
Why Do Americans Stay When Their Town Has No Future? - lnguyen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-23/why-do-americans-stay-when-their-town-has-no-future
======
autokad
its really hard. I imagine company hiring practices (their growing dependence
on recruiting firms) also doesnt help.

For instance, the best way to go to a new geography would be to land a job
there prior to moving there. Even in data science, supposedly hot job market,
I wanted to get a job in san francisco or seattle, but I was living in
philadelphia. you hear stories about people graduating from cali universities
and companies jumping through windows to get to them, but even though I
graduated with a masters in CIS from Upenn ... crickets. I think because most
of them recruit through agencies which filter by geography. I had to reach out
aggressively to the recruiters themselves, and bypass a lot of the blockers,
which took 2 years. Had I not done that, my talent didn't mean as much as
where I was.

Now, imagine a small towner trying to do the opposite, get a job after they
make a move to say, one of the urban centers. most people dont have a lot of
savings to begin with, and what would last them 6 months where they are would
be depleted very quickly in one of the larger cities. even getting an
apartment is harder, you dont have a job? reject.

its not impossible, its just really difficult.

~~~
phil248
Yes, it is difficult to uproot your family, take a huge risk, and relocate to
a place with better employment and educational opportunities.

Just ask the tens of million of immigrants in this country who have done
exactly that.

In a sense, it's unfair that native-born Americans are forced to compete with
people from all over the world who are highly motivated and have an extremely
high tolerance for risk. But it's also what has actually made this country
great.

~~~
patrickg_zill
You're contrasting the people whose forefathers built the country, with the
people who came later, after it was already built and there was no risk to be
taken.

How much risk is an immigrant really taking on, when there is a safety net in
terms of social services available to them, that pays multiples of their
yearly earnings back in "the old country"?

Meanwhile, the native-born Americans have too much assets (even if in a crappy
location, it still disqualifies them) to qualify for that same assistance...

~~~
me_again
Most US immigrant visas (h-1b etc) are conditional on not becoming "a burden
to the state" so you would be deported if you tried to claim unemployment etc.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Most US immigrant visas (h-1b etc)

H-1B is a non-immigrant work visa.

The only relation it had to immigrant visas is that, as a dual intent non-
immigrant visa, it's not illegal for you to enter on an H-1B with the intent
of applying for an immigrant visa without departing in between.

> are conditional on not becoming "a burden to the state"

That's not exactly true. The condition that actually exists in law relates
mostly to the _future likelihood at time of admission_ of becoming a “public
charge”.

> so you would be deported if you tried to claim unemployment etc.

No, but your I-864 sponsors (whose income and assets are considered in making
the public charge decision at admission) will have to pay back any payments
you get from certain federally-funded public benefit programs. You can be
deported for you not paying back your debts for certain other benefit programs
in a specified time period, but very few benefit programs create the kind of
debts that relate to that.

Unemployment, as an earned benefit, isn't actually an issue at all.

------
newnewpdro
“A big factor here is a loss in self-confidence. It takes faith to move.”

When I first started dating and generally getting to know other American
families on a more adult and intimate level, it often shocked me how low
everyone's confidence and motivation levels were. There was always some
looming fear of failure, of being wrong, or getting hurt, it was paralyzing.

Our culture, the media, the education system, it all cultivates fear, doubt,
helplessness, and dependency. Without exceptional influences, we generally
produce scared consumers.

My parents are both immigrants, and it's had a substantial impact, good and
bad. Confidence, motivation, willingness to take on challenges and risks, are
not problems for me. But the flip side of that is I'm often quite frustrated
by my contemporaries, as I tend to expect the same. These traits seem like
part of the bare minimum of being an adult from my perspective, and the
average American just seems like an overgrown child in this context. It's
quite frustrating.

edit:

Just wanted to add; one of the things I've most enjoyed about working at tech
startups is how effectively they tend to filter out these people.

