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Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

nytimes.com

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Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#81

Post by dsfyu404ed »

pastor_elm wrote: post #59
msluyter wrote: post #48

I'd love the idea of living in a quiet, small community, were it not for a number of practicalities: Schools -- We're trying to provide the highest possible quality education for our daughter, which means living in the best public school district we can find or within range of the best private school we can afford. And while I'm sure there are exceptions, this means living in a city. Jobs -- Even though in theory I c…

>None of this is meant to denigrate small towns or rural areas, and perhaps there are some areas that provide the above (I'd be curious to hear about them if there were, actually...) Many rural areas in Vermont (particularly in the Northeast Kingdom) will give you a school voucher to use at any school you want (public or private) because there isn't a local public. As a consequence, there are some really good private…

> It has actually created somewhat of a culture of upper class people moving there.

Depends on the Vermonters you ask. I take it you weren't canvassing a trailer park.

A lot of people will give you some wise ass answer that people from MA and NY made their money in NYC or Boston and once they had a family to raise or when they were ready to retire they realized had to move to a state that hadn't been turned to crap by the people in NYC or Boston.

Considering the political difference between NY/MA and (a good chunk of) people in rural areas of VT (or any other state in northern New England) you can see why they might say something like this.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#82

Post by davidf18 »

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…

"...The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry, and that concentrates jobs in big cities."

Well, this statement isn't true because otherwise there would be no outsource to India, etc.

Taxing outsourcing and incentivizing the very firms that outsource to India and other places back to these underdeveloped areas could make a substantial difference.

Besides, for customer service roles, you would have people with better communications skills who are easier to understand by and large.

It is totally wrong to blame "hi tech" of firms such as Amazon and Google, and better to look at all of these outsourced service jobs.

The question the reader should have is why the economists and the writers of the article didn't address the repatriation of service jobs back to the US.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#83

Post by jandrese »

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?

Plenty of other factors too. No nightlife. Limited restaurant options. Schools that offer only the basics and may be failing. No public transit. Shitty and expensive Internet. No local job hopping opportunities. Limited extracurricular activities for the kids. Lots of anti-intellectual peer groups in the schools.

You pay a lot for that cheap house in the end.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#85

Post by dsfyu404ed »

thrwthrw93223 wrote: post #21
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.

Easy for you to say as an outsider with a comfortable salaried job. A lot of people in these rural communities aren't educated and live paycheck-to-paycheck. Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution.

>Putting them in larger cities for jobs they aren't qualified and wouldn't be hired for probably isn't the solution.

If your goal is to make rural people (historically a very hard group for governments to control, everywhere, not just in the US) more dependent on and controllable by the state then it works great.

(Yes, I know I'm just stirring the pot by saying this)

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#86

Post by lotsofpulp »

protonimitate wrote: post #46
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…

If the idea is for the Tech Industry to 'revitalize' these small towns (which I'm not sure I buy into), then the only way to do is to incentivize companies to hire workers from these areas (i.e. better education and early awareness of 'tech jobs'), or incentivize companies to move existing employees to these areas and allow them to work remotely. > The pressure of agglomeration is high in the tech industry Which is f…

Reality shows it is for something. People must be getting something out of density, otherwise the most in demand people (i.e. highly paid) wouldn't be opting to live there. At the very least, trust is a very valuable thing and knowing people who know people is very valuable, which is much easier to accomplish in cities.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#87

Post by sunshinelackof »

The only solution that will save small towns is dismantling some of the industrialisation that freed people up to work in the factory or mill that no longer exists. It's a trivial example, but ban preservatives in bread and now they need a bakery that can deliver bread everyday. Bread that lasts two weeks on a shelf is an optimisation for communities that support advanced professions. Heavy industrialisation is a model that no longer fits these communities and while some might be able to attract select tech workers--in effect patchwork, others should realise that they're optimised for a workforce that no longer exists.

All of that may not even be possible. First try and sell your community their way of life is unsustainable, then try and shake the Walmart, McDonalds dependency.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#88

Post by schnevets »

mohankumar246 wrote: post #79

Whenever people question the concentration of tech jobs in cities like SF it always makes me think: 1) Why do most jobs related to show business(movies) are concentrated in LA? 2) Why are most jobs in banking concentrated in NYC?

Because LA is where all the movie stars are and New York is where all the bankers are!

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#89

Post by lotsofpulp »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #71
mr_tristan wrote: post #43

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. (Subsequently, if their life continues to get worse, well, I suspect more tendencies towards authoritarianism.) This is where I sense the tension. At least in the US, the political system seems to want to maintain people in rural areas, but th…

>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.

Re: Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy

#90

Post by TarpitCarnivore »

sidlls wrote: post #58
badloginagain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

> if the schools are garbage, there are few or no parks, the politics are very conservative, and diversity is lacking.

But all of this exists outside of rural areas, and in fact in many areas close to metro hubs. Just because you're in a more urban environment does not guarantee you to have this utopian neighborhood.

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