Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 120 posts

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

#101

Post by hiram112 »

madengr wrote: post #15
saycheese wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm suggestioning that American stop subsidizing vast unpopulated areas of its country for the benefit of a subset of the country. Once the subsidies are deverted, the areas will naturally depopulate.

Subsidize? Maybe those vastly unpopulated areas of the country ought to stop feeding those 100 miles from the coast.

I agree with you. I constantly hear (especially during election season) about how the blue coastal states are basically 'subsidizing' the idiots from fly over country - some statistics about tax payments and farm subsidies tossed out to make the case.

In reality, the situation is reversed. The US largest export, by FAR, is agriculture and meat, almost none of which comes from the coasts.

If you want to count GDP, do you really think that the trillions of dollars of bank profits from lower Manhattan are really as important to the economy of the US as the trillions of dollars of corn, soy beans, wheat, beef, pork, etc that's produced in the Midwest? The former is just redistribution of wealth, the latter is actually traded to other countries.

How bout all that energy produced in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Texas? Do you think the US would miss it more than they'd miss the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in DC on mostly dubious military spending or on the thousands of silicon valley companies finding creative ways to serve tracking ads?

In reality, if the red states and blue states separated from each other, you'd have one nation with massive real exportable wealth divided by a small population, and another nation with mostly printed and worthless dollars backed by non exportable services, divided by a huge amount of people and their unfunded entitlements.

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

#102

Post by hiram112 »

msandford wrote: post #80
trashtoss wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is subsidization, on too many fronts to name. If anything it has been too effective because it is quite invisible and taken for granted by the recipients, which then allows them to see their own life narratives as stories of succeeding in the market economy due to hard, honest work. The work may indeed be hard and honest, but it only succeeds at the costs and prices it succeeds at due to vast subsidies, which agai…

The modern infrastructure that you're talking about, is that phone and electricity and water and sewer? Because most of the small town inhabitants pay for that themselves, or get small subsidies through federal programs. For example, the "much" higher cost of bringing phones to rural areas is a surcharge on your phone bill. In 2014 it was about $7 billion. That's a lot, but a complete joke compared to the federal bud…

Spot on. And really the subsidized roads and trains are less about getting fresh produce to the cities and more about getting the trillions of dollars of agricultural products to the sea for export, our single largest source of income by far.

Without the Midwest, our currency would effectively be worthless.

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

#103

Post by rhexs »

lowpro wrote: post #33
dao- wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely not forced relocation, but on the other hand I don't quite understand why people think it's a good idea to fight urbanization on a policy level rather than embracing it.

Many people, including myself, don't like cities. Being from Indiana, everyone I know that lives here wants to be here. Cities are crowded, dirty, and far more dangerous than the country and many small towns. The coasts are already overcrowded, they don't need more people.

I spent a few years moving around to big cities for tech jobs. Only thing I really discovered is that I strongly dislike living in big cities.

Grew up in a small college town. Great quality of life, affordable (if you have a university job or something supporting them...), very little suburban sprawl, I only have to drive 10-20 minutes to get to the bar district to do something. Sure, I can't go to world renown art centers or find some hyper specific activities/businesses that can usually only succeed in higher population densities, but I'd only be a few hours away from them if needed.

Lots of pluses for me. Hope to take a significant pay cut and shoot for a stable job someday in one of these places. The friends I grew up with make 1/3rd what I do, but they all own homes and seemingly enjoy a higher quality of life. My current solution is save up a nice nest-egg and re-specialize into something else. Haven't decided what yet.

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

#104

Post by gibsjose »

hellofunk wrote: post #64
gibsjose wrote: post #56

Although I don't think this is feasible or even necessarily the right thing to do, I personally am dying to go back to the Midwest. Coming from beautiful, friendly, cold Northern Michigan, I'd be ecstatic to get out of the DC area, but good luck moving the other 10,000 NASA employees. It's a different culture in the Midwest. Some good, some bad, but overall I personally prefer the ability to have friendly conversatio…

I think you are really stereotyping here. I suspect your impressions are based more on your social circles than the actual culture. If your circles are in work related settings or with other transplants from outside D.C., the experienice is a lot different than if interacting with D.C. natives. Likewise for non midwesterners who move to the Midwest.

You certainly have a point, and I definitely was generalizing.

My social circles consist mostly of international folks who work in various agencies and laboratories, and a few who work in private industry.

My biggest fault with DC (and most of the east coast to be honest) is just the difficulty of starting a conversation with someone. It seems like a lot of people walk around with their heads down here (either glued to a phone or the pavement) so as to avoid making eye contact. Folks here also give me strange looks when I say "sorry" all the time.

But hey, different cultures and different strokes. Not saying one is objectively better, but I definitely know which one I prefer personally.

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

#105

Post by Tempest1981 »

ethbro wrote: post #92
mcguire wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always fun when someone from HQ is transferred out to the rural Siberian hinterland of MSFC. A combination of "Wait, they have Starbucks here in the middle of nowhere?" and "Why are there cows next door?"

