Why rural areas need the cities

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
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Not only are the Trumper voting hicks in the sticks ignorant fascists that spread propaganda that the cities are burned down and full of Antifa, blah blah blah bullshit, they are ungrateful. The metropolitan areas subsidize the rural areas. Just like in general blue states subsidize quite a few backwards red states, blue-er metro areas, regardless of the state, subsidize the redder Trumpie rural areas. I am sick of the Trumpie leeches that are not only sucking any intelligence out of this nation, but also the dollars of actually evolved people.

Like the idiot that railed on Portland saying all the real taxpayers are outside of the cities - as usual, just more ignorance. More stupid. More dumbfuckery.


"The 2018 midterm elections affirmed that the deep geographic divides within the United States are here to stay. As they did in 2016, Americans living in rural areas overwhelmingly backed Republican candidates, fueled in part by the sense that the American economy is leaving them behind. The plight of rural America, and ideas for its economic revival, continues to animate policy discussions, including among Democrats concerned about their ability to appeal to blue-collar voters.


There are real economic challenges confronting small towns, many of which struggle to add jobs and retain population in today’s knowledge-driven economy. But it would be a mistake to enact policy solutions to save rural America at the expense of cities. Recent efforts to bail out farmers amidst a trade war and exempt rural counties from work requirements to receive Medicaid and other safety-net services in effect hurt people and businesses in cities and suburbs. While these policy moves seem like clever ways to rebalance urban-rural economic divides, they could ultimately harm rural communities, too, by choking off the very engines that make rural investments possible.

In fact, one of the best ways to help rural America may involve helping cities: supporting a distributed network of economically vibrant small and mid-sized cities across the United States.

Why cities matter to rural economies
When looking into urban and rural communities, some context is useful to consider. Many residents in this country, and across the world, continue to move to cities to pursue better lives. Though the fastest rates of urban growth are taking place outside of the United States, America continues to become a more urban nation: Since 2010, metropolitan areas in the United States grew in population by more than 6 percent, while non-metropolitan areas shrank by 0.5 percent.[1] Brookings analysis reveals that during this timeframe, metro areas with populations over 1 million gained jobs at the fastest rate, while smaller metro areas and non-metro areas added jobs at progressively slower rates, corresponding with their population size. To be sure, rural areas have experienced an uptick in employment in 2017, and within the longer-term trend of rural decline are countless stories of smaller localities that found ways to maintain, and grow, their populations and economies. But the fundamental reality is that more people will live in cities in the years ahead, regardless of any local, state, or federal policy initiative.

Given this, cities matter greatly to rural revitalization, for at least three key reasons.

  1. Prosperity in cities and metropolitan areas effectively subsidizes public investments in rural areas. Nationally, many of the states that receive the highest per-capita rates of federal investment have greater shares of their population in rural communities, such as South Carolina, North Dakota, and Louisiana. Meanwhile, many of the states that receive the lowest rates of federal investment have greater shares of their population in urban centers, including Delaware, Illinois, and Ohio.
This pattern holds for state government spending, too. Studies in Minnesota, Georgia, and Wisconsin reveal that metropolitan areas contribute more to state coffers than they receive in education, infrastructure, and other public services investments. In Georgia, for instance, metropolitan Atlanta provides 61 percent of state revenue but receives just 46 percent of state investment. State spending on roads, broadband networks, schools, and other public services in small town America is funded, in part, by the economic prosperity of cities.

  1. Access to cities—and their markets, specialized industries, and capital—increases rural prosperity. Analysis by our Brookings colleagues Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton suggests that proximity to cities can contribute to rural communities’ well-being due to the spillover benefits that cities generate. Muro and Whiton categorized non-metropolitan counties into ones that are adjacent to a metropolitan area, and ones that are not. While both groups of rural counties experienced job losses between 2008 and 2017, the “non-adjacent” counties fared far worse (Figure 1). Total employment in “adjacent” rural areas declined by 1.9 percent during that time span, but it declined by 3.5 percent in non-adjacent places. In other words, proximity to cities acted as an economic buffer for nearby rural areas, on net, slowing their economic decline."

