6 ms·

As Population Growth Slows, Populism Surges

30 points by rinze 8y ago

ScottBurson 8y ago
Maybe it's time for governments to start coming up with policies to attract technology businesses to small cities and perhaps even towns. These businesses would have to be comfortable having many remote workers, since there's no way they're going to get everyone they want to hire to move there, but maybe they could be given sufficient incentive to set up a headquarters there. It's not unusual, of course, for localities to give large companies tax incentives to build factories, warehouses, or even data centers, but those tax incentives are very expensive, and they don't tend to bring better-educated, higher-earning workers into the area. Trying to attract a larger number of much smaller businesses might be a more fruitful approach in the long run, if a way can be found to do it.
- JBReefer 8y ago
  That won't work - there are really, really good reasons why clusters of industries emerge, and why they almost always emerge in dense areas. A better move might be to pay people to leave dying counties. I've heard it discussed for Coal Country in West Virginia, and in parts of Kansas that have been shrinking for the last century. As farms and rural industries mechanize, and as cities become the primary focus, why swim against the current?
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I think there are strong headwinds to this, but there are some things that the government can do. For example, insuring that high-speed internet access is available in rural and small-town areas, similar to how they have in the past made sure that affordable postal delivery and phone service were not for big cities only. High-speed internet access makes it easier for certain kinds of jobs to be done from almost anywhere, and small towns tend to be more affordable.
  - pnj9 8y ago
    Y’all are making the assumption rural areas want these things without asking How about we include their own list of real needs (not just “More jobs” rhetoric) in the real debates rather than going in circles with hypotheticals on social media Maybe the government can start there Cause I grew up in a rural area. The aren’t luddites. But they also don’t want YOUR context pushed on their ways Read some Paulo Freire
    - ScottBurson 8y ago
      If you want people to come and spend money in your small towns, you're going to have to give them some reason to do that. If you don't want that, that's certainly your business, but with the consolidation of agriculture and the mechanization of manufacturing that have been going on the last several decades, it's not clear to me what else your local economies can be based on. And indeed, the depopulation of rural areas and small towns that this article is discussing suggests that a lot of local economies are having a very hard time. If you have a better idea for a solution, by all means, tell us. What "real needs" do you have in mind?
      - pnj9 8y ago
        Apparently you missed the part about not bothering with hypotheticals on social media
        ScottBurson 8y ago
        I have the impression that you could contribute to this conversation if you would engage with it, but you seem to be interested only in taking pot shots at the rest of us. Do you want to make yourself understood, or do you just want to scare us off?
    - rossdavidh 8y ago
      I grew up in a town of ~16,000 (it's ~14,000 now) that was the biggest town in its county. I have many friends who still live in small towns. High speed internet is definitely something they want.
- bobbytherobot 8y ago
  There has been an effort to attract technology business to small cities and rural areas since the mid-1990s. I recall driving through West Virginia around 2000 and seeing a sign labeling a stretch of highway as "West Virginia's Tech Corridor." Knowing West Virginia, any company that built along there would have zero taxes, heck they probably wouldn't have to pay for the land. Purely monetary incentives don't work. You have to look at the full range of what incentives people to move to a place. And companies are still run by people who are swayed by those same incentives. Even in the Bay Area, companies with large campuses and competitive pay are opening offices in San Francisco because their talent is demanding it.
  - ScottBurson 8y ago
    All true. I didn't say it would be easy. And I never suggested one could just pick a stretch of road and put it there — I think you have to have at least a small city.
repolfx 8y ago
Parts of this article seem like a rather circular analysis. In the world’s largest cities, where populations are densely concentrated and growing, economies are generally thriving and cosmopolitanism is embraced. Where populations are sparse or shrinking, usually in rural places and small cities, economies are often stagnant, and populism sells. What does "thriving" mean here? GDP? Do any countries track GDP by city? I haven't heard of that if so. This paragraph is vague but if by "thriving" they mean lots of economic activity, that's a circular definition - "thriving economies are where lots of people are". By this logic cities have always had more "thriving" economies than rural areas and always will, by the very definition of what a city is. Also, whilst they define populism, they do not define "cosmopolitanism". If populism is the feeling that a small group of elites do not represent the needs of ordinary people, then what is cosmopolitanism? The idea that elites don't exist at all? Or that they do and that it's a good thing if they rule? As youth have continued to migrate from rural areas to cities, their movement has widened not only the median age gap between rural places and cities, but also gaps in attitude, since the young, regardless of where they live, tend to associate more with urban outlooks. More circularity. Cities are dominated by the young, therefore the young associate more with urban outlooks. This is restating the premise in different words. One movement extols the values that are a practical necessity in dense, interconnected cities: interdependence, internationalism and the embrace of “diversity” (defined along multiple dimensions) This is stated as if it's obvious fact, but I don't understand why. Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities? Or African cities? Overall I find this analysis weak. It's basically a big correlation/causation fallacy, written by academics in the NY Times (elitist intellectuals writing in what is practically the official newspaper of such people), who are non too subtly arguing that smart young energetic people and places are people who agree with academics, and old decaying declining people and places are people who don't. But there are many other ways to explain contemporary political shifts. I see no reason to link it to demographics.
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  The causal start is advancing industrialization. This both reduces fertility rates and favors cities over the countryside. The relation is very consistent over many different countries, and it is easy to see what the causal chains are for each of them. >Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities? Or African cities? These cities are far more interconnected, both internally and externally, than the countryside. Also, I hate it when someone claims they have an alternative explanation, but don't present it so that we can examine it critically.
Bucephalus355 8y ago
>“The trend toward population decline, set off by a sustained decrease in fertility rates beginning in the 1960s, has been driven to a significant extent by increasing prosperity and life span.” In the US, I’m pretty sure it’s because ppl can’t afford to have kids.
- stevep001 8y ago
  After a certain point, family size is negatively correlated with income. http://m.startribune.com/minnecensus-family-size-and-its-relation-to-income-in-minnesota/171194091/ http://m.startribune.com/minnecensus-family-size-and-its-rel...
zerostar07 8y ago
cant read - Does this happen in europe too?
- lainga 8y ago
  Article says that the trend of nationalism is one of the most surprisingly international phenomena today - observed across the West except for Japan.
ramblerman 8y ago
The word 'populism' just seems to be used as a derogatory slur these days, for any party opposite to the person making the argument. Webster defines it as: populism - the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite

