rural counties. The county’s population peaked with the 1910 Census but managed to decline by less than 2% through 1980. I left during the 82 economic crises. Town where I went to school 40 years ago had a population of 2,200 and nearly 4,000 manufacturing jobs, drew in workers from the surrounding areas. Today county population is down nearly 20% from when I left. Town population is down 10%, jobs less than half. But it’s doing relatively well, 4 nearby towns lost all their retail stores, no longer even a gas station.
So why did a county that survived two world wars and the great depression take such a hit when the rest of the US economy was doing so well?
First, structural issues, namely mechanization/consolidation of farming. When I was a kid on the farm a family could make a living running 240-360 acres, now 1,500 acres and a part time off farm job are the minimum. But this has been a long-term situation. Yes, but up until the 1980 most of the shift was from farming to manufacturing jobs in the same area which helped keep the population stable.
So, what changed? Reagan republicans’ education reform, Walmart, and NAFTA. Cont.
1
I worked in economic development in a very rural county in northern New York until five years ago. It became very apparent that I was just a cheerleader for a non-existent team. Broadband has to be a government priority, because private enterprise will not and cannot make the investment in rural communities. Nothing can thrive without utilities: water, electric, sewer AND broadband.
1
The money is all the same. A good young lawyer can bill their time and live well. If good young farmers were able to bill their time in a similar manner cheeseburgs would be on a par with college tuition.
Subsidized agriculture. You eat so cheap it's rediculous.
Hard to do anything about the mindset. Subsidized television has cooked their brains.
Without this non sense Donald's tariff, US farmers can feed the rest of the world. Donald grew up in Queens stiffed workers including immigrants. Now he defrauded conned and misled these noble farmers to vote for him. Mueller's probe and the southern district of New York prove it. Donald can not differentiate a wheat plant from a soybean plant.
1
A small point. As usual, the New York Times misrepresents Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is the largest city in Ohio -- by far, the 15th largest in the United States, and the 8th fastest-growing city. The Times once described where billionaire Les Wexner lives by saying he was "three hours from Cleveland." Which is true, but more to the point, he lives in a suburb of Columbus.
1
If people who live in cities think that technology companies will
make them immune to economic realities then they are
"whistling past the economic graveyard".
At least we grow food we can survive on if things go under.
The rising price of housing/living will make it untenable
to live in cities that are Tech-Hubs and when the economic downturn
comes, who will buy your overpriced houses and what will you do
when the only job you can find pays 1/2 of what you are presently
making ?
I wish the New York Times would not publish comments from
people who denounce their fellow Americans because they happen
to live in Rural Areas of America.
You will find as many bigots in Manhattan, if not more than you will
in rural part of America.
3
Why doesn't the population density map show New York County? It's twice the density of Kings County.
Yet ANOTHER article about disaffected rural citizens. Can't we reference any of the other hundreds that have been written since November 2016?
1
I lived in Maine for five years, after growing up in the Greater Boston Area. The people I knew there were hard-working, nonsense kinds of folks. They were also intolerant, ignorant, and suspicious of anyone that didn't look like them. "Conservative" doesn't begin to describe how socially rigid these people were. Now, large parts of Maine are de-populating. Heroin addiction is rampant. Poverty is increasing. People are leaving, or clustering in the (relatively) more prosperous southern part of the state. Wacko Christian 'churches' are popping up like toadstools. There is no future in places like this.
3
The defeatism of many of the comments here is unwarranted, and, reflects, I think, a lingering prejudice towards rural folks. "Those jobs are going away, and are not coming back," is a mantra that has been repeated so often by Democratic pundits and politicians that it has pushed rural folks into the arms of the Republicans.
Before you demur, I urge you to read Tom Vilsack's powerful testament as to what Democrats can accomplish in rural areas if they will but "show up" and "listen, learn, and inform." Vilsack is a former governor of Iowa, and a former Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama Administration. https://democracyjournal.org/?p=12664
One thing is clear to me from this column by the estimable Eduardo Porter. Liberal economists in their ivory towers don’t have the answers, and never will. If Democrats want to help revive rural life, they have to show up, as Vilsack urges, engage local voters, and work together with them on a plan that offers hope.
This is not only the right thing to do, but it is also the only way Democrats can revive their fortunes in rural America, as Vilsack makes clear. Incidentally, it is also the only way the Democrats can hope to win the the electoral college in 2020.
3
While "Liberal economist" may not have the answers it's obvious that neither do Republican politicians or conservative economist or policy wonks.
Did you ever think that maybe there just isn't an answer?
Economic change is often brutal. America's inner-cities never fully recovered from the de-industrialization that started in the 1970s. What makes you think that rural communities can recover from what is happening now? The cold stark realities that many cities and small towns in America have none of the requisite engines for economic growth; strong educational systems, highly skilled work forces, transportation, communication, and energy infrastructure and communities welcome to change.
America is no longer a republican democracy it's a plutocracy. We as a society and as individuals have made choices that clearly show we are content to a nation of haves and have nots.
It is hard to be sympathetic to people who are capable of improving their own lives by learning new trades and relocating, but who choose not to.
For example, how long will coal miners in West Virginia sit and wait to be saved by somebody? Probably forever since it is clear that there is little interest in coal now and there never will be again. Self-defeating political opinions insure that better economic conditions will not arrive while allowing the holders of those opinions to feel smugly superior and unwilling to change.
1
Here is the big problem faced by rural America, it lives in import economies. If wealth is going to be created anywhere that place needs to sell more than it buys, and it needs to sell things to communities other than itself. Look at any rural community, all the businesses are owned by entities that do not reside in the community. Now this business may provide jobs for local workers but they wouldn't have a branch in that town unless there was profit to be made, and taken somewhere else. These businesses, even if they provide jobs, are draining wealth from the community. The only way to offset that is to have a business located in the community that does sell things elsewhere, but even then the profits are still taken away. Rural communities are the same as nation states, if you can provide other communities, or countries, with something they need, and so take a share of their wealth you will do well, if you need to buy everything from somewhere else, if you need to work for a company that is based elsewhere and takes its profits away, you will be poor.
1
What a dilemma! But still....this shrinking rural population should not have the same political representation as the more populated areas - "the tail wagging the dog" politically. Two Senators from Wyoming, and two Senators from California just doesn't add up to fairness. People, not acreage, should be represented.
3
That's what the House of Representatives was designed to do, until its membership was frozen over a century ago by Congressional Act.
The allocation of too few members to a vastly bigger and more concentrated population has been skewing power toward rural states, which spills into the Electoral College.
The Senate membership is in the Constitution, but a House membership of 435 is NOT.
EXPAND THE HOUSE! EQUAL REPRESENTATION FOR ALL!!
1
Let me get this straight;
there's a portion of America that looks down on families walking thousands of miles thru several countries to improve their lives; and that same portion of America sits and stews and waits for relief? Which one of these groups has the American spirit?
4
Having traveled across this country since the late sixties, avoiding the interstates, on my bi-annual migration to and from my seasonal job in the northeast, I drove through so many small towns and the thing I noticed was ..... some looked prosperous and bustling, others not so much, and others looked like that one horse town where the horse was dead. Pick a state. New Mexico, Kansas, Oregon, Missouri, New York. And I'm sure this variety of conditions of small towns all over America existed way before I was born.
So, the downhill trend of rural America did not start just a few decades ago.
I believe that many rural people had to be entrepreneurial to get by or do well. They still do.
Gone are many of the smaller farms of eggs and chickens and milk and corn.
Gone from every little town is that little general store that had everything, Everything, because shopping habits changed.
Gone are many of the smaller schools; now consolidated.
Gone is the little factory that made plastic spoons and forks.
Gone is the small packing plant for your "can of corn."
Gone is that gas station and the mechanic.
Gone is the Hotel/Tavern/Restaurant for the hunters.
Gone is the Greasy Spoon.
Please add to this list. I know I am missing a lot.
"Is there really no option but to do nothing and... return depopulated parts of rural America to the bison?"
Yes, although returning large stretches of land to a natural state, unlikely as that is, is not "doing nothing".
People vote with their feet. Those born and raised in small towns, if they can go, go, and head for the cities. The ones who remain are not the kind of human resources upon which to build a modern economy. Low-skilled and semi-skilled human labor is all but obsolete in manufacturing and agriculture. We've only scratched the surface of artificial intelligence. In a generation AI will have eliminated most if not all of the jobs, labor and management, in manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation. (There are self-driving semi's on the road today.) No government program or subsidy is going to change that. The solution is life-time cheap/free education and re-education. I believe it was candidate Hillary "Lock Her Up!" Clinton who had a lot to say on that subject.
People are born, live, and die, why can't towns? I see nothing wrong with letting vast stretches of prairie becoming vast stretches of prairie again. The same with the hills and hollows of Appalachia and the foothills of the Rockie Mountains.
2
One can't truly know what rural means until one has lived in a small dying town that is 50 miles from the closest grocery store, pharmacy, health care providers, or other necessary services in a state that has a small declining population. This was the headline two days ago in the Topeka Capital Journal's online version: "Lack of population growth costs Topeka 500 jobs, economic development official says". I think that headline says it all. The entire state, not just far SW Kansas, is in trouble and voting for Trump and his ilk did not and is not going to help. Just look to the mess Brownback created before he departed for an illustration of that.
2
It's not up to us to "save the rural areas," it's up to those who live there, either by choice or by birth. If they don't want the peace and tranquility of rural life they can move. If they do want to enjoy a rural lifestyle they can buckle down and make a go of it. Either way, they have to get the skills needed in the global job market and the global economy. Half my neighbors in a small Washington town have well-paying jobs that allow them to work from home. My daughter is married to a man with the technical knowledge and computer skills that allow him to do likewise. He is employed by a national company that lets him live anywhere he likes as long as it's within two hours of a major airport. Since he and his wife like the rural lifestyle, they have chosen to live on a farm in Oregon's wine country. Some rural areas, like the one they live in, are thriving. Others, like many in Republican-ruled Trump country, are opiate-addicted disaster zones. Now why would that be?
3
Few will read this far into comments but I write anyway. I live in a county the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined with a population of 36,000 people. Yes, we opioid problems and rural poverty, a large aging population. But we have a thriving off the books economy of calming, tipping for wreaths, blueberry raking- and thank you very much, lobstering is fine.
I am 78. My husband of 88 just died and I am surrounded by more love and support than I can describe. For a year the community drove my husband once a week an hour to dialysis. I was kept supplied with food. It is past words what people did and do for me, comfort even from strangers.
We chose to live here, retired, started a small business. We came for the beauty of the coast scenery. We stayed, even when it was difficult because of the vanishing art of community, where strangers have come up and hugged me. (We are big huggers, so I'm warning you>). I have lived elsewhere I can tell you in populated areas the art of community is dying but this week in my small, poor town Christmas is alive and well with a free dinner for seniors and veterans, a Christmas parade and soap box derby, carol singing and so much more. And we will among friends and relatives. You can't beat that at a mall.
Come and join us. We will welcome you.
3
Perhaps part of the solution is increasingly advanced digital communication tools that make it possible for employees in the information sector to work from pretty much anywhere. Tech companies in particular can and do manage with workers spread out all over the map, as long as they have the skills and a fat internet connection that can support high quality video.
‘We can’t figure this out, and we hope the private sector will,’
Good frickin' grief.
Read about Teddy Roosevelt. His economic policies. His foreign policies. They were built on tariffs, which kept our country strong.
You did in one generation what should have happened over a hundred and fifty years, and you are surprised about what happened? And can't figure it out?
It seems obvious to me that you never will, and don't really care.
1
Michigan has a serious problem with infrastructure where many of our residents have no, or limited, access to the internet. I know people whose only access is either at the public library, at public schools, or at work. Instead of the huge tax cut for the wealthy we could have paid for infrastructure improvement in rural areas to bring them into the 21st Century.
3
Name one Republican politician in the State of Michigan that proposed investment in public schools, libraries, or infrastructure improvements in rural areas? Yet the bedrock of Republican Party support in Michigan is in rural communities.
Go figure?
1
One need only look at all the withering, or already dead Industrial Parks on the fringes of suburban and urban regions. Look in NJ. NY. PA. VA. CT. And elsewhere across the nation especially on the more populated coasts. Large firms built their sprawling "parks" in rural-ish areas, just close enough to attract suburban and urban talent, not too far out, often in the reverse direction of the older, more congested urban commute. At first they boomed. Local commuter communities sprung up, attracting Wal-marts, and other big box stores and malls. But then those zones became as congested and bleak as any other. Then the companies began outsourcing at a feverish rate. And the Parks began to wither...leaving behind communities that were then hit by the '08 crash...
Moving tech to these rural zones is not the solution. Mainly because you cant import the necessary mind-set these firms and the rise of local "urbanization" need to survive. You simply plant an Alamo in the middle of Indian country. (Sorry for the non-PC reference, but its damn spot-on) The locals never truly embrace the imported, new forward moving culture". Further marginalizing them. And the money rarely trickles their way...as that economic idea is fake anyway...
1
Maybe America should be asking for farmers from India, for immigration and jobs, instead of software professionals.
[ A bit farcical but maybe not ?! ]
Indeed, why not ?!
When we were first spreading our country westward, we used a combination of public and private resources. The Transcontinental Railroad was started during the Civil War. The telegraph soon followed. It was not uncommon to see advertisements for mail order brides. Immigrants flowed from eastern ports to midwest and western enclaves. Mormons hopped from Elmira, New York to Nauvoo, Illinois to Utah in search of a place to call their own.
We can do this again. We have immigrants clamoring for entry in fear of their lives in their home countries. We have rural areas losing jobs and schools whose inhabitants see their regions dying.
Why not invest in a second wave of population for the rural regions? Consider such options as:
-- placing cell towers atop wind turbines to spread broadband into the empty spaces
-- giving a stipend for three years for any immigrant admitted to the country on humanitarian grounds for settling in an underpopulated region
-- investing in high speed rail to unite the dense and sparse regions of the country
The fundamental solution to rural problems is people. Add enough people to a region and the jobs will follow or grow there organically. Out of this immigrant soup among other things came 3M, now found in most doctor's offices (Littman stethoscopes), many homes HVAC systems (Filtrete air filters) and businesses (Post-it notes). Immigrants really are our friends.
1
This is a national problem to be solved, and it is time to look at how we elect our national government. The creative solutions and synergy of thought comes from our large cities. It is time to give them their fair share of representation in our congress. Rural fear is festered by conservative media, conservative power brokers, and politicians to increase political power for an agenda, over ideas that work. Rural America will not be saved by the ideologs.
Remove the electoral college and replace it with the popular vote when electing the president. Instead of two senators for each state, a state population should determine how many senators are sent to Washington. Gerrymandering must end by law. The 50,000,000 people in economically depressed rural America have a very over sized influence in our national government.
If given a chance, science and the creative implementation of ideas might have a chance to create the kinds of jobs and opportunities that the rural area of our country needs. In the process we might even be able to address the most significant danger we all face, climate change.
I live in Appalachia and it is not easy and opportunities are needed. Let’s start electing people to Congress who represent the best in all of us, not just the fear mongers.
3
I've been listening to Caroline Fraser's book about her great(?)grandmother Laura Ingalls Wilder. The story of Wilder's life in the midwest during the second half of the 1800's is quite something. Extreme weather, locusts, Indians, fluctuating markets all with no government support. We have come along ways but at some point people still need to be responsible for themselves, starting with if you are in dire straits not to mention angry and bitter, why on earth would you have children? I'm sorry people are going through hard times but that's kind of part of life right?
2
Having spent most of my life in cities... Chicago, New York, Toronto -- am now retired in rural eastern Ontario. All around are the ruins of a thriving economy that made goods sold all across eastern Canada and the US. And all stitched together by railroads -- that bridged the towns that were generally a day's buggy ride apart. Lots of reasons for the decline are apparent -- exhaustion of the local mineral deposits, demise of the huge first growth forests, changes in product tastes and procurement patterns. An order of 10 or 100 brooms is no longer enough. Endless landscapes of small farms -- some still prosperous and others long derelict. People still need to eat. And the never-ending food recalls that blight our existence don't seem to come from local farms but the huge industrial complexes.
The old days are not coming back. But other than agriculture, there are many reasons to want to be here. Back in Toronto a peaceful morning on the deck was soundtracked by the unending rumble of traffic in all directions. Out here its the call of birds, the lap of waves on the shore -- the old philosophers were right about how good this peace is for the soul.
This is why the only practical solution is the Universal Basic Income. It works, it could be implemented through Social Security, and it gets around all the problems of other ideas. You can send someone to job training, but that doesn't do any good if there are no jobs around for them to apply to. UBI would let people put that money to better use that other programs. If the main barrier someone has is transportation, they can put their money toward that. I work for a state government, and almost everyone in my office has to work a second job because we, like teachers, don't have a salary that is enough to support a family. That UBI would at least make it to where we only have to work one full time job. The UBI would generate a LOT of economic activity. We have the answer, just not the political will.
I live in a town of 1500 or so in Maine. We have a town office, a post office, a bar/restaurant, a library, a storage/laundromat. And an art/framing gallery. And a concert venue in a barn that attracts the likes of Lyle Lovett, Los Lobos, Lucinda Williams and many other smaller groups. There are also myriad smaller more personal ventures going on; many people are resourceful and figure something out because they want to live HERE. I don't dispute this article, but it is seen through the general lens of the usual capitalist/growth at all costs/shareholder profits economics. Some people just want to make enough so they can live here, this specific place. Some of them are poor, some have money from a previous life, some are in the middle. There are new houses and trailers next door. There is tension between long-time residents and newcomers, as there is in any rural area. We work it out.
There are many younger people coming to Maine to farm. A hard life, and they will probably burn out eventually, but so what? Farmers do eventually burn out; so do many other professions. There are many people in the building trades and some have been smart and industrious enough to learn new things and have thriving businesses so they can stay here where their families are. They hire others. They are not huge companies, but they matter here. The huge companies won't come because Maine doesn't have enough people for their shareholder profit driven business plan.
I live in rural Wisconsin, in a beautiful part of the state with bluffs and trout creeks. I moved here with my small business that employed my husband and myself. Our home was affordable, and the serenity we found nourished our lives. Our rural area is a patchwork of political flavors. November 2018, democrats won the popular vote for all state wide races including state assembly, yet democrats won only 36% of the assembly seats. I question the premise that money make you happy. If I had to pick just one fix, it would be to create an education system that was not tied up with property taxes and assured that every student graduates with a strong foundation in science, math, civics,and the humanities. And I want this for every state in this nation. In addition, I would promote education as a lifetime commitment to oneself and their community. It is ignorance that is divides us, destroys our communities.
3
In response to: hammond San Francisco
"I think the only way out is a combination of cultural change and educational opportunities." It will take this and so much more. And, it's not going to be a quick fix, it is going to take a generation or two ... or more. Sad, but the sooner we get at it the sooner we can solve it. But, in the meantime, in addition to education and cultural awareness, it is going to take economic/social bridge programs to sustain people. To leave them/rural America for dead is a sure recipe for violent social unrest. Even if one really only cares about oneself/loved ones then care about all of these distressed people because they will eventually threaten (not intentionally or overtly) you and your way of life.
Living in a rural area with our graduate degrees, we see the same flight to jobs for those technical and professional occupations. We see the children who have the initiative and drive go away to school, return for a short time and then leave for good. We see our neighbor acting as a testing ground for autonomous farm equipment. A farmer in 1980 produced enough food for 14. In 2016, a farmer produces enough for 44 with half the labor. In 1980, a farmer actually farmed a total of 1600 acres of owned and rented land. By 2010, he was farming almost 3000 acres will half the labor. Even so, over half of farm families have someone "working in town" to make ends meet. The small rural manufacturing facilities were able to reduce their labor by half with a great increase in productivity thanks to automation, CNC machines, etc. Those trends are going to continue no matter what policies are in place. If you wan to read of the attitude of many rural areas, just read Hillbilly Elegy. That defeatist attitude is prevalent and getting more pervasive across the 3 different midwest states where we have lived.
2
If we ever get serious about mitigating climate change we'll need rural areas more than ever.
Clean, carbon-free energy, like wind and solar, needs space, lots of it, as in rural areas.
There's also the need to soak up carbon dioxide already in the air. Trees, the world's forests, are the best bet right now. Reforestation and well managed forests (something the US excels at) are both rural area things. "Well managed" means that forests can be harvested for timber as long as new, carbon-storing trees are planted. Timber logging creates jobs. Timber becomes lumber. Lumber becomes wood products that can store atmospheric carbon for decades, and longer. We need more forests, more domestic lumber, and more domestic wood products, all of which would create business opportunities, jobs, and yes profits in rural areas.
4
Despite all the fine reporting here, thanks to Republican manipulation of state and federal government, these areas wield political influence over the rest of the country. We have a minority party, led by a minority president, that works against the wishes of the majority.
2
It would be unproductive to describe some of the overt racism I experienced as a boy of color growing up and going to college in rural Indiana. At the same time, I would be remiss not to recognize the exceptional kindness and genuine fellowship of so many friends, neighbors and casual acquaintances during my adolescence. Those experiences are laminated into my being contributing mostly for the better of who I am. Traveling and living abroad, I have repeatedly been surprised that some of the most delightful, humble and well adjusted expats were similarly raised in the rural midwest provinces of this great country in dynamic flux.
I lived in northern New Hampshire (Grafton County) for almost twenty years. This article fails to mention one significant factor in the decline of rural America. The best and brightest young people go to college, get a job in a city and only come back to visit their parents or grandparents for Thanksgiving or Christmas. This leaves a remnant of people who have little education and even less opportunity.