....more at link.
 
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MrSquished

Lifer
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You can find analysis for multiple states but here is one of PA -


Rural towns & counties in PA are revenue vampires — sucking tax $ from suburbs, cities
Ron Ruman

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In his March 1 column, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes rural parts of several states want to secede and join neighboring, more conservative states, because they feel their current states are dominated politically by more populous urban centers, whose residents know little and care less about the lives of their rural neighbors. Reynolds says gun control, logging restrictions, and high taxes have rural folks upset.
I can’t speak for other states, but in Pennsylvania, those of us living in suburban townships, as well as small cities such as York or even larger cities such as Pittsburgh, may want to think about secession. While Reynolds argues cultural issues are driving rural residents to seek political emancipation, here suburban and urban taxpayers in counties such as York, and municipalities such as my home of West Manchester Township, are subsidizing many services used by residents in Pennsylvania’s small towns and rural counties and townships. Big time.

In a column last year, reporter Tom Ferrick Jr., who runs the Facing the Future website, produced research showing what residents of each county get back in relation to state taxes paid. Turns out residents of Pennsylvania’s smallest county, Forest, population 7,340, get $2.62 for every dollar they send to Harrisburg. The city we all love to hate, Philadelphia, is second, getting a return of $2.57 for each dollar paid. One could argue Philly deserves a good deal, as it provides 15-and-a-half percent of the state’s GDP, according to the Census Bureau, with 12 percent of the population. But the next four in return on state taxes are among the state’s smallest counties: Cameron, McKean, Clarion and Fulton."

...more at link
 
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MrSquished

Lifer
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Your Bias is amazing.

There is so much data in those articles, and as I stated feel free to search for specific results for other states, and your entire rebuttal consists of your emotionally stunted right wing pea brain's ability to critically think and say it's just bias.

Thank you for proving my point how conservatives are mostly useless if we want to live in a society that analyzes the situation the ground, and adjusts and moves forward.

10 years ago I didn't feel this way about the rural areas. I was all about Obama giving everyone health insurance, everywhere. Helping farmers. Broadband to the sticks. Just like those damn socialist progressivs brought them things throughout our history like the rural electrification act. Tennessee valley authority. Infrastructure. Roads. Education. The USPS - we in the metro areas subsidize their postal service since we all pay the same thing, and their deliveries cost more. Everything.

It turns out the GQP base that lives out there? They are bad people. Ignorance is no excuse anymore. We all have access to the same information now. Their internet may not be fast, but they have it. The real info is there. But just like you, they dismiss it with four word sentences like a 4 year old covering their ears.

They are my enemy. It's not Putin or Bin Laden or ISIS that stands to destroy democracy and regress our society. It's the fucking GQP, and their base is out of the metro areas. Like that idiot from Oregon that thinks the city folks are the ones being subsidized by the taxes of the rednecks. So fuck these people.
 
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America did fine for many decades with rural areas and small towns. Corporate demons like the Walton family destroyed small towns. I'd almost wish 'cities' were population and area limited so they couldn't be allowed to exert influence over smaller areas.
 
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People used to live their whole lives never having been to a town of more than a few thousand people. And they did just fine. The 'big city' here is something like 30,000 and I only go there once a month or so. Wish I didn't have to go that often.


Grew up in a big city. Hated every minute of it. Never going back to one if I can help it.
 
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Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
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Hicks, bumpkins, chawbacons, churls, clodhoppers, cornballs, countrymen, hayseeds, provincials, rubes, rustics, yokels, boors, clods, clowns, gawks, louts, oafs, peasants, peons.

Any wonder why country people might hold city people in contempt?