30 points by rinze 8y ago

Maybe it's time for governments to start coming up with policies to attract technology businesses to small cities and perhaps even towns. These businesses would have to be comfortable having many remote workers, since there's no way they're going to get everyone they want to hire to move there, but maybe they could be given sufficient incentive to set up a headquarters there. It's not unusual, of course, for localities to give large companies tax incentives to build factories, warehouses, or even data centers, but those tax incentives are very expensive, and they don't tend to bring better-educated, higher-earning workers into the area. Trying to attract a larger number of much smaller businesses might be a more fruitful approach in the long run, if a way can be found to do it.

JBReefer 8y ago
That won't work - there are really, really good reasons why clusters of industries emerge, and why they almost always emerge in dense areas. A better move might be to pay people to leave dying counties. I've heard it discussed for Coal Country in West Virginia, and in parts of Kansas that have been shrinking for the last century. As farms and rural industries mechanize, and as cities become the primary focus, why swim against the current?
rossdavidh 8y ago
I think there are strong headwinds to this, but there are some things that the government can do. For example, insuring that high-speed internet access is available in rural and small-town areas, similar to how they have in the past made sure that affordable postal delivery and phone service were not for big cities only. High-speed internet access makes it easier for certain kinds of jobs to be done from almost anywhere, and small towns tend to be more affordable.
- pnj9 8y ago
  Y’all are making the assumption rural areas want these things without asking How about we include their own list of real needs (not just “More jobs” rhetoric) in the real debates rather than going in circles with hypotheticals on social media Maybe the government can start there Cause I grew up in a rural area. The aren’t luddites. But they also don’t want YOUR context pushed on their ways Read some Paulo Freire
  - ScottBurson 8y ago
    If you want people to come and spend money in your small towns, you're going to have to give them some reason to do that. If you don't want that, that's certainly your business, but with the consolidation of agriculture and the mechanization of manufacturing that have been going on the last several decades, it's not clear to me what else your local economies can be based on. And indeed, the depopulation of rural areas and small towns that this article is discussing suggests that a lot of local economies are having a very hard time. If you have a better idea for a solution, by all means, tell us. What "real needs" do you have in mind?
    - pnj9 8y ago
      Apparently you missed the part about not bothering with hypotheticals on social media
      - ScottBurson 8y ago
        I have the impression that you could contribute to this conversation if you would engage with it, but you seem to be interested only in taking pot shots at the rest of us. Do you want to make yourself understood, or do you just want to scare us off?
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    I grew up in a town of ~16,000 (it's ~14,000 now) that was the biggest town in its county. I have many friends who still live in small towns. High speed internet is definitely something they want.
bobbytherobot 8y ago
There has been an effort to attract technology business to small cities and rural areas since the mid-1990s. I recall driving through West Virginia around 2000 and seeing a sign labeling a stretch of highway as "West Virginia's Tech Corridor." Knowing West Virginia, any company that built along there would have zero taxes, heck they probably wouldn't have to pay for the land. Purely monetary incentives don't work. You have to look at the full range of what incentives people to move to a place. And companies are still run by people who are swayed by those same incentives. Even in the Bay Area, companies with large campuses and competitive pay are opening offices in San Francisco because their talent is demanding it.
- ScottBurson 8y ago
  All true. I didn't say it would be easy. And I never suggested one could just pick a stretch of road and put it there — I think you have to have at least a small city.

