3 ms·

I know a lot of people with a similar story: born in a rural area, had the good fortune to be pointed in the right direction, worked hard, escaped to a good lif

I know a lot of people with a similar story: born in a rural area, had the good fortune to be pointed in the right direction, worked hard, escaped to a good life in a city far from where they grew up. This is held up as the model for success, especially by the Republicans. I agree that it works but doesn't scale. The key question is: How do we help the people that are left behind in poor rural communities with no good opportunities? I'm afraid nobody has good answers. Trump's astonishing success came from raising this question, which is more than anyone else did. Unfortunately his answers are more about blaming immigrants, foreign governments and intellectuals than solving the problem. His policy proposals actually make it worse: Exhibit A: the ACHA, which significantly reduced benefits in Trump-voting areas. The Democrats focus on hand outs. People reject this because it makes them feel useless (side bar: people complain about Obamacare while demanding they keep their expanded Medicaid... Politics makes no sense). Ok, so Trump says it's a problem but has no ideas. Democrats say of course it's a problem and want to build a national safety net. Rural voters reject the safety net idea while using it heavily and request good jobs so they can get assistance. So how do you get them good jobs? Mining coal will destroy the world and their bodies too. Factories need skilled labor, good infrastructure and communities of practice, none of which these areas have. The only hope I see is massive education investments, but even those will only help people leave unless the students decide to stay and build. Why? Because a flat world becomes spiky: productivity comes from density, which be definition is an urban phenomenon. http://bigthink.com/articles/the-world-is-spiky.amp http://bigthink.com/articles/the-world-is-spiky.amp Tragically, I think these really are the only solutions (1) massive Federal subsidies to sustain people living in uncompetitive areas or (2) massive Federal subsidies to educate them, allowing the next generation to escape routinely or, if they can be convinced to stay, invent new reasons for their communities to exist. Really, you probably need both. Again, Trump isn't doing either of those things. He's just scaring people and breaking things.

throwanem 10y ago
Not that hard to convince people to stay, I think. On balance, I'd rather have; even now, I'd much prefer it be possible for me to take what I've learned and become, the things of which I'm now capable that I never was before, back home. I'm not sure what decision I'd make if it were possible, because I've come to love Baltimore much more strongly than I would've imagined possible when I came here. But that's moot, because the career I have isn't one that I can go back home and still sustain. There are a lot of companies that talk about taking remote work seriously. Almost all of them are lying, and those few which are not have tall stacks of applications from engineers much more distinguished than I ever hope to be. Had it been possible to build this kind of career without leaving home, I would have done so. Make it possible for others to do so, and they will. The subsidy model has been shown to work by Silicon Valley VCs; I see no reason why it can't be made to work with federal dollars in Mississippi, too, alongside the sort of education subsidy you describe. If you see a need for an inducement to stay, which I'm not sure I do but all right, you could add a stick to the carrot by building the education subsidy on the extant student loan model, and tying payment deferral and eventual forgiveness to locality - if you move out of state, or outside a certain radius of states, or whatever, within some period after graduating, then you can do that, but you do it at the cost of paying back your loans yourself instead of having them forgiven. Too, this neatly straddles the divide between the sort of handout so destructive to pride, and the need to convince people to accept help when they need it. You do that by making it feel earned, and this would at least come closer to achieving that requirement than the sort of pie-in-the-sky UBI schemes so often mooted here. Of course nothing like that is ever going to happen, because it makes far too much sense. Don't pretend the Democrats are going to do it, either, any more than the Republicans will - to do so would constitute an insult to your own credibility, and the intelligence of anyone who might happen to read such a comment. In a world where Sanders had a genuine shot at the DNC nomination, I might say otherwise, not least because he'd have won it overwhelmingly. (I'd also have voted for him.) But recent events demonstrate that we do not live in such a world, and I voted for Trump in full knowledge that scaring people and breaking things was the most he might possibly accomplish. That I judged this a more desirable outcome than a third Clinton term should perhaps frighten you - it certainly frightens me! But here we are.
soundwave106 10y ago
Historically, in the past, there was a wave of automation from the 1900s-1920s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#1920s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_...) that arguably affected rural America to a much greater extent than this current wave: the mechanization of agriculture. Back then, the solutions provided were roughly: A) An emphasis in education. This doesn't help folks ingrained, but a strong rural education system did help the children move to the cities where the opportunities were. (This describes one of my grandfathers: our family still owns a farm, but only one person is needed to maintain it these days. He got a college education and moved.) From my perspective, this is one of the better options even for the modern automation problem. B) Some forms of subsidies and quotas, as tried in the 1930s. I would personally prefer options more on the lines of improving health, resettlement help, and public works. Handouts for nothing create stagnation, and handouts in the wrong direction (eg agriculture subsidies, which tend to benefit farmers, who often may be prosperous already) may create distorted markets. Later World War II also provided an escape valve (another option I don't see terribly appealing). It's tough for me to see anything else working. If companies start becoming more remote friendly, we'll need less of option B perhaps. But I can't see escaping option A. The politics of Donald Trump can be explained to some extent as an exploitation of the long-running "Southern Strategy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy), which in contrast to the name is actually national in nature. I do not believe that rural voters are rejecting the idea of the safety net per se. It's more that in the current American political scene, identity / tribe politics often far overshadows economic politics. I believe that Bernie Sanders showed that a safety net oriented campaign with less emphasis on identity / tribe type politics can be quite popular with rural voters.
- throwanem 10y ago
  And the DNC ruined him for it.

