>This isn't a Republican or Democratic problem. At every level of government, both parties represent distressed areas. But the economic fortunes of the haves and have-nots have only helped to widen the political chasm between them, and it has yet to be addressed by substantial policy proposals on either side of the aisle.
I don't understand how the article can claim this when their own graphic at the top of the page shows that the majority of distressed communities are in Republican-dominant areas.
This is an honest question and not intended to be snarky, but what have Democrats done to improve job scarcity in middle America? I'm not insinuating that the GOP has done anything either.
You don't do one thing to fix something like job scarcity, you need a roundup of changes over decades to fix it. You need programs that push people into higher education so the communities have something to offer. And people can't study at college or university if they have children from unintended pregnancies, so you need to have good social programs to help people from when they enter high school to when they leave grad school. You need healthcare to prevent health issues before they happen and to get people back to work as soon as possible when they do fall ill. You need welfare programs so if shit happens (And it does) you don't have your life completely destroyed and you and your family put on the street.
Are any of those policies ones that the Republican party stands for? Sex education, socialized healthcare and education, and welfare are on the GOP hit-list. Democrat states have had these things for decades now, which is why they are the prosperous ones.
So all those things are great, I don't see how any of them will solve the employment problem plaguing most of the country, either directly or indirectly.
The closest thing you listed is pushing people to college degrees. Once they get their degree, they'd have to move to a prosperous city to get employment. The non-prosperous city hasn't improved at all.
So I think what you aren't understanding about the problem, is that in all these non-prosperous towns, there are few jobs and most of them pay shit. They had jobs, but they all left. The problem is to get the jobs back.
What have the Dems done to get the jobs back? Again, I'm not saying the GOP has done anything either, but see my issue? Nothing is being done by either party, and that's a huge issue affecting millions of families. I mean it's not even really discussed. Warren is the only one even on the trail of some solutions, but she is an outsider (by her own admission).
I mean if you go to these areas, it's the Great Depression. The towns are all boarded up and the people are hurting and have been for 4 decades. It's a huge failure of government that this is happening, and has been happening for so long.
And if you look, you'll see that Democrats did propose plans in the last election. But without the approval of Congress, there's not much that can be done.
So should we continue to just tell a good chunk of the country to go to hell? What plans would the Dems enact if they sweep the 2020 election? I mean this is the most pressing issue for a huge voting block. Without a good plan, I don't think the Dems can take back the house or senate, much less the presidency. It's long over due, and the GOP don't have any good ideas either.
>And if you look, you'll see that Democrats did propose plans in the last election.
"So should we continue to just tell a good chunk of the country to go to hell? "
Absolutely not, and no one is suggesting this. But it would be completely foolhardy to say you're going to "bring back coal" when that's just not going to happen.
And please, stop with this "Dems have no plan" narrative. It's entirely false, and it's quite dishonest to bring it up when even a cursory Google search will prove it wrong.
So Dems do have plans. But the problem is that many of the people in those areas don't want to hear that their previous jobs are gone. They don't want to retrain. So they latch on to the people who say things like, "We're gonna bring back coal jobs," regardless of how realistic it is.
>But it would be completely foolhardy to say you're going to "bring back coal" when that's just not going to happen.
Coal is done (except in China where we send a lot of manufacturing), even the coal workers know that. Subsidizing solar and "solarizing" middle America would create quite a few jobs, including long term jobs maintaining the solar panels, etc. Haven't heard any proposals along those lines though. I believe Obama had mentioned it a few times, but nothing concrete.
>stop with this "Dems have no plan" narrative. It's entirely false, and it's quite dishonest to bring it up when even a cursory Google search will prove it wrong.
Look, I like the Dems, I vote for them quite a bit, but I'm not going to blindly say they are great and have a real solution to this problem, because they don't, at least none that I've heard anyway.
Anyway, I Googled it like you said (I found it odd that no one could actually name any though) and here is Schumer's (and therefore the Democrat's) idea:
First, we’re going to increase people’s pay. Second, we’re going to reduce their everyday expenses. And third, we’re going to provide workers with the tools they need for the 21st-century economy.
None of these is going to solve the problem. I'll go one at a time.
- "First, we’re going to increase people’s pay." Increasing pay is great in the larger cities with a good knowledge and industrial base, but closes a lot of small town stores and restaurants with not a large customer base. Cost of living varies greatly from region to region and even city to city. In summary, this will improve the minimum wage workers positions in already prosperous cities, but hurt them in small towns (which is the target of this discussion).
- Lowering household costs by providing paid family and sick leave. This is nice, but it attacks a symptom rather than the problem of few to no jobs and even fewer ones that pay enough to live on. I assume it's an attempt to lower the cost of living, but I don't see how it does, unless you are sick and already have a job.
- We’ve already proposed creating jobs with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. I've always thought this was a good idea, but it's temporary, unless the US commits to building and maintaining a hell of an infrastructure forever. Based on how our elections work and the GOP not liking this sort of thing, I don't see how it could be a permanent solution. I mean it's something though.
To solve the middle America problem will require something a lot more radical, I just don't know what it is. I'm hoping to hear it from the Democrats though. I haven't yet. I certainly haven't heard anything from the GOP either.
The problem is that GOP get elected by saying Government is broken then proceed to fulfill the prediction by breaking it further (look at Kansas).
The Dems need to go back to the 50 state strategy and just "show up" at a number of uncontested races preparing to lose but win the 2nd or 3rd time - the problem is that the establishment wing of the Democratic party cock-blocks that and actively advances "their person" into such races and proceeds to lose them (blaming the grassroots candidate in the process), while ignoring large swathes of winnable races.