Having just gotten back from Asia, I'm convinced at this point there are Starbucks everywhere .

And they plan to open another 12,000 stores globally by 2021: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-starbucks-investors-idUSKB...

They have around 25k stores now, roughly half in the U.S.

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

#106

Post by gibsjose »

mcguire wrote: post #89
gibsjose wrote: post #56

Although I don't think this is feasible or even necessarily the right thing to do, I personally am dying to go back to the Midwest. Coming from beautiful, friendly, cold Northern Michigan, I'd be ecstatic to get out of the DC area, but good luck moving the other 10,000 NASA employees. It's a different culture in the Midwest. Some good, some bad, but overall I personally prefer the ability to have friendly conversatio…

It's always fun when someone from HQ is transferred out to the rural Siberian hinterland of MSFC. A combination of "Wait, they have Starbucks here in the middle of nowhere?" and "Why are there cows next door?"

Haha I'm at GSFC so I'm somewhere in between, but we still have to deal with 95/495 traffic, which is a real drag.

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

#107

Post by trashtoss »

hiram112 wrote: post #102
msandford wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern infrastructure that you're talking about, is that phone and electricity and water and sewer? Because most of the small town inhabitants pay for that themselves, or get small subsidies through federal programs. For example, the "much" higher cost of bringing phones to rural areas is a surcharge on your phone bill. In 2014 it was about $7 billion. That's a lot, but a complete joke compared to the federal bud…

Spot on. And really the subsidized roads and trains are less about getting fresh produce to the cities and more about getting the trillions of dollars of agricultural products to the sea for export, our single largest source of income by far. Without the Midwest, our currency would effectively be worthless.

133 billion is a recent usda figure. Do you have any source for "trillions"?

For bystanders the figures I am referencing are here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

There's a big gap between the two.

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

#108

Post by mapt »

saycheese wrote: post #86
mapt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, yes they do. if you build the housing that the market demands , as happens in most cities on Earth, people tend to move there voluntarily. 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 massiv…

>> "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." Interesting, please explain or provide a link to an explanation.

SF has 121km^2 of land area within the city proper. This may be a little low - I was hoping to use the area-including-water of 601km^2 within the city limits.

Kowloon Walled City was put together with little central planning, ruled by gangs, located directly under the approach path of an airport landing strip, and relied on a near-zero-public-infrastructure model. It was limited to ~15 stories. It housed ~50k people on 6.5 acres. Most importantly, it was built for people in the developing world, for a lot less than $2M per dwelling - residents accepted about $10k per person in remuneration during the eviction/demolition process; If we take this as a fair value of the housing construction, we have perhaps 50x the resources as Kowloon had. That density at 121km^2 is 230 million people in the city landmass of SF; At 601km^3 it rises to 1.14 billion.

For 50x the resources, in a streamlined design-build process rather than an ad-hoc "does the roof break? No? Build higher" manner, with an indefinite height limit and modern technology and a large degree of central planning (absolutely necessary for a 3D construction+utilities grid), I assert we could comfortably house the vast majority of the world in 601km^2 if we absolutely had to at 6x the density of Kowloon. 50x the resources pays for a lot of complexity. Right now, that money (an enormous quantity of the urban economy) is draining into land values & the financial system, but the city is enduring that money sink because the city (and large cities, in general) has found things it is fantastically more productive at, than 100 large towns each 1% of the size.

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

#109

Post by mapt »

saycheese wrote: post #86
mapt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, yes they do. if you build the housing that the market demands , as happens in most cities on Earth, people tend to move there voluntarily. 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 massiv…

>> "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." Interesting, please explain or provide a link to an explanation.

As a general principle, when a city finds something it's really good at, something it's the best in the world at, and there's room to grow this thing? It is entirely natural for the city to balloon in size. It is ridiculous to expect the rest of the world to direct money into the city, without the city employing more people in this industry (and thus more people in general), and thus needing to house more people overall. That is what economic growth is, and an area of labor migration (where someone in an economic backwater can move to a thriving new boomtown) is a large part of what a functioning economy is. SF desperately needs coders; But as it adds coders, it also needs to add yoga instructors, bank tellers, retail sales clerks, and dentists to serve the coders, or to serve each other while sponging off the excess money flowing into the pocket of the coders.

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

#110

Post by jlgaddis »

nightski wrote: post #42

Judging by comments it fees like the HN crowd has an incredibly warped view of the Midwest. It is amusing because it is a rather great place to live.

Indeed. I live in the country outside of a good sized (university-centered) city (Bloomington, IN). There are farms nearby, I have a huge empty field behind me, surrounded by a large amount of "woods", and my neighbor across the street has horses (yes, we do lots of cows and corns nearby too). However, I work pretty comfortably from home and the City just announced plans to build out a city-wide GigE fiber network (although I'm probably not included in the that, being outside the City limits, I already have GigE FTTH).
Post reply on HN