2
It's a bit ironic to title an article "Hard Truths" and then tiptoe around the most important of those truths. In a capitalist system a region prospers only to the extent it is valuable to business interests. Rural America is valuable to very few business interests today. The decline of rural America is one of the fundamental failures of our current version of capitalism. If rural America survives, or even reverses its decline, it will be because of government actions which limit lassez faire capitalism through non-market incentives and regulations. Yet many of those living in rural areas and those who represent them cling to policies that demonize government and degrade the government's ability to act.
4
Amazon has hastened the decline of rural America because it's killing small retailers. It's worse than the old Walmart effect. Hard to see how we stop that.
Also, the hollowing out of small businesses is leaving a big gap in local civic leadership. Small towns and cities used to get leaders and even visionaries from owners of the local banks, insurance agencies, hardware stores, etc., and others who ran solo businesses, including doctors. Some of them thought big! They built hospitals, started colleges, etc.
Now, there are just the managers of the local Walmart, Lowes, regional bank, etc., and they are are just employees who report to someone who lives elsewhere. They're afraid to get involved in local issues because they don't want to lose their job. So no one wants to run for local office or speak out or help plan for their community's future.
So even as rural areas face big challenges, the local civic leadership that might help find some answers is not nearly as strong as it used to be.
2
Porter's analysis of the problem and the weakness of proposed "solutions" is on target, but perhaps incomplete. Clearly, a set of policies that either (a) make rural economies look more like urban economies, (b) make it easier for rural inhabitants to move to cities, or (c) subsidize rural employers/workers do not offer much of a solution, even if they did work to some extent. What's not in the analysis is this: the existence in rural areas of wealth-creating opportunities rooted in rural assets, such as natural systems, rather than in the industrial-innovation economy. Urban areas depend on these assets--for environmental services, for recreation, for food--and the advent of renewable energy and circular economies offer new avenues for rural wealth creation. But the current and future products of these assets are greatly undervalued, as is the interdependence of urban-rural places. Right now, most of these assets are locked into private property parcels or government-owned areas, which are hard to mobilize and aggregate into productive assets. Unlocking rural wealth and economic value creation is a different kind of solution--but it requires just what the urban economies need: young entrepreneurs and a new ideas.
It seems that some of the rural regions become bastions of fear. Fear of the other. Fear of each other. All of it fueled by relative ignorance compounded by a low level of education. This is not always the case, but those reflecting the characteristics mentioned seem to clump together in this fashion.
It's the inverse of the way inner cities used to be (and viewed)( in the mid-late 20th Century and, in some cases, still are today. As a citizen of the NYC-metro area with a bit of adult time on this planet I can attest to this. There was no easy solution to that which afflicted the cities then; there's no easy solution to the same that afflicts rural America today.
So it may come to this. It's a big country, with lots of rural. To echo Peregrinus' thoughts (see below) I suppose the only thing to be done is to let nature take its course.
John~
American Net'Zen
1
Mr. Porter,
This is not the time to be a shy violet, and you are invited to stay at the 'Inn' in the village here for a closer view of Main Street. Two hours away from New York City, on the Appalachian Trail, you will find us in plain sight, if in a state of shrinkage. You are to bring your 'own pair of glasses' and take an uninterrupted tour on your own on foot, stopping at our gasoline station to purchase a copy of the local news for a wider scope.
We have the best movie theater in America, but this is not the time to see 'Roma'. Many of the stores, some that clothed and furnished our community, are officially closed for business after seventy years or more. Nearly all of us are in possession of a car. A friendly neighbor of this reader will offer to take you on a sighting of our farms, waterfalls and lost mansions, for a view of the hills.
If I am writing to extend this invitation, it is because I do not believe we are going to make it. We need an economist with a sharp and objective eye. This would be you now, and rather than adding to your own mental horizon, it would help to have your social and economic outlook at a distance.
To sum it up, this rural community is a foundling foundation among others, of our Nation. It can be restored, but time is not on our side, nor is Mother Nature. We are a friendly if mistrustful lot, predominantly white, hard-working and trying to afford to live. Do not mention the word 'Liberal', and Trump is off the record.
2
I heard a comedian once say,"The reason small towns keep getting smaller is that no one wants to live there". The consolidation of farms, the increased mechanization of small factories, the flight of young people to somewhere else is all around me. The school enrollment has declined and the proportion of retirees increases. The hospital census and revenue continues to decline. We do have a small college, but it's enrollment is declining. Fortunately, an active Rotary club, good churches and a recent school millage passing will fight back against these strong forces of decline.
1
Rural problems are not new, well before the IT Revolution if you mark it with the advent of the PC circa mid 80s. Remember the corporate farmers buying and then crowding out the family farmers?
The same with the downfall of the mining industry. The demise of UMW and the devastation of clear top mining have trapped the coal miners. Sometimes you wonder if they worried more about their jobs than about mine safety.
A friend of mine from Silicon Valley tried his hand on a startup in N Dakota providing high speed internet service when fracking was in its infancy. It was a tough sell without federal money but the final straw was Verizon and AT&T moved in aggressively with 4G. Ironically, in the heyday of fracking, there was no proportional buildout of infrastructure. When fracking became uneconomical due to Saudi's flooding the market with cheap oil in an attempt to bankrupt the American fracking companies, the locust left town.
The above anecdotes may appear to be disjoined but the point is that there has not long term planning and the rural economy is at the mercy of Big Money of the moment. It wouldn't be a surprise if weed farming would become the next fad should the Federal case against marijuanas is lifted. So the solution is not Amazon let alone IT but the provide *some* protection to rural America. Rural America is not monolithic but its constituents need to support each other. In the meant time, the Obama era's idea of hi speed communication is the needed infrastructure
1
Do American rural migrants who have escaped these rural communities and moved to cities and new lifestyles send remittances to their impoverished relatives back in the farms to help them survive the decline? This is what migrant workers all over the world do and have long done, from rural to urban migrants to transnational migrants. Why not American ones too?
4
One 'hard truth' yet to be learned by the big-city Mr Porters is that rural people are not the only people in the country who have a 'rural' set of values and worldview. Go ahead and push Bernie or Elizabeth, Alexandra or Beto for 2020. See what it gets you.
1
It's too late to save rural America. They don't want to be saved. Time to cut the anchor and sail on.
2
Nothing new here. We have globalized and are wording hard to automate most jobs.
"The Lights in the Tunnel." Google it. Read it.
It's where we are going.
1
The simple answer is one person one vote.
Normalize # of senators each state has to the population of that state.
Require the composition of state legislatures to reflect the percentage of votes received.
Then we can finally escape these people and their twin desires to wreck the planet and merge church and state.
1
If cannabis was legalized throughout the country I know there would be a lot of farmers interested in growing hemp. Simple solution...
This wouldn't matter much if we didn't have a Senate.
1
These rural communities want and need more people - especially younger - yet by and large they reject immigrants. They reject gays. People of color are concerned about trying to make lives for themselves in these communities. Their corporations bust the unions, lowering their income, and still skip town and find cheaper labor in foreign countries.
And then they vote Republican - the party responsible for this!
Sorry, but they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
6
I don't know why you would create subsidized housing in urban areas and think that rural folks would move to cities. You could probably subsidize the moves, not the housing, and get a better response. But only if rural folks would be willing to move to cities at all, and I suspect that may not be the case. It's amazing how long some Americans will stick like dung beetles to what they know, even when opportunities lie elsewhere. This country used to be full of people willing to move for economic opportunities. It would be again, but of course, they're foreigners. And nothing sends rural Americans into a panic more than foreigners, it seems.
3
Columbus is not a "middle sized city".
It is the 14th largest city in the US.
1
People want to work, support themselves during all of their productive years and feel good about what they are doing at work, at home, in life. Work in turn becomes a source of salvation because in order to work, you can't be drugged up constantly and being productive helps with mental health. Once a place declines beyond a certain critical level, critical mass if you will, there is almost no hope of revival because there is no one or no group to lead the way.
American enterprise capitalism is killing the goose that laid the golden egg by constantly, rabidly pursuing ever higher profits. Good profits are no longer good enough, they must always rise higher and higher.
Industrial scale farming is a major cause of much lower population in many rural areas and it also helps to create a food supply that has many negative (chemical) aspects to it that is most likely responsible for causing millions of people to die prematurely.
Small downtowns die and are filled with empty shells of buildings as big box stores move to the edge of town and crowd out long established and family run businesses. When the center of a town goes, so does a lot of community spirit. Neighbors no longer run into each other daily or weekly, shopping becomes an impersonal experience through vast stores of foreign made goods. People gradually lose a connection to where they live.
There is no one solution. It must spring first from the places being hurt and be guided, carefully, wisely, toward success.
We are entering into a dangerous cycle here. These counties with small populations have a disproportionate influence on our elections. They are angry and are clinging to outdated ideas that exact revenge on the rest of us. We in turn feel disdain for them.
They need to vote for people who support their needs, not exploit their anger. Until that happens we are all going into decline. What can be done about that?
The urban answer is to just wait for them to die. The problem with that is 1. It's inhumane and 2. We don't have time for that.
1
I live in North Central West Virginia and absolutely nothing that happens in the US economy nationally or locally can undermine Trump's popularity. The idiotic belief that hundred thousand a year jobs are coming in droves once the coal industry is adequately deregulated is so fiercely help it amounts to a religious axiom among a large enough percentage of the population that no useful projects are possible. Truly for at least another generation this is entirely hopeless. Too many people here simply think in irrational terms about coal, guns, guns, guns, and coal, their minds easily controlled by political hacks who understand the mentality of all too many people who live in this region. Look at WV's rankings in addiction, obesity, unemployment, etc etc etc. NO solutions are possible for years and years and years. It actually just keeps getting worse. My kids will not remain in this state and nor will I ASAP.
2
If, as the data shows, the modern economy cannot accommodate rural America, then it should be allowed to die out as the data shows is currently the case. The majority of the wealth in the United States is situated on both coasts, in New York and California. Texas is the odd man out in the center of the country. But even within these three states, the great majority of the population is in the urban centers. However, due to artifacts of colonial period deal making, these rural areas of the country, which contribute little to the overall wealth of the United States, get an oversized share of the vote in national elections. These are the same people that voted for Trump because he promised them a pipe-dream and they were ignorant enough to believe it. These are the same people that believe everything that the Republicans tell them and keep people like Mitch McConnell in power. If they are in fact, dying out, we should celebrate this - not that the individuals are dying out, but that the culture which created them is dying out. The biggest danger to our country is the sense of entitlement which permeates our rural areas. They feel entitled, but have to face the reality that their lifestyle, education and world outlook is leaving them behind. Good riddance. The rest of the country and the world needs to move ahead without an albatross around our necks.
1
First off, I freely admit I am an urbanite and am uncomfortable in small towns. That being said, I do sympathize and am saddened by their growing plight. Also, I am not great at understanding economics, so please bear with me. I read an interesting article after that idiotic deal in Wis. where Walker was crowing about his Foxconn deal. Even I could figure out it was a gigantic rip off and not a very bright idea. No wonder he was voted out. Anyhow, this article talked about investing in small businesses vs focusing on these major corporations. What if Walker had taken that 4 plus billion dollars and had spread it around to these smaller communities? What if states or the Feds started offering low interest loans to small businesses/start-ups or something like that? Why do only big companies get tax breaks, for example? Every town needs a private infrastructure of services, stores, diners, etc., right? Why does everyone always talk about big farms, big tech, etc, etc, as the only solutions to these problems? I grew up being told owning your own business is part of the American dream. Maybe instead of focusing in on what these rural areas can't do, we should be focusing in on what they can do and help them revitalize themselves from the inside than from the outside. IMO, an immediate help would be untying the expense of med insurance from businesses.
One thing is true, we need farmers and not just big farmers. We need a diversity of crops and services that give people the opportunity to succeed as individuals. We need to invest in the idea that America is one country. Not simply rural vs urban. That is not the America that I grew up in and I am ashamed to see Americans being so imperiously selfish. We all need jobs and so does our country need for us to have them...............people that have jobs pay taxes. Paying taxes pays for everything in this country. If we don't pay salaries to citizens we are moving money out of the country and diminishing our own quality of life by not sustaining our country. That is treason. Actionable treason.
1
Plain and simple explanation ... NAFTA ... which was signed into law back in 1994; 24 years ago.
And Billy-bob campaigned against it stating those displaced by the move of US industry overseas would need to be retrained as well and new industries needing to be introduced to pick up the slack.
And if I'm not mistaken, republicans took control over Congress at that time as well.
So go figure.
Another hard truth is that some of these towns will die, as they always have. The U.S. is full of ghost town, usually resulting from a lack of something or something running out- topsoil, water, minerals, trees, people... Nothing wrong with that. Small towns can survive, but they need to work on it. St. John, WA is an example. Population is stable, town is thriving. Their key ingredients were a physician and high speed internet. The community pulled together, worked hard, and stayed alive.
1
Rural America is grossly over-powered and over-represented by the U S Senate. That is obvious. US Dept of Agriculture is one massive farmer welfare agency with budgetary immunity thanks to its political power. Farmers do nothing to endear themselves to non-farmers, decry government and collect special benefits in the billions. Poor pitiful rural Americans is a myth. They are over protected, over compensated, over represented, and dishonest reporters of their financial condition omitting their real estate assets particularly. Let them enjoy the very respect and power they offer urban Americans.
2
It would be great to have an economist or other thinker from a rural university opine on this subject that Prof. Moretti who seems to have a tunnel vision, "“If you put a tech company in a place like rural Indiana, it will be vastly less productive than if you put it in a tech cluster,” Mr. Moretti said. “The effect is quite large.”
I have read reports from NYT and Washpost where smaller tech companies have gone into rural communities in West VA and Kentucky and found willing students to be retrained into the the tech field.
Maybe that is just one answer and the second may be a question as to why we encourage Agribusinesses who overshadow family farms and then on top of that get subsidies from the Government?
It would not be complex if we have economists and sociologists from local communities represented in this article than an urban economist from a heavily tech oriented region.
It does us no good to romanticize agricultural life. It does us no good to romanticize factory towns. This nostalgia for an imagined rural white American small town or farm communities is a conservative impulse and it is laden with racism. The white picket fence symbolizes white exclusion to me. Technological advances have made farms and factories impractical. People cling to symbols. Let us let go and move forward.
1
The SF Bay Area is having a mini building boom of high density housing. Mainly apartments in 5-6 story construction, due to earthquake danger. We have the 30/30 rule here. A 30% chance of a major quake in the next 30 years, according to the USGS.
So relax zoning rules all you want, but you need to have safe structures. Building them on soil that "liquifies" during a quake takes very expensive engineering. The cost of the foundation of a building or single family house here can equal the entire cost of the above ground structure. That's part of why you get 2 bedroom apartments that sell for 1M+ and rent for $6k a month.
So come live in SF, but make sure you have a household income between $150-200k. More if you want to bring a family.
Wednesdays are yard sale day throughout an entire county in the Missouri Ozarks. We stopped at a few yard sales along a highway on our way to go hiking. A toothless old lady grinned as she demonstrated a samurai sword for us in front of her dilapidated trailer. She had some other antiques I thought might be worth something. I said, "Don't sell stuff too cheap. Look up their value on Ebay." She said they have no internet connection. When I got home I looked up maps of broadband access. There are entire rural counties with virtually zero access. I wrote to my state rep about it.
I hate shows like American Pickers, those who take advantage of the poor. I can't say I've gotten to know rural people well on our hiking trips, but no matter how poor they were, they've always been warm, friendly, relaxed, kind. It's gotten to where its pretentious urban people that stress me out. Taking off for a hiking trip, I feel like I can "loosen my corset" and breathe.
You may want to check out rural areas yourself. Please don't take advantage of the rural poor. Be a goodwill ambassador as you can. Crossing the urban/rural divide might do everybody some good.
2
A large number of the comments here are essentially saying "You big city elitists can't make me move! I LIKE it here in rural America!" So if rural America is such a great place to live, then why are we having this discussion in the first place? Clearly it's a paradise that doesn't need us big-city folks to save it. (big city slicker from a bustling metropolis of 70,000 people here. Man, I feel like such a sardine driving three miles to get to the nearest gas station.) On the other hand, if you're arguing that you want the government to step in and save your community because you simply can't be bothered to move... well, tough luck. We all have to move to wherever the jobs are. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. You want to live on a fifty acre plot of land, you'll have to make do without the perks that developed civilization has to offer. These perks include public services and economic security. If you want these things and you don't want to move to Queens, there are these places called "suburbs" and "small to medium-sized cities" that you might want to look into.
2
The flip side of this is that as the rural areas de-populate, our coastal cities are becoming overpopulated and unlivable. Everybody wants an SUV and a big house and yard. They want giant freeways to drive by themselves to work and they want nothing to do with "congrestion fees" or mass transit. And they don't want to pay taxes for roads. They spend two hours a day - and more - in their cars when they could be spending some of that time with family or on other pursuits. The amount of carbon this lifestyle is putting into the atmosphere is helping to destroy the ecology we depend on to survive. Cost of living in the city centers has gotten so high in many places that only the most affluent can afford to live in them and those who can't are moving out.
This is the condition in which vastly more people in the US are living today. The really serious problems are urban-suburban-exurban. Not much is being done about them.
4
Thank you! Mr. Porter is SO out of touch with reality. Not everyone in a Big Blue City is rich or has a great paying tech job. There are a LOT of struggling middle class people, forced OUT of the prosperous city cores and into dingy suburbs, from which they face horrific commutes that can easily add 20 hours a week to a 40 hour work week (if not MORE) and which are soul-destroying, aggravating slogs every single day. He only touches briefly on really, REALLY unaffordable housing is -- it's not merely "a bit expensive" -- it is wildly beyond reach of all but the megabucks wealthy. He doesn't mention that San Francisco, presumably chock full of great "tech jobs" also has a poverty line of $117,500 -- the MINIMUM you would need to "just get by" there. (Ergo, you can earn a healthy $100K a year and BE POOR!)
Vast, costly urban enclaves are NOT A SOLUTION....they are NOT giving a good life to a majority there. They tolerate massive poverty, with no solutions. And simply having "fewer zoning codes" will not create any new mass of affordable housing for rural newcomers -- hahahaha! -- any new housing is snapped up ASAP by existing residents, or investors, or foreigners with lots of cash.
The most the liberals LIMPLY offer dispossessed Americans is $15 an hour....at which rate of pay ($31,500 a YEAR), "affordable housing" would have to cost something like $600 a month. That won't rent you a parking space in NYC or SF.
2
Rural way of life is in retreat everywhere in the world - and good riddance. Small-town America is the breeding-ground for intolerance, small-mindedness, opioid abuse and ignorance. My husband was born in rural Iowa and could not wait to escape the place where his desire to read and learn was mocked as outlandish. Those of his classmates who stayed either succumbed to drugs or wasted their lives doing pretty much nothing. I was born and lived most of my life in big cities but I have seen American small towns that look like the set of a zombie movie, with ruined properties, morbidly obese inhabitants, ten churches and no library. Some of those towns are located in beautiful nature spots and could have reinvented themselves as tourist destinations but their inhabitants lack initiative, business sense, training and broad-mindedness to do it. Cities and metropolitan areas are engines of prosperity. We should not waste money trying to save an outdated way of life.
4
There is a much bigger problem with the economy than the geographic distribution of jobs and population. As technology has advanced, jobs have become more technical, specialized, and abstract. They require more education and training than in the past. Not everyone has the aptitude to be trained as a software engineer, big data analyst, or radiology technician. And even those with aptitude must first have acquired certain interests, attitudes, habits of thought and discipline that must be inculcated starting in childhood and cultivated over a lifetime. And everyone is now competing in a global arena. The boat may have already sailed for many who are left behind.
So the real problem is a surplus of population created by technological advancement in the context of free markets and international capital flows. Perhaps the only solution is a more progressive tax system to support a guaranteed national income so that everyone can lead a dignified life in a stable community. A more likely outcome, given our current political reality, is deepening tribalism, internecine conflict, and further social disintegration. Only time will tell.
3
Housing is very expensive in urban areas and dirt-cheap (comparatively) in more rural areas. Investing in good infrastructure, like rails, to transport people easily, faster, and in a more environmentally-friendly way to areas that are currently more sparsely populated could help bring life back to some rural communities and help alleviate housing shortages in densely-populated urban ones. It would also generate a lot of jobs, both in the creation of housing and infrastructure and in the people who would live there bringing their business and dollars back.
However, one of the biggest problems is that a lot of these rural communities are incredibly homogeneous and don't like change. They want to stay white, Christian, and traditional, like they have been for decades if not centuries. Bringing more people and jobs in would inevitably lead to less homogeneity and a great deal of change. And therein lies the problem: you can have more prosperity, but you can't have it nowadays without diversity and change. These communities want the prosperity without what comes with it.
4
Just wondering what the urbans will do for food, water, fuel, electricity and building materials when the rurals are gone. At this rate we might find out sooner than later. Kinda tricky to grow food in urban environments but a few have small gardens. Also kinda tricky to drill water wells or create reservoirs in urban areas. No way the urbans will allow any oil wells in their midst, much less a refinery, right? Same goes for a power plant or millions of acres of solar/wind power so where will the electricity originate? Clearly no way for urbans to grow any trees for lumber either. Well,...now we have possible shift... moving all these resources from the rural areas to the urbans could become really, really expensive and incompatible with avoiding Climate Change so then the urbans will flock to areas closer to the sources of food, water, energy, materials and more space without the threats of hurricanes, floods, fires or drought or expenses.
BTW, not too long ago, Palo Alto was rural... So was San Jose, Berkeley, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Phoenix, Houston, Denver, plus urban areas east of the Mississippi River.
No doubt about it, rurals are dying right now.
5
"We think you're toast."