repolfx 8y ago

Parts of this article seem like a rather circular analysis. In the world’s largest cities, where populations are densely concentrated and growing, economies are generally thriving and cosmopolitanism is embraced. Where populations are sparse or shrinking, usually in rural places and small cities, economies are often stagnant, and populism sells. What does "thriving" mean here? GDP? Do any countries track GDP by city? I haven't heard of that if so. This paragraph is vague but if by "thriving" they mean lots of economic activity, that's a circular definition - "thriving economies are where lots of people are". By this logic cities have always had more "thriving" economies than rural areas and always will, by the very definition of what a city is. Also, whilst they define populism, they do not define "cosmopolitanism". If populism is the feeling that a small group of elites do not represent the needs of ordinary people, then what is cosmopolitanism? The idea that elites don't exist at all? Or that they do and that it's a good thing if they rule? As youth have continued to migrate from rural areas to cities, their movement has widened not only the median age gap between rural places and cities, but also gaps in attitude, since the young, regardless of where they live, tend to associate more with urban outlooks. More circularity. Cities are dominated by the young, therefore the young associate more with urban outlooks. This is restating the premise in different words. One movement extols the values that are a practical necessity in dense, interconnected cities: interdependence, internationalism and the embrace of “diversity” (defined along multiple dimensions) This is stated as if it's obvious fact, but I don't understand why. Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities? Or African cities? Overall I find this analysis weak. It's basically a big correlation/causation fallacy, written by academics in the NY Times (elitist intellectuals writing in what is practically the official newspaper of such people), who are non too subtly arguing that smart young energetic people and places are people who agree with academics, and old decaying declining people and places are people who don't. But there are many other ways to explain contemporary political shifts. I see no reason to link it to demographics.

woodandsteel 8y ago
The causal start is advancing industrialization. This both reduces fertility rates and favors cities over the countryside. The relation is very consistent over many different countries, and it is easy to see what the causal chains are for each of them. >Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities? Or African cities? These cities are far more interconnected, both internally and externally, than the countryside. Also, I hate it when someone claims they have an alternative explanation, but don't present it so that we can examine it critically.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

>“The trend toward population decline, set off by a sustained decrease in fertility rates beginning in the 1960s, has been driven to a significant extent by increasing prosperity and life span.” In the US, I’m pretty sure it’s because ppl can’t afford to have kids.

stevep001 8y ago
After a certain point, family size is negatively correlated with income. http://m.startribune.com/minnecensus-family-size-and-its-relation-to-income-in-minnesota/171194091/ http://m.startribune.com/minnecensus-family-size-and-its-rel...

zerostar07 8y ago

cant read - Does this happen in europe too?

lainga 8y ago
Article says that the trend of nationalism is one of the most surprisingly international phenomena today - observed across the West except for Japan.

ramblerman 8y ago

The word 'populism' just seems to be used as a derogatory slur these days, for any party opposite to the person making the argument. Webster defines it as: populism - the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite