The town of Iola in southeastern Kansas has experienced a declining population and high rates of poverty.
Posted on 01/04/2018 7:07:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
One of the great debates in American politics and economics in 2018 is likely to be how to help the country's forgotten towns, the former coal-mining and manufacturing hubs with quaint Main Streets that haven't changed much since the 1950s and '60s. Many of these places turned out heavily to vote for Donald Trump. He talks often about wanting to help them, but it's unclear how he can.
Traditional economics says people living in these struggling towns should just move. Many of the United States' urban centers (and surrounding suburbs) are booming. If jobs are plentiful in Denver (unemployment rate: 2.6 percent) and Salt Lake City (unemployment rate: 2.8 percent), then Economics 101 suggests it's time for a big migration west from the Rust Belt to the Boom Belt. Trump appeared to endorse this solution over the summer when he said Americans are “going to have to start moving” from places such as Upstate New York to areas where they can get jobs.
“I’m going to explain you can leave. It’s okay,” he said in July.
But the reality is Americans have become homebodies. People in the United States are moving at about half the rate that they did in the 1970s and '80s, according to census data, and no one really understands why. There are obvious economic barriers to moving. It's expensive and risky to leave a place your family has been living in for generations, and there's no guarantee the job you move for will still exist in a few years. But there seems to be something deeper holding people in place.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Herd yinz all into Big Blue cities to keep you under control and the Globalists happy.
In the last 60 years, NY has lost almost half its House seats. Folks have been bugging out for decades.
How about a 20% import tariff and let the economic explosion of repatriated manufacturing begin. WaPo loves urbanization. Urban critters are leftists.
They are sustainable safe places when all hell breaks out in the metro areas.
As long as Wapo doesn’t start encouraging liberal cityfolk to start moving to our small towns.
Times change, adapt or die.
Or even 18% VAT Tax as Europe does.
I know how hard it is to pull up roots.
I also know how much better things got when I did.
There are simply towns that peaked out in the 1960s.
Detroit for example...will never recover, and even today at 672,000....is really a town of probably 500,000 max. If the Census folks do their job correctly in 2020....I think they will lose 100,000 easily.
New Orleans is another town like that. Its suggested that they are at 391,000. It probably 30,000 fewer folks than that who live within the city.
I hear you but a VAT is bad idea. A tariff targets imports which are the biggest threat. A VAT hurts domestic industries too. No VAT!
If aircars ever get off the ground in a big way,
would that lead to the suburbanization of small towns?
I did a word search on the word “tariff” in this article. Not one mention. Wow, the globalist don’t even consider the root cause or the solution. These cities are casualties in our inability to fight back in the ongoing global trade war. Our DC overlords could give a crap.
While Art does not always imitate Life, I grew up with TV shows like "Route 66" and novels like "On The Road". People were mobile. And of course everyone wanted to move to California. There was a general feeling that you could hop in a car and "just go" wherever you felt like going. Stay in a boardinghouse, get a short-term job somewhere in a store, in a diner, paint houses, whatever. If you wanted to be unsettled, you could. You could even load up your family and just take your chances somewhere else.
By about the 70s, I'd say that really started to fade away. Troubled economy, too many laws, too much regulation, too many immigrants, too much bureaucracy, complicated tax forms. It's not worth the hassle. People just stay put. Which isn't always smart, but it's easy.
United Van Lines’ National Movers Study Shows Americans Continue To Move West And South
Illinois Tops the High Outbound List as Residents Flee the Midwest and Northeast
Right. More taxes, like Europe. Yes, I'm sure that's the answer.
We’ve had enough of that in our small town.
Small towns are attractive for self-employed folks or small business owners who ply their trade via the internet. I have met a few self-employed folks who have left the cities and suburbs for small town America - and they love it.
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