You fill up my senses like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses come fill me again

Come let me love you let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you let me always be with you
Come let me love you come love me again
Let me give my life to you come let me love you come love me again
You fill up my senses...
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
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People used to live their whole lives never having been to a town of more than a few thousand people. And they did just fine. The 'big city' here is something like 30,000 and I only go there once a month or so. Wish I didn't have to go that often.


Grew up in a big city. Hated every minute of it. Never going back to one if I can help it.

It was the development of agriculture that led to the development of cities.

Maybe the Republicans should become the Hunter-Gatherer Party, to campaign for the US to abandon the cities and return to the traditional nomadic lifestyle? A sort of Khmer Rouge of the right...actually, you wouldn't even need to change the colour, it would still be Rouge.
 

Moonbeam

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Nov 24, 1999
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It was the development of agriculture that led to the development of cities.

Maybe the Republicans should become the Hunter-Gatherer Party, to campaign for the US to abandon the cities and return to the traditional nomadic lifestyle? A sort of Khmer Rouge of the right...actually, you wouldn't even need to change the colour, it would still be Rouge.
How sanguine. I think the local shaman paid a recent visit to congress.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
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Any wonder why country people might hold city people in contempt?

Well, it's because country life was always considered high-status, ever since the working class moved to the over-crowded cities to serve the needs of capitalist industry (those dark, satanic mills), while the aristocracy was defined by its ownership of rural land and large country estates and the new capitalist class aspired to copy their lifestyle.

The cap-doffing, forelock-tugging "stout Yeoman" became the fetishized ideal for the 'lower classes' (the reason why Samwyse in Lord of The Rings has the accent he has in the modern movies, while most of the bad guys seem to have urban accents). Hence how even now the urban wealthy aspire to have a foot in both camps and have their 'house in the country', even to play at being farmers.

That's why country people hold city people in contempt. It's because country people tend to be much better-off, financially.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
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Well, it's because country life was always considered high-status, ever since the working class moved to the over-crowded cities to serve the needs of capitalist industry (those dark, satanic mills), while the aristocracy was defined by its ownership of rural land and large country estates and the new capitalist class aspired to copy their lifestyle.

The cap-doffing, forelock-tugging "stout Yeoman" became the fetishized ideal for the 'lower classes' (the reason why Samwyse in Lord of The Rings has the accent he has in the modern movies, while most of the bad guys seem to have urban accents). Hence how even now the urban wealthy aspire to have a foot in both camps and have their 'house in the country', even to play at being farmers.

That's why country people hold city people in contempt. It's because country people tend to be much better-off, financially.

The way I read this thread is the red rural parts of the US who hate city liberals do so for good reason. They are held in contempt by city people and not for the reasons, here in the US but might have some merit in England.

I saw this as a liberal attempt to tell the rubes they should be more grateful for the blessings cities afford them. I merely tried to suggest why that kind of effort won't get one very far. You won't get much thanks from people you put down. You will get a return on your contempt which then goes in a circle, each demonizing the other. Cities need rural areas and rural areas need cities and I would like to see the best for both.
 

WelshBloke

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
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Your Bias is amazing.
Hes right though. I live in the countryside and I like it here but I'm under no illustrations that the nearest city isn't the economic engine of the area. It has a much higher population and number of businesses.
Sure all the agriculture is out here and we make great products but if you think of how much one farm drives the economy (farming does not make much money at all) and how much room that farm takes compared to pretty much any urban business and look how many small and medium businesses there are in a city!
 
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Cities are good for keeping the trash out of the country. Stack people 80 floors high, 20 to a room. Let'em hash it out between them.
 

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
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There has long been a commonly held belief in downstate IL where I grew up that somehow separating form the Chicago area would solve all the problems. Of course this new utopia would be poorer than Alabama and have virtually no tax revenue to speak of but nobody wants to talk about that part. In basically every US state with a few exceptions (resource extraction like Wyoming) the big metros pay the vast majority of the state's bills became that's where the economic activity and tax base is.