Honestly, with this issue, and it's a huge issue, it seems the government is broken. I don't know how the Dems plan on solving this either, so I'm not sure replacing every GOP politician with a Dem politician will solve anything.
You haven't been listening to platforms. There are solutions that the traditional media ignore because their funders/advertisers don't like them. Example: medicare for all, financial transaction tax, Gore's lockbox for SS funds, repealing parts of patriot act, etc.
I like all of those ideas, especially medicare for all. I think that is one that will help middle America. One of the main reasons people don't just quit and start their own businesses is because they can't afford to lose health insurance.
I think blocking all these M&A would go a long way too. No one can compete in an industry with just one or two giants who enact huge barriers to entry, etc.
Bernie proposed Medicare for All, but I haven't really heard anything about blocking mergers. Sounds more like effective DOJ/antitrust, though.
Keep in mind that Obama (widely seen as a sellout from Dems and the antichrist on the GOP side) was effective in reducing mobile subscription costs by blocking the AT&T / TMobile merger in 2014 - that was the FCC.
Yes, I didn't like him at first but Tom Wheeler did a great job. To bad Ajit is reversing most of it.
I'm of the mind that no large company mergers shouldn't be allowed period, at least for a long time. Small company mergers in growing industries, sure. These large mergers in established industries only serve the companies and hurt both the workers and the consumers. The word cartel comes to mind.
I think the biggest problem with US politics, at least in the executive branch, is presidents need to be cautious until the last 2 years of an 8 year term, and still, anything radical they do can hurt the party. I think we need something radical done to fix middle America.
Arguably Obamacare has been great for adding jobs to the healthcare industry.
That said, I'm not entirely sure what the executive branch can be expected to do here aside from tweaking interest rates and actively hiring people directly.
Democrats have long had plans for retraining programs for those affected by economic change. On most trade agreements, Democrats are the ones pushing for retraining programs for those who's jobs would be displaced by the agreement. Hell, Secretary Clinton had a whole plan written up on retraining programs for those in economically distressed areas. They actually had ideas and plans beyond "Let's bring back coal."
Yes, I remember Bill gave a good speech about retraining workers, but without businesses in these towns to hire people, I don't see how it would do much for actual employment.
It's not only manufacturing that left, agriculture scaled so high that you need 1000+ acres to make it in most crops. 1000 acres costs millions of dollars, leaving even more people behind. I don't know your age, but there were a bunch of Farm Aid concerts in the 80s. Didn't seem to do much though.
If you actually zoom in to the map, you'll see that yes, a lot of these are republican territories, but there are also a lot of democratic territories with a majority of black and latino voters.
I don't really see how this can be remedied, besides there being a revival of traditional industries (unlikely) or current workers retraining in massive numbers (again, unlikely). It almost seems like this is a post-industrial great migration, where people from distressed areas would need to move to the few areas that are thriving.
It doesn't help that the republican dominated political parties in many of the distressed states are more concerned with cutting taxes on the rich (Kansas) or trying to pass ridiculous and unnecessary laws (bathroom bills in NC, Texas etc). This has got to stop.
Accepting Medicaid expansion, as I see it, is probably one way to immediately kickstart many of these distressed states. The federal money that comes in might just help create jobs in the healthcare sector (or fund existing ones better) that might somewhat mitigate the affects of economic duress. Not to mention better healthcare for the people.
I think their metric is suspect. It only uses where new companies are being created as a major metric to categorize "distressed" economies. Pooling of resources around major urban areas is very typical of how economies grow. You can't expect companies to just rise up in the middle of nowhere
Maybe you should get out more. I'm pretty sure a cross-country trucker would agree the towns off the main interstates are crumbling. I just visited my mom's hometown, Lamar, Colorado. They clearly surf the same internet you do, they are trying to mimic the same patterns of behavior, but the town is falling apart.
I think this reality has to be frankly talked about. If liberal tax policies are so destructive to business and innovation, why are the most successful counties often times (as shown in this map) run by more liberal / progressive / dare I say socialistic governments? People often criticize this line of inquiry and call it divisive or inappropriate or callous, but I cannot see how it is unrelated nonetheless.
Tax breaks, gender discriminative bathroom laws, climate protection deregulation, and "appeals to traditional values" do not seem to be improving the lives of these people very much.
I think the policies you cite as bad ideas do in fact enjoy broad support in the areas that enact them. "Hearts and minds" campaigns led by outsiders are notoriously difficult and prone to failure. Can you suggest a way to start the conversation about these policies in a way that you think is likely to succeed?
This is an extremely good question and very difficult to answer, to say the least. There has been quite the disinformation program going on in many conservative states; actually not simply disinformation, but demonization, so that its difficult to even get many people to listen to liberals.
But I think Al Gore probably has the best solution to this, which he talks about in his new documentary: if you focus on real economic benefits of certain "liberal" ideas, then you seem to have a chance. e.g. if wind energy is shown to be cheaper than natural gas, people will adopt it.
Democrats (and fact-believing republicans) really need to include more economics in their messages. Like how expanding Medicare actually helps small businesses and rural communities. Like how higher taxes on the rich help fund education and infrastructure projects that lead to greater prosperity.
I understand it is a somewhat skeevey way to do it, because if you're a democrat, you probably also believe in other non-economic democratic values (e.g. diversity, womens' reproductive rights etc.) and to win the support of people who don't believe in these things might seem uncouth.