They're not really wrong when they say this. My hometown is in a county that epitomizes the issues and challenges outlined in this article. The local community college offers free tuition for new students who are willing to study certain subjects. It hasn't recruited the number of students predicted. A new meat processing factory, scheduled to open in January, still hasn't hired any hourly workers. Just getting projects off the ground in this part of the country seems like too heavy a lift anymore.
There are good people here, but there as many embittered and angry people who place the blame for what ails the community on others, on "outside, unknowable forces" that seek to "keep them down." They voted for Trump in droves, hoping he'd be the remedy to their existence. It's easy to fall into the trap and think of what could have been, in a mood-altered state. I'm moving away to try again, while I still have a card to play.
4
Cities and town and even small villages do not exist in isolation. They are actually systems that work because individuals and groups, including governments, corporations, churches and non-profits, all do their smaller thing without, in the main, thinking about the whole but which, collectively, make the system work.
Okay, the system is broken in much of rural America. It did not break itself, it was broken by many different forces. One of the biggest was the 100 year long shift from smaller family farms to huge industrial size farming operations. Small farmers were bought out or gave up, the big guys took over, families moved away or stayed with far fewer opportunities. Isolation followed.
It is nearly impossible to imagine and implement a complex system that would enliven rural areas because each part of the system has to work effectively. No one anywhere in the world, to my knowledge, has successfully built such a system from the ground up (the Chinese have tried to create cities in the countryside and they are largely failures or just dreary places barely dragging along).
One part of a functioning rural system is transportation to nearby hub cities or towns that would allow people to live where they want to but work where jobs are available. A series of towns around a modest urban hub with fast, cheap transportation would be one experiment to try, but it would be costly. Instead, railroads have been shutdown and inner city bus transportation is occasional or rare.
5
Success, then, has to be incremental and experimental, step by step providing necessary improvements and services. Instead, the federal government usually takes an omnibus approach: let's take these billions, solve the problem and move on. Doesn't work.
I commend to attention a recently published book by a former mayo of Oklahoma City called "The Next American City" by Mick Cornett. He details how he and others were able to get temporary tax increases passed, by popular, citizen voting, in deeply conservative Oklahoma by targeting the purposes of the increases and setting a limit on how long they would be in effect. They helped to change OKC from a backwater to a city on the rise where businesses wanted eagerly to relocate or expand. It wasn't any one thing, but a whole lot of smaller efforts combined with some major projects and attention to details over a couple of decades.
Yet, we need to understand that there was a reason the smaller towns were once needed and, in many cases, that need has passed and is not coming back. The system of a community has to have a core reason to exist.
2
As long as we keep idolizing prosperity and kneel in front of the graphs of GDP growth as the only metrics of happiness and fulfillment, there will always be room for articles like this, articles that ignore the real mega-trends, first of all global warming (what is this edulcorated 'climate change' anyway,) and the decline of the American Empire.
Yes, rural America can be painful to observe. I just spent a week doing research for a book in the Mississippi Delta (the corners of MS, LA, and AR) and I pained at what I saw. It can't get any worse than that in the Western Hemisphere.
Yet there are rural places where bigotry is anathema and despair is kept in check, like Vermont, where I moved after 30 years spent first in Manhattan then in New Jersey (aka "Joyzee" by the natives.) We too suffer from some of the rural pathologies. And probably even a progressive community will not enough to ensure survival of the rural economy -- in the short run.
It would take a metanoia, a collective shift of mind toward the non-material and more spiritual yearning for self-realization and a dignified existence, to stop the erosion of our strong foundations. Said like this, it sounds like a new-ager's fantasy, and it probably is until the harsh reality of a calamitous decline will tear to shred the insane axiom that wealth is the only way to measure richness.
6
Urban people literally cannot imagine a flourishing, modern rural economy. It is our alienation from what we consume ultimately that drives this, along with social pressures. The fundamental problem of rural America is that of the American economy as a whole. Monopolization, economic inequality and alienation from the biosphere. The tastes of city dwellers, from fashion trends to consumerism (Whole Foods, antiques/rustic crafts) suggests a yearning for a life more connected to this material reality.
3
We drive through "flyover" country for business once or twice a year. It is apparent that many small towns in the US sprang up because of road or railroad construction or some other temporary phase of settlement, without being located near a river, metro area, or having another reason to exist where they are. Over time life seems to have bypassed them.
We just returned from a trip to New Zealand (South Island) and spent most of the trip in quite rural/remote areas. The few towns we passed through were referred to, often, as "service towns" - that is, they served the rural community around them with banks, shops, machine repairs and all the other little stuff of daily life. Maybe that is something to take into consideration - as others have posted, independent service providers - plumbing, car repairs, construction and home maintenance, education, banking and commerce - in locations where it makes sense would breathe life into at least a few places.
On the other hand there are probably some places that existed briefly while a rail line was being built or other temporary reason for settlement existed and then decayed that should be gently let go.
7
As a matter of fact, rural America cannot be saved. Thanks to the quirks of our political system, they will cling to disproportionate voting power for a long time. But the population continues to decline, and an increasing number of rural communities and townships are simply fading out of existence. Their people are not disappearing. They are moving to cities and suburbs in order to survive. As for those scattered few who can't (the elderly and destitute,) there is nothing more that we can do for them. The policies of the Republicans they elect are accelerating their demise. The ACA, Medicare and Medicaid are coming to an end along with all other forms of public assistance and government development of infrastructure. But only a small portion of these people are being strangled to death by government neglect. Most of them are simply moving on.
1
Many of the comments here focus, rightly, on the reasons that people value living in these smaller communities, a sense of the outdoors, not always being rushed, and a sense of community. But that's the problem. Who is that community with? Often it's only other people that were brought up in the same place. How welcoming are they to new families, especially if those families don't fit the local norm?
A similar mental view is in many smaller cities, like St. Louis and Philadelphia. Places where a common first question is "Where did you go to high school?" Because to most locals that's what defines you and tells them how to think about you. "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is pretty much a documentary of that city, where people form a group of friends in high school and then decide that they're set for life, for good or ill. It's one reason I could never stand living in those places.
The most friendly places I've ever been are cities like NYC, DC, SF, Chicago, Boston, because people are constantly coming or going. To have friends you have to constantly be making friends, and open to knowing people that are different from you. Making friends with former strangers is a skill that needs to be learned, and many people never do. This is one reason companies want to be in these places. You need employees that can work in a team and quickly welcome new employees. Just living in a big city is training for being an open person that welcomes others and loves to learn about them.
4
And - what about the FACT that a huge number of people living on all our coasts- are going to have to move - inland - in the next decades?
That's already starting to happen, you know. They're going to have to move right into those rural counties. Build homes- infrastructure. Golly, think of all those jobs. And then - what?
Any projection that does not include the certainty of climate change- coming very fast now - is an indication of - um, inadequate mentation.
8
Towns die. Places die. It's a story old as time.
Why do we think we can or would want to sustain dying locations? It has the effect of trying to stave off the passing the time. Not gonna happen. If you chose to stay, you choose your fate. There is nothing wrong with that just don't expect to be saved from it.
You may not want to move to NYC but you can move to the next biggest town and reorganize your life and build a brighter future (however that looks). Is that not American? Besides, waiting for someone to come and save them is a lot like what they shouted and voted down for at least a 100 years.
4
It's all about the grain co op-I am a city boy...but driving coast to coast, I came to this realization.
Each town, in the midst of the hollowed out area, has what was clearly the center of town...at one point. Faded paint, clearly the result of locals, and local work. Every single one empty and ramshackle. The farmers aren't gone, but corporations have bound them into long term contracts...the buy - sell, local trade, all gone...the trade hammered into contracts with a huge corporation...much like the local stores and retailers, now a big box store, surrounded by empty storefronts. Who remains ? The civil servants, police, fire, hospital...a few workers, less than before, with less benefits and pay (corporate overlords five states over have seen to that). The nexus of trade and community is destroyed, replaced by the money leaving the community....
1
Thanks very much for writing this. I would welcome any additional articles that discuss efforts to find evidence-grounded solutions to this problem.
I grew up in a very small town. Two points to make:
First, I agree with the other commenters here who express concern about the excessive generalizations made about rural residents. It is true that one can find some bigoted viewpoints, and some people who are relatively uninformed, either willfully or not. And obviously many voters fit the political stereotype. But there is also diversity in the heartland, and tolerance, and some very, very sharp people. And voters of all political leanings, be it liberal, libertarian, centrist, or otherwise. Also note that many people who live in these towns are not necessarily there out of choice. You can't choose where you are born, and many people who wish to leave cannot, due to either finances or family obligations. I certainly don't intend to criticize anyone who does choose to live in a rural area voluntarily, but I just want to address what I see as a common misconception.
Second, note that more than economic opportunities are lacking. A curious child in a small town might be required to attend a poorly funded school district, and will lack very many of the rich intellectual, cultural, and other opportunities that are available to those of us who live in cities. So, it would be great if there were some way to improve upon that situation as well.
9
Let's see - what's one of the biggest needs in the near term future? Well, that would be long term elder care - especially for dementia. Taking care of the elderly does not involve high tech training - just the ability to take care of elderly needs. Private prisons locate in remote rural areas and provide employment - why not farm out indigent eldercare to the same areas? Cheap land, cheap labor, fresh air, open spaces, maybe fresh veggies and fruit, fresh eggs and dairy products.
Yeah, the inmates, er, I mean clientele will be isolated from relatives, so maybe a bus could run once a week so they could visit. Of course, Medicare would now have to fund rural hospitals that are being abandoned for medical procedures, but that would open up residencies to train American doctors. Lots of win-win for everyone - the poor elderly get decent care, the rural get employment/health care and doctors get trained. And the taxpayers save money not paying city rates.
2
"Yeah, the inmates, er, I mean clientele will be isolated from relatives, so maybe a bus could run once a week so they could visit."
Nobody wants to drive or take a bus a hundred miles every week to visit the relatives they've put into a nursing home.
And frankly, I don't think the people willing to look after the demented--almost entirely immigrants in the city where I live--are especially plentiful in small-town America.
It's wishful thinking to suggest that even more people move to Silicon Valley or almost anywhere in California. Yes it's expensive here compared to say Hattiesburg, MS where I went to college, but the bigger problem is resources. There is a finite amount of water, freeway space, even air. Adding more people degrades all of those for those of us who are here now. Sorry, just because you want to live in SF or by the beach doesn't mean it's feasible.
5
Well, I live in Lancaster CA about 70 miles from downtown LA. And I didn't come out here for better "resources". or my health LOL. I came out to the high desert because after six years and three moves I couldn't afford the rent any longer. I bought a house out here on a single earner's income during the crash and got a fixed mortgage that's as much as my last rental in LA. I got lucky. Without the crash I couldn't have afforded the down payment let alone the house. So no, in my world, the bigger problem wasn't "resources" it was housing. Lots of people have to make this move from LA for the very same reason and commute in. I'm glad the Antelope Valley (Lancaster/Palmdale) hasn't gotten to the point where those here are telling those coming to stay out. But it would appear from this post that SF and plenty of other places are doing just that.
1
Crank up the drawbridge.
1
In this day and age there is little reason that working from home could not be the norm for probably the majority of jobs, instead of insisting that people go to work in an office building. The problem is that business managers often don't like to lose that degree psychological control over their staff.
Second problem, the retail behemoths have made it far too expensive for independent stores to operate, and that would be a necessity for revival.
But America sure could use with re-establishing communities where people cared for and looked out for each other.
2
USA used to import 12,000,000,000 barrels of oil per day in 2005 and now the US is a net exporter. At $50/barrel that is $600,000,000 per day staying in the US that used to leave the country, that is because of rural America. The issue isn't that rural America has no wealth, the issue can be framed as that Social Contract refuses to give the people in rural America their cut but that argument doesn't fly in B-school.
3
And.... that's because rural America routinely votes against politicians and policies to get their cut.
1
That's because Propaganda is expensive and hence asymmetrical. To purchase Hannity for one hour runs $120,000, for Tuesday that's $240,000 and toss in a Wed it's $360,000. Therefore non-rich people can't purchase Propaganda and that's why you never hear about Parkersburg WV eating Teflon, drinking Teflon and breathing Teflon. That's just Gods Will apparently.
I live in rural Kansas. The town has 5,500 and the county about 20,000. Jobs are hard to find if you don't work in ag or the service industries. That said, I wouldn't want feedlots, beef packing, or tech here. Housing is cheap and the city does a great job with low-income housing and poverty assistance like free food. There is some ignorance, which makes the county support the GOP, but there are also some enlightened and educated people. It is not all doom and gloom.
4
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you about not all doom and gloom. Why is the state in the current mess it's in unless the rural Kansas voters wanted that?
3
Well, the mess in Kansas is somewhat overstated. Housing is affordable here, unlike where I grew up in Silicon Valley. Yes, spending is down on education, but I still make a good living in education. Education spending should increase with the new Democrat governor. Even many Republicans in state office want to increase spending on education. Finally, my little town is extremely safe.
There's a great deal of economic dislocation and hopelessness in Queens, NY and in other urban areas. Look it up. What might be needed are economic incentives to get rural dwellers to move into cities. While Columbus, Ohio or Bismarck, North Dakota may never inspire Amazon, population density itself creates employment and sustain mass transportation allowing greater access to job opportunities. Whether decamp rural states for populous New York or Virginia, North Dakota and Iowa will still get the pick two US Senators. I would hope that bigger cities in rural states might reflect itself in their selection of politicians. Also, too bad too many in those locales support anti-immigration policies. An incentive that would steer new Americans to help populate cities in rural areas is a surefire way to make them more vibrant. Immigrants are our most entrepreneurial class.
1
After agriculture one of the greatest creations of humanity is the city. It sounds so ridiculous but it's true. Living in close confines of one another, with agriculture allowing some of us to not worry about tending crops, allowed people to be creative, to master science and the arts, and to create new technologies. This is just another step in the inevitable path of people clustering together. Cities have always created significant wealth. We should understand and be sympathetic to the plight of rural America but we should also make it more affordable for them to move to cities. The communities across rural America simply don't need nor can they sustain many people any longer.
Dude, some of us don't want to live packed in like sardines next to each other. Some of us want to live, where at night, you can hear the birds, or the crickets. There's no price tag you can put on that, although I'm sure some folks are willing to try.
16
I get it that nature is wonderful but a couple of things. One: there's a price tag on everything even if you think there is not. Two: Rural communities cannot economically sustain themselves. I don't want to live like a sardine either but sometimes reality just happens.
1
Dude, that's awesome. As long as you're self-sustaining and don't expect the rest of us to build your roads and treat your sewage, it's all good.
This is a worldwide problem. The Chinese are going through a similar situation. Brexit exposed the divisions between urban and diverse London and the rest of England.
It did not being recently. My grandfather, born in the 1880's, left a rural NC community (still unincorporated) to go to the nearest city to work for a telephone company, the new technology of his time. Several relatives followed and also got jobs at the phone company. His father's farm was sold at the time of his death to pay off the money he borrowed to send some of the younger of his 12 children to college.
Some of those who stay behind come to deeply resent those who leave. They resist being proud of them and instead put them down. And those who leave may be glad to get out and be very critical of the people they left behind. It is unhappy all around.
I do not foresee a time when leavers and retainers will appreciate whatever virtues may be in the other. I do wish rural kids had opportunities to spend summers in cities, and city kids could visit rural America...sort of a Fresh Air Fund exchange. Maybe there would be a bit more compassion in both directions.
9
As the native son of a small city that has been in constant decline economically for several decades, I have only one suggestion. Leave and face up to higher housing cost elsewhere. Follow the job opportunities That, of course, in a different time is what motivated your ancestors to move to that small town or rural setting from whereever they had lived before. Follow their example!
That was my case also. I never have regretted pulling up stakes and following the money. Only retired people, who have no further need for earned income, can afford to stay in economically depressed area.
3
“If you put a tech company in a place like rural Indiana, it will be vastly less productive than if you put it in a tech cluster,” Mr. Moretti said. “The effect is quite large.”
I understand that the "network" is important, but it is not all that impossible here in Asia for a Japanese company (for example) to be dealing with people in Australia, Philipeans, Singapore, India, Taiwan, etc. These have enormous language and cultural barriers, yet business finds a way. The internet connects them. I grant that we are also dealing with issues of education in small towns, which is not the case here in Asia, Yet spreading out tasks is not like it was 40 years ago. There is a lot of work that can be "farmed out" and doesn't need to be done is huge expensive offices in the largest metropolitan areas. We would reduce traffic, expense, and even the cost of shifting a few workers around is far less than having to support them to live in the very insanely expensive cities. Maybe it is just that in Asia, we have to do that, and the US, people in high places have no vision about it.
1
You can see why urban areas stay strong by putting yourself in the shoes of a prospective employee. Where would you rather be: working for the only significant employer in a rural area, or working for one of 50 major companies in an urban area? If you get laid off or get mad at your boss, etc., in a city you can get a new job over a weekend. If you're out in a rural area, it would be hard to get away to interview someplace else and, if you lost your job, you would be looking at a harder job search and relocation.
Rural, ag based, America is in relentless, irreversible decline. The minimum economic farm has been getting larger every year. So, the typical farm is larger every year. Why? Because it takes scale to be globally competitive.
A generic county in the old days would have had hundreds of small farms, hundreds of large farm families, and the total population would have been large enough to support a lot of small scattered towns catering to the needs of a population that couldn't travel far, and didn't want to, for supplies and services.
Today, that same county has few farms, all very large, owned/managed by a smaller family/workforce. The resulting county population is so low it will no longer support the scattered small towns. They fold. Only the county seat stays viable. And, thanks to Amazon, delivering to the hinterlands, even the county seat isn't doing well.
So, just how do you draw a company there? No population. No workforce. You can't.
4
No mention in this article of income inequality fostered by rightwing tax policy and corporate welfare. If more individuals were sharing the wealth created over the last decades they would be investing and spending in much wider and more diverse ways than the almighty tech heroes and/or government economic schemes. We have an economy now that disproportionately rewards and incentivizes concentrated wealth. You can't start or run a small business in a rural area when nobody there is making more than minimum wage or has the ability to save and invest in their communities.
5
Right. Open a diner in a town of 1250 and pay a minimum of $20/hour. Then come back to tell how all that worked out.
This breaks my heart. Why not build Amazon in West Virginia or any number of cities where the need for work is greater ? It’s happening, Amazon will open down the block from me, but all I can think of is small town America barely surviving. I don’t have the answer but I’ve stopped buying most anything that’s made overseas. American made only.
2
Good for you. I hope you don't need to buy anything more complex than a dinner plate or a wheeled hand truck in the next few years.
Why would Amazon employees want to live in W. Va.? Amazon employs gay people, black people, immigrants - why would they want to live there? And for everybody, there's the issue of finding a job for your spouse, good educational options for your kids, something to do on the weekends, opportunities to change jobs without moving if Amazon doesn't work out...
1
These places have disproportionate national and local political power, due to the equal senate power between states like CA and WY, and also the Electoral College. Heck, the Senate Majority leader is from rural KY. If it wasn't for them, we would have nationalized healthcare, a nationwide minimum wage, a better national curriculum, and reduced income inequality by now. How about we turn this discussion around and ask why THEY have not been doing THEIR part to help the REST of the country?
50
The "why don't they just move?" crowd, including economists, seem to ignore the way that rural people's longstanding relationships with friends, family, vendors and suppliers, and customers - hard-pressed though they all might be, IS their safety net. Like immigrants of certain ethnicities, they live in a different economy from the educated in big cities, whose relationships are primarily contractual and capitalists. In rural areas, as in ethnic enclaves of immigrants, relationships are what help people survive - and those who live there are completely clear about how they would fare in another state or city without them. Just ask anyone who has moved to a job and found themselves laid off or at the mercy of a downsizing or bully boss or landlord within weeks or months of arriving. When will economists who start with "I've never lived there" and commentators who praise "efficiency" get that they're not dealing with widgets and that the problem isn't individual obstinacy but structural policies that have enriched the few while leaving fellow Americans out in the cold?
19
Tech workers often work remotely even if they're relatively close to the office, perhaps it makes sense to encourage them to work remotely from more rural areas. At scale, this could reduce housing pressure in cities and spread innovation.
3
These locations don't offer much beyond cheap housing. I live in NJ and work in Manhattan and I work from home a lot but beyond that I have everything I need in walkable distance. What quality of life do these urban areas offer ? What about the schools for children ? Most of these folks are Republican supporters who ENABLE their elected officials to decimate budgets and axed most of the public school and parks/recreation budgets to the point some areas resemble 3rd world countries. Why should I feel any sympathy or compassion for their situation? They did it to themselves and now that their Orange Knight in Shining Armor has been finally exposed for the criminal he is, we're being made to feel as if it's OUR responsibility to show them the way forward ? REALLY ??
7
@Charlotte Exactly! 100%.
I do not think urban living is for everyone, so I believe that rural areas with vitality could offer an attractive alternative. After traveling overseas, I have thought that high speed rail may be a tactic to improve our country's infrastructure and provide more employment and housing options to those who live within a commutable distance. I just haven't figured out how it could be funded.
5
I have lived in rural most of my life. What truly is missing from rural America is the ability to communicate with the rest of America. Most of our small town newspapers and radio stations have closed down. We have lost our ability to connect and express ourselves. We are often labeled ignorant, and poor. The Democratic Party and to some extent, the Republican Party stopped listening to us and concentrated on the Urban communities. Trump connected with the hurt and anger of the rural American, and his populist message of jobs and economic renewal was, and to some extent, still believed. Thank you for this excellent article, and my hope is somehow rural America will regain its voice and find its rightful place in our nation.
