The reason their existence is subsidised by the city is because the city is implementing policies that benefit the city and not the country. Consequently the re

The reason their existence is subsidised by the city is because the city is implementing policies that benefit the city and not the country. Consequently the relative inequality is entrenched. The country people see that and think, "Well whatever they're axin fer that I can stop - I'll stop that. Maybe then I'll have some influence." They probably don't see it with quite the same analysis as I've put here, but it's much closer to what's really happening than your rendition. It's probably necessary that in any developed economy, the cities will do better. But over the last several decades, it seems the problem to any complaint has been "let's just reduce business taxes and increase free trade", which is obviously aggravating to the people who are hurt by those policies. The policies proposed by the left have usually been "let's try to increase the lot of the absolute worst off without affecting the top of the middle", which of course squeezes the people in the middle and makes it easier for them to fall into the worst off category. Moreover it's kinda obvious to everyone that the left is using the resources that traditionally have gone to middle to help the worst off (instead of taking some of the top's excess). So there isn't a clearly pro-systematic way of getting better short of complaint and preventing things. And you get a culture of "us against them, black against white, city against country", rather than "all for one and one for all". It takes just a moment to look back at everything that's happened over the last couple of decades and realise that this analysis is accessible to the distressed, fair to them, and accounts for the data. [ed: they're -> their in first sentence]