I personally think that the issue is orthogonal, but correlated.
Liberal policies in the US are highly correlated with high population density. Even in red states, the cities are mostly outposts of blue politics; even in California, the rural landscapes are dominated by red politics.
Communities seem a bit like ponzi schemes, or are at least creatures of inertia. If the community is growing, it exudes promise and hope and more people are interested in moving there. Growth leads to job openings, which leads to more growth. The inverse is dire. When cities go bankrupt or when rural areas lose residents faster than they replenish them, it becomes a downward spiral and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rural areas don't sustain themselves. Urban or "hip" suburban areas have a much better chance at sustaining. College towns constantly have fresh blood (so long as the college stays out of bankruptcy).
I think cities thrive despite the friction created by more socially liberal policies and higher taxation. It's far easier to pivot your business and there are more serendipitous events in densely populated areas with highly educated people. I suspect people would prefer to move to a place with a reasonable social safety net as religious institutions lose the prestige they once had in the US. Perhaps in liberal areas people don't have to fear the social darwinism of the similar situation in a state+county with no funds to help the poor/homeless.
The obvious counter-example to "liberal policy places thrive" is Detroit. Detroit had very liberal policies in a state with very strong labor laws. After car manufacturers moved their manufacturing to cheaper labor areas (the US south and other countries), Detroit's population collapsed to less than 50% of it's peak.
Cities like Seattle get municipal tax dollars from companies like Amazon whose business disrupts small towns across the US. States receive the sales tax but there's no compensation for the larger disruption effects.
The story of Detroit is far more complicated than what you describe, especially when you choose to gloss over decades of racist violence and humiliation that preceded its collapse.
And its economic collapse was also the product of broader right-wing attack on the political/economic power of working class people in the US. Under the guise of “free trade,” they were forced to compete with labor of poorer countries, while the wealthy and their administrators were largely exempt from the same pressures.
On a macro scale one of the republican arguments is that corporate tax breaks will revitalize corporations in these areas, giving these people jobs and livelihoods.
> and "appeals to traditional values" do not seem to be improving the lives of these people very much.
There's a few things going on here:
1) Many in these communities see success and virtue as intertwined. The idea here is that a person with the correct traditional values plus hard work and faith will have a good economic outcome. If God is present, and God commands us to act in certain ways, surely he will reward us for our faith in all aspects of our life (including the economic dimensions).
2) A person living in an economically depressed area won't have money to hold onto, and his life is usually just a few ticks away from financial ruin, losing his home, losing his car, major health episode, etc. It's an ugly and chaotic state. Traditional values provide constancy and a psychological anchor. I may be in a chaotic state but God is in control, even if things go horrifically bad. The trade-off here is that God sets the rules that everyone has to abide by.
This thinking runs contrary to the fact that cities like Detriot, Chicago are debt-centers. California (also reliably blue) is far 'in the red' as far as debt goes.
No, liberal tax policies are not the answer. The piper must be paid eventually.
Which piper is getting paid? The wealthy who made their fortunes in society but don't want to contribute back with their fair share of taxes to keep society running?
With regards to rural health care, this investigative series about "rural communities wilting after their hospital closes"[1] just published recently. A quick Google search reveals a number of different outlets publishing similar pieces since at least ~2012.
Making offshoring of manufacturing more expensive would be a big start. Require that companies only offshore with countries with the same environmental and worker protections the US has or better.
Companies offshore manufacturing because the labor is cheap and the environmental regulations are slim.
Automation has taken a large chunk of the manufacturing jobs of the 1970s, but bringing even automated manufacturing back would boost auxiliary businesses in the towns.
I actually agree with you on this. But unless there is some kind of consensus among different countries, including those that have free trade agreements with the US (e.g. NAFTA) to change the terms, it seems rather unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Besides, I wonder how much more expensive that alone would make manufacturing in other countries. AFAIK a significant reason for labor being cheap is COL being cheaper in other countries.
> But unless there is some kind of consensus among different countries, including those that have free trade agreements with the US (e.g. NAFTA) to change the terms, it seems rather unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Yes, Trump is trying to renegotiate NAFTA. Not sure the details or what he's trying to do with it. It does show it can be done though. I'm fairly suspicious of all our trade agreements. I'm sure they have a lot of US industrial influence in them and not a lot of worker influence.
>Besides, I wonder how much more expensive that alone would make manufacturing in other countries. AFAIK a significant reason for labor being cheap is COL being cheaper in other countries.
That's a good question. I would assume the cost of putting environmental regulations in place would be substantial, but not sure about the labor rights.
What I do know is you can buy a hunk of land for real cheap in the middle of nowhere in the US as long as you don't mind:
1. No water
2. No electric
3. No sewer
4. No road
5. No nearby hospitals
6. No nearby grocery stores
In other words, I think our infrastructure has a lot to do with our COL.
And I'm certainly not saying the renegotiated deal will be any better for middle America. Trump seems to be moving towards a traditional GOP pro-business at all costs stance.
I'm not sure how economists can say it didn't hurt or barely hurt American workers when we have so many plants in Mexico today.
This is the Perot v Gore debate on NAFTA. I think Perot was right.
I think you are trying to mince words. Renegotiating and finalizing aren't the same thing. Just because the renegotiation failed doesn't mean there wasn't any renegotiating going on. Just because I didn't accept an offer doesn't mean I didn't negotiate.