throwanem 10y ago

Not that hard to convince people to stay, I think. On balance, I'd rather have; even now, I'd much prefer it be possible for me to take what I've learned and become, the things of which I'm now capable that I never was before, back home. I'm not sure what decision I'd make if it were possible, because I've come to love Baltimore much more strongly than I would've imagined possible when I came here. But that's moot, because the career I have isn't one that I can go back home and still sustain. There are a lot of companies that talk about taking remote work seriously. Almost all of them are lying, and those few which are not have tall stacks of applications from engineers much more distinguished than I ever hope to be. Had it been possible to build this kind of career without leaving home, I would have done so. Make it possible for others to do so, and they will. The subsidy model has been shown to work by Silicon Valley VCs; I see no reason why it can't be made to work with federal dollars in Mississippi, too, alongside the sort of education subsidy you describe. If you see a need for an inducement to stay, which I'm not sure I do but all right, you could add a stick to the carrot by building the education subsidy on the extant student loan model, and tying payment deferral and eventual forgiveness to locality - if you move out of state, or outside a certain radius of states, or whatever, within some period after graduating, then you can do that, but you do it at the cost of paying back your loans yourself instead of having them forgiven. Too, this neatly straddles the divide between the sort of handout so destructive to pride, and the need to convince people to accept help when they need it. You do that by making it feel earned, and this would at least come closer to achieving that requirement than the sort of pie-in-the-sky UBI schemes so often mooted here. Of course nothing like that is ever going to happen, because it makes far too much sense. Don't pretend the Democrats are going to do it, either, any more than the Republicans will - to do so would constitute an insult to your own credibility, and the intelligence of anyone who might happen to read such a comment. In a world where Sanders had a genuine shot at the DNC nomination, I might say otherwise, not least because he'd have won it overwhelmingly. (I'd also have voted for him.) But recent events demonstrate that we do not live in such a world, and I voted for Trump in full knowledge that scaring people and breaking things was the most he might possibly accomplish. That I judged this a more desirable outcome than a third Clinton term should perhaps frighten you - it certainly frightens me! But here we are.

soundwave106 10y ago

Historically, in the past, there was a wave of automation from the 1900s-1920s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#1920s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_...) that arguably affected rural America to a much greater extent than this current wave: the mechanization of agriculture. Back then, the solutions provided were roughly: A) An emphasis in education. This doesn't help folks ingrained, but a strong rural education system did help the children move to the cities where the opportunities were. (This describes one of my grandfathers: our family still owns a farm, but only one person is needed to maintain it these days. He got a college education and moved.) From my perspective, this is one of the better options even for the modern automation problem. B) Some forms of subsidies and quotas, as tried in the 1930s. I would personally prefer options more on the lines of improving health, resettlement help, and public works. Handouts for nothing create stagnation, and handouts in the wrong direction (eg agriculture subsidies, which tend to benefit farmers, who often may be prosperous already) may create distorted markets. Later World War II also provided an escape valve (another option I don't see terribly appealing). It's tough for me to see anything else working. If companies start becoming more remote friendly, we'll need less of option B perhaps. But I can't see escaping option A. The politics of Donald Trump can be explained to some extent as an exploitation of the long-running "Southern Strategy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy), which in contrast to the name is actually national in nature. I do not believe that rural voters are rejecting the idea of the safety net per se. It's more that in the current American political scene, identity / tribe politics often far overshadows economic politics. I believe that Bernie Sanders showed that a safety net oriented campaign with less emphasis on identity / tribe type politics can be quite popular with rural voters.

throwanem 10y ago
And the DNC ruined him for it.