~~~
haskellandchill
People don’t want to die it’s true. If you fail you die in America. Period,
end of story, game over man.

~~~
b_t_s
> If you fail you die in America.

This made me chuckle. There are a lot of countries where this is true, but the
US is generally not one of them. Sure you might end up loosing all your assets
and living in a homeless shelter, but at least we have homeless shelters. Yea,
you're probably better off indigent in much of northern/western europe, but
the social safety net here in the US, while imperfect, is a heck of a lot
better than much of the rest of the world. A big part of why immigrants
"fearlessly" launch themselves into the unknown and immigrate is because where
they're from, if you fail you actually do die. Soon. Painfully. There may be
instances of that in the US, particularly in cases involving drug use and.or
mental illness, but it's hardly the norm. Moving for a job you don't have yet
to escape an economic backwater is certainly a huge financial risk, but it's
hardly a life and death risk.

~~~
haskellandchill
Ok, completely discount my experience. Thanks. I've been to other countries
too. Yes we are lucky there isn't a war breaking out right now. It's not
funny. It's real and raw suffering.

------
spicymaki
My armchair guess would be that debt is keeping people chained to particular
locations. If you live in a town that no one wants to live in, who will buy
your house?

If you go bankrupt or have a foreclosure on the record, it can be hard to move
to locations with better opportunities. Many jobs require credit checks, so
leaving the job you don't want can be a hassle.

~~~
adventured
Despite popular myth, US households are in good condition when it comes to
debt.

The US household debt to income ratio is far lower than in nations such as
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Australia, South
Korea, Britain and Canada (see: [1] [2]).

US household debt service payments as a share of disposable income, are near a
40 year low. [3]

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-economy-
debt/canad...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-economy-debt/canada-
household-debt-to-income-near-record-high-home-sales-fall-idUSKCN1GR1RD)

[1a] [https://i.imgur.com/XRJIDbi.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XRJIDbi.jpg)

[2] [https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-
debt.htm](https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm)

[3]
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP)

~~~
Broken_Hippo
This doesn't cancel the concerns, though.

You can have bankruptcy and have little to no debt for years. A foreclosure,
repo, or eviction can happen for various reasons. Maybe you simply got sick
and were missing work. You can owe money on your house - a reasonable amount -
and be stuck because you can't sell your house nor afford to both pay the
current house mortgage and live somewhere else.

Some of the "debt" things are special to being poor. Lose your job and can't
pay the final cable bill? Collections. Can't pay the $600 hospital bill?
Collections and eventual judgement. It doesn't take a large amount of debt to
have it affect your life negatively when a flat tire puts your electricity at
risk of being turned off.

------
jackcosgrove
Maybe because it actually makes economic sense to stay. Cost of living, mainly
for housing, in high-paying regions means that after a certain age you won't
realize the benefits of the higher wages since you won't be able to pay off
your mortgage before your career ends. In fact rent or mortgage interest may
capture all of the salary bump and more.

Working a menial job in a depressed area makes a lot more sense when a house
there only costs $125,000.

I understand that those open to education can have a life transformation in a
new city by acquiring new skills. But that's a small number of people.

Most people work to live and not the other way around. Some just want three
hots and a cot, family, and friends. And that is perfectly alright.

