NYTimes has an interesting article on how aging demographics leads to the rise of the Far Right based on what happened in Germany.
It’s called the demographic doom loop. Younger people have long been moving to the cities from the country. With a declining birth rate, these have not been replaced in the rural areas. The rural areas get rapidly older, the economy declines, government services are reduced, quality of life worsens, hopelessness grows as does a longing for the old days. Those remaining blame government, immigrants, elites, becoming fodder for far rightwing fanatics. The drive to eliminate immigration worsens the population problem. So rural areas become more extreme.
It makes a lot of sense and nicely explains the growing political divide between blue and red in America.
It may be that the only way to stem this seeming inevitable path to fascism or anarchy is to find some way to transfer wealth from the cities to rural areas. The folks growing food should share in the wealth produced by high tech. Otherwise there will be future musk/trumps.
If I were running the democratic party (oddly no one has asked) I would be running ads showing pictures of declining small towns in the farm belt, the south, and Appalachia while introducing a plan to recruit hard working refugees created by America’s insatiable use of illegal drugs to revitalize rural economies. The drug violence and drug cartels are America’s fault. We have a responsibility to help those affected while also solving a big problem of our own. I, perhaps naively, believe that economics will overcome racism/nativism.
Some do, not all. Depends very much on indoctrination and on how people treat people. If all people are the same how do you explain the variations between cultures? Indoctrination.
@btresist I live in a remote rural area where the previous local industries (logging and farming) have mostly faded away. I was actually a part of the trend of sucking talented youth away from the area since I mentored a young girl along with her mother, eventually leading to all the daughters earning STEM degrees and the entire family moving away.
The local leaders try very hard to revitalize the economy which is currently aging fast. The largest employer is the local hospital which is running a huge deficit because Medicare pays less than the cost of treating patients. If the hospital closes it would be a disaster because the nearest medical care would be hours away and the displaced workers would either leave the area or be unable to find equivalent employment.
Realistically, it’s very difficult to revitalize a rural economy simply by bringing in younger (immigrant, perhaps) labor. Living-wage jobs don’t exist and housing is unaffordable. My mother suggested this 50 years ago but I told her the same thing.
This is happening already with rising land values. There is a limited supply of land. Values tend to increase. Land is an excellent inflation hedge.
Already ranchers say cost of land (driven up by city people who want a place to play) makes ranching difficult. Family farmers are likely to sell and live off the interest.
Land owners tend to see themselves as business owners. They vote red. Their states are red.
The trend is corporate ownership of farm and ranch lands. They have the capital to pay those prices. But probably depend on immigrant labor due to declining birth rates. So probably support legal immigration.
As families leave rural areas, hospitals close. When the voters are mostly immigrants how do they vote? Red?
Big changes are coming. But i don’t see the trend as fascism. Populism is merely a stop on the trail.
It is not easy. The thing about poor refugees though is that they know how to make do with very little and for them all they really want is an opportunity to succeed without being killed. I’ve walked into many a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant or store where three generations of a family are working and there is a kid in the corner doing his/her homework. I always had the feeling that kid was going to do really well in life. Put that ethic anywhere and the economy will improve.
Recruit and place refugees in towns where the schools teach English for immigrants and there are advisers helping them start businesses. There is precedent for such coordinated programs working. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/revival-and-opportunity/
The national news ran a piece recently, about Cumberland, MD, which was offering a $20,000 package to people who work remotely to relocate to Cumberland.
Thing is, if a person can work remotely from Cumberland, or Kalamazoo, they can be replaced by someone working in Bangalore for a lot less.
When actress Tippi Hedren visited a Vietnamese refugee camp in California 40 years ago, the Hollywood star’s long, polished fingernails dazzled the women there.
Hedren flew in her personal manicurist to teach a group of 20 refugees the art of manicures. Those 20 women - mainly the wives of high-ranking military officers and at least one woman who worked in military intelligence - went on to transform the industry, which is now worth about $8bn (£5.2bn) and is dominated by Vietnamese Americans.
Forty years after the fall of Saigon, 51% of nail technicians in the United States - and approximately 80% in California - are of Vietnamese descent.