13
“Think through the political consequences of saying to a substantial portion of Americans, which is even more substantial in political terms, ‘We think you’re toast.’ ”
this seems to me to be the core of current American political dysfunction: the unwillingness of politicians to speak the truth. instead, Trump tells these people - whose suffering is all too real - that he can reverse history, make things the way they used to be. I get it that no politician wants to tell people the bad news (thanks Mr. Porter for doing that), but creating scapegoats ('coastal elites', George Soros, etc.) only kicks the can down the road.
2
"these people"
Caught yourself before it was too late.
My experiences with small town Amurica in MN, NE, SD, and IA leads me to ask - why are we presuming it should be saved? These scattered small towns are not sustainable. They were built and located according to the transportation technology of the nineteenth century: wagons, river boats and trains. Farms were small, and distances traveled also small.
Know what else I've found to be small out there in my 4 decades of experience? Minds. Outlooks. Tolerance. These people have self-sorted - the ones to scared or too stupid to change dig in their heels, while their kids with potential do the smart thing and get out as soon as possible. They go back home to visit, only to be degraded for no longer conforming to their hometown narrow-minded definition of "life", which of course is managed and tended by the people who are terrified of anything new or different.
Let it atrophy. These people can't be fixed. They are done. Allow the natural evolution of the midwest and west to happen - mega agricultural conglomerates with employees living in fewer towns.
5
"These scattered small towns are not sustainable."
There are urban neighborhoods that are not sustainable. HS Graduation rates are dismal, unemployment and crime are high (yes they do exist). We should just bulldozer them under and the have the folks move out. Sounds like a plan.
Many of these small towns survive on manufacturing. They're probably not making computer chips, but they may be making lawnmowers or automotive headlights. The horse left the barn with NAFTA and China. I've been around manufacturing plants for 35 years. I recall thinking about what kind of fool would advocate pitting our rural workers against Chinese and Mexican laborers, where there's no safety regulations, no minimum wage, no child labor laws. Those fools turned out to be the liberal economists who were advising the democratic party (the one time party of labor)! These changes should have been made over a generation, not all at once. I would have required any company relocating jobs to low labor markets to pay the workers who lost their jobs for 10 extra years, to bridge many of them to retirement. That would have eased the pain. Countries that have the capability to manufacture have power. To look the other way while it leaves our shores is foolish. After rural communities were sold out by the Democrats, of course they voted for any orange charlatan who came along promising to help.
7
Actually, they do have a minimum wage and child labor laws in China. Maybe not as tough as ours, but they do have 'em.
1
Revisionist history. Liberals were apoplectic about free trade, NAFTA and WTO in the 80's-early 00's. No one listened to the silly flower children. That allowed the space for Clintonism / corporate democrats to seize the party. It's taken 20 years to loosen their grip to the point where other ideas can be considered.
So these rural places vote for people who work to prevent programs offering the very help they need and vote to cut taxes for the rich, denying the country the money it would need to help them, and now we're supposed to spend billions to help them (no doubt sending the country further into debt) because unless we do they will get even more racist and dumb in their voting and who knows what might happen then? I thought Republicans, which I assume most of these people are, were supposed to be into self-reliance? I'm all for helping people in need. But it would be nice if they make some effort to help us help them...
6
I agree, let the land and nature return back to it's elements. There's an ebb and flow of civilization and nothing is meant to last forever. We're witnessing, in real time, the decline of certain sects of society and it should be left to it's own demise. Not every problem warrants a solution and these folks have had more than enough time to pick themselves up. Those who could, did and left; those who decided to stay are the outliers and sadly, intrinsic to the circumstances.
3
Charlotte - Discrepancies have gone to extremes on both sides. While rural people seem left behind, urban "civilization" is entirely dependent on digital technology, a house of cards that could collapse at any moment if the power grid went down. Rural people know how to survive, they're resourceful, thrifty and handy. A lot of urbanites don't even know how to sew a button on a shirt. Perhaps the meek really will inherit the earth.
2
I remember the sixties and I still believe a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In the 60s Newfoundland, the Maritimes and Quebec were our weakest links. Today many might say they are the glue that holds us together.
In the 60s Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and a number of today's red states were your weakest links.
Today many of those weak links are weaker than ever and they invariably send two Republican Senators to Washington which further weakens your country. It is time to get rid of the Republican Party and replace it with a party intent on uniting the country instead of tearing it apart.
The 19th century saw GOP policies keep 90% of the US population in poverty and here they go again. I am not ready to divide your politics into good and evil and I have many problems supporting many Democrats but the Republicans of Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan cannot help get America back on track. They only know how to derail trains moving ahead on the correct tracks.
2
Before you write long, reflective articles about how to save or not save rural America, come live a winter with us in a beat up old Maine mill town. It's presumptuous and frankly elitist. Big city? Nah. I'll visit when I need a fix of culture or I want to spend $300 on a mediocre but trendy meal. Rest of the time, I'll stay up here. It's much, much better than you city folk realize.
To have the issue of rural decline and decay crystallize around Mr. Trump denies those of us living in rural America an effective, thoughtful, and innovative leader and spokesman. Articles like this compound the problem.
8
My dad owns a house in a town in the center of France, Auvergne, region which looks a bit like the Appalachians, but much more difficult to get to. The house is in a town whose population of 1700 is shrinking past. Last time I went there, last year, 22 houses were on sale.
Nice houses, fully equipped, fully furnished. Nobody, nobody, nobody wants to buy.
When my 94 year-old father passes away, I will inherit this house and will abandon it. It is ugly and badly situated, but more importantly I have absolutely nothing to do in that remote region.
Now, on the other hand there are MILLIONS of refugees, MILLIONS of displaced people, MILLIONS of homeless people in this world.
Mmmm... go figure...
1
Education is usual the best path to personal economic improvement. If you won't educate yourself then nothing can be done for you. Others have mentioned it, but voting for republicans who hate education is not too bright and very unlikely to be in their best interest. At some point one must finally understand that they must help themselves. We cannot force someone to stop smoking, or drinking heavily or taking drugs or any number of self destructive habits and one cannot force people to become educated in a useful skill.
That said, we should not also assume they aren't already happy and just whining to see if they can get some more free stuff. They say they are mad and frustrated, but are they really? To me, they seem awful hedonistic to be unhappy people. I would suggest that the whining is also something they enjoy, garnering sympathy may be one of their joys.
2
I live in a very small town (population 3300) in a very rural county (population 7000) in extreme eastern Idaho. You want to help communities like mine? Come talk to us. We know the answer to economic development for each of our communities. And it is not one size fits all - so don’t expect whatever the policy makers in Washington come up with to work.
8
You seem to be skipping a lot of governmental levels. Hopefully your state (if not your county) has ideas about what types of economic development would best suit your area. Those ideas should be communicated to your congressional delegation (who can approve/oppose/craft legislation that meets your needs). Sometimes you need to make known what you need, not just wait for someone to ask.
2
We could make a much larger dent in rural poverty and joblessness while simultaneously improving the hyperexpensive real estate problem if we would only invest (a great deal) more in high speed mass transportation. High speed rail can go 200 mph, meaning that huge swaths of rural Americans would suddenly be less than an hour from a job in/near an urban center. The win-win here would be that both improving the current technologies, as well as building all the lines, would create many thousands of jobs. And when we were done, we'd have fewer polluting cars on the road, plus many infrastructure-maintenance jobs in perpetuity.
16
>States, municipalities and the federal government have spent billions to draw jobs and prosperity to stagnant rural areas.
Show me the money! What are the odds that 'rural' welfare is more like Wall Street welfare.
Growing up in a rural part of NJ (when NJ had rural parts), every nasty thing described in these comments was there. The best anyone can do in some rural areas is to suceed enough in school to get out. It's partly a test, why would an innovative employer want to hire someone who can't see and act on this obvious truth? And it's partly social Darwinism, beloved by conservatives and libertarism, doing it's thing.
3
The politicians elected to represent rural areas are far more vested in maintaining power than in helping their constituents in any real way, especially if those solutions contradict agribusiness and corporate interests. (We've heard enough about that dynamic in all the hand-wringing about MAGA voters.) Yet from reading the comments here, it would seem that blue-state opinion is also more vested in beating down rural residents than in dealing with the very real economic issues involved. Instead: How about some focused initiatives that pay people to do the sort of work that is still very necessary and that might encourage young adults to stay and commit instead of fleeing? Care giving to the elderly and home bound, day care so that single mothers can get jobs to support their children, adaptive re-use of empty industrial buildings, small scale farm-to-grocer or CSA collectives, sustainable recycling, vocational training that prioritizes the good old repair ethic more trendily labeled these days as "DIY"... I could go on. (But not encourage urban to rural carpetbaggers such as in those profiled this week in the Real Estate Section.) Where is the creative pragmatism not just for rural areas and the Rust Belt, but also deteriorating urban areas within our largest and wealthiest cities? Guess where people go when cities become too expensive and exclusionary? Some of them - of all races and ethnic groups - move to rural areas.
5
How about if we welcome immigrants, especially those who want to move to rural areas, work hard and raise their families there? The U.S. is already being saved from the fate of Europe, with its aging population and low birth rate, by the influx of immigrants into our country. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants, and we all are descendants of immigrants unless we are Native Americans. If we want to revive small-town rural America, it makes sense to WELCOME immigrants instead of turning them away, and allowing them to repopulate the aging, decaying rural areas.
4
I can think of things I wouldn't do, things that pretty much define the federal/private tool bag.
I wouldn't pay for training where there are no jobs, or ones that offer wages that would have embarrassed me in high school.
I'd stop spending millions on "employment subsidies". For Pete's sake, you want to help poor, desperate people by giving money to rich guys in hopes they'll create jobs at pay that would have embarrassed me...
We need an attitude change.
Its time to admit American Business is a terminally fixed game no longer resembling capitalism; the American strain particularity virulent. We should admit free markets require robust government regulation and management.
We must decide what to do with workers no longer employed or employable by industry that will not want them no matter what they do.
Do we continue the mean-spirited charade, forcing people to look for work or training, or do we admit that A)We no longer have jobs for everybody and B)Since these people are taking one for the team its our responsibility to make them whole and keep them comfortable.
Neither of which is a problem so long as we can get to C)Its possible for a person to be rich enough, even too rich. We can help by encouraging them to pay their share to maintain their society.
If we don't get C), we won't be viable much longer. The signs already indicate danger. We're a too-proud people not prone to flexibility or compassion.
These folks are the vanguard of a looming problem.
5
If there isn't a way to reverse decline, and this is true for many rural communities, then the challenge is managing the end stage gracefully.
Consolidating school districts to increase services while reducing taxpayer burden, organizing regional economies across several counties, combining government services and re-conceptualizing "communities" as collections of small towns, rather than a series of disconnected townships and villages in adjacent counties, can help maintain quality of life even as populations decline.
2
I'm an upper middle class, 200k household income, remote employee (although I travel most weeks to the nation's pharmaceutical hubs on the east and west coasts). My ego says I might bring a unique perspective to the comment section. I chose to live in rural America because I personally just enjoy the wide open spaces a bit more than the exhausted landscape of the big cities. To each their own. However, my circumstance makes me wonder if growth in remote work might free up people who are more inclined to live in naturally beautiful areas, often rural, to move and spend money here. Eh, it's probably wishful thinking...
6
What happens if Mr. Porter shifts his question from a comparison of earning to a question of putting people to work. My sense, because unlike Mr. Porter I did grow up in a very rural place, is that the people who live in these places aren't looking for a job at Amazon (which is actually a wretched employer--I also lived in Seattle) or your average startup or whatever urbanites think of as real money. Rather, they want to farm or fish or log or mine. They want to work in industries that make actual things or feed people. They want live in communities with their friends and family. Americans haven't stopped eating or consuming wood or minerals. What's changed is not just technology but an incentive structure that rewards business for eliminating jobs. Rural Americanas have always wanted to work. It's urbanites who have invented and celebrated themselves for putting rural Americans out of work.
6
Actually (Trump aside), most of those oligarchs (Walton, Koch) seem to live in gated suburbs/exurbs. The vast majority of "urbanites" have no interest in celebrating "themselves for putting rural Americans out of work."
For more than two centuries, the people of this country moved to where the opportunities and jobs were. It’s time they did so again.
1
NJ is a state that is a strange mix of urban and rural communities. For almost 30 years, I lived in a small rural town of less that 1000 people that was 5 miles from the next small town in one direction, 5 miles from another small town in the other direction and 5 miles from the NJ Turnpike. Amazingly, it was the quietest place I have ever lived in and it took me a long time to adjust to nighttime noises when I left. I commuted 45 minutes to work in one of the bigger urban areas north of us. NJ actually has the best of both worlds, a lot of small towns close to big urban environments where jobs are available because it is the most densely populated state in the nation. Of course, there are problems there too, because the cost of living is much higher than many other states, but my family was able to maintain a lower rural cost of living while earning higher urban wages. It allowed my husband and I to retire younger than most and move to a state with a cheaper cost of living in retirement.
3
I am not a rural person. I don't know what will work to revive rural economies. In 1896, William Jennings Bryant said that the farms were the foundations of the economy, without which the cities would wither and die. The farms are still feeding the world, but without the farms. Mechanization has replaced farmers. That will not be undone, anymore than auto factories that employ people rather than robots will return to Detroit.
Maybe the same impulses that led rural voters to support Trump stand in the way of rural revival. A desire to look to the past for a social and economic model. Closing the mind to social and demographic change. Solutions need to come from the rural residents themselves and will need to be supported by national policies and a national economy. But, solutions will need to be based on change, not empty promises to return to a nostalgic vision of a country that really wasn't quite as great as they remember.
1
Not to be harsh or judgmental, but another huge obstacle for rural areas is that their very best young people move away in disproportionate numbers leaving behind their less educated, less socially skilled, less employable and less mobile peers. Those high school rural and small town students that graduate at the top of their class and go onto college, more times than not, never return. This often leaves these rural communities with only a small portion of high achievers that have the education and skills (including social) that employers are seeking.
The sad reality is that there is just not enough human capital talent-wise to justify most employers to set up shop in rural or small town America even if the governments pay for training, etc. The human talent just is not there.
Times have changed. American companies are not just looking for qualified people, they are looking for the very best people they can get. Global competition in the past 30 years has forced companies to always seek out the very best talent. This is why tech hubs are flourishing, and rural and small town areas are perishing. The very best talent is flocking to the tech hubs, as the companies flock to those hubs for the talent. And, this brain drain from rural America is killing her.
6
The rural economy is based on mass scale agricultural of mostly soybeans, corn, wheat, etc. The fact that the government has heavily subsidized this on a huge scale, and made multi millionaires out of many of the farmers, and ranchers, is what has kept the economy going in rural America, also the wind turbine business. Many people like the way of life, even if the incomes, and jobs are what they are in the bigger cities. Coming from Montana, and spending regular time there, the people always emphasize that the money isn't there, even if you have college degrees, but then they add, that isn't the main reason they live there. Montana is the last best place on earth, the fewest people for its size, least polluted, and one of the most beautiful. Glad that I spend lots of time there.
2
A big factor in rural decline is poor broadband internet availability in low population areas. Commercial providers cannot make a profit. Clearly what's needed is federal legislation comparable to Roosevelt's Rural Electrification Act of 1936.
20
EXACTLY RIGHT. We don't have ACCESS even to cable, because the companies REFUSE to string wires, no matter the density of an area outside a town or village. We have been promised cable for THIRTY YEARS THIS MONTH, and the killer is we can SEE the end of the villages cable, but Spectrum will NOT come up our road, or any OTHER rural road, and New York squawks and does NOTHING to force or fund this. So no one wants to move here, to downgrade, and cut the communications that allow us to work remotely or educate on line. Our Republican Congress Rep is less than useless on this, we are lab rats to her. We need a " Works Progress Administration" or the like, to take us along with the digital world.
1
I do feel sympathy for them, not as much as I feel sorry for teenagers growing up in Rural America, raised as tolerants enlightened by the internet and social media and who are well aware of the opportunities outside their doors. My heart aches for that 18 year old girl who wants to venture out of her rural town to a larger city, born to unsupportive bigoted parents, knowing fully well the blighted future her hometown holds for her. The article completely misses this demography, and so does our political discourse.
As an immigrant, I will not invest in these rural counties, not as much because of the lack of return, but rather due to their collective bigotry, condescension, disdain for other cultures, including mine. Rural America does not even fall under my travel bucket list.
These people don't realize that their children have dimmer outlook, due to the sins of their parents.
7
I recently relocated to DC after 14 years in Vermont. It was devastating to see a place I love become so economically challenged. People think of VT as trouble-free, with a gorgeous landscape and progressive values - but a huge percent of young people are leaving the state, and the small towns have lost their manufacturing bases and main streets have lost their retail businesses. Property taxes are sky high and there few good jobs to support that kind of $$. It is a very innovative state, and with education and training, there is significant opportunity to scale, if there is money available. Still, there are few choices than relocating, when you have a family to feed.
4
Having many relatives in upstate NY (and I mean "upstate," not Westchester or Orange counties), I have seen over the past six decades just how once-thriving towns have emptied out as local industries closed up shop or were bought out. Some of it was due to consolidation - my grandfather made cheese for a living in the early 20th century, but was bought out by Kraft. Many of the independent paper and lumber mills surrounding the Adirondacks were bought out and closed down. Lots of railroad jobs went by the wayside with the advent of Conrail. An uncle worked for years at the Alcoa plant in Massena that shipped finished metals across the highway to a GM auto plant. That's winding down, too.
Yet, many of my relatives and their kids stayed, even the dairy farmers. Why? It was about quality of life, about a wide circle of friends you could depend on 24/7. It was about never having to lock the doors, and having neighbors just drop in any old time with dessert to share a coffee.
I even had one cousin quit his job as a mortgage officer and start his own dairy farm with the help of his wife and many kids. He found that work more fulfilling, even with his college degree and a chance to leave the area. Other cousins have retired in place and are happy traveling, playing golf, and fishing and boating in warmer weather.
Roots in the community are powerful things. Don't discount the strength of those bonds.
14
I don't think people in rural areas—which really means about half the country, if defined culturally speaking—want to be "saved” by outsiders. They want to be treated with respect and have their lives and values taken seriously. That is precisely what the Government and society have not been doing, and it is precisely why Trump was elected.
13
No one is stopping them from having their values - problem is, that's not what they want. They want their values to be forced on everyone else, in entertainment and in law. That's the problem. It's not OK. It's not a reasonable requirement.
22
Partly to blame is former agriculture secretary Earl Butz and his "get big or get out" presumption, that only economies of scale matter, chemicals, factory farming, which everyone bought into as the only way. This, of course, ignored the 'externalities' of destroying communities by indebting smaller farmers year after year in a flawed model that some since have broken out ofby creating their own sustainable farm models, and ignored the effects on the environment, our health, and on our freedom by those who would dictate to us what to eat.
As for coal country, coal companies and perhaps unions have strong incentives to keep out other industries - no alternatives means companies have no competition for labor or power and unions can (not that they do) collect union dues with impunity: pay to play. Regarding the rust belt - steel and manufacturing in general - we reacted slowly to what was obvious, that the industrial countries had recovered from WWII by the late 1960s and 1970s, and the U.S. once again had competition but tried to hold on to the status quo rather than adjusting. And therein lies part of the problem - people who don't want to change what they're doing, not just those who wish to take advantage such as management and unions, but also rank and file; resistance, holding onto hopes of a coal revival, makes it harder to fix the problem. Hillary offered to bring renewable manufacturing to Appalachia, but they wanted coal.
3
It's about time that the MSM and "think" tanks are starting to think about the non-urban areas of America, and the problems facing them. Neglecting this for decades led to the rise of Trump - even though he hasn't the foggiest notion of what to do about these problems. Ironically, he was seen as not part of the System that has ignored a significant portion of Americans.
As to what to do about this? First, the "experts" need to get out of their urban cocoons and spend some time with the people they profess to want to help. Second, just because technology is the fastest growing and most lucrative sector, it doesn't mean that all jobs have to be tech-based. Third, re-visit some of the things that worked after the Depression: the CCC and WPA, updated to today's needs and requirements. Invest in building tech schools in rural and less urban areas, not just for post-high school, but as alternatives to traditional h.s. Launch a program to provide high speed data and communications to rural areas, similar to the effort that provided electricity to these areas back in the Thirties. Get the long-promised Infrastructure Program off the ground - NOW! - without any further delays. And eliminate the "trickle down" economic policies that reward short term profit-taking, and punish the long term investment that would spread the wealth and opportunities to ALL Americans, rural and urban.
We landed men on the moon in less than a decade. Can people really not figure this out?
9
Congress would have served us better if they had focused on infrastructure, expanding broadband access, and working on ways to make health care more affordable instead of channeling all of their energies into a tax cut that hardly benefits middle class families. But that would require some serious research, thinking, and worst of all, cooperation between both parties.
15
These are programs that Democrats support.
And with the Rural vote against democrats, not to mention the principle that a elected official should try to represent their constituents, that's not likely to happen. Urban America shouldn't be pulling Rural, kicking and screaming, into a different way of life than they support and choose on their own.
Plenty of smart people there, why aren't you proposing and voting for people who will do this for yourself? Why aren't we hearing from the elected officials from midwestern areas about the programs that you want?
2
Details: These are programs that Democrats USED TO support, but stopped supporting them decades ago. Instead the New Democrats have followed a philosophy that's almost anti-rural, and heavily invested in wooing wealthy donors, while at the same time focusing on identity politics. With that philosophy, why would rural voters vote Democrats into office? The Democratic Party's abandonment of not only rural America, but the working and middle class has left a bad taste in people's mouth.
I agree that Urban America shouldn't be "pulling Rural America into a different way of life" - that was the gist of my original post. There are plenty of jobs and opportunities that COULD be created without trying to force everyone to become a techie.
