> There should be a Rural Broadbandification Project set into motion so everybody gets fiber. This also has the advantage that it requires lots of labor like di

> There should be a Rural Broadbandification Project set into motion so everybody gets fiber. This also has the advantage that it requires lots of labor like digging ditches. I’m not very convinced by this. 100 years ago you could employ a lot of people to dig a ditch because labour and spades were cheap. Today, I think you can’t realistically give people spades and I worry the large efficient digging machines would be too expensive or in short supply to start a massive campaign of ditch digging. They also require training. But maybe I’m wrong. > It also has the advantage that it would allow some of these high earners to move from turbo-high cost of living areas to much lower ones. I generally find these arguments compelling but I just looked and I can’t find much evidence of a significant benefit. Partly I think this could be a lack of studies or me misreading the data, or that it is just difficult to measure (and there are different things to measure too, eg the FTC defines broadband as >= 200kbps, which is I think not generally what is referred to when people talk about improving rural broadband). Do you know of any studies into whether improving rural broadband actually has these beneficial effects?