Declining population in rural counties is a major issue. Mechanized farming and smaller family size is devastating. Population density in a typical farm county in Missouri was 30 per sq mi in the day of the horse. Farmer now farms 2000 acres and has two children. Population density now is 8 per sq mi and is headed for two.
Large family meant many kids looking for work in local manufacturing. But now manpower is short. How do you run a business when whole county population is less than that of the county seat 50 years ago. How do you keep schools functioning?
Churches?
Corporate farmers will bring in professional managers. Immigrants likely will do the work. You will drive miles for groceries. Why would you build a factory in such a place? Only if there is a necessary resource as from mining.
…and just think about the political madness as already low density but politically mighty farm states lose most of their remaining population.
The shift to corporate farming is almost inevitable, and its macro and social effects are huge. Best have some other strategy than our current one, which is this
Kalamazoo is great, if you like snow, lots of snow. The lake effect belt is a gift that keeps giving. Cumberland is in the mountains, so it probably gets it’s share too.
But all the “JCs” care about is who does the work cheapest. The folks in Bangalore will underbid any USian, living anywhere.
As in Seattle. Will the last one to leave please put out the light.
Already communities are offering payments to settle in a rural town. Already they are recruiting possible dairy farmers from Europe.
Modern life style–often a two career family–making living near a city attractive. Young people leave rural areas for better jobs. In some places you must know someone to get your child a job in the local plant. And that is the only way to keep your grandkids nearby.
Larger towns in rural areas maybe work. They are at least large enough for doctors, insurance salesmen, and lawyers, etc.
Supreme Court has ruled that bicameral legislature districts must be population based. As population shrinks the districts get larger. And voting power shifts to the urban areas with more population.
Of course life gets interesting if the population of say North Dakota shrinks to a few thousand and still has two senators.
Wikipedia says area of N Dakota is 68,995 sq mi. 2/sq mi would be population of 138K. Current population is 800k = 11.6/sq mi. Obviously not all rural.
Well this is certainly the most nonsensical thing I have read in a week. There is already a VAST transfer of wealth to rural areas (and they surely don’t appreciate it.)
Rural areas use more Medicaid than Urban areas. Rural areas use more Medicare than Urban areas.
Rural areas are subsidized by “welfare” payments to rural hospitals so they don’t close, and by “welfare” payments to smaller airports so air transport is available to those communities.
Laws mandating rural electrification come at the expense of urban users, as it’s obviously more expensive to string miles and miles of copper to serve a dozen farms than hundreds of thousands of densely cloistered users.
There are specific government subsidies for rural housing, for running rural coops, even for installing renewable energy (over and above that which is available to you and me.) There are grants and funding for public transportation for rural areas for both capital costs and running expenses.
There are, of course, grants to small farmers in the vain hope that they won’t be swallowed up by corporate farmers, even though their productivity is less.
On a per capita basis, rural areas receive more welfare and take more SNAP benefits than urban areas, and receive more assistance for medical, health, and safety issues as well. There are programs offering payments for rural government infrastructure (because you know, they can’t pay for them themselves) and other projects including roads and dams - all on the theory that it’s good to have things which benefit all of society spread around rather than concentrate in certain [high population] areas.
But people in rural areas have been convinced that they are aggrieved, and those dastardly welfare queens and thoughtless gays and similar are wantonly destroying “the free market” and “Murica”, even as those in the outlands celebrate their lifestyle and ruggedness, far more on the welfare dime than those they so easily criticize.
REA rural electrification was financed by low interest govt loans during FDRs term. Most got electricity by 1940. Customers bear the costs. They are not subsidized.
The major push at present is high speed internet. Many only have dial up. High speed is essential for work at home, home work, etc.
It seems pretty likely that a program that matches the skill sets of hard working refugees to the needs of small towns in rural America would solve multiple problems.
We are turning people away at the border whose only alternative is to help cartels produce drugs for America’s addictions at the same time the American Farm Bureau Federation is saying there are “roughly 2.4 million farm jobs needing to be filled”. America Has a Farming Crisis - Newsweek
There seems to be a very obvious win-win solution staring us in the face.
