gee, I can’t imagine why young people would want to leave such a stagnant regressive environment …
Yeah, who could even begin to guess...
Probably something to do with the weather. We'll never know...
Its the water - its turning the freaking frogs gay
That's been a general movement away from rural America for decades (and people have been leaving the countryside to make their fortune in the big city for centuries). However, this line stood out to me because of the timeframe cited:
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023.
Maybe I'm just still bitter, but maybe they should have tried social distancing, wearing masks, and getting vaccinated.
Yeah, it is an interesting statistic, isn't it? It definitely doesn't seem like the kids moving away for better economic prospects is the only factor here.
Right.
Honestly for as much "woe is me" that they crammed into this piece, my takeaway was mostly just, "Hmmm...good."
Like...I love rural PA, I'm just not wild about a lot of the people who live there. They vote against my own interests (and theirs), disproportionately influence state government, and welcome corporations that proudly destroy the environment while taking a hostile stance toward anyone not like them.
This isn't down to every last person, of course, but broadly speaking, the ones who aren't fitting that template are also not the ones doing most of the dying.
So the piece is reading, to me, more as, "the people most responsible for keeping the shitty aspects of Pennsylvania shitty are dying faster than they're breeding"...which is good news for the more reasonable residents of the state.
This is not limited to the United States either.
Urbanisation and the growth of cities is across the industrialised world.
For example, while Japan's population shrinks, Tokyo is growing.
This stood out to me as well, the conservative stance on C-19 and the resulting general negligence seems a very obvious major factor to the rural population decline in this timeframe.
The decline is threefold:
Agriculture is getting significantly more efficient. You don't need 300 people do backbreaking labor for 12 hours a day in the beating sun anymore. We have automated threshers.
Industries are shifting. We generally moved away from manufacturing and an extraction-based economy. (Though the former is recovering, thanks to Biden's awesome investment plan)
jobs are moving to cities, where there are more schools, hospitals, high paying jobs, and may be more resilient to climate change.
Personally, I'd never ever consider moving anywhere rural for the aforementioned reasons, but also because rural americans are against my type family, and I don't care to be the queer pioneer family for them to realize we aren't so bad. I also never want to drive a car for a half hour+ for basic supplies or to see friends. It's too lonely. We have rail and ebikes here. I can get to the store or a friend's in less than 10 minutes.
There are still a lot of workers needed in agriculture, but increasingly they are either undocumented migrants or on restrictive visas (like temporary foreign workers in Canada) that limit their bargaining power and let their employers exploit them with poor working conditions and rock bottom wages. This means that these workers often don't have the means or income to participate much in the local economy beyond the bare essentials. This is actually a case of "trickle down economics" where paying workers fair, living wages would lead to healthier local economies where these workers could spend those wages and support having or starting a family.
Having come back to the farm later in life, the issue with rural communities (at least in Canada) isn't prejudice, it's that everyone is up in everyone else's business. But we have gay couples with kids around that seem to negotiate it fine. People are fine face to face usually.
This rural Pennsylvania town could get a huge population boom if they had a "we welcome queer people and migrants and we don't tolerate hate" policy they announced to the world.
But of course, that's way too far for them.
I don't think rural towns are depopulating due to hate or discrimination... it's mostly because of job prospects, no?
Obviously my own experience is entirely anecdotal, but I think relevant to the point. I work 100% remotely, I just need a decent Internet connection. I currently live in a moderately sized city, and keeping up with the finances can be a struggle compared to the lower cost of rural living. However, I’m also a gay man, pro choice, I don’t care what two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their home, etc. etc. etc. with all the usual liberal stuff.
The job prospects aren’t why I left the rural southeastern US, and they aren’t the reason I’ll never go back there.
These people were warned about the brain drain their bullshit would cause. I have no sympathy for them or their towns’ dwindling tax revenues.
With WFH I just need a small town with high speed internet. However, with kids, rural schools do not rank well.
There are two sides to the equation though - depopulation and repopulation. Hate and discrimination may not be causing (most of) the exodus, but inclusion and acceptance could be part of the solution. I've known more than a few people who have wanted to move to rural areas but have avoided them for exactly that reason. The braver ones have made the move, but only as a group able to support and protect each other.
