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I think most rural counties would struggle to attract remote workers. People have this dream of rural and small town life, and much it may be based on travel to

I think most rural counties would struggle to attract remote workers. People have this dream of rural and small town life, and much it may be based on travel to destination rural and small towns, but most of non-urbanized America has little infrastructure, services, or cultural institutions. Good luck even getting a decent Internet connection. The small towns that have this stuff also have very high cost of living. Small towns and exurbs on the fringes of metros may pick up people as workers can go into cities when they need to for work or play, but you couldn’t pay me to live in most rural counties in this country. People not from small towns also underestimate the level of substance abuse that these areas have — either from excessive drinking (and often drinking and driving) and drugs. I’ve had multiple high school classmates from my Ohio town die of opioid overdoses.

ryandrake 5y ago
Now that remote work has opened up as a possibility (at least for fortunate me), this topic now comes up a lot in our house: I'd like to move out of the Bay Area to a very low cost rural area, where we could get a house with land and live like a king and queen. My spouse looks at these areas and points out that sure, we'd save money, but we'd be king and queen of crap. She can more easily see the downsides of non-urbanized America than I can. I'm a shut-in, so I really don't care that a particular rural area has no night life or museums--hell, I basically didn't leave my computer chair throughout 2020-2021, and it was totally fine. But she has more of a social life, enjoys civilization, appreciates city infrastructure, and every time we drive out to look at one of these rural areas, it's really depressing for her to imagine living in one of these places. I think -if- small towns even -want- to attract remote workers, they'd need to solve this appearance of not at least being part of civilization. That said, the whole "Californians Please Stay Away" meme is common to a lot of small towns across America, so it's likely these places don't want me moving there anyway.

ryandrake 5y ago

Now that remote work has opened up as a possibility (at least for fortunate me), this topic now comes up a lot in our house: I'd like to move out of the Bay Area to a very low cost rural area, where we could get a house with land and live like a king and queen. My spouse looks at these areas and points out that sure, we'd save money, but we'd be king and queen of crap. She can more easily see the downsides of non-urbanized America than I can. I'm a shut-in, so I really don't care that a particular rural area has no night life or museums--hell, I basically didn't leave my computer chair throughout 2020-2021, and it was totally fine. But she has more of a social life, enjoys civilization, appreciates city infrastructure, and every time we drive out to look at one of these rural areas, it's really depressing for her to imagine living in one of these places. I think -if- small towns even -want- to attract remote workers, they'd need to solve this appearance of not at least being part of civilization. That said, the whole "Californians Please Stay Away" meme is common to a lot of small towns across America, so it's likely these places don't want me moving there anyway.