My point is that it is incorrect to point to Trump's effort as demonstrating anything that minimizes the upthread comment about the need for consensus among trading partners (and implying such a consensus is unlikely) to achieve the kind of change that was being discussed when that comment was offered. Since Trump's efforts to date neither render moot the need for consensus nor demonstrate that such consensus is within reach.
> Doesn't the term negotiate or renegotiate imply the consensus of more than one party?
No, it implies trying to reach such a consensus, not the existence of such a consensus. The practicality of attempting to find consensus is different than that of actually finding it.
> As far as "can be done," meaning it is legally possible to renegotiate, which it is.
Then that was a stupid and pointless response to the comment about the need for consensus, which raised an issue of pragmatics, not legal possibility.
America needs to stop with the "land of opportunity" bullshit narrative. It's not the 1920's anymore, not everyone gets to be Elon Musk.
We can either be like Germany and tackle these problems together - which will involve massive capital and wealth redistribution. The course we're on - "winner takes all" - is not sustainable - there will be riots on the streets before long.
I find it ironic how the GOP voters who seem to be disproportionately living in economically distressed areas are the ones most likely to vote for politicians pushing the dog-eat-dog economic model.
> I find it ironic how the GOP voters who seem to be disproportionately living in economically distressed areas are the ones most likely to vote for politicians pushing the dog-eat-dog economic model.
I don't. In many cases, people aren't voting for a party because they agree with all its policies, but because they agree with it on one or two policies they don't want to compromise on.
So perhaps one of the GOP's social policies (as much as they're disliked by the left) might just generally be more popular and held as more important than their economics ones.
With the US two party system, you can either vote somewhat more left wing social policies and economics policies, or somewhat more right wing social policies and economics policies, assuming you want to make a difference.
If this changed, then I suspect you'd see a very different picture in regards to what politicians are voted for.
That's simple psychology- take the poor and downtrodden, give them a scapegoat for their problems (liberals), someone to feel morally superior to (everyone but poor, downtrodden GOP voters), and sprinkle the whole thing with Prosperity Gospel Christianity and poof instant voter base.
> It almost seems like this is a post-industrial great migration, where people from distressed areas would need to move to the few areas that are thriving.
Except, at least in Canada, people increasingly can't afford to live in the cities where the jobs are. The alternative might be a movement of people moving back into the bush - if you are going to live in poverty, you might as well have freedom and spare time rather than working three part time jobs just to pay rent, grocery, and utility bills.
I can see believing that if you're only familiar with Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. You might find it surprising to hear that there are many other vibrant urban areas in Canada that have jobs without the absurd housing costs.
I'm saying your claim that "people increasingly can't afford to live in the cities" is an easily refutable, broad stroke statement that fails to acknowledge regional nuances. The same would be true of any single, monolithic measure that attempts to quantify such a claim.
Moreover, if you take the time to drill into the actual numbers, you'll find housing affordability is about average relative to historical figures (in terms of percentage income spent on housing) in most urban areas, with the exception of a few major centers (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto) that are pulling up the national average:
This is nothing new, and it didn't happen overnight. The prosperous-vs-declining areas have been moving in that direction for at least a generation. Perhaps more magnified/pronounced in one area vs another, but on the whole this has been the trend for as long as I can recall.
Nonetheless, a couple of observations:
- Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska: regional chunks of comfortable/prosperous areas compared to the rhetoric espoused during the 2016 election campaign. I expected these to look much worse.
Dismissing it offhand as "nothing new" is a little disingenuous.
There may have always been this momentum but it didn't hit critical levels until lately, and that combined with the rise of globalism (whether that really is the culprit or not) has left a lot of people feeling down, literally, in the dumps. This information adds another facet to our understanding of today's political stage and it's worth paying attention to so we can better resolve it.
I'm originally from Missouri and would say it hit critical level over 10 years ago. The state has been in decline in terms of personal income, GDP growth, and a host of other economic indicators since 2009.
This includes the metro areas of KC and STL, who represent the lion's share of the upside of growth numbers. Take those away, and the rural areas are disastrous -- just as the chart shows. Stark differences when viewed on a county basis, but it's been on this trend for a long time.
I can't speak to the rest of the country, though. As always, your mileage may vary.
As someone who has lived in the southern United States for over 30 years I can say with confidence that America did not leave these people behind... They left themselves behind.
I can assure you that the children living in these communities didn't. I'd even be willing to bet that a good chunk of the policies keeping these places behind were inked and dried before their parents could vote.
So, as much fun as it is to blame these people for their own woes it is neither productive nor accurate.
No I cannot. Not being an economist I can't point to exactly what is causing this to happen. I can, however, talk about my theory on what causes it. More or less it boils down to education. In a lot of rural communities the school systems are one step above garbage and have been for generations. This feeds back into declining tax revenues (because education tends to lead to higher paying jobs) which feeds back into worse schools.
The children didn't, but their parents did nothing to fix the problem and in most cases voted to continue to pass these same problems on to their children. Public school is scary-bad because them damn liberals are teaching our children to think and those judges prevent us from force-feeding our preferred cultural indoctrination, so let's starve the schools in the guise of cutting taxes and promoting "choice." Then let's all act surprised when our children get a shit education, when they lack qualifications/skills for jobs and continuing education, and businesses have to expand elsewhere to find an educated workforce. Then we can blame the failure upon the schools, greedy teachers unions, and administrative "bloat" and not admit to our own greed and short-sightedness. Of course the children of the elite will do just fine in private school, where they will get an education that might, almost, be as good as what any kid in Minnesota gets from public school.