Really? That's your go-to glib answer? No discussion about education opportunities or job prospects? No question about why the downturn was really noted in 2014? Just immediately jumping to the conclusion that rural people MUST be hateful?
Disappointing.
Look I'm from such a small Pennsylvania town. Rural Appalachian. Coal mines and specialty steel production most notably.
Both of you are right, and the problems feed back into each other to some extent.
After my family migrated west more than a decade ago, every single time we go back to PA to visit family, attend a funeral and so forth — it just keeps looking more and more run down. Honestly the place is a shit-hole nowadays. I'm sad to see my old county went for Trump by 70%. You couldn't pay me enough to move my family back.
The young, educated, smart, and compassionate folks leave and GTFO asap — both for jobs, and for more diversity and tolerance. The sad part is I remember watching a slew of documentaries in the early 2000s forewarning of what would happen to these small-towns...
No doubt these communities feel the pressures they're complaining about; they've just been exploited by right-wing media about who is responsible: the southern migrant more desperate than them, the trans, the homosexuals, the liberals, etc...
@FlyingSquid is also right that there is FAR more bigotry among these communities as well; and that ties back to not being well-traveled, our education system collapsing, and the right-wing fearmongering machine.
Edit: Shit, Inside Out 3 should be about being inside the head of a MAGA supporter.
Inside Out 3 should be about being inside the head of a MAGA supporter.
Pixar doesn't make horror movies.
Uhhhhh, I don't care much for their response either but like a solid 80% of rural houses are flying trump flags, even in states like new york. You can pretty safely assume that old rural people are hateful.
You're right, it's probably one of those rural Republican-voting towns full of residents who love queer people and migrants.
I left because of the bigotry and hate. I work remotely and don't have kids. That is the only thing stopping me.
Diversity leads to education opportunities and jobs. Hate and discrimination are the reason there are no jobs and shitty education. Please stop white washing our society. The hate is a cancer.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time...and every time after.
These assholes don't change.
Were about to move to a smaller but more queer friendly town for this exact reason. My city seems indifferent at best, and I'd like to live somewhere that actually likes us.
We're DINKs, we pay taxes, were good neighbors pretty much any way you look at it, but were visibly queer & barely feel tolerated here.
No duh. Have you ever been out there? Sure, it’s pretty, but that’s it. Absolutely nothing to do. Except meth. Oh, and drunk driving and KKK rallies.
I see you've been to my hometown.
The other person that replied did mention a lot of cool things you can do in a rural community. But being half an hour from a grocery store that has something I actually want at a price that's reasonable (as reasonable as groceries get, I guess) sucks.
Fucking exactly.
Oh, I need bread, shit. Gotta get in the car and drive 60 miles an hour for 25 minutes each way. Great.
Not hyperbole. If someone pointed a gun at me and told me that they would shot me if I don't agree to move back to my sub-500 people Northern Appalachian village I would help that mother fucker load the gun.
Remote work.
Build homes in the echoes of cities instead of gentrifying shit holes.
Repurpose the corporate offices into affordable housing to fix the growing homelessness problems.
Create less car dependent infrastructure
Make more high density areas car free, and build affordable housing over the parking areas.
Subsidize farms if they use green tech. Subsidize them more if they're smaller to reincitiveize small farms.
Abolish any ability for any corporation from owning any land not zoned for corporate use. Corporations may not own homes.
Did I mention remote work?
I'd add corporate farms should not get subsidies.
the more subsidies, the more transparent EVERYTHING about their operation has to be
Sadly, if you can remotely work from rural America, you can remotely work from rural India.
I've worked with India teams in 5 companies. Always bad. we need to rehire Americans to manage/oversight or redo. Ends up costing more. The code and website teams complaints never end but c level Don't care.
End up bad, but for the first couple of quarters that "rock star" MBA has created huge short term profits. And is that what really matters in business these days...
This is because of SOCIALISM! And if not Socialism it's because of IMMIGRANTS WHO DON'T EVEN LIVE IN THESE COMMUNITIES! But it 100% is NOT due to Racism or Capitalism killing off Job Opportunities or Bigots or Catholics wanting to Legislate your Bedroom. No it's DEFINITELY Communist Immigrants causing this!