2
The decline of manufacturing in the U.S. has helped rural communities falter. The U.S. has become a service economy, with around 80% of jobs in this sector, and such jobs rely on a mass of population. In addition, U.S. tax policy favors big corporations, thus helping big agribusiness kill family farms that employed at least some of those in rural areas. In addition, corporate leaders once considered both workers and shareholders in managing their businesses. Today, the unions that forced corporate attention are almost gone and corporate leaders consider only two things: how to increase shareholder value and how to manage the business to maximize top management bonuses. Neither augurs well for corporate investment in rural areas. Perhaps a change in tax policy to reward investment in workers in rural areas and to heavily tax the offshoring of jobs would help.
2
Perhaps the government could help people move, in a manner similar to the way they help refuges. It's daunting and even dangerous for a rural family without resources to move to a city. Another idea would be to support medium sized cities that are in rural areas. I live in a rural area that's also pretty darn prosperous (there are medium sized cities within commuting distance) and not, at least overtly, bigoted. But about 70% of people voted for Trump. Mostly, they just won't vote for a Democrat because Democrats are viewed as anti-rural and anti-christian. The population is declining as it has for generations. Agricultural labor productivity increases are just continuing. People have to move out, as they always have.
2
Whatever happened to the free-wheeling, independent-contracting tech nomad? Web developers can work anywhere with a good internet connection. Some engineers and lawyers can do the same. We also hear about people "fleeing" expensive tech metropolises. If you can get them to move to the small cities, they don't need to find a job there, because their gigs would be paid by the coastal companies and they would be pumping money into the small city communities.
Of course, one has to provide the comforts and thrills of life that such persons often look for, but not every software engineer wears black and must have the latest food truck. And even if they did, how hard is it to provide a few food trucks? There are pretty, charming little towns everywhere that could be desirable to a techie getting tired of all that or wanting to segue into a family lifestyle.
Alas, the biggest obstacle are probably attitude, openness, and liberality, which seem non-negotiable for this set. I don't know if this is an unchangeable cultural thing or just perceptions, on both sides, that can be changed.
2
I'd look to the 1800s at, say, the Colorado gold rush. Colorado has several ghost towns that were once thriving communities, until the rivers were panned out, the mine went dry, whatever. Then people moved. They weren't paid to find a new place to live, re-educated to get new skills. If they were old, special efforts weren't made to support them - they moved with their kids.
It's not impossible or even bad for people to move from a place that's economically defunct. I think the best effort would be to entice people to do so, maybe by offering enough cash for the old house that they can make a down payment on a new one in a more prosperous locale (razing it to prevent profiteering and other goofiness), and a moving allowance for renters. If old people absolutely won't move from their beloved little town, pay young caregivers to live there until the last of their charges pass away, then cut the power.
I'd offer a carrot - a buyout, and a stick - we're not going to keep subsidizing if a person refuses. the buyout. Another possibility (for those dead set on remaining) is to chop up large estates so that individuals could at least do subsistence farming.
I see this as a preview of what's coming down the pipes: large scale automation of lower-skilled jobs, where vast numbers of people may simply become unemployable. There's a lot we should learn from the plight of these tiny towns, and how it is addressed.
2
Nowhere in this article is there another option beside joining the tech revolution. Accelerated global extinctions and climate change make it achingly clear that the modern American lifestyle—driven by technology and science—is ruining our only planet.
Tech is embraced as the only answer, to the extent that technological progress is conflated with evolution. This makes 'going back' unthinkable. Napoleon's armies travelled as fast as Alexander's, yet half this continent will be submerged before reverting to horsepower is considered.
Ninety years ago the majority of Americans weren't solely dependent on wages. Many grew and hunted some of their food, and bartered for goods, to get through the Depression.
Federal funds should foster homesteading, small organic farms, crop swaps and farmer's markets, and subsidize internet access, creating a model of self-sufficient regions. When our insane current food model comes crashing down for good, the hordes that can identify 1000 corporate logos and 0 edible wild plants will beg for entry, my family and I among them.
18
"There are too many people." - most scientists
A big problem is that we have become too used to cheap food, as opposed to valuing high quality food. If we had a strong artisan appreciating economy which found value in high end food and was willing to pay good money for it the decline in incomes wouldn't exist, and there would be a cultural value in producing such food which would encourage younger people to remain where they were born. This wouldn't change the productivity issue, and it wouldn't solve the decline of rural communities everywhere, but it would sure help.
Otherwise the move from the country to the cities seems to be inevitable, you can't hang onto everything, make the transition easier for those involved but don't try to make the past a permanent fixture, things change.
1
erhoades:
It is simply not all about the food. Many of the people being forced out and bankrupted are food producers-of either, cattle, hogs, or wheat, corn, etc. Try making money after all the "middlemen" take their cut. You can, I suppose, fight for a spot in a high end farmer's market stall in any number of cities. My understanding of that model is that those folks work 7 days a week about 20 hours a day-when you count the picking, harvesting, prep, packing , transport, setting up and storing the booth, and then drive all home to start over -tomorrow ! Well, you have to be young and healthy.
Cheap food is not necessarily good food I agree. But many people cannot afford rent, transportation, medical costs, shoes and clothing and afford high end , artisan food. And some that can afford it would rather spend money on something else. Or build savings. I don't think that you are going to find support for national policy initiatives and funding to encourage artisanal food producers. You are on your own.
5G technology might help to close some gaps and enable more telecommuting from places with a much lower cost of living. Robots will likely bring more manufacturing to the USA since labor costs will become a smaller slice of the pie, even if this will mean fewer jobs per facility. Many "green" jobs need a lot of cheap real estate to be viable, and our need to live more sustainable lives should be more clear to more people than ever.
Everyone moving to one of a handful of cities is not a stable end game. The present is certainly bleak in a lot of places but it is not destined to always be that way.
I was recently in rural Germany, where industrial employment is surprisingly healthy and the standard of living is apparently stable. Cities are doing well but so are the rural areas. Probably this is due to a lot of factors, but one thing that struck me as well was how many of the factories are family-run. The families who run these factories are well-off but double down on communities rather than selling out to publicly traded international corporations. These factories have evolved and innovated over the decades to stay relevant in the global economy. No, these are not software factories. They make real stuff.
Perhaps it's just cultural, but this phenomenon starts with good corporate leadership, and clearly rural US would benefit from this kind of leadership. Making the excuse that you can't do anything because of globalization is clearly not true everywhere. You can compete, but there need to be leaders who put greed on hold and commit to innovation. But if you decide to give up, then these communities vaporize, skills rot away, and it becomes even harder to catch up to winners like Germany.
14
"The most helpful policy for people in small towns could be to relax zoning rules in dense cities like New York and San Francisco, so that more affordable housing could be built to receive newcomers from rural Wisconsin or Kentucky, and they wouldn’t need the income of an investment banker or a computer scientist to afford to live there."
You don't get it. Most people live where they do because they don't WANT to live in New York or San Francisco. I know it's hard for New Yorkers or Bay Area people to imagine, but there are many people who actually find your cities pretty awful, and can't wait for you to go back to them after you visit the countryside on your vacations.
6
Not to mention the ugly fact that relaxing zoning regulations does NOT result in more affordable housing, absent some very careful, specific, hard nosed negotiation between local governments and developers. In most cases developers are allowed to make vague commitments that in the end amount to nothing.
2
This is so true it hurts
I'm just asking: What is the infrastructure investment in these areas? Tech centers and the like don't spring out of nowhere. Silicon Valley fed off UC Berkeley and Stanford. You need education. You need communications.
You need an open mind. Plenty of small communities have cottage industries that have propelled them to prosperity. Napa and Sonoma in California were mostly dry, hot, open ag land, until someone figured out they could grow grapes there, crush them and make wine.
What about tourism? Plenty of urban people want to "get away" from the city and have a nice, historically oriented vacation. The people of rural areas rightfully should be proud of their history and what they accomplished in building America. Sp make that a legacy, not a burden. Here in Hawaii, we don't have pineapple for export anymore. It's cheaper to get them from Mexico. But we've got the Dole Plantation, a touristy spot, and we grow enough for our local population and for tourists to take home.
I'd take a tour of an old coal mine, and hear stories about what those people went through. I just don't want any more coalminers to die doing it, much less have people breathe the bad air that results from coalburning utilities, or have storms and droughts that devastate the world for generations to come.
5
Why waste billions on improving on forcing "investments" in areas which are inexorably dying? Why not spend that money retraining for today's economy and providing relief funds allowing people to relocate to where there are jobs, plus providing elder care for those who can't move/are already out of the work force and don't need to move? It's understandable that people can't simply abandon the assets that they do have and the relief funds would help absorb this loss.
I am from Appalachia, with a background where getting INTO the working class was an aspiration. I was raised "up the holler," and spent a good deal of my young life in the rural midwest. I know the culture intimately and personally.
If you're not from there, you have no idea of the amount of anger, self-righteousness, bigotry and willful ignorance you're dealing with. I have seen a blighted small town run a businesses off using a corrupt sheriff and judge because that business was owned by a black man. I have been present when an entire community turned the other way as a gay couple was burned out of their home, and their son was nearly beaten to death by his classmates. These are not aberrations. Their religion, their worldview, and their choices are consistent with the "values" they cling to.
The reason they support Trump is a simple one - he acts just like they would if they had money. For all their Bible-thumping.
There is no saving this "culture," all the people who could have revitalized it have either left for better opportunities, or have been run off by the Morlocks. Nor should you want to save it. It is a breeding ground for hatred and despair, dying with a Bible in one arm and a heroin needle in the other. Let it die.
797
Except it won't die alone. Our current electoral system allows them to bring the rest of us down too.
Look, what you say is true. All true. But it's also true that destitute people are angry people. Angry people do not make good decisions. Their self-inflicted wounds splatter diseased blood on the rest of us, and we suffer too.
For better or for worse, we're all Americans. I for one am happy to support public policies that go beyond throwing scraps at impoverished rural dwellers. This article invites suggestions and solutions.
33
I live in rural America. Trumpslyvania if you will. I am quite certain the places you describe exist. I have never seen them. I have seen hard working and yes, God fearing people just trying to live the American dream. Or some reasonable facsimile thereof.
They have seen their lives upended and their pleas ignored. Largely because the already rich want more. These people will not be ignored much longer. Trump was the final plea.. France is coming here.
Some say the USA will become like Syria. Nonsense. The military would crush such an uprising. But do you really want to see Dallas, Chicago or Seattle turned into Paris?
There have been some excellent suggestions on this board. Telecommuting is a great example. There are things that can be done. But we must start working together.
9
"This article invites suggestions and solutions."
I agree, and I think your point is valid. But these people REALLY think that coal is coming back, or that a factory can be conjured to save them. I don't know how you disabuse them of that notion, other than letting time take its toll. In addition, a lot of these people are beyond the age where they can reasonably expect to start their careers over again. You can teach a 50 year old unemployed coal miner to code, but you can't make a software company hire them in preference to a 23 year old who can afford to work for less.
What we SHOULDN'T do is reinforce failure. Throwing good money and effort after bad, trying to convince people that places like Southern West Virginia (where I'm from) are viable places to build a life - if it convinces a talented young person to stay there in the hope of social resurrection, you're doing them no favors.
As to the politics of resentment, which you accurately describe as "splattering diseased blood on the rest of us," call it what it is - sexism, racism, religious intolerance and willful ignorance.
The only solution is generational change. While we wait, we defend the republic and the rule of law from demagogues and vandals and wait for economic change to force social and political change. It is these same people who support a criminal president who is busily stripping the government of any power or income to help them. Vae victus.
44
I live in a rural area. My chain saw quit working and the last small motor repair shop closed six months ago when the owner retired. Growing up in a rural community almost everyone I knew was an independent businessman - farmer, trucker, plumber, mill and hatchery owner, septic excavation and tiler, contractor etc.. There is plenty of work that needs to be done, but in a rural community if you wait around for someone to offer you a job you may be unemployed for a long time.
158
You are correct that there is a lot of work to be done in rural areas. The problem is that there is not enough population needing that work to create a business that is viable. You may need a plumber, tiler, etc. but there probably are not enough enough others needing that service for someone to make a living doing that.
1
Plenty of work to be done, but can they pay your bill? All communities import considerable goods and services from elsewhere. It follows that they also must sell goods and services to other communities, elsewhere, to remain solvent.
Once that source of income from sales made elsewhere goes, the community dies.
Farmers often had second jobs, using their skills to help others. It is how people got by financially, and how skills were shared.
Their wives would specialize too. My grandmother canned fruit (preserves) and her garden veggies, and made things like sauerkraut. She got in return milk from one neighbor, eggs from another, break from someone who baked every day.
On the smaller scale of rural life, someone must know how to fix certain equipment, and someone else will know how to do something else.
In rural counties that have not received and embraced immigrants, especially from south of the border over the past 20 years, you will see counties in population decline, economic decline, and age decline. These rural counties with no immigrants are older, have less economic viability, and little hope for the future other than getting out. In rural counties with immigrants, you see the opposite, youth, weddings, baby showers, quinceañeras, baptisms, and babies. That's a sign of growth and vitality. It's the reason why we need an immigration plan that looks at infusing rural communities with immigrants who have endured hardship, have grit, and are entrepreneurial.
3
This article came out during the same week that NRDC posted its new analysis of rural job growth in the wind and solar sectors. While there are no easy answers in the hard-hit rural areas Mr. Porter writes about, the growth of clean energy jobs is a rare new area of opportunity and I'm excited to see solar job training opportunities expanding across our region.
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/clean-energy-sweeps-across-rural-america
166
Thank you for bringing this up. I live in a place that could be transformed by clean energy, New Mexico.
Most of our power is sadly generated by coal even though we have wind and sun to spare. Part of this is due to entrenched interests like PNM, the electricity utility maintaining the status quo.
We also have massive levels of poverty, lack education and have a high unemployment rate.
Broadband internet here in rural parts of the state is ridiculously expensive and a virtual monopoly if available at all. Often the highest speed is advertised as 25mbps and can be over $100 a month, making it an impossibility for most residents.
Switching over to solar and wind and investing in community broadband would go a long way towards helping my community. Now that my new representative (Xochitl Torres Small) is a Democrat I hope she will work with us on these ideas to help her constituents and not protect the oil and gas industries as she has promised.
4
I agree. There are far more clean energy jobs than in coal production.
Also, new crops like industrial hemp and marijuana would help revitalize former tobacco growing areas.
In my decimated and blighted home town where there haven't been industrial jobs for years, most productive people work over the internet, buying and selling.
1
Lol...yes, except they do not want wind farms or solar energy plants in their communities and are campaigning consistently to deny zoning and have them removed where they have already been installed.
A lot of this rings true. I live in a rural area and it is indeed a very elderly population. For the younger and middle-aged people here, it takes substantial finances to get by, but most everyone has high degrees of self-sufficiency. But people live here because they love it. They love the landscape, they love having easy access to the outdoors, and maintaining their own property. And in twenty or thirty years, when climate change is straining the cities of the eastern seaboard, people in rural areas will know how to be resilient. You can't quantify the emotional connection to a place in economic jargon. There are more important things in life than money.
4
This article is particularly poignant to me as a young person who left a small town to pursue a career in a tech hub city, and also resonates with me as someone who formerly worked in economic development. Often our ideals for improving peoples' lives clash with the choices those people actually make. Not every one wants to live in a city, and not everyone wants to get a college degree, and for some, those two things aren't options at all. At the same time, the article does a great job of pointing out that the benefits of companies locating operations in places where educated talent are overwhelming and difficult to counter with tax breaks. The size and spread-out nature of the United States presents a unique challenge not shared by our European peers - we simply have a lot of land. That makes it difficult to provide enough schools, amenities, and transportation to satisfy the needs of employers in every corner of the country. So even though you can't realistically expect everyone to move to a city, those who stay in small towns have tacitly accepted the consequences of their choice.
6
"Geographic mobility hit a historical low in 2017, when only 11 percent of Americans picked up shop and moved — half the rate of 1951. One of the key reasons is that housing in the prosperous cities that offer the most opportunities has become too expensive." When I apply for jobs online one of the first things the ads say is that the company is looking for local people. This means that the company does not want to pay to relocate employees. These same companies do not always allow people to work from home. Some of the jobs cannot be done from home. Rural areas face another problem: access to the internet that is not too slow most of the time.
At this point our country needs to rethink the definition of work and the definition of who deserves to receive "welfare" and at what level welfare should end. We are seeing people who want to work, cannot find jobs, may not have the skills, and who do not have the money to relocate to the expensive urban or suburban areas where most jobs are today. Then there are people who cannot move because of family ties like elderly parents or a spouse whose job also supports the family.
There is not one answer to these problems whether one lives in a rural area or a metropolitan area. We need a multi-pronged approach, one that is sustained rather than ended after 3 years. It takes time to build up a workforce, to help people get back on their feet after they've lost jobs, homes, and hope. I know, I'm skilled and I've lost hope.
3
I am very saddened to hear of your plight, Hen3ry. I know how easily I, and most of my friends, could be in the same boat. IMHO, I think our Democratic legislators need to take a close look at how those over 40 years old, and especially those over 55, can be helped. Age discrimination is very much a reality, whether you live in a rural county or a city. I would suggest that as a start, Medicare should be opened up to those 45+, with premiums dependent on income. It's not a complete panacea, as Medicare does not cover 100% of the bill and you still need to purchase a supplement, but it's a start that could make starting a small business, cobbling together part-time jobs, or gigging it more viable. Such employees would also be more attractive to employers if they did not have to offer medical coverage to them. There is a crying need to address the reality that middle-aged (or older) job seekers face.
3
Porter has himself pointed at the solution: "During the economic recovery of 1992 to 1996, 135,000 new businesses were started in small counties, a third of the nation’s total. Employment in small counties shot up by 2.5 million, or 16 percent, twice the pace experienced in counties with million-plus populations." That was Clinton's first term.
3
It seems paradoxical to me that technology which should enable many people to work anywhere instead is contributing to agglomeration. I understand the effect of concentration of expertise, but there is no reason all kinds of enterprises should choose high cost coastal cities to "agglomerate" in. There is something missing from the analysis.
1
Why not subsidize and incentivize telecommuting? That way tech hubs can remain in cities while their employees live in rural areas, vitalizing the local economy with city-level wages?
2
"I’ve lived most of my life in big cities. I don’t pretend to understand what it’s like to live in a small town or on a family farm" ...but I'll go ahead and write about them anyway...! There are a few glaring drawbacks to this piece. The first is the monolithic narrative of "rural as an economic wasteland." Indeed it's true that many rural areas have experienced decades of economic contraction, but that's not true of all rural places, and nor is that experience confined to rural America. The solutions proffered -- to ease zoning to facilitate rural outmigration to urban areas, and to build rural tech skills -- are sadly limited and misguided. It's a shame that no rural demographers or rural sociologists appeared to have been consulted in this article as it unfortunately perpetuates anti-rural stereotypes without shedding much light on the true challenges and opportunities facing an incredibly diverse array of communities, places, and people who fall under the category of rural.
8
"incredibly diverse array of communities, places, and people who fall under the category of rural" couldn't agree more
Earlier, watched a formation of wild geese in the open skies, while the cat prowled in the woods. The daily commuters, many in boarding houses, have not returned yet. Early to rise, and late in coming back, some will be working in overdrive tomorrow on Saturday.
Working for a prominent economist in a capitol city for years does not make one a financial expert, but there is a flavor of bankruptcy in our town and community.
A town, a village and a hamlet, rich in history, recognized as the 14th Colony (1740-1840), 'being the true saga of those lands and waters known severally as The Northwest Litchfield Hills of Connecticut, The Southern Berkshires of Massachusetts, and the Oblong of New York', described by a local resident.
We need a restoration of our town for our community dwellers with funds to support our school and library, our fire department, post office, and basic essentials. Our local doctor is holding the fort, the police force remains vigilant, but time is not on our side.
Our farms are dying. Once green, our valley is now in peril. To The Statue of Liberty, send us your rich, your finest economists, small businesses, and you will be given a warm welcome. We are in Veteran's Country, and proud to be part of a peace-keeping task force.
It is lonely to hear the sounds of the hunting horn late at night in the forest, where the Past lingers so beautiful but we have been forgotten.
The plight of rural counties and rural America is proof that Capitalism and 'Free' markets do not work for a large majority of society. It is time to go back to the way human beings used to live. Create small self-sustaining agricultural communities that will serve to feed everyone in it and also give them a job to do. I mean, that is where we came from right? And did that not work really well? How about an 'Organic Farm' movement driven by agricultural communes? All this nonsense about hi-tech and machine learning and robots etc. is serving mainly to make the rich richer. It also provides silly toys a la Fit Bands, iPhones and Alexas to the city dwellers who are qualified and lucky enough to be members in that economic circle. Behemoth industrial farming again puts money in a few pockets while destroying the environment. Plant soy and more soy, corn and more corn, all to feed cattle and hogs so that a few farmers and their ancillaries can export meat to China and Japan. The problem is not of wealth creation via Capitalism. That part seems to be working fine but the wealth seems to be getting constipated in the bank accounts of the top 1%. It is time to claim the Commons again. Take the land back, let it provide a meaningful existence and sustenance to as many people as it can without profit motive.
18
It worked really well when the weather cooperated. When it didn't, everyone starved. Local subsistence agriculture is well and good until a hurricane, drought, wildfire, early frost or flood wipes out your crops. Given the increasing vagaries of the weather, I don't think I want to take that bet.
1
No, it didn't work that well. It didn't support nearly as many people. Who do you intend to kill in order to reduce our numbers enough to go back to that model? What does happen as land is overfarmed? There's a reason civilization changed from those days, which people like to forget as they romanticize the past and lifestyles that don't actually work without a bunch of technological support.
