An Exchange on Reviving the Rural Economy

From “The Hard Truths of Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy,” by Eduardo Porter, The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2018.

The election of Donald Trump, powered in no small degree by rural voters, has brought the troubles of small-town America to national attention, with an urgent question: What can be done to revive it?

…Nobody — not experts or policymakers or people in these communities — seems to know quite how to pick rural America up.

…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.

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? As [William Galston warns], ‘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”.’

The distress of 60 million Americans should concern everyone. Powerful economic forces are arrayed against rural America and, so far, efforts to turn it around have failed.”

Here's a conversation constructed from the comments on this article:

Rural America has real problems and in many cases have been ignored. Their pain and problems are real and, as a fellow American, I would like to see some way of lifting them up.

But people in rural areas often prefer to stay in a dead or dying town rather than looking for opportunities in places with healthy economies. Worse, they don’t even consider the possibility. It never occurs to them to go someplace else. There’s something like 7 million job openings in the U.S. Why not move and try to get one of those jobs? It's interesting that thousands of people are leaving their homes and families to move to our country for any kind of work, but our own citizens won’t move to another town in their own

Many of those jobs require specific skills. People in rural areas don’t have those skills.

They can get them. Community college is available to almost every student in the country.

There’s no point in saying, "Just get a degree in engineering.” Let's be realistic—that’s not going to happen.

They don’t need an engineering degree, or any four-year degree. Just 9 percent of high school students think about pursuing a trade.

It’s not enough to have the training. My two brothers-in-law are both highly skilled, experienced plumbers. There just isn’t enough demand for their services within a hundred miles.

If you’re a middle class professional it’s easy to say, “Move to the city. I did, and it worked out fine.” But it won’t for a lot of people, even those who go away to college and get a four-year degree. Almost half of college grads can find a job in the field of their major. As for particular skills, maybe as many as two-thirds of jobs in the near future will require skills that aren’t being taught yet.

As things stand, folks who move to urban areas can’t get good jobs. The jobs that are available are minimum wage work in fast-food or retail, or part-time work with no benefits. Housing is too expensive for people with low-paying jobs. You can't blame the rural proles for not leaping at the opportunity to have that kind of life. Telling people in small towns and rural areas to "move to the cities!" is about as useful as telling them to get a college degree in some field that either isn’t in demand or soon won’t be.

It's working-class occupations everywhere that are declining. It’s just more noticeable in rural areas because there really isn't a rural middle-class to obscure the view.

The unfettered markets of neoliberalism helped create the booming tech sector, but they also destroyed rural America. You can’t dance around that fact. When faced with paying American workers to produce things, employers chose the workers of Japan and South Korea, then China and Mexico, and now Vietnam and India. Nobody cares less about rural America than the corporate class everybody thinks can save it. Luring businesses with tax breaks never works. They come and then leave. Look at where Amazon chose to put its second administrative center: Brooklyn and suburban Washington, DC.

Of course Amazon chose urban locations rather than Kansas or Mississippi. Tech industries and even traditional 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? All the people who could have revitalized it have either left for better opportunities or have been run off.

Yes, and they’ve been run off by people who don’t want to change how they live. That’s the real problem. They don’t care about education after high school. They want jobs, but they want ones they can learn to do easily and that don't require them to think. I know what the prevailing attitude is in most rural areas. I grew up in one.

Some small cities that were once on the skids are coming back. The reason is direct investment. The investment comes in various forms: from entrepreneurs, from the communities themselves, or from a college or university. Most corporations won’t make that investment.

Research shows that communities that are able to adapt and succeed in rebuilding their economies start with a simple principle: Make ours the kind of community anybody would love to live in. That means putting money and sweat equity into repairing infrastructure, renovating commercial and residential building, improving schools, and so forth.

People in rural areas are passive. They don’t take the initiative. They’re not ambitious. They wait for somebody to save them. That’s why Trump appealed to so many of them. They vote for Republicans straight down the ticket. But what do Republicans offer? Easy solutions that require nothing from them and let them express their unwarranted bile at different people who did no harm to them, like immigrants and people of color.

I agree. Frankly, if rural voters 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 are killing them. I sympathize with their plight. But there comes a time to bury the dead and move on if you want to survive. Those who don’t adapt get left behind. It’s sad, but true.

The disproportionate power of rural voters to elect Republican legislators and Congressional representatives implies that electoral reform is imperative. If rural areas aren’t "productive," they shouldn’t enjoy the huge political advantage they have. Personally, I'm not feeling much empathy for rural Americans who whine about their situation. Most want low or no taxes while at the same time expecting their elected officials to pass legislation that benefits them.

Remember how often conservatives have insisted that people must “take responsibility for their own lives”? We don't hear this from conservatives these days because they know the truth: they refuse to take responsibility for the part they played in years of failed supply-side economic policies, anti-union and minimum wage policies, low taxation and zero investments in infrastructures. They have nobody to blame but themselves. But they’d rather feel victimized and entitled.

You have no idea how much spiteful anger, self-righteousness, bigotry, and willful ignorance you encounter in small towns and rural communities. Their religion, their worldview, and their choices reflect the "values" they cling to. The reason they support Trump is simple: he acts just like they would if they had money and power. I’m sorry, but there’s no saving this "culture." Nor should anybody want to save it. It’s a breeding ground for hatred and despair—for dying with a Bible in one arm and a heroin needle in the other. Let it die.

It will die—if we do nothing to prevent that. The question is, with the death of rural American take the rest of us with it? This is a whole country we’re talking about, not just its rural communities. The nation is an “ecosystem.” Everything and everyone is connected. If part of the country dies, the remainder’s going to suffer, too—especially if at some point coastal cities are inundated with salt water. But we’ve got to get over the infatuation that the educated and prosperous still have with neoliberal policies. We need a partnership between rural and urban areas to save the former. The question is, how do we do that?