Krugman: Getting Real About Rural America - Nobody knows how to reverse the heartland's decline.

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/opinion/rural-america-economic-decline.html

Getting Real About Rural America
Nobody knows how to reverse the heartland’s decline.
By Paul Krugman
March 18, 2019

...

So what can be done to help rural America? We can and should make sure that all Americans have good health care, access to good education, and so on wherever they live. We can try to promote economic development in lagging regions with public investment, employment subsidies and, possibly, job guarantees.

But as I said, experience abroad isn’t encouraging. West Germany invested $1.7 trillion in an attempt to revive the former East Germany — more than $100,000 per capita — yet the region is still lagging, with many young people leaving.

Nor, realistically, can we expect aid to produce a political turnaround. Despite all that aid, in 2017 more than a quarter of East German men cast their ballots for the extreme-right, white nationalist Alternative for Germany.

I’m sure that some rural readers will be angered by everything I’ve just said, seeing it as typical big-city condescension. But that’s neither my intention nor the point. I’m simply trying to get real. We can’t help rural America without understanding that the role it used to play in our nation is being undermined by powerful economic forces that nobody knows how to stop.

[SHRED]

1. Grow hemp

Create thousands of eco-friendly homegrown products.
Careers that can't be outsourced.

There, I solved it.
Next.

[Volaris]

2. Shred I agree.

Additionally, we have to replace the rural and red-state manufacturing jobs that used to exist. Oh, I know...maybe all that empty floor space our pResident wants reopened, should be used by the department of energy to make solar panels for people's houses at less than market rate (since we're gonna make say, about a hundred billion of them)

We solved rural america, and it took 2 posts. We should go buy each other drinks!

In all seriousness, it isn't that difficult. If corps don't wanna do a thing, then the government should get to do that thing BY DEFAULT.

[SHRED]

4. *

[Beartracks]

10. That's how we got rural electrification.

Profit motive cannot and does not solve every societal need.

=======

[Moostache]

3. While the above posts make all the sense in the world, this reminded me of something very old..

A comedy bit by Sam Kinison circa 1985-ish..

Substitute "Jobs" for "Food" and you can get a lot further along at solving some of the employment problems these people face. Of course, these snowflakes don't want the jobs that they claim immigrants are 'stealing'...things like picking the crops or actually working the land...they just want to live away from society while dictating to society what priorities and policies we should have...well, I am feeling a bit more than a little non-charitable of late to that notion....so to them I say "FUCK YOU....move to where the jobs are, do something else to replace your "good old days (THAT NEVER WERE)" or starve to death.

(editorial content - please realize in advance that ANYTHING quoting from 1980's stand-up is guaranteed to offend at some level in 2019, so no, I do not really believe this, just venting a bit!)

[Volaris]

5. Lol I miss that man...

And moving to where the jobs are would require them to live near brown people and liberals.

Thats just unacceptable. .

[radical noodle]

6. There's more to it than that

Moving is expensive. The areas with jobs mean moving to a place with a much higher cost of living. I lived in rural areas for decades. It's not as simple as racism or ideology.

[appalachiablue]

11. These experiences are true, and far too many folks are ignorant

of more rural, non urban areas that consist of diverse populations and cultures- white, black and Hispanic now and in the past. Likewise, residents in high cost urban areas aren't all culturally exposed, close to minorities and immune to racism, esp. Re 'brown people.' That's a myth.

[radical noodle]

13. Democrats need to have this conversation

[Nitram]

7. So much for the right wing love affair with a "free market economy."

[Igel]

9. It's not just all about money.

Whatever some obsolete 19th century philosophers said.

Nor just about democracy and organization of society.

Nor just about culture.

The three (at least those three) interplay.

I know kids who move from the 'burbs to the city because it's "cooler" to be in the city. They move, and they're everybody's best friend. They pay more. They do nothing they couldn't have done in the 'burbs. Except be in the city.

"It's because everything's backwards, all the repression." But they can't actually point to any. So they point to songs. To tv shows. Where people who live in the city paint those who don't live in the city as retrograde idjits. Gotta have the right lifestyle. Not the wrong lifestyle.

In other words, shaming. It's a really useful tool, as many have found out after fighting for decades over how wrong shaming is. Peer pressure. Framing and PR, spin.

Tech let's companies that don't require people to all be in the same set of cubicles to be scattered. But "corporate culture" is how cool it is to be together because if you're with the cool people "like us" then you're cool. There's something to be said for common distribution nodes, but often those are set up *around* cities. They trust their employees. As long as they're on the other side of a glass window where they can be monitored. Closely.

Soviet-style socialism could have worked. But as they recognized, it would require a "New Soviet Man" to pull it off. The "engineers of the human soul" apparently didn't figure things out correctly. Laissez-faire capitalism would also work just fine. But it would require a different sort of critter to make it work, not us. It's at the heart of the desire for nurture over nature; if we could just fix the environment then everybody would "just get along" and then the desired system would work. (But again, fix that problem and *any* system would work.)

[Nitram]

12. It is refreshing to read a comment that doesn't reduce everything to a simple bumper sticker slogan.

Thanks, Igel!