Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

But we haven't. We've pretended that these urban engines of economic growth and fiscal productivity are simply an area of private real estate investments or money trees for state and federal governments to pluck to feed the less privileged. We've surrendered this massive amenity (the ability to move the jobless to places that can give them jobs) due to quirks of our electoral politics, quirks of our property law, quirks of our economy, and quirks of our welfare system. Instead we've propped up jobs and rural communities with massive subsidization, and watched as the very best that our economy can offer prices itself out of existence.

The Bay Area is only the most extreme example of this; It can cost 20x as much to house someone there, as to house them in Topeka. This is a massive productivity & economic growth success story that we are holding back because we're choking off housing and driving up prices, preventing the population of Topeka from moving there. The concept of natural limitations ("The peninsula is only so big!") is absolute bullshit, because the population density is drastically lower than many far more economically marginal places have achieved. For $2M in _construction costs_ to house each family you could house the population of the entire world, 7 billion people, comfortably in a place the size of the SF city limits.

The government departments lost a most of their key people whom had no interest to uproot their kids and their own future career from the Oslo area. Especially as some department moved to some very small provincial fringe towns where future opportunities are limited. Departments moving to larger towns (Stavanger/Bergen/Trondheim) was probably less affected. And it did result in very large increases in travel budgets as meetings still mostly had to be held in Oslo (airport) with other departments and companies.

Though in theory it was a move I supported. To help decentralise and support local economy but also so e.g. fisheries department actually being in an area where fishing is important probably affect their policies etc. But it does come with a cost, they miss the quick collaboration across department and other industries, and most importantly reduced staff contribution in the (potentially very long) transitional period until new local competent people are up to speed. I think a lot of staff did not move and ended up working from home for parts of every week for a few transitional years before moving full time or most likely eventually a suitable person could replace them.