These communities aren't useless. They just support fewer jobs and probably a lower standard of living than they once did. This happened to coal mining towns

These communities aren't useless. They just support fewer jobs and probably a lower standard of living than they once did. This happened to coal mining towns in Wales a hundred years ago. A lot of those people came to the US. But Wales didn't become useless, it just lost a major source of employment. People will migrate, retrain, change their expectations.