When I was a midwestern public school kid of the 70s and 80s, Kansas was on par with the rest of the midwest in terms of general public education. After Brownback and his ilk have finished raping the state anyone with a child under the age of 14 should probably consider moving to a another state for the sake of their own child's future. This is not a problem that goes back generations, and the cause and solution are blatantly obvious.
Seriously, the one word response to your attempt to absolve them of any agency or responsibility for this situation is "Kansas."
This is such a profoundly useless sentiment. What's the point of spreading the "Southerners are backwards" meme except to win some feeling of self-satisfied collective superiority?
You're ignoring the fact that investment has been plainly beneficial everywhere in the south. From land grant universities and TVA electrification to NASA in Huntsville and St Jude in Memphis, it's pretty clear that southerners don't just choose to "leave themselves behind" when given resources.
I think the point is they frequently vote against their own interests. For just one example, one need only look at the Kansas experiment to see what unchecked conservative tax policy can do to a state.
It was not an attempt to spread a meme or feel a sense of superiority.
My comment was an observation of a cultural difference that is not even really confined to the south.
It’s more about rural and urban differences. I can only speak about the south because it is what I have experienced.
A culture that is at its root regressive, anti-science and anti-intellectual should not be surprised when it does not succeed in a modern world.
Yet again, Minnesota bucks the trend. Wonder why they keep doing so well while the rest of the middle states flounder.
By bucking the trend I mean that compared to most other states it appears to be very comfortable and prosperous across the state in most but not all counties at least according to this map. I’ve seen similar findings in New Yorker and in the NYT too.
Edit: is there something MN is doing that we could all learn from? They weren’t apart of the North Dakota oil boom really so I don’t think it’s that.
Minnesota has a lot of very unique things going for it. An above average number (17) of Fortune 500s in the Twin Cities area. One of the nations best private hospitals (Mayo Clinic), which drives its 3rd largest city's economy. A low cost of living due to opinions on its climate.
I don't know of a definitive study that controls for all variables but one theory is the heavy Nordic population there.[1]
If you believe in cultural factors... (e.g. memes such as "Swiss punctuality", "German engineering", "Protestant work ethic", etc), there's something about Nordic culture or solidarity that aids success. (E.g. Norway does not squander its oil resources and built up its citizens' pensions -- while oil-rich Venezuela is basically bankrupt.) It's hard to think of a geographical area in USA with significant # of descendants of Sweden/Norway/Denmark being an economic slum.
It's an interesting correlation, if not provable causation.
> Yet again, Minnesota bucks the trend. Wonder why they keep doing so well while the rest of the middle states flounder.
I would assume its because the majority of Minnesotans live in the Twin Cities Metro and the Twin Cities is doing pretty well economically. For example 16 of the 17 Fortune 500's in Minnesota are headquartered in the Twin Cities and the unemployment rate is about 3%. If you drive outside the Twin Cities lots of towns look pretty distressed.
In Oklahoma the Internet has shown up in the rural areas. Oklahoma is 30% rural which amounts to 1.3M people who don't live in any kind of town. Rural Oklahoma is rapidly changing so fast many of the people are having a hard time understanding the changes. It is not that it is falling behind, but generations old ways of order became obsolete or massively challenged overnight. This community is being asked to catch up on multiple decades of urban cultural in a few years. So they vote to slow it down.
The Urban-Rural divide is real. Massive investments in Rural Oklahoma and Rural America are needed. Something I hope to promote if and when I enter the Oklahoma State House.
From the article:
"It's not likely to fix itself," said EIG co-founder Steve Glickman. "Entrepreneurs are everywhere, but capital flows are really isolated and captured in a handful of places."
From YC's FAQ section:
Location
Can we do it without moving to where you are?
-Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them move.
I've said this before, but the conservatism of YC regarding location is astounding when considering the diversity that YC accepts in virtually all other facets of its operation.
They'll invest in a file sharing app and a nuclear reactor company in the same batch, but apparently investing outside the Bay Area is just too hard.
Sorry, if you don't move to SF, attend burning man regularly (and use the Experience to completely define yourself from then on) and disavow any right-leaning views, you have no right to participate in the startup world. Well, that's how it feels as someone living in the midwest who has tried to be a part of startups.
I lived in California for over a decade and the entire startup thing was almost too easy to participate in. Money thrown all over the place, easy to find new startups or participate in your own. But god help you if you don't feel like living in California.
91 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadI don't understand how the article can claim this when their own graphic at the top of the page shows that the majority of distressed communities are in Republican-dominant areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Nationwide_US_presid...
That kind of map conveys acres of unfeeling land, rather than a quantity of distressed humans.
So that particular graphic is simply not very useful -- whichever way folks want to argue things.
Are any of those policies ones that the Republican party stands for? Sex education, socialized healthcare and education, and welfare are on the GOP hit-list. Democrat states have had these things for decades now, which is why they are the prosperous ones.
The closest thing you listed is pushing people to college degrees. Once they get their degree, they'd have to move to a prosperous city to get employment. The non-prosperous city hasn't improved at all.
So I think what you aren't understanding about the problem, is that in all these non-prosperous towns, there are few jobs and most of them pay shit. They had jobs, but they all left. The problem is to get the jobs back.
What have the Dems done to get the jobs back? Again, I'm not saying the GOP has done anything either, but see my issue? Nothing is being done by either party, and that's a huge issue affecting millions of families. I mean it's not even really discussed. Warren is the only one even on the trail of some solutions, but she is an outsider (by her own admission).
I mean if you go to these areas, it's the Great Depression. The towns are all boarded up and the people are hurting and have been for 4 decades. It's a huge failure of government that this is happening, and has been happening for so long.
