My guess would be that this may drive engineers to the Midwest, with its lower cost of real estate and already-entrenched culture of cooperatives (in agricultur

My guess would be that this may drive engineers to the Midwest, with its lower cost of real estate and already-entrenched culture of cooperatives (in agriculture and some industries) and worker-led structures like labor unions. Places like Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, or maybe even college towns like Madison and Ann Arbor (where housing cooperatives are very prevalent and widely-accepted) would be where I would look for this kind of change first. Current "'Silicon $foo' where $foo != 'Valley'" type cities (St. Louis, Austin, etc) may be a good bet too. Interesting theory. (Let me add Minneapolis to your list.) The Midwest gets a lot of bad press on the Coasts ("flyover country") but what's missed is that if you control for urban-versus-rural or for density, it's probably the most educated and liberal part of the country (perhaps tied with the Pacific Northwest). The East Coast, for example, isn't notably cultured (to any degree that's hard to find in other parts of the country) outside of certain neighborhoods in Boston or New York (which are getting expensive and inaccessible anyway). The real cultural tension in the U.S. isn't South vs. North or "Red States" versus "Blue States". You might call it "urban versus rural", but there are so few farmers (and most farmers I know are actually quite educated; you have to be smart to compete with agricorps) that it's more of an urban versus suburb dichotomy (with the distinction depending more on lifestyle and outlook than whether the location is technically part of the incorporated city). So yes, I agree. I don't know that we need more talent coming into the Midwest (although it won't hurt); we just need to stop losing the talent that we have to the Bay Area (where young engineers are still paid better after adjusting for cost-of-living; once you get older, the Midwest starts to win because it's more like 140k vs. 170k than 70k vs. 120k). Obviously, most of those talented people don't stay in the Bay Area (they get older, need space for families) but there isn't a clear "next" destination for them. Do they go to Seattle? Chicago? Portland? Austin? Somewhere else? Perhaps this is a good thing, though, because it's probably better for the country to have talent spread around than to try to replicate an aberration (SV's concentration of economic activity, which congests it and deprives the rest of the country).