>You say yourself that socialism won’t fix the plight of their towns dying out, so they’re not wrong to be against socialism in this case.
How are they not wrong, and not hypocritical? If we leave them to pure capitalism, they would all just die out. So why should they get any help at all, when that's socialism and directly contrary to their stated values?
>Furthermore, moving to a major city is expensive
It's not expensive to live in your car. Countless immigrants come to this country with basically nothing, and manage to grow roots and even start thriving, successful businesses. But you're telling me some small-town American can't do that, because it's "too expensive to move"?
>Having family or a struggling farm or business
If the business is struggling, it's time to sell it and move on. And what does family have to do with anything? As I said above, countless immigrants come here across oceans and manage to thrive, and they don't whine about their extended families they left behind.
>Even immigrants have a support network of other co-immigrants, usually.
Maybe, maybe not. Someone had to be the first.
>Encouraging businesses to open up in these towns could be good policy
Why would they do this? There's no skilled workforce left there, there's not enough of an economic base; it really makes no economic sense. There's a reason people have been building and living in cities for several millennia now. Small towns only make sense when there's some industry there supporting it, usually having to do with resource extraction (e.g. mining) or agriculture. Once those dry up, the town's reason for existence is gone.
>Other towns should close, but there would need to be some help buying people out of their homes where most equity resides.]
Why should these anti-socialist people get a socialist benefit program like this?