3
Two suggestions: first, improve mass transportation options. High-speed rail can make it possible for people to live in rural areas and work in urban areas with a reasonable commute. It may not be realistic for people whose entire wealth is in their homes to sell them and move to the big city, but if the transportation problem could be solved, they wouldn't need to.
Second, and more difficult, rural culture must change to value education and seek the jobs it can provide access to. As long as football is viewed as more important, and more prestigious, than studying science, all the investment in the world won't help. For the older folks, there needs to be serious analysis of what skills they have and what they could be trained to do. Perhaps a large infrastructure plan could employ many of them. For the young ones, the emphasis and expectations need to change, so that they will have the skill set to work in the new economy. If they refuse to do so, they will have chosen their own doom.
4
As I recall reading several small towns in Midwest states were being revitalized by immigrants, many of them people without papers, who had opened small businesses of all sorts, and in the past year alone are drying up again as Dishonest Donald and his ICE Gestapo raid and deport them. Even as the citizens try to help keep them, the bigot voters want them gone, say they are taking American jobs, yes they are taking American jobs, when they lose their small business, have to abandon homes they bought, American jobs are leaving too. When a factory in a small town loses 2/3 its work force the rest of the town loses it income, the locals are not standing in line to butcher hogs, feed the chickens, harvest the fruits.
In California's Central Valley there are the remnants of several small towns along Rt 33 that used to cater to the immigrants mostly from Mexico. They sold cars, appliances, household goods, these towns are drying up as those immigrants leave. Without that work force there is no reason for these towns to exist anymore. What is left is some farm families, the kids go off to school,they meet other young people like them and stay where they can meet more. When the nearest possible boy of girl friend lives two miles down the road, the bigger city life is far more rewarding.
3
I grew up in rural PA, in a county that languished with a high unemployment rate even in the 1960's and 70's, but only about 30 miles away from Centre County, home to Penn State University. Our county, even though it had a branch in the state college (later state university) system, still did poorly while Centre County mostly flourished. Part of it was that a resident student population at PSU supported local businesses more, but IMHO the nearby county did little to court its student population, instead clinging to traditional manufacturing jobs that had mostly disappeared by the lid-to-late-70's. Bright kids I went to school with left the area because of the lack of opportunity (as did I). This is not a new problem, and, at bottom, I think it had as much to do with a population who was happier wishing that the "good times" would return, instead of trying to figure out how to adapt to the future. Trump's appeal fed into this sense of insularity and nostalgia, but as the experience of Centre County shows, figuring out where the new opportunities are (even in their own back yards) is a more successful approach.
8
Companies do not want to invest in rural areas. Their stockholders are interested in profitability and do not want them to. An economic policy based on letting companies do what they want will continue rural decline.
An economic policy based on bribing companies to invest in rural areas will be manipulated by companies to increase profits while not making large investments that are seen as unwise or unprofitable. An economic policy based on threatening or coercing companies will generate a great deal of backlash and will be portrayed as anti-business.
Any policy to improve rural economies must be based on a determination to do so, a recognition that private enterprise will generally not contribute, and a willingness to be brutally honest about what is going on and to take action on the basis of that honesty rather than buying votes and doing favors for the politically connected.
3
So many comments seem to imply that it is an easy thing to just pick up and move. Shall they just abandon their homes, the only tangible asset many have. How will they pay for the move? How will they pay for food and shelter once they get there until they find a job? How will they pay for child care for their children, now that they have left friends and family behind? It costs money to relocate people! Everyone wants simple answers to complex problems.
25
An important op-ed piece raising important questions (if providing little answers). We need more pieces on what is going on in this sector of the country (which often seems to city folks like another planet) and what their options are. And what would happen if all this rural people opted to migrate to the urban areas? Remember the mega cities of the third world; and the favelas. Will there be work, housing and infrastructure for all of them? Problems will be exacerbated with automation. This problem sounds like a replay of the rural-urban tensions and migrations throughout the globe in the last century. More political economy pieces like this are needed.The population density map was a visual revelation. I wish we could hear more voices from those places in the comments section--but they probably do not read or have access to the NYT. We only hear from those who chose to escape those places.
2
Economic change is far from new. At least since the Industrial Revolution, there have been growth sectors and declining sectors, growing regions and declining regions. Think back to the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the movement of Americans to the west. The essence of a dynamic society and economy is change. I fully agree that agglomeration economies play a very important role in driving high tech economic activity to co-locate and to reinforce the existing concentrations of economic activity. This is true for both technology generating industries as well as technology using industries. Regions had to prepare themselves to compete and succeed in this dynamic economic reality and failing to have done so is probably fatal. An expectation of entitlement to be able to stay unchanged is not realistic. There have been success stories in the Southeast but they tend to be university towns with natural endowments, such as Greenville, SC. Even existing centers had to be creative. The Chicago economy, for example, bears little resemblance to that which existed as late as the mid-20th Century. I suspect that a large proportion of the young people who grow up in rural areas will need to get an education and find work in urban areas. There will be a continuing population drain and, frankly, there is not much that can be done to prevent it.
2
Rural America lost its ability to deal with the real world after WW1 ended. Europe in 1918 had nearly no harvest to speak of, and American farmers filled the gap to keep French and British and Belgian and Italian and every other European from starving. But Rural America ignored basic economic truth: That after a war is over and soldiers go back to being farmers, the need for American foodstuffs would drop. The farmers in Rural America thought the war would go on forever, and it didn't. As a result, farmers went bankrupt over the next 10+ years. This led them to Hoover to demand that food prices be kept high, right when the Depression was about to drop prices. Hoover, and then FDR, enforced the higher prices - which led to scenes of government agents destroying food surpluses in front of people who were starving.
What to do? There is one solution that Rural America and its proponents, as well as the NYT, never propose. Laissez-faire Capitalism. It's what made America the best producer of foodstuffs in the world, even though the Ukraine provides more fertile soil. But the Progressives cannot abide solutions that work. Otherwise, who would vote for them?
"Progressives" aren't in charge now--so by your logic the current group in charge should be able to fix it all. Any day now, right?
1
Let us ask who chooses to live in a rural area. You have farmers who have lived there for generations, then you have urban flight. These people have children and then the cycle starts. Farmers can farm, but what are the children of non farmers to do? Blame immigrants?
1
I find the tone of this piece offensive, bigoted and narrow minded, fostering the kind of anti-rural rhetoric that got got us our current President. As a resident of a rural area on the border, I see amazing community development projects that could use some infusion of money and national attention. Instead of urban dwellers thinking and talking about what to do with rural dwellers, we invite you to Bisbee Arizona to talk to rural dwellers about what they need.
9
Having visited Brisbee, I don't think it's a good example of the kind of struggling rural communities described in this article (not every town can survive on an "arts" community). Local communities need to figure out what they need, and communicate those needs through their county, state, and Congressional representatives. You need to press for what you need, not wait for someone to come and talk to you.
I don't think they are declining because no one cares; I believe it's because of exactly what the author stated - the "new" economy depends upon educated people. Not everyone wants to get a college degree but unfortunately, non-college jobs are not well paying. It's not because no one cares or is looking down their noses. Facts are stubborn things.
5
Most of these places should never have been settled in the first place and only were established to provide water and fuel for trains.
8
Go to the Bay area: that seems to be what Porter is suggesting. Make it more dense than it already is. When was the last time he was there? Sure, if you are one of the high paid techies, you can afford a (tiny) house or a middling condo. Maybe you don't mind having to watch where you put your foot as you pass people sleeping or defecating in the street. You can also commute an hour or more to your job from some far flung suburb if that's too much for you. If you are in any job that pays closer to a median wage or less, the solution seems to be dorm living. Forget it if you are a low paid service worker. The solution for you seems more and more to be a tent beneath an underpass. If you have mental health needs, there's always the streets of SF. Sure there are neighborhoods that could take more density but for most of us, the density levels of SF and the Bay area generally, let alone Queens or the DC area are depressingly dense enough as they are. Not every millennial wants to live packed together like a sardine in a can without a tree or a park or a garden in sight. There are far more enjoyable places to live in the US than Bezos's choices of Seattle (a commuter's nightmare), Queens (ugly, old, cramped and dirty) or DC (filled with political bots). The comparison between SF and rural Nebraska leaves an awful lot of really nice places that many people would choose to live in out in the dust.
7
Soilent Green
2
How long before the "yellow vests" rise up in this country?
4
Any minute now I suspect. It seems to have gotten the attention of Macron.
As I read this informative article, a song keeps running through my head, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree'." I grew up in Buck Country, PA, which was pretty in my time with lots of history, but generally deadly boring. Our big excitement was a shopping trip to Trenton, NJ, before that imploded in the 1960s. I am so glad I moved to NYC 50 years ago. I would be living in misery had I remained in my ancestral home with only a mall or two for excitement.
3
The fact is that humans have to follow the food source, or now, the money. Survival depends on it - always has since the dawn of time. I'm not heartless, I grew up in a small Southern town; I know what it is like having roots in a poor community where jobs are scarce.
2
Until we realize that people will never reach their potential while they are fighting to survive or make ends meet. Remove that obstacle and suddenly it doesn't matter so much where people live or what they do "for a living". But alas, such utopian ideals are limited to sci-fi or other story-telling genres.
There are actions that can be taken that might help the situation.
These are some of them:
~ Legalize weed and let the stoners grow and sell it, rather than large corporations.
~ Ditto moonshine.
~ Build out high speed internet, so the locals have commercial access to urban markets.
~ Emphasize family farm support over big agriculture.
~ Build transportation systems for urbanites to more easily access weekend getaways and outdoor recreation in rural areas.
~ Hoist rainbow flags in rural towns that are officially friendly to people of all shades and stripes.
3
Except… what about the generations-long connections to family, and the land? It seems a bit much to ask that many of these people move to big cities. Tech ed & telecommuting might present a way for some to survive, economically, in place.
2
honestly, I would favor giving people who can't move (low-skilled middle-aged, elderly) a basic income and then help the new generation to become educated and move to cities and suburbias. unless they have a small farm; then they should be heavily subsidized as opposed to big Ag which gets most of the money.
2
These rural places maybe can't sustain too many people, but aside from their native industries, they have a lot to offer the country in terms of beauty, space and nature. As our urban and suburban areas become more and more crowded, people will continue to seek out more open spaces. It may not be a huge money maker, but this type of tourism could help sustain some population in these areas.
As a tech worker in the Seattle area, I'd love to move to rural America if the jobs were there. I have no problem with Seattle or other large cities, and while I harbor a cosmopolitan worldview and liberal political and economic beliefs, I really prefer the rural lifestyle, its inhabitants, and its day-to-day pace of life.
5
Obviously, farming was once the backbone of rural communities. Farmers needs were met by seed. equipment, and supply stores. Mostly local retailers were able to serve the local populace and survive themselves. All of that economic activity churned through local communities. And then along came: Earl Butz. His message to farmers was "get big or get out" (70's). Not a covert message--those were his exact words.
They did get out (were forced out), as large, extractive agribusiness (the darlings of Butz and many others of similar mind), began buying up huge chunks of land thereby driving up land prices and taxes. Small family farms suffered, and often lost their farms and land.
Meanwhile, the virtuous circle of money flowing through farm communities was disrupted. The new mega-farms contributed nothing to local economies; their profits were sent off to corporate headquarters elsewhere. The web of a healthy local economy was tattered.
And then....along came WalMart and other national chain stores which exacerbated the problem. Local retailers could not stand the competition and folded. Once again, dollars were sucked out of communities, this time by extractive retailers. The situation was already dire 20 years ago. It's been worsening since. Now we have an opioid epidemic in small town America.
It might be time to question the meme that BIGGER IS BETTER!
7
You highlight an important point. Even though those local owners/bankers were squeezing what they could out of workers, they at least spent much of what they got back into the local economy.
I feel for the people of rural America because those locations provided great places to grow up where you knew your neighbors and understood WHERE food came from. But the reality is that like it or not manufacturing in those areas is gone and is probably not coming back. People remaining in those areas have to accept that reinvention is the only way they will survive. The mantra of "That's the way we have always done it" so prevalent in some of these communities is to embrace the fate of the dinosaurs. There is a freedom that comes with living in small rural areas and small framers can have that by looking to things like setting up things organic gardening farms that city people love, setting up small woodworking shops (city people love the concept of something "handmade") or setting up tourist attractions for their wide open spaces that help people want to come even if it is only for a few days, to breathe some fresh air and spend a few dollars. The sooner rural America accepts that they must change or die the sooner the change can begin...
6
I have sympathy for those suffering, but they must bear the responsibility of their choices. By no means does this apply to all who live in economically distressed areas, but based on the small sample I have witnessed, they have chosen their economic circumstances by voting for leaders who are anti-union and pro-offshoring. Until those who live in these areas wake up and realize they have been voting against their own economic interests for decades, their situation will only deteriorate.
6
Maybe it's investing in education, regardless of location. A more capable workforce will draw more investment.
Reminds me of a quote:
"If you want to change government, change the corporations, and the government will follow. If you want to change corporations, change the consumers."
- Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia)
1
The only trend that can save rural America is the steady increase in telecommuting jobs however most of those require an education. And if the US would launch a major effort to increase wind, solar, and other domestically generated renewables that would help as well. Too bad rural folks seem to prefer GOP candidates and those have historically worked to reduce access to quality public education which is vital for retraining and also have been climate change deniers. Just two more ways that rural folk have been their own worst enemies.
3
The simplest solution would be to subsidize telecommuting and relocating of employees to rural areas. An IT worker that can barely afford an apartment in San Fran can live like a king in a rural county. If a few dozen migrated to the same region there would be enough like minded people to form a community. The employer would save money and the local community would have an influx of money for main street, and role models for the youth.
1
I live in a rural area by choice and work full-time for a well-known company as a telecommuter and make a good living. Most of my experience is from working in bigger cities through the years. No large company in their right mind would ever come here. No one is educated. Yes, you graduate from HS but the education system is awful. Even in manufacturing you need a certain education level. No one has a work ethic. Trying to find dependable and reliable help is next to impossible. There is no airport within an hour's drive and those are small so it's expensive to fly. There is not enough population density to support any kind of transportation network. Our Internet is spotty at best. This is not a recipe for success for any company. I would never start a business here that relied on hiring people for these reasons.
7
I started out in a place like that. Around junior year of high school, everybody divided into two categories -- those who realized we live in a diverse economic society so they needed to get a good education and be prepared to go where the employment was that their skills allowed them to tap into, and those who wanted to stay in their safe cocoon with their families and their familiar places, and didn't further prepare themselves. The latter group is now the old, under-educated white folks that populate those places. For them it's simply too late; nothing any government can do will reverse that.
5
You are right - in my hometown (Florida panhandle) after graduation some kids would buy a trailer and park it in their parents yard, behind their parents trailer.
I don't understand reinventing the wheel.
You have what was the longest undefended border in the world where North of the border like here in the Eastern Townships of Quebec or north of NY21 the economy North of the border the rural economy and the small cities, villages, towns and farms are thriving.
I remember when NY21 represented to many in Montreal what prosperity and America looked like. I am only 70 but I remember poverty was this side of the border in conservative Quebec and conservative Ontario. I remember Duplesis' Quebec and Robarts' Ontario and the poverty on our side of the Maine New Brunswick border.
I love America and for the most part I love its citizens. I have watched the deterioration of life in America's rural areas for 50 years and I am disgusted but mainly dispirited. I don't understand your conservatism. I don't know why people vote against the best interests of their children and grandchildren. I do not understand why NY21 elects a Republican when it is 45 minutes from Montreal or Ottawa and the agriculture and rural areas are thriving and real estate including farmland is valuable and its citizens are living what was once the American dream?
I don't understand why American farmers want our farmers to suffer the same stress and disappointment they face rather than aspire to the good health, education and security our farmers enjoy.
53
You don't have Fox News in Canada.
The GOP's 50-year propaganda project continues to pay off, exhorting it's watchers/listeners that all of their problems are the fault of "the left." They're suspicious of education and expertise; very rich men like Hannity join their lamentations against "the elite." It's been the most powerful brainwashing effort of my lifetime. In a free society there's no reason for people to cleave to that harmful nonsense. There's sensible information available all around them. The dopamine hit of not being to blame for their difficult lives is evidently too hard to go cold turkey on.
Maybe fewer people driving 30 miles to get their morning coffee (or anything) in a gas guzzling pickup is ultimately better for our planet. This was a secondary reaction of mine to the news that Vermont's rural towns are faltering.
1
I wish there was a simple answer to this situation but there is none. We can talk about creating a more fluid system of education, better internet systems or transportation among so many things. I don't believe it is about city vs. rural only. The problems of people stuck in a city ghetto or on a failing rural farm are really not so different as they involve the constantly shifting flow of opportunities in our culture and whether a person is ready to deal with a ready to deal with a speed of change unequaled in human history.
Obviously as we fight over the scraps for money and power we the older generation see only blearily the direction our younger generation must take to form a more just, inclusive and prosperous society. Considering how fast the younger folks in my family figure out a computer, solve a technical problem or accept differences of race or gender they can create that society assuming that the global warming we have left to them does not swamp them completely.
Perhaps this is a cop out or perhaps I am just feeling old.
1
Yeah the recession recovery bypassed rural America. But let's remember many of those areas rejected the stimulus package for the sole purpose of "stigginit" to Pres. Obama.
Rural hospitals are closing, keeping families away. The ACA would have kept those hospitals open. But they rejected it.
They could elect politicians who could and want to devise a better school funding system than property taxes (which screws over rural communities as much as urban ones). Instead, they focus on electing politicians for the purpose of sticking it to big cities for problems that are their own.
19
These areas are dominated by corporate employers like Walmart, the largest private employer in the country, and McDonald's, and together these corporations take all disposable income leaving not a dime of profit in local pockets. What mega-corporations don't hoover up local hospitals take with their unregulated prices. A recent article showed that two entities -- Walmart and hospital corporations -- are the biggest employers in every single state. The effect is Walmart heiresses build crystal palace museums and hospital executives make gazillions while french fryers and nurse's aides make $7.25 per hour. We need to raise the minimum wage, sue Walmart for unfair trade practices and hospitals for price-gouging, and give local mom and pop shops a chance.
10
We keep trying to "bring things back" when once the past has been lived it's gone forever. The world needs more educated, better educated workers. Yes we lose manufacturing jobs to automation & cheap labor but those low skill jobs are just going to continue to shrink away. The answer is not the easy fix that you will get from a short term politician, the type we seem to have in the US. Education in America has gone backwards for an entire generation. College is nearly unaffordable for all but the rich or well leveraged. It needs to be free. It once was in America, at least in some places like California which experienced it's greatest economic expansion in the last century fueled by those it educated for free. We also need to be more connected. AT&T was a monopoly and at the government's behest the entire country was wired for telephones whether it was profitable or not. When the telecom industry was circling the bowl in 2002, the government should have done a big infrastructure initiative and put fiber optic cable everywhere for high speed internet and hdtv. If we all had the opportunity for education and a chance to participate in the modern economy I believe the prosperity would be more equally shared between the different parts of our society!
3
Here in Oregon, we have a somewhat bifurcated economy: a few wealthy urban areas (I live in one of them), and a lot of rural land. We have made some decent progress stitching these together by building a greener economy. Solar panel and wind turbine installation are skilled, blue-collar jobs that pay well and are located in rural areas. Some lumber towns are sputtering back to life thanks to manufacturing glued-laminated timber, being used to renewably supplant the use of steel beams in high-rises.
It's true that rural areas don't have the population density or educational attainment that cities do, but they can produce food and energy like no urban area can. Those are the competitive advantages, and we will prove ourselves wise if we work together to maximize their production.
3
This might sound crazy - but is it possible they invest heavily in marijuana crop production?
1
It would seem much of this article is based on manufacturing employment. I live in an area that watched coal mining jobs disappear. The overall population is stagnant or shrinking. Yet "service type" jobs are holding their own or expanding. The population average age is getting older. There are a lot of retirees here. The pace of life is slower, the traffic is less congested and cost of living reasonable. The population is concentrating more in smaller cities particularly those offering services like health care. We have decent access to larger cities for entertainment and shopping forays. This is actually a nice place to retire . We have plenty of wildlife, scenic areas , fishing and golf. Every time my wife an I travel to a large metropolitan area we come back gratified we don't have to put up with the maddening traffic congestion there, every day. This area is not devoid of manufacturing as some smaller innovative firms are popping up. Our state and local governments are putting a concerted effort into broadband development and completing construction of a decent road net. While economic necessity is forcing some to relocate, a lot of retirees have a decent enough income that they can enjoy the area. This factor seems to get overlooked by some of the statistics used in this type of analysis.
4
It seems to me that much like how the case of climate change is ultimately going to force retreat and retrenchment that the shifting economic landscape is going to do the same. And this isn't a wholly bad thing. Though it's painful for some people and there's going to be some real loss there is also opportunity. We can take the opportunity to re-wild many places. This is good for climate change, it's good for biodiversity, it'll be good for new tourism. Not everywhere will disappear but the history of human habitation is that of growth and decline. We have many examples of formerly impressive ancient cities that declined to wild areas. Managing this migration is going to be hard but it brings opportunities for development along high speed transportation corridors to widen the urban areas into the exurbs and increasing population density in smart and sustainable ways. Bringing people together is never bad. Having more open land is never bad. We just need to be honest with where we're at and where we're going in order to manage this.
2
So, here is one thought, and I welcome comments. At least for the areas that are not terribly far from "urban centers," better transportation (of all kinds) might at least help. Assuming that people do indeed want to work, better access with fewer difficulties commuting might allow people from rural areas to work in a more urban environment, then return home at night to their "idyllic town."