Just for fun I searched Bloomberg for this phrase: "why do upper middle class
people continue to live in overpriced cities despite having all their needs
met". The second result was this one:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-percent-
of-upper-middle-class-households-are-saving-money). Maybe we are more alike
than we realize...

~~~
wutbrodo
> Just for fun I searched Bloomberg for this phrase: "why do upper middle
> class people continue to live in overpriced cities despite having all their
> needs met". The second result was this one:
> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-12/only-45-p...).
> Maybe we are more alike than we realize...

The article is paywalled, but AFAICT it's not particularly true or relevant.
The article you posted is from 4 years ago, and is based on the Fed's annual
"Economic Well-Being" report. The most recent one was just released
([https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-repor...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-report-
economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf)), and it shows that ~40 of non-
retired adults think that their retirement savings are on track. This
comfortably encompasses the upper-middle class.

The 2014 report is here
([https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2014-report-
econo...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2014-report-economic-
well-being-us-households-201505.pdf)) and shows worse numbers for savings (the
metrics seem to have changed, so I can't make a simple apples-to-apples
comparison). AFAICT, the main changes have been to economic optimism and
liquidity, both of which are better indicators of the contemporary economy[1]
than they are of actual financial stability or level of savings. This is
hardly surprising, given that we were still not that far out from a shaky
economy in '14.

------
phil248
As a broad response to a lot of comments here (and the HN perspective in
general), there are many dozens of thriving cities in the US that are not San
Francisco or New York City. Moving to a city for opportunity does _not_ mean
moving to one of the 10 most expensive cities on the planet.

It doesn't even necessarily mean moving to the trendy, increasingly expensive
cities, like Portland or Denver or Austin.

It can mean moving to places like Charlotte, Nashville, Madison, Lawrence or
Savannah. Or maybe Santa Fe, Columbus, Provo or Bend.

For most Americans, there is a growing city with colleges, trade schools and
unemployment rates below the statewide level within a couple hours drive.

~~~
closeparen
Chicago. Chicago is an honest-to-goodness world city with skyscrapers and
trains and everything. A luxury condo in one of them can run you less than be
down payment on a rundown shack in a far-flung Bay Area suburb. Unfortunately
the tech scene there is mostly in the old-school business IT tradition and in
suburban office-park hellscapes.

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
The winters are also... bracing, to say the very least. If you like feet of
snow, it’s great, otherwise maybe not so much. I love to visit, but I wouldn’t
last a year.

~~~
closeparen
Winter is a tooling problem. The tools are straightforward and Chicago is
well-practiced in their use. You put on a coat. The city plows. You drive a
4WD car carefully. It works out.

Compared to paying half your “upper middle class” salary for living conditions
that most Americans would identify as poverty (roommates, paper thin walls,
1970s fixtures, no dishwasher, garbage disposal, laundry, or parking, etc) due
to game-theoretically intractable politics, it’s nothing.

~~~
thrav
> You spend as little time outside as possible for several months.

That’s a big fuckin’ problem for me. In fact, it’s the exact same reason I
can’t live in the south. Y’all have heaters; they have AC. It all still means
I’m trapped indoors and miserable much of the year. No thanks.

~~~
mantas
Proper winters are AWESOME. Skiing, winter hiking/camping.. Lots of things to
do.

Year-cycle puts a nice rhythm in life. November is time to bring out tea,
books, warm socks and reflect the year that is about to pass. Then first signs
of spring comes, everybody is out celebrating and there's a deep-rooted
feeling that rough time has passed and now you can relax for a bit.

I couldn't live somewhere without proper 4 seasons. I did stay in non-snowy
areas for extended period of time more than once and it's just.. sad. On the
other hand, it's probably upbringing&culture.

~~~
magnusdeus123
Moved to Montreal from Vancouver and this is exactly what I noticed. There's
something the seeps into the people that live in regions with a proper
4-seasons that doesn't happen elsewhere.

------
Simulacra
I have family in this situation, of all ages, and I think it's a lack of
knowledge about what exists out there. It takes a lot to break with family,
tradition, history, and everything you've known, to go to a new place.

------
tshadley
> According to a new Brookings Institution report, the largest metro
> areas—those of 1 million or more people—have experienced 16.7 percent
> employment growth since 2010, and areas with 250,000 to 1 million have seen
> growth of 11.6 percent, while areas with fewer than 250,000 residents have
> lagged far, far behind, with only 0.4 percent growth.

So, clearly most Americans don't stay behind when their town has no future.
The article should add the qualifier "Some" Americans to avoid a misleading
impression.

~~~
panopticon
That quote doesn't say anything about the movement of people though; just the
economic situation of urbanites versus rural residents.

------
gerdesj
I'm not from around there but this sounds like a sense of place or a feeling
of belonging, perhaps tribalism. From the outside this phenomenon looks a bit
odd and will need some explanation from the locals.