Yeah, young folks are moving away because they've been indoctrinated in liberal college institutions and lured by a gay communist urban agenda to destroy rural America and bring about the decline of Christian conservative values! Nothing at all to do with capital consolidation and market monopolization resulting in reductions of diversified local markets and diminished job prospects! Increased cultural exposure due to accessing instantaneous global communications and social media? No way that has any influence in the decisions people make about what cultural environment they'd prefer to raise their children in. SmallTown USA is the best place to escape all the scary ideas that exist in the world, like equality among gender and race, and socializing the excesses of the private. Who would want to live in that kind of world?!
Once upon a time you could entice youngsters to the countryside with promises of low cost of living, but then rural housing got super fucking expensive super fucking fast during the covid years. Like sure, maybe rural housing is still cheaper than suburban/urban housing (although this is HIGHLY location-specific), but gone are the days where you could buy a pretty nice house (or an iffy house on a sizable chunk of land) for less than the down payment on a house in a "desirable" area. You might be able to convince a middle-class 30- or 40-something American to live in the middle of nowhere in exchange for a good house they're able to pay for in cash with change to spare (and with it the opportunity to retire a decade or so early). But once rural housing started needing mortgages to afford and buyers still had to deal with crap like bidding wars and sparse inventory, where's the draw? At least in my state (Washington) rural housing inventory is finally going up and prices are starting to come down (although monthly payments are still at near-record highs if you need a mortgage), but it's going to either be many years of incremental decline or a very sharp, very painful crash to return rural housing affordability to how it was.
Waaah our town is dying! Why don't any young folks want to stay here?
many residents in this deeply Republican town say they view Trump as having a better vision for salvaging rural America
The town I was born in is dying and its been going on since I was a kid. They were a wood mill town with three plants. They have made every bad decision that they could make. Turned down a paper mill and college before I was born. Turned down two manufacturing plants and a wal-mart after I was born. Consistently resisted chain restaurants and stores even after I had grown up and left. Then the world changed, manufacturing and new opportunities dried up completely and they still cling to the old way of doing things because they can't see they are the problem.
Now its just a shell full of empty lots and rotting houses. The local mayor is still associated with the old families but still is only interested in protecting what they have. They keep getting elected and the place continues to deteriorate. In their minds its due to people like me leaving and all the poor and their children who are still clinging to bones of that town. Not their fault though. How could it be? They are better than everyone else.
This is the state of far too many small towns in the US today.
The 1% can make their own wage slaves
They say neither Pennsylvania nor the nation can afford to lose small towns and the institutions that power them.
Lol, why?
Not only are they a touchstone of American life,
Very often a hard and poverty stricken life.
but they are also key to driving certain sectors of the economy, like agriculture.
What's stopping farms from being built next to suburbs or even within cities with the tech we have now.
These boomers are why over romanticizing how "good" small town life was. What they're really sad about is disproportionate political power our anti democratic electoral college gave them and the unchecked tin pot dictatorships they often held over small towns. Being able to get away with literal murder sometimes because they personally knew the cops and judges.
They couldn't care less about the poor quality of life that most citizens of these small towns had. If they did they would have made the necessary investments to attract people (like a handful of small towns have).
And yet real estate prices remain at all time highs. Boomers asked for this.
The town I grew up in is in the middle of a cancer cluster. The largest factory (where most people work) got caught illegally dumping chemicals in the ground. They were just made to pay a relatively small fine. The corporation was threatening to move the plant somewhere else if it became too expensive to operate there, and all lawsuits were dismissed.
That factory, and most other factories in the area primarily just hire "temp" workers that they keep as temps for years, never actually hire them full time, and pay them near minimum wage with no benefits. Many young people who do end up staying in that area become drug addicts and die in their 20s or 30s.
There's a lot of corruption in the local government and police as well. The police harass anybody they don't like, and they know pretty much who everybody is and what they drive. A few people in government got caught embezzling money. A sheriff tried to frame somebody for murder. Also, I think the people in the courts have some kind of deal with the juvenile detention center, because they give kids very long sentences for minor things (6 months for being 10 minutes late to school while on probation in my case).
Small towns, in my experience, are shitholes with corrupt and authoritarian local governments, and are exploited by corporations in ways similar to third-world countries.
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