1
Governor Sqwalker of Wisconsin turned down the opportunity of a good rail connection between Madison and Milwaukee. There's a lot of land and a lot of small, failing towns between those cities. With better transport between the two larger cities, many of those small towns could be revitalized as residential and small business areas. Ditto for building better transport along the lake. And here's an additional plus: it's pretty there unlike in Queens. For the average American (including those with skills) living in NY City would be their worst distopian nightmare. Let's not force more Americans there.
The great depression started in rural America long before it came to Wall Street or Main Street. One important factor that brought rural areas back from economic collapse was a commitment to develop and improve rural infrastructure. The paving of rural roads, rural electrification, flow control projects, hydroelectric projects and soil conservation are examples of investments that contributed to rural economic recovery.
Two infrastructure improvements that can help the rural economy today are insuring robust digital access everywhere in the country and expanding natural gas distribution lines into rural areas. Access to all forms of digital technology supports business growth and education. Natural gas is an inexpensive form of energy. Areas that have access to both have a completive advantage over areas that must rely on other forms of energy.
From a purely corporate point of view these two infrastructure improvements are not attractive investments. But then again neither was rural electrification nor paving rural roads.
4
People used to get up off their butts and move when they needed a job. Now they expect everything to come to them. Talk about lazy and entitled...
3
All rural people are not bigots and racists. Nor are we all undereducated and hicks. Really there are some real terrible reverse discrimination comments here and it's sad. I did not vote for Trump, I have a masters degree and I live in a fairly rural place. This is true of many people here. There is opportunity if you're willing to commute. I'm gonna have a good laugh when climate change devastates these people who wouldn't know how to survive without electricity for more than a day. Good luck with your high tech skills when there's no food and your water is inundated with salt water. There will come a time in the not too distant future when Americans will really need each other from the urban sector to the rural communities. Be careful what bridges you choose to burn. On another note I have watched very innovative and strong rural communities finding new economic models that will sustain them even through the changes coming our way with climate change. People need to open their eyes. American ingenuity is not exclusively an urban trait.
224
Laura, the gist of this article is that rural poverty is a genuinely difficult problem. Put more plainly, there is no low-hanging fruit left in the form of easy or obvious solutions. This means that all of us are going to have to think harder. Your suggestion seems to be that people should move to rural areas to help mitigate global warming. As you said, "there is opportunity if you're willing to commute". I've spent a lot of time in less-densely-populated areas of New England, and people there spend large amounts of every day driving, especially pick-up trucks and heavy awd vehicles. Encouraging more of this is not exactly a step in the right direction! I would also suggest that anywhere within commuting distance of Boston isn't exactly rural. New England equivalents of the counties described in this article would be found more in northern Maine and northeast Vermont.
5
Why do assume city dwellers couldn't figure out how to desalinate their water,
grow and can food? Or that we cannot connect with enough neighbors to help each other?
The problem isn't where any American lives, the problem is our perceptions of how others live is really distorted.
We're all human with the same three basic needs. Why does everyone posture that we are all so "different"?
3
Your comment wreaks of the superiority complex that you claim urban dwellers have toward rural communities. As this article points out, your rural communities are already dying off.
Those "strong rural communities that are finding new economic models" aren't doing it by themselves. They're relying on university-educated graduates from top schools, and on investments from Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The integration is already happening, it's coming FROM the cities TO the countryside. and you don't have to be so snooty about it.
People don't move to the city just to move to the city. They move to the city because it has opportunity and a lifestyle they like. They like living in a place where there's top entertainment, major sports, good food and Stuff To Do. If you don't need that, fine.
And if you think climate change is only going to affect city dwellers, you are sadly mistaken.
3
I am a tech worker (cybersecurity researcher) who lives in one of these rural towns. The cost of housing is nothing short of spectacular. I own 10-acres on a river in a beautiful 2400 sf home for which I paid $200,000. (The average home price is around $75,000.) I moved here deliberately for the cost of housing - knowing that I (even with a high-six figure income) could never afford a house in New York or San Francisco. The answer for these communities lies in remote work arrangements.
There are many, many jobs that having nothing to do with programming in the tech sphere - that individuals who are motivated can learn in far less than a 4-year college time frame. And there are other jobs outside of technology that can be done online as well! However, the local community college doesn't even offer a computer science class beyond graphic design...!
The jobs are out there and going unfilled. The inexpensive housing exists in the rural areas. And, a lot of people (myself included) do NOT want to live in large, congested urban spaces and spend all their time sitting in traffic. I enjoy walking out into a beautiful, quiet space, breathing fresh air - and then walking back in to my well-paying work.
We need infrastructure and updated training and employers willing to look outside of the tech "hubs" for employees. This problem is not unsolvable.
9
I did the opposite and moved from LI to upstate NY, commuting distance from Albany, back in 1988 since there was no way I could afford a house on LI. What saved me is a free education. My mother worked at Adelphi and I went to Hofstra for free. I'm solidly in the upper middle class where I live. Education is key.
4
Yes, New York residents are fortunate that state universities are tuition free for residents. I hope more states will pick up on this trend to offer free tuition to in state students.
5
This has been a long time coming. The population of my hometown, a small manufacturing city in Western New York, peaked at 45,000 in the year 1930. By 1960, it was down 7% to 42,000. In 1963, the city’s Republicans ran on the following platform: “We believe that the most serious problem facing Jamestown is the lack of jobs and the possibility that still more jobs may be lost in the future. We pledge to take an aggressive part in the attempt to convince outside industry that Jamestown is the right place for new plants. We pledge to actively seek ways to help local industry so that it may grow prosperous in Jamestown, and not seek to move away.” Despite this early call-to-action, Jamestown is now home to less than 31,000 people.
4
Not that long ago, similar sentiments were expressed about the futures of central cities.
6
The problem is that the population is self-segregating into different neuro-tribes. People who have critical thinking skills have moved from the country to the city for opportunities and to be with other like-minded individuals.
This leaves a population bereft of critical thinking skills in the country. There is no opportunity for these rural individuals who lack enough critical thinking skills; anyone foolish enough to be played by donald trump doesn't have what it takes to be in the jobs of the future (or even the jobs of today).
If there is any genetic component to these traits then the children of the critical thinkers will also be more likely to be critical thinkers and the people in the country... not so much.
6
I didn't get none of them critical thinking skills cause I got bad DandA from the folks in my neuro-tribe. But, it seems to me, speaking un-critical thinking skillfully, that y'all CTS folks are probably also at least +5sers. Soooo, why don't y'all figger out how to do some jean splicing to cure our recessive genetic CTS components. You could sell it as a kit at Wal-Mart and Amazon. Then, when one of y'all says "y'all cain't fix stoopid", y'all could say, "not so, rube". Then send em off to Wally World. It would be so cool if all of us had critical thinking skills like y'all smart folks in Bezerkeley.
4
Consider Philippines, where as far as I know, you can only have a middle-class lifestyle if you have family members working in US sending money back home.
Seems like a solution - no?
1
There is great value in knowing what you don’t know, you don’t know. For example, progressives and most of the media tells us the greatest threats to the American people are: Donald Trump and the Republicans, the one percenters, tech giants and climate change. The real fact is, this is nothing further from the truth.
The seat of this nations great power lies comfortably in the fly over states. In those dilapidated, hard scrabble towns that, according to progressives, need lifted up and brought into the 21st century, on par with urban dwellers. You see these country bumpkins control our nation’s supply of food. Imagine what havoc farmers could wreak on this nation if they collectively decided to sit out for a couple of years. The farming community could grind this country and its economy to a halt in a matter of months, without ever raising a voice or firing a shot. Having fewer farmers means more power for those who are left.
True, unadulterated power need not make itself known, show its wealth or its hand. Let the rest of the nation entwine itself in the circus of politics, the farmers control the bread.
3
Farmers have tried just what you say. Look up the history of the NFO (National Farmer's Organization) that tried to raise farm prices by holding output off the market. It didn't work and it never will, because if it did start to work its impact on prices would bring the output back onto the market and thus cause the holding action to collapse, which is exactly how free markets work. Today's farming is even more capital dependent -- the idea that farmers could pass up getting their output sold and repaying the loans they need each year is wildly unrealistic.
2
Agreed John, trying to unionize farmers is about as easy as herding cats. Understand that as the small farmers make way for the mega farmers, the control over crop and animal production becomes concentrated and thus easier to manage and control. Don't underestimate the power of agriculture has over our country just because you haven't seen it.
1
Kurt
Sorry but farming will never reach the concentration it would need to achieve market power (monopoly) as you suggest. Mega farming has only occurred in a few distinct subsets of agriculture such as soybeans and corn in the midwest and certain crops on the West Coast, but even in those subsets the number of producers generally is in the thousands and the idea of concentrated action, e.g. "sitting it out for a couple of years", is a pipe dream.
1
I'm not surprised, but no less appalled, that the author would blithely suggest everyone in rural America could just move to NYC and San Francisco if we only relaxed the zoning codes enough. He's moving around widgets in his mind, not human beings.
This type of blinkered approach to life and public policy is why the economics profession has so badly failed our nation and planet. They seem to suffer from some sort of collective autism.
But even by the standards of the profession his suggestion is ridiculous. Does he really think demand for San Francisco is perfectly in inelastic, such that it is impossible to overbuild so much that you've destroyed everything that made it appealing in the first place, and you're left with an overbuilt hellhole as everyone abandons it? "Nothing can be done, you're toast," I can hear him say.
16
I live in one of those declining communities in Otsego County, NY. A lot of what is said in this article applies to our situation.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, this county was more prosperous. Small family-owned dairy farms were the economic backbone of our towns and village. Most of us were not rich, but we lived middle class lives with middle class values.
All that has changed. Most of my neighbors are like me, aging and retired. It's getting harder and harder to sustain civic organizations. Young people with promise leave because there is just no opportunity here. School populations are dropping. Housing is deteriorating.
Acknowledging that some of these communities will die requires acknowledging the suffering that goes along with their ending. Those who remain include larger and larger proportions of people who a damaged in some way. They are not qualified for jobs and, perhaps, don't want them. They used drugs of various kinds, too often overdosing. Their obituaries rarely state the cause of death, but when people in their 20s, 30s and 40s die suddenly, everyone wonders.
I don't know the answer, but I am absolutely certain demanding individual responsibility isn't going to make anything better. If people can't or won't take the steps to fix what's wrong with them, the only result is going to be dying communities and festering misery.
7
indicative of the problem: At least this author admits he has no idea what he's writing about. "I’ve lived most of my life in big cities. I don’t pretend to understand what it’s like to live in a small town or on a family farm, or how it feels when all the jobs in a community seem to be fading away. I do spend a lot of time thinking about how the economic changes of the last several decades have undercut many American workers." How about the authors of the various studies he cites? Time to wake up and smell the small-town coffee: Policy wonks born and raised and living in big cities are 0% qualified to think about or write about the dreams and needs and preferences of Americans who live in small towns and rural areas. And they don't look deeply into obvious root issues like tax policies that give vast sums to urban/suburban-based corporations and their wealthiest employees; that favor capital gains over small business earnings; etc. Or public funding structures that create well-equipped and well-staffed public schools in wealthy suburbs while rural schools struggle to sustain teachers and facilities. Or the decimation of public land agency budgets. There's a few places to start. But the policy wonks want to sit and think some more and try to figure it out from their city desks, and then impose their vision on our world, our lives. Are you really surprised this approach has failed and will always fail?
3
One way to get rural areas up to the 21st century standards is to upgrade the internet. In rural areas the fastest speeds you can get are maybe 25 megabits per second... paltry compared to city internet speeds. Roads and infrastructure like everyplace else in America are also in need of major repair. This may not necessarily kick start their economies but it wouldn't hurt to try.
1
Transforming rather than "saving" the rural economy may be the answer. First, despite there being an abundance of open land in rural America, much of it is off-limits. The recreation economy is thriving but requires access to land and other resources. Counties with recreational amenities (mountains, lakes, rivers, etc.) have stronger economies and growing populations than those that do not.
Secondly, while the agricultural sector is presently locked in a (heavily subsidized) race to see who can pay the least to workers and drain the land of its vitality, the need to address climate change alone will soon require widespread adoption of improved agricultural practices. This form of production is only more expensive if externalities such as carbon pollution and soil depletion are excluded from its value.
Neither of these are quick fixes but neither is anything else. One thing is certain, what drove rural America to its current state won't be its savior.
1. Did it occur to you that most of our National Parks are located in rural areas? Ditto for National Monuments, state parks and so on. These "rural" areas are responsible for large contributions to our national surplus in Services. Do you think the four million visitors to Yellowstone every year are sleeping under the stars and eating jack rabbits?
2. You obviously are oblivious to modern agricultural practices. The Dust Bowl is long gone. That $500,000 combine is connected to the internet as its operator monitors the computer outputs on soil conditions and the robustness of the various seed varieties that may be planted in any field to take advantage of micro growing conditions. CPS does most of the steering. The "producer" has time to monitor the Chicago Board of Trade while pondering the prices levels for his product at the local market, and checking weather reports in Brazil. Eco-fallow techniques were adopted decades ago to minimize soil erosion and soil fatigue...Agriculture today is high-tech today. It has to be to produce the food to feed a world that is intent on calling billions more people to the dinner table.
3. Rural America doesn't need a savior. It is the urban archipelagos that are operating on borrowed time. You can't produce the food, energy and water that you consume in huge quantities. If you don't start reflecting on your future, even Rural America won't be able to bail you out as it always has.
1
These small towns still themselves had a farm/town split across their populations. Though a community might have been largely agriculture-based and supported in a significant way by farming and farm service economies, many of them were also bedroom communities for good, skilled jobs at nearby, oftentimes larger towns. If they also went away there was no future for these people's kids there.
Schools consolidated merely to survive and still provide education in these areas. If your hometown was one that lost its school - - well the result of that is more devastating than can be calculated. Who moves with kids to a town without a school in it, or that has to bus 15+ miles to get to one? A small community with a 50+ year old school, with teachers that probably taught 2 or more generations of the same families that just disappears? That's literally like tearing the heart out of a community and leaving it for dead. Add in the dwindling prospects of running the family farm vs. giant agribusiness and it's not surprise why people's kids of have moved on.
There are Americans all over the country that would like to raise their families in places like Smalleville. That's not just a fictional town, it's where many of us and our parents and grandparents grew up, but this decline is almost 30 years old now. Reaganomics? Does anyone remember the need for Farm Aid concerts?
1
These rural counties have lots of cheap land and labor. Why not establish retirement communities with comfortable inexpensive housing, golf courses, man made lakes, etc.etc.etc. With baby boomers retiring there will be demand for this type lifestyle. In Florida we have The Villages and Sun City. The local folk could be employed in these communities. High tech not necessary. And , if necessary, the government could provide incentives.
2
I now live in a rural area, and if it suburbanizes, I plan to move to a county that is steadily losing population. There the average age is older and older; a few kids go into agriculture but most must move to the cities to find rewarding work.
You will not attract those Gen Z or younger Millennials who dream of farming to the rural life without providing them with affordable land and a way to make a living with sustainable agriculture. It can be done, but it takes strong State and Federal support.
3
I grew up in one of the poorest counties in Missouri and likely one of the poorest in the country. I do not have any idea how to turn things around in the extraordinarily poor rural areas. The lack of any meaningful intellectual stimulation and the feeling of being a million miles from civilization drives college educated kids to leave in droves. The thought of ever moving back triggers panic attacks for me and I suspect many others that left for better opportunities. And, those left behind cling vigorously to the social structure in place and distrust anyone that leaves for college and comes back, which I suspect makes things even more isolating for those that may choose to return.
2
I'd be interested to see some data analysis of Vermont, the most rural State in the US. Are they doing as poorly as the examples shown in the article? If not, are they doing something different? Not that they don't have similar problems of other rural areas, but people I know there are not complaining, they still love it. Comments?
1
The article clearly identifies the issue but should embrace the obvious solution bravely. Yes, return some areas to the bison.
The sparse population density was a necessity when each family needed a plot of land to live off of, but today it impedes progress. The rural population should be a concern to us all but the solution is to live in higher density areas. Urbanization is a global, positive, and unstoppable thing.
Even the single family house of the suburbs as the ideal American dream is not sustainable: it involves reliance on cars and is too expensive on a large scale.
1
I don't see much value, literal or figurative, in trying to stem the demographic trends that are leading to the exodus of people from rural areas. Rural means fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, fewer resources, in a country whose wealth and industries are changing dramatically. You cannot save the small towns.
Having the programs and policies in place is important. Also important is what can be expected of a community to access those policies? What happens if a community chooses not to pursue economic development because it may change community demographics in ways that residents do not desire?
1
The author mentioned high output dollar amounts per worker in a few locations. I suspect that most of the money flows elsewhere and the amount left in the area where the productivity occured is minimal.
I was also surprised to see no mention of rural healthcare, or the lack thereof. Breadwinners often end up giving up whatever work they had close to home so they can commute long distances to reach jobs that come with benefits that include health insurance. Beyond that, when the population density is low and the population that can pay for care is lower, there is no incentive for health care providers to locate in the area. Ensuring that everybody has coverage would go a long ways towards making it possible to access healthcare reasonably close to home in rural areas.
1
Factories are so efficient that they just don't need as many employees as they used to, and big construction projects wont help as much as they used to because construction technology is so good now, you don't need a lot of people to build a road or whatever.
The huge advantage of UBI is it doesn't take some huge new bureaucracy and the benefits are universal. Just have the IRS deposit money in people's bank accounts once a month.
UBI is probably the only doable answer, but as long as the rural population votes Republican, it won't happen. It'll take a huge cultural shift to start making any real progress.
It seems more efficient to have people move to where the jobs are than ask taxpayers to subsidize businesses to move to rural communities. It's ironic that thousands of people are leaving their homes and families to move to our country for any kind of work, but our own citizens are reluctant to move to another town in their own country.
334
This is true, but the burden of moving costs is on the employee. If you own a home in a rural area, you can't sell it, and chances are you can't afford a new home in a larger city unless you unload your old home first. If you are renter, rents in major metros are sky high and deposits generally require you have 2 months in rent saved. For low skill workers, you aren't saving at your rural job and your new job in a major metro isn't paying your relocation expenses and probably won't pay enough for you to afford your rent. Plus are you leaving family that needs your help? Aging parents? An adult who spent 20 years working in coal and owns a home and takes care of aging parents in a county in WV that is losing population has neither the skills nor monetary resources to go work for Amazon in NYC.
4
True. But for weird reasons, many who reject the idea of subsidizing businesses in rural communities, are at the same time complaining about the lack of public subsidies when there are not enough businesses in struggling (because overpopulated) urban communities. What is the difference between rural poor communities and urban poor communities, which justify that some deserve taxpayers subsidies and some don't?
2
Tens of thousands of people commute from the rural Central Valley in Northern California to the Bay Area every day to work lower-paying jobs at the big tech firms. They can't afford housing in the Bay. And the traffic is horrendous.
This is true in every big tech city in the U.S. What would be wrong with Apple or Google opening a satellite facility in Stockton, for example.
The real problem in our economy is not "agglomeration", it's "monopsyny" which is when just one or two companies control an entire industry and thus have control over the all the jobs. The TImes had a good piece on this a couple months back, apparently Porter didn't read it. The domination of our economy by a handful of corporations is not and never will be good for the economy, rural or urban. It hollows out the middle class and leaves a huge wealth gap between the 1% and the rest of us. Ask your average NYer who is taking the subway to work if they think they are successful economically just because they have a job in a "thriving tech hub"
3
I bicycled across the United States in 1986. One thing I observed throughout the eastern part of the US were the abandoned factories near the center of every town that bore a famous name like "Westclox". In many areas of the Appalachians, the roads are simply to sinuous to support a factory that manufacture goods that need to ship in bulk. Materials have become so specialized that a single factory town can't support a sub-supplier infrastructure.
Call centers are the perfect business for rural areas - because people don't need to gather to work. They can work from home or from a share workspace.
2
I live in one of these dying rural towns and there are two things the article doesn't address.
!) If it's anything like the town I live in, the people don't try too hard to change anything. For example, a local bank gave Main Street 5,000 dollars to make a "Welcome to P...." sign to put up at the highway exit. Twenty years have passed and the sign still hasn't been made. Always an excuse as to why.
That attitude filters to everything else. There is a vo-tech 30 miles away that teaches every computer skill a person could need, teaches restaurant management, nursing, all kinds of medical tech, auto mechanics, building tech, you name it. There is also a major research university and a smaller college within 30 miles. Nobody wants to go to any of them. Nobody here wants an education. They want jobs but they don't want to think.
2) Tech industries and manufacturers now look at quality of life and not just tax breaks when scouting locations. If you were trying to recruit computer geniuses would you locate in a town with no recreation, no movies, no stores beyond Dollar General, no restaurants except McDonalds, no outdoor recreation except for looking at cows or oil wells on flat fields, and where alcoholism and drugs are the major entertainment? I ask teenagers here what they do for fun. They tell me they go to the lake and get drunk. Is this the kind of place you'd want to live, work, and raise kids?
616
I read somewhere recently a good article that described there situation. These Americans grew up in a world where there jobs were physically demanding, potentially dangerous and somewhat simple. And they were fine with that arrangement because they were able to support a family with this job.
That arrangement is gone now and they want it back, more importantly they are drawn to politicians who promise to bring it back.
That's a brutal assessment. Is it your state? We don't see that here in central VA. In the coal fields, yes. Maybe these places need to dry up, like Western towns from the Gold Rush. Their day is done.
Excuse me, Linda, but YOU are living in this dying hell. Why?
1
Surprised the author ignores the two obvious reasons for the decline of rural America:
NAFTA and China joining the WTO.
1
One way to revitalize rural areas would be to accept refugees and settle them in under populated areas. This would bring people who could open (and shop in) stores, children to be taught, so schools could stay open, parishioners to fill the now-empty churches, as well as workers for farms. Of course this solution would be anathema to the people it would be rescuing - and salt to the wound that their salvation would be in the hands of "those people."