They're not coming back.
And if you look, you'll see that Democrats did propose plans in the last election. But without the approval of Congress, there's not much that can be done.
So should we continue to just tell a good chunk of the country to go to hell? What plans would the Dems enact if they sweep the 2020 election? I mean this is the most pressing issue for a huge voting block. Without a good plan, I don't think the Dems can take back the house or senate, much less the presidency. It's long over due, and the GOP don't have any good ideas either.
>And if you look, you'll see that Democrats did propose plans in the last election.
Like what?
Absolutely not, and no one is suggesting this. But it would be completely foolhardy to say you're going to "bring back coal" when that's just not going to happen.
And please, stop with this "Dems have no plan" narrative. It's entirely false, and it's quite dishonest to bring it up when even a cursory Google search will prove it wrong.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/workforce-and-skills/
So Dems do have plans. But the problem is that many of the people in those areas don't want to hear that their previous jobs are gone. They don't want to retrain. So they latch on to the people who say things like, "We're gonna bring back coal jobs," regardless of how realistic it is.
Coal is done (except in China where we send a lot of manufacturing), even the coal workers know that. Subsidizing solar and "solarizing" middle America would create quite a few jobs, including long term jobs maintaining the solar panels, etc. Haven't heard any proposals along those lines though. I believe Obama had mentioned it a few times, but nothing concrete.
>stop with this "Dems have no plan" narrative. It's entirely false, and it's quite dishonest to bring it up when even a cursory Google search will prove it wrong.
Look, I like the Dems, I vote for them quite a bit, but I'm not going to blindly say they are great and have a real solution to this problem, because they don't, at least none that I've heard anyway.
Anyway, I Googled it like you said (I found it odd that no one could actually name any though) and here is Schumer's (and therefore the Democrat's) idea:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/opinion/chuck-schumer-emp...
First, we’re going to increase people’s pay. Second, we’re going to reduce their everyday expenses. And third, we’re going to provide workers with the tools they need for the 21st-century economy.
None of these is going to solve the problem. I'll go one at a time.
- "First, we’re going to increase people’s pay." Increasing pay is great in the larger cities with a good knowledge and industrial base, but closes a lot of small town stores and restaurants with not a large customer base. Cost of living varies greatly from region to region and even city to city. In summary, this will improve the minimum wage workers positions in already prosperous cities, but hurt them in small towns (which is the target of this discussion).
- Lowering household costs by providing paid family and sick leave. This is nice, but it attacks a symptom rather than the problem of few to no jobs and even fewer ones that pay enough to live on. I assume it's an attempt to lower the cost of living, but I don't see how it does, unless you are sick and already have a job.
- We’ve already proposed creating jobs with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. I've always thought this was a good idea, but it's temporary, unless the US commits to building and maintaining a hell of an infrastructure forever. Based on how our elections work and the GOP not liking this sort of thing, I don't see how it could be a permanent solution. I mean it's something though.
To solve the middle America problem will require something a lot more radical, I just don't know what it is. I'm hoping to hear it from the Democrats though. I haven't yet. I certainly haven't heard anything from the GOP either.
The Dems need to go back to the 50 state strategy and just "show up" at a number of uncontested races preparing to lose but win the 2nd or 3rd time - the problem is that the establishment wing of the Democratic party cock-blocks that and actively advances "their person" into such races and proceeds to lose them (blaming the grassroots candidate in the process), while ignoring large swathes of winnable races.
Honestly, with this issue, and it's a huge issue, it seems the government is broken. I don't know how the Dems plan on solving this either, so I'm not sure replacing every GOP politician with a Dem politician will solve anything.
I think blocking all these M&A would go a long way too. No one can compete in an industry with just one or two giants who enact huge barriers to entry, etc.
Who proposed that? Bernie?
Keep in mind that Obama (widely seen as a sellout from Dems and the antichrist on the GOP side) was effective in reducing mobile subscription costs by blocking the AT&T / TMobile merger in 2014 - that was the FCC.
I'm of the mind that no large company mergers shouldn't be allowed period, at least for a long time. Small company mergers in growing industries, sure. These large mergers in established industries only serve the companies and hurt both the workers and the consumers. The word cartel comes to mind.
I think the biggest problem with US politics, at least in the executive branch, is presidents need to be cautious until the last 2 years of an 8 year term, and still, anything radical they do can hurt the party. I think we need something radical done to fix middle America.
That said, I'm not entirely sure what the executive branch can be expected to do here aside from tweaking interest rates and actively hiring people directly.
It's not only manufacturing that left, agriculture scaled so high that you need 1000+ acres to make it in most crops. 1000 acres costs millions of dollars, leaving even more people behind. I don't know your age, but there were a bunch of Farm Aid concerts in the 80s. Didn't seem to do much though.
If your metric is land mass, dividing on party lines is only going to get you one result.
It cuts both ways.
It doesn't help that the republican dominated political parties in many of the distressed states are more concerned with cutting taxes on the rich (Kansas) or trying to pass ridiculous and unnecessary laws (bathroom bills in NC, Texas etc). This has got to stop.
Accepting Medicaid expansion, as I see it, is probably one way to immediately kickstart many of these distressed states. The federal money that comes in might just help create jobs in the healthcare sector (or fund existing ones better) that might somewhat mitigate the affects of economic duress. Not to mention better healthcare for the people.
Tax breaks, gender discriminative bathroom laws, climate protection deregulation, and "appeals to traditional values" do not seem to be improving the lives of these people very much.
