Have the small cities not send any taxes to support the state and keep them in the community. Gas, state income, sales taxes.
Big cities are ready to use government force to squeeze small communities out of existence so that they can be returned to their “natural” state. We don’t need no stinkin’ farms or farmers!
(Is the sarcasm tag necessary?)
I grew up in small town Maine, and still have a lot of friends and family in small town Maine.
This fool is correct in the assertion that there's a lot of poverty in the small towns. (My family was pretty poor when I was a kid, but I never knew it because everyone else was in the same boat.) However, his assertion that moving people from rural to urban areas will somehow "fix" the problem is beyond the pale. There aren't any more jobs in the urban areas of Maine, than in the rural areas. By promoting such a hostile business climate, libs from Boston and points south have chased all of the Maine industries away.
All his plan will do is pick up the problem and move it somewhere else. After the rural areas are well-destroyed, I'm sure that he has a "DE-Centralization" plan, as well. And, he'll only need four more years to implement it, so please vote for him in 2020......
The farms would still exist, the farm districts, water districts would still exist, the roads would still exist, power lines, the few gas lines, etc would still exist.
Anyways, until you spend some time in rural Maine and sit stunned in disbelief in the whacked out economies at almost all scales in the region, it’s hard to explain.
Some of those 100 towns don’t even have grocery stores anymore, the Walmarts upward of 40 miles away killed all retail for dozens of miles into the backwoods. People regularly drive 80 miles roundtrip for groceries. Nothing wrong with those who make a living in the backwoods, but many of those people are on permanent gov benefits, and are spending huge sums just to transport to/from the Walmart.
People do this cause the few remaining local markets are charging 150% to 200% of Walmart retail to cover their own business and transportation costs.
Hospitals, car parts, fuel, every damn thing, costs alot to transport in Maine, more in winter.