As far as city folk looking to put down the rurals/small towns this is basically the situation: it is almost exclusively one sided in my experience.


5e0gif.jpg
 

Fenixgoon

Lifer
Jun 30, 2003
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The way I read this thread is the red rural parts of the US who hate city liberals do so for good reason. They are held in contempt by city people and not for the reasons, here in the US but might have some merit in England.

I saw this as a liberal attempt to tell the rubes they should be more grateful for the blessings cities afford them. I merely tried to suggest why that kind of effort won't get one very far. You won't get much thanks from people you put down. You will get a return on your contempt which then goes in a circle, each demonizing the other. Cities need rural areas and rural areas need cities and I would like to see the best for both.

gotta agree with moonie here. economics is not a zero-sum game. it's a cooperative game. yes cities drive economic growth, but rural areas provide food (obviously) as well as plenty of raw materials (via mining, chemical plants, etc.). each is valuable to society. arguing over who's better helps no one and only makes progress more difficult.
 
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There has long been a commonly held belief in downstate IL where I grew up that somehow separating form the Chicago area would solve all the problems. Of course this new utopia would be poorer than Alabama and have virtually no tax revenue to speak of but nobody wants to talk about that part.
And unfortunately, those are the Red areas that have more time to do things like vote because they don't have jobs or anything else to do.
 

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
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And unfortunately, those are the Red areas that have more time to do things like vote because they don't have jobs or anything else to do.

I don't think that's it at all. Older Americans vote at much higher rates than younger Americans and rural/small town America is increasingly filled with old people because most of the younger ones haver departed for better opportunities.
 

Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
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Your Bias is amazing.
LMAO! HAHAHAHAHAOMGLOLHAHALMAO!

Just FYI: bias is the legions upon legions of assholes on social media (including the former President) and on the news who constantly berate the cities as crime-ridden shitholes filled with unemployed welfare queens, and who insist that only the non-urban areas have good taxpaying citizens, when in fact it is the cities that are the economic engines for the entire country, producing the bulk of the tax revenue, and it's their rurals areas that are plagued with poverty and unemployment.
But of course, you will never call out that bias. We just need to spend billions more to protect those few thousand coal jobs in WY, amirite?
 

brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
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LMAO! HAHAHAHAHAOMGLOLHAHALMAO!

Just FYI: bias is the legions upon legions of assholes on social media (including the former President) and on the news who constantly berate the cities as crime-ridden shitholes filled with unemployed welfare queens, and who insist that only the non-urban areas have good taxpaying citizens, when in fact it is the cities that are the economic engines for the entire country, producing the bulk of the tax revenue, and it's their rurals areas that are plagued with poverty and unemployment.
But of course, you will never call out that bias. We just need to spend billions more to protect those few thousand coal jobs in WY, amirite?
It's a secret.
 
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senseamp

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
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Rural areas are self destructing by voting Republican. Who wants to move to an area with no hospital left because local yokels elected politicians who blocked Medicaid expansion?
GOP wants to keep rural America isolated, dumb, bitter, scared, and looking for someone to hate for it. Go to any successful rural college town, drive out 10 miles and you'll find mostly people who hate it, even though it supports the local economy. Comparison is the death of joy, so they would rather be surrounded by endless despair than have have successful educated people nearby.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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While gentle ribbing is always appropriate, I do think we've got far too adversarial a relationship between the townies and the hill folk. Literally both are needed for the US to function, so tribalism between the two groups is idiotic at face.

What we *should* be tribalistic about, is us vs the unknown horrors of the cosmos.
 
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While gentle ribbing is always appropriate, I do think we've got far too adversarial a relationship between the townies and the hill folk.


"On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own"

"So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they'd kill

It came an answer from the mountain
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
All the riches buried there"

"Now the valley cried with anger
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people
So they won their just reward

Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain, dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
"Peace on Earth" was all it said"