21
There was a story recently about how immigrants did just what you're describing. Very hard workers from Central America arrived and rejuvenated a chicken plant, which in turn caused stores and restaurants to open up, churches to once again thrive, etc. Deporting these workers en masse would lead to the town returning to its former, degrading state. The success of GOP propaganda means the poor people remaining in the failed town blame their woes on the same people who worked so hard to revive them. What can we do about a group of people who refuse to turn away from disinformation? We used to have the Fairness Doctrine, which required some honesty in communication over public airwaves, in part to keep audiences from succumbing to lies. Reagan made sure to get rid of that. Limbaugh, Fox, etc. have thrived since.
Today, America is a vast territory ruled and exploited by a handful of city states. My America is over. No amount of political ghost dancing in the media will save it.
1
Yet, via gerrymandering and the electoral college rural areas have outsized influence in state and national politics.
5
I disagree. If you're arguing that "city states" are ruling over rural America, you've got things backward. 1st, much of rural America is subsidized by the cities and, 2nd, the electoral system grants far too much power to rural states. In many ways, it is the more populated, urban areas that must dance to the tune of regressive, small-state politics.
4
What is the name of the dog in the picture with the cattle rancher?
Is it a good dog?
Because, honestly, that is what we old rural people care about most.
2
The tone, implied conclusion and lack of imagination in this article pretty much confirms most rural peoples fears and alienation. Why don't we solve many problems at once, and not corner our future into doomed urban conglomerates?
- High speed rail networks connecting rural and exurban centers to urban centers.
- Free public tuition to those earning below a reasonable to-be-determined threshold.
- Mobilization through a transfer of subsidies, budgets and the development of programs for sustainable energy, food production and other sustainable resource management and ecological restoration.
Just because the "Tech economy" is highly profitable, FOR NOW, does not mean that we should sacrifice all other necessary economic activity to its throne, leaving our food production to robots and chemicals, our energy production to a handful of prosperous fossil fuel counties, essentially all of our resource management, extraction and processing to an automated technocracy that will drive us to extinction.
2
"Doomed urban conglomerates". Everything's doomed, of course - I mean, one day the sun will explode. I think a better way to look at it is, "what's happening now, and what do I need to do to adapt to it?" I think staying in a dying town or county is not a good way to approach the problem.
That said, the Amish are still there. Look to them and adopt their methods. Get friends, neighbors, etc. and realize you'll need something to trade for medical care, manufactured goods, gasoline, etc.
1
Using the Amish as an example of adaptation is hilarious. You literally cannot imagine a flourishing, modern rural economy. It is our alienation from what we consume ultimately that drives this, along with social pressures. The fundamental problem of rural America is that of the American economy as a whole. Monopolization, economic inequality and alienation from the biosphere. The tastes of city dwellers, from fashion trends to consumerism (Whole Foods, antiques/rustic crafts) suggests a yearning for a life more connected to this material reality.
1
People face this same issue in the cities--our jobs changing, declining, evaporating; layoffs; lack of work. Yes somehow only lack of jobs in rural areas matter to our politicians. My own field, advertising, is shrinking and shucking workers of all ages, but no one ever talks about saving advertising workers. My POV is it's part of every era, jobs morph and disappear. (How many buggy or button makers do you know?) Our school system should educate people about the probably brief span of the careers they're studying for. ... which brings me to another observation: city workers are usually better educated and better able to adapt, which the places mentioned in this article are many times anti-science and against the type of education that might help them in the end.
5
A prospective picture with a couple of puffed-up coastal megalopolises who, despite already bursting at the seams yet relentlessly keep tabs on much of the available workforce. Next comes middle-scale cities that slowly deplete themselves in the process of feeding larger agglomerations. On the opposite end of the spectrum, rural areas who in a steady stream are simply being emptied out. Mainly, because that's the vision of the future currently being sold to the go-getter generation.
As a mirror-image, megalopolis is where top-tiers elites have established themselves, within their magnetic sphere the courting citizenry merely eke out a living while tending to the ruler's needs. Then arrives middle-sized cities = middle-class income brackets perhaps on the brink of collapsing while further off, rural areas (oddly representing the 99% backstock of the population) drop off the equation and are on track towards massive pauperism. Certainly not a sustainable picture.
2
"... relax zoning rules in dense cities like New York and San Francisco, so that more affordable housing could be built to receive newcomers from rural Wisconsin or Kentucky, and they wouldn’t need the income of an investment banker or a computer scientist to afford to live there."
You seem to be describing a group of people who live where there are few economic opportunities and have few skills to bring to the areas with where there is economic opportunity. If this is really the case, the problem would seem to be intractable.
1
Porter is describing the children, who must find opportunity elsewhere, not the adults, who will be left behind.
The people in these rural and small town areas have made the choice, over several generations, to remain where they were born and raised. I understand the desire to do that, but it has come at a high cost. This "stay put" lifestyle has become ingrained in the culture, and it has helped make these people less skilled than their peers in urban areas.
We can't save these towns with subsidies; the economics simply don't work. The people who live there have to make the choice: stay and continue to fall behind, or move to where the opportunities are.
7
I've had a soft spot for rural America since childhood. I remember reading in Scholastic Scope in 4th grade how family farmers couldn't pay their debt and were losing their farm. I remember reading "Where the Red Fern Grows" and watching "Old Yeller", stories that depict the wonders and dangers of living far away from cities.
But I'm sad to say that all changed after I witnessed how willingly many voters in the rural counties latched on to the racial animus of the current president. Whereas my first reaction to economic stagnation in rural counties used to be sympathy, now it's indifference. Intellectually, I know that's wrong. But emotionally, it is what it is.
29
It started way before el Dono. Look back 50 years to George Wallace. Construction workers demonstrating FOR the war in Vietnam, & by association FOR all the social & economic hooey that the Goldwater-Nixon-inspired 'think-tanks' came up with. Democrats lurching to the right (WJ Clinton steering AWAY from FDR/LBJ) to reclaim the 'center', & leaving out Archie Bunker.
Read Thomas Frank for the definitive explanation of how working class America got where we find it today.
1
If you want to live and raise your kids in the country, you must do what country folk used to do and many still do. Grow something, build something, repair something, sell something and help your neighbors do the same. Real country living is not about working for a corporation for a paycheck. It is about independence, self-sufficiency. extended family and community. The point of rural living is not to get rich. It is a lifestyle with different values and priorities. No government, local, state or national, is under any obligation to "create jobs" for rural residents but they should do no economic harm to the small farmers and manufacturers, family business owners, Main Street merchants and community banks and utility co-ops.
23
Good luck with self-sufficiency if you don't own some good land & have access to water. You can supplement your meals with home-grown produce, but the labor & money required to construct buildings (legally, to code, utilities, etc . . ..) repair machinery, raise livestock (at a scale that provides income) leaves open the question of how your kids will pay for college, or how you will pay for your health care, or that of your parents. I'm all for 'Community', but bake sales don't go very far towards covering modern-day medical bills. You might as well be recommending a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as the cure for American inequality.
6
So what happens if you solve for those expensive things on a national level -- healthcare and education? Other countries have and when they do, it frees up innovation in other areas. What if the answer to rural stagnation *is* universal healthcare and free college tuition?
4
Great point, JC! If only Bernie Sanders and Democrats would make the economic argument for single-payer, universal healthcare, they might pick up some votes in all the rural areas and the Rust Belt. BTW Healthcare is the biggest employer in many rural counties.
It would seem that a lot of the call center and customer service work that is now done by people in other countries could just as easily be accomplished by people working from home here. The problem is also directly related to consolidation of agriculture and increasing mono-cultures. We've taken farmers out of farming. A question I have no good answers for is how do rural communities organize? The problems are roughly the same as disadvantaged urban neighborhoods in terms of education, unemployment, crime, drugs, but at least the density offers some hope of collective work. I don't begin to know how that works when the same number of people who are within walking distance in a city are spread out over miles and miles.
1
The people working in call centers and remote customer service in countries like India are much better educated than the people available for such work in rural parts of the US. Americans with equivalent education levels won't stay down on the farm and work for call center wages.
3
Ya know, I remember the outsourcing boom of the late 90's early 2000's and how cities tried to get help. Politicians from rural America said that making outsourcing harder would be one step from literal communism and that we city folk being screwed should "move to where the jobs are." Just sayin
3
I moved away from a rural area as soon as I graduated from college (one of the few from my small town who went to college...). I couldn't stand the small-mindedness, the bigotry, the sense of entitlement ("all" grads of our high school were pretty much "guaranteed" a job on the line at the local auto plant -- that is, until the plant closed down a few years later), the anti-science bias (soo many people believed in Creationism and took the Bible as the literal Word of God...) and the suspicion and even outright mocking of anyone who was educated. I now live in one of the biggest cities in the U.S., full of creative, diverse and upwardly mobile people, full of great lectures and art and culture and foods from all over the world. We have "mom and pop" start-ups everywhere -- from restaurants to clothing boutiques and book shops (!). The younger-skewing population prefers these to the chain stores. Meanwhile, the small rural town I left is mouldering in its crime, rundown housing, joblessness, opiate addiction and general hopeless longing for a golden (probably imaginary) Norman Rockwellian past that will never come again (mostly because it was a past that kept women and people of color "in their places" and celebrated the dominance of old white men and factory work...). I go back from time to time and it's disheartening, but not surprising, to see the decay. But I don't know what anyone can do about it. Most of the folks left there DON'T want to learn or progress. It's sad.
61
President Obama called it more than a decade ago: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." The GOP has been stoking these fires for years and the smoke has covered up obscene transfers of wealth to their richest donors.
I worry that rural America will have the same sort of epiphany that we’re seeing in France. The biggest difference, though, is when our Yellow Jackets take to the streets, they’ll be extremely well armed.
115
Ironically, our yellow jackets would be demanding the things that the politicians they vote for are against. As long as they vote their emotions and not their interests, little cam be done to make things better.
2
Your authors ask what will happen if......This is closing the barn door after all the jobs have gone. Rural America has already lost jobs and is living in poverty, we are already seeing the political fallout. That probably accounts for Trumps success in rural areas. But Trump was a faux populist and none of his policies are designed to benefit rural areas. The real populists of the Gilded Age understood that financiers on Wall Street were draining the money from farmers. The original populists targeted the gold standard and the railroads. Maybe the targets are different now, but the same disparities exist. and its not just the tech businesses. Wall Street and hedge funds have bought up local business and manufacturing, loaded them with debt, and cut wages before sending businesses into bankruptcy and closing businesses. altogether. Where has the money gone? Into the pockets of Wall Street investors.
4
I guess it took the total disaster of Donald Trump for the rest of America to finally see us out here.
I completely object to the defeatist tone of this article. Don't tell me that the thinkers and innovators of this great country can't devise workable solutions for our rural areas, because I believe it can be done.
And as for the commenters who say to just stop whining and move, thanks for your compassion. Lots of our young people do move, just as soon as they have their college diploma in hand. Is it begging the question to say that if good jobs were available, our population would not be dropping as precipitously?
Yes, moving is one option. However, moving would not really offer a solution to many of the rural people still here. Many of them would simply be competing for low-paid jobs in a new place where they can't afford to live because of skyrocketing housing costs. (As we speak, people are fleeing the cities for that very reason.)
It is risky for people over 40 to move without an offer in hand because of the rampant job discrimination which exists for "older" workers.
And of course, it would not make sense for old people who are barely scraping by on meager social security checks to move.
Please give these people some credit for seeing the obvious. It's not just that they don't want to live in the city.
184
What would be an acceptable solution in your eyes? If it's difficult to bring new jobs to rural communities and it's unlikely that the industries of heyday see a revival, that seems to leave the option of increasingly dependence on outside government or charitable assistance, if not relocating. And I don't want to adopts a retaliatory tone, but realistically it strikes me as unfair to expect solutions to distressed communities' problems from the people whom are often dismissed as 'elites' within them.
5
yes 1,000 times to this comment. thanks for your perspective Madeline.
2
And Republicans want to even scrape those social security checks further.
3
Our entire economy is moving away from heavy physical labor and it has hurt all areas where that type of work dominated from 1935-1995. It has disproportionately caused pain to rural America because of the one-note nature of rural economies. Even strong rural economies cannot survive being insular--they have to have something to contribute to the larger regional, national, or international market in order to keep resources flowing into the community.
Though attractive, things like alternative energy will not employ enough people to be a boon for rural economies. Things that will always be required by our society could provide an opportunity. Inpatient mental health care, childhood trauma, and residential substance use recovery facilities could be built in clusters in regions within 150 miles of a metropolitan area. These "treatment recovery hubs" would generate growth in the medical support and service industries (hotels, restaurants). Much of the staffing of such institutions is based on certificate-level training and they take require large staffs. The only problem is that those fields are not well-compensated and would require a shift in our view of the importance of the work.
2
From: Re-dynamising Local Economies in the Age of
Trumpism; https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/S6.pdf
"Progressive coalitions at the city and nation-state level should first of all
develop policies that increase the capacity for the autonomy of citizens and the new economic forces aligned around the commons. . . Additionally, a revived left should offer large numbers of people productive roles in an economy that can actually build the alternative energy technologies, urban food-production systems and housing infrastructures that are needed to face the ravages of environmental decay and climate change. Rather than doing this according to an ideological prescription, the yet-to-be-created new mainstream left should create economic opportunities that will allow people to fulfill their desires for autonomy and a sense of self-worth."
1
"That the land and its people have been so far brought down is explainable only by the failure of the governors to govern, the legislators to legislate, and the judges to judge in the interest of those they are sworn to serve" (Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House).
Except he forgot to say, "the voters who voted."
2
We are a nation of immigrants. People leave every depressed corner of the world to come here and work. Even the native Americans came here to make a living or avoid persecution. And native tribes kept moving from forest to plains, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. We are a species that follows it's livlihood. My ancestors who came here cared not where they went as long as they could live in secure peace and make a living. The ancestors of all the multignerational white families in rural America came for the same reason a little earlier. When cities lose their means of nourishing their inhabitants they shrink. Ultimately they vanish. Look at Palmyra, Petra, Tikal, Akhetaton ... Old and disabled people can't be expected to leave, and they need services, and a few people can be employed in furnishing those services, but towns need to be allowed to shrink and even die.
3
Relax zoning ordinances? You mean instead of Manhattan being gridlock from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. it could be perhaps gridlock 24 hours a day with people working round the clock? You seem to have an unrealistic idea of the ability of major cities to absorb population growth. Oh, and forget the subways--there's a major subway shutdown for 2019.
How about bringing back subsidized housing and creating new centers of growth in mid-sized cities such as Charlotte, or Savannah? Remember when Seattle wasn't known for much?
5
Anne, great comment. I think you propose a very interesting avenue to investigate. I was wondering while reading the article if subsidies might be provided to help people obtain the skills required for the modern economy and if the costs of moving might also be subsidized to places like those you mentioned. I had wondered about a city like Detroit that has been shrinking but has the capacity to be rebuilt without starting from scratch on its (admittedly decrepit) infrastructure. That said, do we risk adding a population of unemployable people in places that can't find jobs for them?
2
The targeted populations have to be interested in obtaining the skills required for the modern economy and be willing to accept a subsidy to move. They denigrate anybody who has the gumption to get an education and leaves so they aren't likely to do the same.
No doubt a complex issue. I sympathize with their plight. But there comes a time to bury the dead and move on if you wish to survive. Those who do not adapt get left behind. Sad but true. And quite frankly, if they want the government to help them, they need to start electing people that truly have their best economic interest at heart. The people they are electing, for whatever the reasons, are slowly killing them.
428
What you and others don't understand Felix is that farmers work for none other than themselves. The absolute last thing a farmer wants is the government meddling in his business. If all goes to hell he knows he can still provide food for his family. Not many of us can say that.
They do vote for their interests. Their interests just happen to include a heaping help of racism being more important to them than social welfare.
3
Felix, you hit the nail on the head about electing people who will actually help them. Far too many are religiously conservative, single issue voters, who continue to vote for people who will strip them of all services, because "he's gonna save all of them babies." They are so concerned about the unborn, but don't care about those who are already born and can't find a job.
4
Hi tech firms such as Google and Amazon need to locate where the highly skilled engineers, scientists, and computer programmers want to live which is in the same cities as prestigious lawyers and medical doctors and researchers.
A far better way to help these communities is to restore the various jobs that were outsourced to India and the Philippines such as call center jobs and computer programming jobs back to the USA.
This could be done by changing the tax policies to heavily tax outsource of service skills and incentivizing the location of these centers in parts of the nation addressed in this article.
It could be set up to not cost the government any money at all. Tax all outsourcing and use that tax revenue to provide incentives to firms that locate back to the US for these jobs for a duration of 20 years, for example.
1
It's hardly a purely American issue. The entire human species is moving to mega cities planet-wide. Agriculture is becoming automated; more and more farming will be done by robots.
The good side of this is the emptying of rural areas will allow some non-human species to recover.
15
The concept of Bison Commons is not a stretch of imagination. Ecological restoration is an urgent need across vast stretches of rural America that have suffered from poor land use, extraction industries, invasive species, loss of native biodiversity and a blighting of the rural landscape. There are huge opportunities for employment in restoration businesses, native plant and seed nurseries, stewardship of nature preserves, creation of native pollinator habitat, hunting properties, sustainable farming, outdoor recreation, etc. All it takes is a vision, to Make America Beautiful Again. And, of course, a reevaluation of our values as a nation. And some serious thought given to how much wild is really needed to sustain biodiversity on this planet. E.O. Wilson's proposal of 50% is looking much more on the mark.
How to pay? Consider where all the wealth extracted from rural America has gone. Your mutual fund index portfolios would not be a bad place to start searching. All that wealth hasn't all gone to the 0.01%. Mr. Peabody is well represented across the vast metropolis.
15
Two questions here: 1) how many people living in rural areas and hamlets are actually farmers or otherwise have their income tied to the economy of those places, and do not otherwise commute into cities or metropolitan centers? We've seen a big loss of farm land in this country because of such "exurban" development.
Second question: what would be the population of rural America if everyone there were gainfully employed at skilled jobs? It seems like a lot of rural America, especially in western Appalachia, is people on disability or working only part-time who really have no economic tie to the area.
America flipped from majority rural to majority urban back in the 1920s, and in has only continued to shift urban since then. My guess is that automation has probably caused as much job loss in that farming as it has in manufacturing, and that rural areas can now only support a small population, especially given the size of corporate holdings. Is the family farm any more viable than the family tech firm? It would seem that both sectors need and should be able to pay skilled people. We need to get beyond this myth of the family farm and how many people ag can support, particularly if we are going to feed the rest of the world. In no other sector of the economy, perhaps other than education, do we let nostalgia so rule our public policy.
2
I traveled significantly across the US and lived in large cities. I was able to return to my small town roots once the internet became reliable. I am able to fly to major clients in big cities when needed, but live on a working crop farm. Yes, the ag industry has severe business cycles. It needs more price stability, not hand-outs. I find that people are willing and able to commute to larger cities, but do not want the high cost and crowding of the cities.
As we have seen for decades our economy and the types of jobs do change. Telecommuting is on the rise. Most companies have multiple locations. I work for large banks where we thrive on conference calls even within the same city and large buildings. People do not have to be in the same room to work together. We need to think more broadly about how people want to live and work.
5
Rural America declined after the Reagan era. The most likely reason was published right here in the NYT - the decline of regional antitrust laws. Keeping St Louis' local advertising agencies wouldn't have helped Kansas farms? Regional centers can give and take to local rural communities - I visit my parents, I do tourist things and shop there - and everything pushed to the edges - or, worse, overseas - cannot help as much. Unions fed the middle class, which feeds local economies. Concentration of wealth means concentration of population. Compare the 50 states to the EU - local industries means local economy.
Now, automation had its hand in this, and yes, that can't be undone gracefully. Neither can extreme mobility. There might eventually be no jobs in certain places. But there can certainly be industries in states that aren't on the coasts. There can certainly be large cities in the midwest again. We just need to nurture those places with the old antitrust laws. We don't know a national AT&T, or a Comcast or a Google. It's possible to diversify thru regulation.
5
Really great article, but the sad reality I've seen is summed up by the statement: "Even if moving people might prove more efficient on paper than restoring places, many people — especially older people and the family members who care for them — may choose to remain in rural areas."
What exactly do we owe these people? A significant fraction of rural America chooses to remain there regardless of their prospects or those of their children, and this is of course their right. But the choice is often couched in "this is the real America" rhetoric of an agrarian/small town frontier that hasn't been he reality for the majority of Americans for many decades. Their choice also requires significant subsidies from urban America that are not acknowledged by those subsidized, many of whom in fact bemoan what they see as handouts to, in the case of my family in rural western PA, their Native American and African American neighbors.
No number of empowerment zones or development districts or giant infrastructure projects is going to change the fundamental imbalance between urban and rural productivity. Better to have a universal, livable stipend, health care, and old-age assistance. Then let people make their minds up about where and how to live. No pork-barrel politics, agro-business tax breaks, etc. And finally, we must amend the Constitution to do away with the Electoral College, so that these areas' outsized influence can be contained.
4
Really great comment, too. But your final recommendation raises a conundrum: if the rural segment loses its "outsized influence" by abolition of the EC, they will have even less leverage than they do now to obtain the politically based wealth/income redistribution they need. Of course, they have recognize that what they need are a livable stipend, adequate health care, and sufficient old-age assistance, all of which are loathed by the politicians they support. So, two conundrums!
Think of all the Central and South American farmers and tradesmen and women who would gladly move to rural America to start a new life.
27
Well, not really if there are no jobs to make a living. That's why they are living their farms and land in Central America.