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Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

nytimes.com

181–190 of 257 posts

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#181
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all 14 of them are Republican. Delaware has two Democrats, and Vermont has one Democrat and one Bernie Sanders.

agree, that makes it 11 GOP senators to 3 DEM senators. California with 40 Milion population 2 senators, to 2 senators for these 600,000 population for each of these 7 states.

>agree, that makes it 11 GOP senators to 3 DEM senators.

And how many of those two CA senators are GOP? Guess those 7 states are more diverse than CA.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#182
post #99

speaking as someone who works in a small town in the midwest as an auto mechanic, the people that shot themselves in the foot with this idea were the very ones who proposed it. I got 5 months of free online Python classes from the local government. This was part of some larger state plan to 'revitalize' us as a 'web 2.0' something or other for the 'silicon valley' of the midwest. The whole thing read like snake oil b…

Without really needing to know, I'm guessing either Indiana (my home state) or North Carolina (lived there three years). I say that only because we'd never go back to NC because of differences in opinion and politics, and never, ever go back to IN because it appears to have gone even more (ahem) divergent from my opinions since we moved out twenty years ago. The things I heard come out of the mouths of clients when I had a consultancy in IN would send a native West Coaster to the fainting couch.

So, yeah, I used to live there and I'll never go back, let alone attract anyone who tans a little too well.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#183
post #64

I grew up in a small town in the Berkshires and recently went back there to see family. It is interesting to see the shift from where it was 100 years ago to where it was when I was a kid, to where it is today (and where it's heading). 100 years ago there was a ton of industry: paper mills, textile mills, marble and limestone quarries. These were supported by a train that ran through town to transports goods to and f…

Well said. I have no data to back this up, but I feel like a lot of remote workers prefer smaller cities that still have lots of amenities - think Portland, Austin, Madison, Boulder. You present a solid blueprint for even smaller communities to start to attract remote workers.

And exurbs from larger systems that are accessible to a big city with, say, an hour drive but are still relatively rural. You don’t really get this in the Bay Area without a huge amount of money but you do in somewhere like the Boston area.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#184
post #157
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drastically understate the infrastructure and other issues you note in places outside of major urban centers of technology. My children do not have a net benefit from a huge home on a huge plot of land if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking.

As someone coming from Poland, a country that’s pretty much 100% white and Polish, I don’t feel that the lack of “diversity” has negatively impacted my development. It seems to me that people in the US have been brainwashed (in schools, by media etc.) into believing that diversity is always good and lack of diversity is always bad, while in reality it’s not that simple.

It's more the "reaction to diversity" that's the issue, in my opinion. Some areas unfortunately are not terribly friendly to non-white or non-Christian people. This sometimes is reflected in certain laws and may reflect in other cultural ways. This probably is not something any international-oriented company would look positively on, since international companies will have employees from a wide variety of cultures.

I remember when one of the consequences of Alabama's 2011 immigration laws was them ticketing or arresting two automobile executives. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/02/alabama-car-bo...) I thought at the time that was a (sarcasm) great promotion to international corporations of the benefits of putting an office in Alabama.

As an atheist I certainly wouldn't move into any very religious area, which unfortunately is a fair bit of rural places. (For examples why, see: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/05/24/atheists-in-the-bib...)

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#185
post #31

Maybe we shouldn't be trying to keep these small town alive. Maybe we should focus on shutting them down in an orderly fashion and help the residents move to more dynamic areas, probably in large part by helping them acquire skills that are actually in demand there.

I am a data scientist and work remotely, living in a small town on 3.6 acres. Moving to a city would be terrible, living within a 40 minute drive is plenty close enough. Why do you feel the need to shut down entire communities?

A lot of these discussions tend to draw contrasts between living in the middle of a major metropolis and living in the back of beyond. Neither represents even a significant minority of the US population.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#186
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are seven states with only ONE House of representative: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. The reason for the above is that there are so little population ( less than 650,000 )in the whole state. These 7 states each have TWO senators. The reason for this is this is how the country was formed giving 2 senators to each state in the constitution. These 14 senators are alwa…

Not all 14 of them are Republican. Delaware has two Democrats, and Vermont has one Democrat and one Bernie Sanders.

That's the stereotype, even if the facts don't bear that out.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#187
post #171
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone coming from Poland, a country that’s pretty much 100% white and Polish, I don’t feel that the lack of “diversity” has negatively impacted my development. It seems to me that people in the US have been brainwashed (in schools, by media etc.) into believing that diversity is always good and lack of diversity is always bad, while in reality it’s not that simple.

> I don’t feel that the lack of “diversity” has negatively impacted my development They said they want diversity for their children. That has nothing to do with how your environment impacted you. People are allowed to have preferences so long as in the process of acting on them, they don't trample on others' rights.

That’s... obvious? Of course people have a right to their subjective opinions and preferences. What I’m interested in though is the objective reality of this matter, i.e. whether or not diversity is beneficial for child’s development.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#188
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work like that. A colleague argued in all seriousness that watching ballet on Youtube is the same as watching it live at the NY City Ballet. The fellow is a boor who would be in NYC for a day but never take his kids to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur skeletons.

I suppose if your criteria is that you need to have world class ballet where you live, that does indeed restrict your options.

What I'm saying is that having high-speed Internet is not the same as being close to culture. It also doesn't put pressure on the corrupt sheriff to straighten out or insist that the school district provide an actual education for the schoolkids. For all that you need a critical mass of interested people.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#189
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone coming from Poland, a country that’s pretty much 100% white and Polish, I don’t feel that the lack of “diversity” has negatively impacted my development. It seems to me that people in the US have been brainwashed (in schools, by media etc.) into believing that diversity is always good and lack of diversity is always bad, while in reality it’s not that simple.

Can you give us the more nuanced view, particularly as it applies to America, a place with a lot of existing diversity and a pretty mixed history with regard to how minorities have been treated? What’s the nuanced case for why Americans shouldn’t care that much about “diversity”?

I feel that the “caring about diversity” is a state- and media-run campaign with a goal to decrease some of the deep-rooted racism that permeates sections of the US’s society. Therefore, for the child upbringing case, as long as a parent is not a racist and is not rasing his children to be one, the crude corrective action of “diversity yay!” is not really necessary. That’s why Polish society is ok despite not caring about diversity - we’re just not very racist in the first place (and don’t get me wrong, it’s not due to some inherent moral superiority - we are just not exposed to races other than ours, so it pretty hard/weird to be a racist).

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly because that land is so inhospitable that nobody wants it.

I’m really not familiar with the geography, or its history, but the feds only kept 2% of Texas. I’ll assume the rest became private.

To put it as succinctly as possible... Oil.
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