But I think Al Gore probably has the best solution to this, which he talks about in his new documentary: if you focus on real economic benefits of certain "liberal" ideas, then you seem to have a chance. e.g. if wind energy is shown to be cheaper than natural gas, people will adopt it.
Democrats (and fact-believing republicans) really need to include more economics in their messages. Like how expanding Medicare actually helps small businesses and rural communities. Like how higher taxes on the rich help fund education and infrastructure projects that lead to greater prosperity.
I understand it is a somewhat skeevey way to do it, because if you're a democrat, you probably also believe in other non-economic democratic values (e.g. diversity, womens' reproductive rights etc.) and to win the support of people who don't believe in these things might seem uncouth.
Liberal policies in the US are highly correlated with high population density. Even in red states, the cities are mostly outposts of blue politics; even in California, the rural landscapes are dominated by red politics.
Communities seem a bit like ponzi schemes, or are at least creatures of inertia. If the community is growing, it exudes promise and hope and more people are interested in moving there. Growth leads to job openings, which leads to more growth. The inverse is dire. When cities go bankrupt or when rural areas lose residents faster than they replenish them, it becomes a downward spiral and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rural areas don't sustain themselves. Urban or "hip" suburban areas have a much better chance at sustaining. College towns constantly have fresh blood (so long as the college stays out of bankruptcy).
I think cities thrive despite the friction created by more socially liberal policies and higher taxation. It's far easier to pivot your business and there are more serendipitous events in densely populated areas with highly educated people. I suspect people would prefer to move to a place with a reasonable social safety net as religious institutions lose the prestige they once had in the US. Perhaps in liberal areas people don't have to fear the social darwinism of the similar situation in a state+county with no funds to help the poor/homeless.
The obvious counter-example to "liberal policy places thrive" is Detroit. Detroit had very liberal policies in a state with very strong labor laws. After car manufacturers moved their manufacturing to cheaper labor areas (the US south and other countries), Detroit's population collapsed to less than 50% of it's peak.
And its economic collapse was also the product of broader right-wing attack on the political/economic power of working class people in the US. Under the guise of “free trade,” they were forced to compete with labor of poorer countries, while the wealthy and their administrators were largely exempt from the same pressures.
There's a few things going on here:
1) Many in these communities see success and virtue as intertwined. The idea here is that a person with the correct traditional values plus hard work and faith will have a good economic outcome. If God is present, and God commands us to act in certain ways, surely he will reward us for our faith in all aspects of our life (including the economic dimensions).
2) A person living in an economically depressed area won't have money to hold onto, and his life is usually just a few ticks away from financial ruin, losing his home, losing his car, major health episode, etc. It's an ugly and chaotic state. Traditional values provide constancy and a psychological anchor. I may be in a chaotic state but God is in control, even if things go horrifically bad. The trade-off here is that God sets the rules that everyone has to abide by.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsi...
TLDR: People vote based on identity (self image), then adjust their beliefs (positions) as needed.
No, liberal tax policies are not the answer. The piper must be paid eventually.
California has significantly below average, for a US state, combined state and local public debt to GDP ratio.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rural-hospitals-closure-...
Companies offshore manufacturing because the labor is cheap and the environmental regulations are slim.
Automation has taken a large chunk of the manufacturing jobs of the 1970s, but bringing even automated manufacturing back would boost auxiliary businesses in the towns.
Besides, I wonder how much more expensive that alone would make manufacturing in other countries. AFAIK a significant reason for labor being cheap is COL being cheaper in other countries.
Yes, Trump is trying to renegotiate NAFTA. Not sure the details or what he's trying to do with it. It does show it can be done though. I'm fairly suspicious of all our trade agreements. I'm sure they have a lot of US industrial influence in them and not a lot of worker influence.
>Besides, I wonder how much more expensive that alone would make manufacturing in other countries. AFAIK a significant reason for labor being cheap is COL being cheaper in other countries.
That's a good question. I would assume the cost of putting environmental regulations in place would be substantial, but not sure about the labor rights.
What I do know is you can buy a hunk of land for real cheap in the middle of nowhere in the US as long as you don't mind:
In other words, I think our infrastructure has a lot to do with our COL.No, trying to do it doesn't show it can be done.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/trump...
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer...
And I'm certainly not saying the renegotiated deal will be any better for middle America. Trump seems to be moving towards a traditional GOP pro-business at all costs stance.
I'm not sure how economists can say it didn't hurt or barely hurt American workers when we have so many plants in Mexico today.
This is the Perot v Gore debate on NAFTA. I think Perot was right.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/09/02/nafta-debate-1...
If Mexico and Canada don't accept it, a renegotiation has not actually been done, only attempted and failed.
Maybe you are right, but what's your point?
As far as "can be done," meaning it is legally possible to renegotiate, which it is.
No, it implies trying to reach such a consensus, not the existence of such a consensus. The practicality of attempting to find consensus is different than that of actually finding it.
> As far as "can be done," meaning it is legally possible to renegotiate, which it is.
Then that was a stupid and pointless response to the comment about the need for consensus, which raised an issue of pragmatics, not legal possibility.
Hah. Pot, meet kettle.
We can either be like Germany and tackle these problems together - which will involve massive capital and wealth redistribution. The course we're on - "winner takes all" - is not sustainable - there will be riots on the streets before long.
I find it ironic how the GOP voters who seem to be disproportionately living in economically distressed areas are the ones most likely to vote for politicians pushing the dog-eat-dog economic model.
