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Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

nytimes.com

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Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#111

Post by dsfyu404ed »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #89
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run. At the federal level there is a bias toward rural states mostly because of how the senate works. At the state level pretty much every state is ruled by a couple counties that have the biggest cities in the state in them and everyone else is a…

There are tons of gerrymandered states that result in states' politicians not reflecting the wishes of the majority of the voters, and it's always the rural areas benefiting from the gerrymandering.

Every east coast state from Maine to Maryland is run by the cities in that state. The west coast is almost the same. I don't know if those states are "gerrymandered" in favor of the rural districts but if they are it's not enough to matter because those states are certainly run by the cities.

I'm not saying what you've said isn't true. I'm saying it doesn't matter in practice.

Gerrymandered or not if the cities want something they get it. The only time rural areas get a real say is if the cities are split on an issue or if the suburban areas split disagree with the cities. NY, MA and VT are good examples.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#112

Post by LrnByTeach »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #89
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect this is a much bigger deal in the US, since we have rural power bias built into our political system. Thus, the rural voter has a much bigger "say" in how things run. At the federal level there is a bias toward rural states mostly because of how the senate works. At the state level pretty much every state is ruled by a couple counties that have the biggest cities in the state in them and everyone else is a…

There are tons of gerrymandered states that result in states' politicians not reflecting the wishes of the majority of the voters, and it's always the rural areas benefiting from the gerrymandering.

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 always Republican and see their weight on 100 seat Senate.

so two reasons why US cannot reflect the wishes of the majority of the voters.

1/ fourteen senators from 7 states ( with a population less than 650,000) elect the same Republican senators for decades ( think about their influence on judicial judge selection and every other decision senate make)

2/ as you mentioned, state-level gerrymandered ( in bigger population states) electing more House reps of Republicans even though their vote share is less than 50%

https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_of_Representativ...

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/17991950/how-gerrymandering-wor...

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#113

Post by ghaff »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #93
hopefulengineer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem for small and medium communities is brain drain. It's a vicious death spiral because the smart and ambitious kids basically have to move away to large cities to get quality jobs. The only solution I can think of is incentivizing remote work so people don't have to be concentrated in cities. You might not even have to incentivize it because it's a tremendous advantage as a tech company to be able t…

The only incentivizing needed is to provide fiber to the home so everyone has ample connectivity to compete on a level playing field, and then businesses will figure out which mix of remote and in office employees works for them and allows them to best position themselves in the market.

Fiber to the home may be desirable but it's overrated. I've had tech co-workers who managed with satellite because that was their only option to live on a rural property they wanted.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#114

Post by zachguo »

InGodsName wrote: post #17

As someone who has lived in a small town, I'd suggest Government to offer: 1. Cheaper and faster internet in the remote locations. Then people can work remotely, have skype HD chats which don't disconnect in middle. Even free internet with 400gb limit per month per house would be good enough. 2. Faster ecom delivery - If we can order the same machines which city dwellers use, well it would suck less. Leave the rest o…

Meanwhile in China https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/why-the-future-of-chinese-...

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#115

Post by CydeWeys »

badloginagain wrote: post #49
edaemon wrote: post #5

For what it's worth the submission title here ("Turning small towns into tech hubs isn't working") doesn't appear in the article. The basic reasoning of the article: ...the high-tech industries powering the economy today don’t have much need for the cheap labor that rural communities contributed to America’s industrial past. They mostly need highly educated workers. They find those most easily in big cities, not in s…

In theory all you need to make it work is good internet connection. Especially if its remote. If there was a serious offer from some company where for the same amount of rent in SF, I could have a mortgage on literal acres of land, thats attractive. Less attractive is the crumbling infrastructure, opioid wildfires, actual wildfires, and aggressively conservative culture. Gotta try something though, right?

The thing is, when I'm working remotely, the amenities that the city I live in can provide are even more important than if I'm working in an office. If I'm working remotely, then 100% of my social needs have to come from the city. So having culture, things to do, etc., becomes even more important.

I live in a city because I like living in a city, and then secondarily also because there's good jobs here.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#116

Post by Scoundreller »

pesmhey wrote: post #101
theseatoms wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of economists push that idea. The way to make people richer is to move them to rich places. (Even more so internationally.) Your point about politicians stands. That's a great assessment of the tension between the two worldviews.

Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’. That economists push that idea begs the question. I’m not placing a value judgement on either worldview, just pointing out that in one worldview, there’s an assumption of constant growth. I happen to fall into this worldview, but I’ve grown an appreciation for those who don’t. Unbridled growth = cancer.

> Not everyone wants to be ‘richer’.

They say that, but if you write them a cheque, they'll cash it.

It's the things that come along with wealth that they may disagree with, but certainly not the wealth itself.

No doubt, there are pockets (even in Canada#) that refuse government welfare programs like health insurance because they feel that they shouldn't be dependent on others like that, but it's much less than 1%.

# Some of our old-order Mennonites refuse to get a government health card.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#117

Post by grogenaut »

johan_larson wrote: post #13

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.

This means you are, at a country level, deciding by policy what jobs are desirable. Which seems to mean, according to you, that Farming and agriculture, which are generally distributed due to the land needs, aren't feasible. There are quite a few other industries that are non-tech that are distributed like these.

Sure lots of these small towns don't need as MUCH centralization as they have but they still need services because there are still people and things to do out in those places.

Now, given modern transportation and things like Amazon, the density in outlying areas may not be as needed. Driving through rural missouri, you see a lot of very tiny dead towns at crossroads, where there used to be a general store, etc, and these died in the 30s. Then you have slightly bigger towns that are dying now. These towns were starting to die in the 90s. In the 60s it took around 8 hours to get from St. Louis to the arkansas border (except along 55). When I was a kid in the 80s it took 4-5 hours. Now it takes 3:30. Because of this you don't need as many of these services as local, but that doesn't mean you don't need them.

Also driving through rural missouri you see things you wouldn't expect. My cousin owns a VERY profitable organic chicken ranch about 2 hours outside of St. Louis, near Owensville. Going further south you find all of a sudden where like 80% of the oak for charcoal and wine / burbon barrels come from. It's completely unreasonable for these folks to commute from St. Louis. It's also completely tenable for them to live in a house in the middle of no where and make plenty of money for that life style.

What seems to be happening is that much of the rural area is becoming LESS dense as you need only basic services and health care, gas food, etc.

There's also other things that need lots of space that you can easily do in rural areas that you can't do other places. If I was to switch to running a textile mill, or a machine shop, and did it in Seattle (where I live now), or St. Louis (where I used to live), I'd have to plunk down 2-5 million on a warehouse. If I did this in Wenatchee area or Owensville, the land is like $200k, and I just build the building and put that other 1-2 million into better tooling and employees, and the effective minimum wage (what people actually need to live), is a lot lower out there because everything is cheaper. Which means product is cheaper.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#118

Post by weberc2 »

nimbius wrote: 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…

What state is this? How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites? Apologies if these questions are naive, I'm not particularly familiar with midwest politics.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#120

Post by aurailious »

weberc2 wrote: post #118
nimbius wrote: 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…

What state is this? How do they require minorities to have ID but not whites? Apologies if these questions are naive, I'm not particularly familiar with midwest politics.

I'm pretty sure the comment didn't say that.
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