I don't. In many cases, people aren't voting for a party because they agree with all its policies, but because they agree with it on one or two policies they don't want to compromise on.
So perhaps one of the GOP's social policies (as much as they're disliked by the left) might just generally be more popular and held as more important than their economics ones.
With the US two party system, you can either vote somewhat more left wing social policies and economics policies, or somewhat more right wing social policies and economics policies, assuming you want to make a difference.
If this changed, then I suspect you'd see a very different picture in regards to what politicians are voted for.
The book Democracy for Realists calls this "folk theory of democracy".
"With the US two party system, you can either vote somewhat more left wing ... right wing..."
You're ignoring the polarizing effect (hyperpartisanship) of gerrymandering.
Except, at least in Canada, people increasingly can't afford to live in the cities where the jobs are. The alternative might be a movement of people moving back into the bush - if you are going to live in poverty, you might as well have freedom and spare time rather than working three part time jobs just to pay rent, grocery, and utility bills.
Moreover, if you take the time to drill into the actual numbers, you'll find housing affordability is about average relative to historical figures (in terms of percentage income spent on housing) in most urban areas, with the exception of a few major centers (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto) that are pulling up the national average:
http://www.rbc.com/economics/economic-reports/pdf/canadian-h...
While it does vary by region, according to this we are at a 20 year high nation wide. I guess it all depends on which propoganda you read.
http://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/rbc-says-housi...
"Home affordability in Canada worst in almost 30 years, Toronto’s worst ever, says RBC"
Nonetheless, a couple of observations:
- Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska: regional chunks of comfortable/prosperous areas compared to the rhetoric espoused during the 2016 election campaign. I expected these to look much worse.
- The map looks a lot like the federal distribution of taxes per dollar contributed: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJ...
- "A large portion of the country..." is actually "a large geo-graphic portion of the country"
There may have always been this momentum but it didn't hit critical levels until lately, and that combined with the rise of globalism (whether that really is the culprit or not) has left a lot of people feeling down, literally, in the dumps. This information adds another facet to our understanding of today's political stage and it's worth paying attention to so we can better resolve it.
I'm originally from Missouri and would say it hit critical level over 10 years ago. The state has been in decline in terms of personal income, GDP growth, and a host of other economic indicators since 2009.
This includes the metro areas of KC and STL, who represent the lion's share of the upside of growth numbers. Take those away, and the rural areas are disastrous -- just as the chart shows. Stark differences when viewed on a county basis, but it's been on this trend for a long time.
I can't speak to the rest of the country, though. As always, your mileage may vary.
So, as much fun as it is to blame these people for their own woes it is neither productive nor accurate.
But that's just gut feeling.
When I was a midwestern public school kid of the 70s and 80s, Kansas was on par with the rest of the midwest in terms of general public education. After Brownback and his ilk have finished raping the state anyone with a child under the age of 14 should probably consider moving to a another state for the sake of their own child's future. This is not a problem that goes back generations, and the cause and solution are blatantly obvious.
Seriously, the one word response to your attempt to absolve them of any agency or responsibility for this situation is "Kansas."
We can accept it’s a crappy cycle that won’t change without external inputs or we can mock them to make ourselves feel better.
You're ignoring the fact that investment has been plainly beneficial everywhere in the south. From land grant universities and TVA electrification to NASA in Huntsville and St Jude in Memphis, it's pretty clear that southerners don't just choose to "leave themselves behind" when given resources.
My comment was an observation of a cultural difference that is not even really confined to the south. It’s more about rural and urban differences. I can only speak about the south because it is what I have experienced.
A culture that is at its root regressive, anti-science and anti-intellectual should not be surprised when it does not succeed in a modern world.
By bucking the trend I mean that compared to most other states it appears to be very comfortable and prosperous across the state in most but not all counties at least according to this map. I’ve seen similar findings in New Yorker and in the NYT too.
Edit: is there something MN is doing that we could all learn from? They weren’t apart of the North Dakota oil boom really so I don’t think it’s that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Minnesota
I don't know of a definitive study that controls for all variables but one theory is the heavy Nordic population there.[1]
If you believe in cultural factors... (e.g. memes such as "Swiss punctuality", "German engineering", "Protestant work ethic", etc), there's something about Nordic culture or solidarity that aids success. (E.g. Norway does not squander its oil resources and built up its citizens' pensions -- while oil-rich Venezuela is basically bankrupt.) It's hard to think of a geographical area in USA with significant # of descendants of Sweden/Norway/Denmark being an economic slum.
It's an interesting correlation, if not provable causation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Americans
I would assume its because the majority of Minnesotans live in the Twin Cities Metro and the Twin Cities is doing pretty well economically. For example 16 of the 17 Fortune 500's in Minnesota are headquartered in the Twin Cities and the unemployment rate is about 3%. If you drive outside the Twin Cities lots of towns look pretty distressed.
The Urban-Rural divide is real. Massive investments in Rural Oklahoma and Rural America are needed. Something I hope to promote if and when I enter the Oklahoma State House.
From YC's FAQ section:
Location Can we do it without moving to where you are?
-Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them move.
I've said this before, but the conservatism of YC regarding location is astounding when considering the diversity that YC accepts in virtually all other facets of its operation.
They'll invest in a file sharing app and a nuclear reactor company in the same batch, but apparently investing outside the Bay Area is just too hard.
I lived in California for over a decade and the entire startup thing was almost too easy to participate in. Money thrown all over the place, easy to find new startups or participate in your own. But god help you if you don't feel like living in California.