~~~
rjdagost
Some people are content with what they have in life and are not driven by a
need to always strive for more. For these people, feeling like you "belong",
in a place with your family and friends are nearby is more important than
better career opportunities. I don't know why this is regarded as such a
mystery.

~~~
wutbrodo
If you read the article, one of the primary things it focuses on is: to what
we should attribute the _decline_ of geographic labor mobility. If you're
going to claim that it's obviously "wanting to feel like you belong", you need
a simple theory for why the desire to stay put would have increased,
especially during a period when the incentives to move have grown dramatically
(i.e., the "opportunity gap").

In particular, the article quite obviously isn't wondering why every single
resident of rural Ohio hasn't packed up and moved to Manhattan. They're
wondering why (to take the county they focused on), a smaller chunk of the 64%
of unemployed adults in Adams County, has left than would have in the past.

Not to mention the fact that we're not talking about striving for more: in
most severe cases, the individual economic issues aggregate to municipal ones,
which can affect quality of life fairly significantly. Just off the top of my
head, the article mentioned increasingly understaffed gov't, plummeting school
funding, and an increasingly strained law-enforcement and judicial system.

Again, if you actually bothered to read the article, it's not a question of
why people aren't striking out from their cozy suburban life to take their
shot in the big city. It's focusing on why the number of people willing to
leave dying local economies has declined so sharply. As part of the article
puts it, there's been a reversal in the correlation between poverty and
geographic labor mobility, from positive to negative.

Again, I recommend reading the article posted (it's the link at the top of the
comments page), and maybe you'l understand a little better what's being
discussed here and what the "mystery" in question is.

------
matte_black
I grew up poor, but I was able to move away to San Francisco and get good jobs
in tech, and ultimately became successful, and by some standards here, even
“rich”.

But you know what? The relationships with friends and family I left behind
definitely suffered. I now feel distant from everyone, and unfortunately some
of my best memories are still from old times when I lived close to these
people. I have very few friends here in the city, most my interactions day to
day are simple and transactional. I wouldn’t blame anyone for staying behind
in their town. I’ve always figured I could move back when money was no problem
anymore, but I don’t think that day will come soon, and sooner or later I’ll
have to decide where I want to plant roots and start a family, and I doubt any
woman here will want to go back to my old town after living in SF. Don’t know
what to do really, just hanging on.

~~~
wutbrodo
I'm sorry to hear that; I was in a somewhat similar position for different
reasons some time ago. The bright side is: because of the large number of
transplants, this is probably one of the easiest places to make friends. It's
not a skill that's particularly natural, since most people are used to having
a community instead of having to build one from scratch, but it's pretty vital
in an increasingly socially-atomized world. I don't want to be bossy, but I
really really really recommend investing actual time in it. I can tell you
from experience: it's just not healthy to not have a social group around you.

I moved to San Francisco with a handful of friends, but I had a facsimile of
your problem due to some unrecognized health issues that made my social life
wither away, along with some bad luck with the timing of people moving away. I
had to start from scratch to build a friend group here, but it turns out there
are tons of people doing the same thing, and it couldn't be easier. Even if
you just go to social Meetups to meet people, it can be very easy to get a
good group around you just by repeatedly putting yourself out there. It does
take work: there were times when i felt lazy but would force myself to go to
some random outing to foster a friendship with someone who I got along with,
or saw movies that I wasn't all that crazy about, but it really paid off in
spades.

The closest friends from the group I've built up over the last three or four
years from nothing are basically like family to me at this point, and the
feeling is mutual. They're the kind of friends whose house I can drop by on a
weeknight more or less randomly (assuming they're not out), and just hang out
until everyone falls asleep/I go home.

Even if you decide that this is not where you want to put roots down, having a
more casual group of solid friends is really valuable, at the very least so
you have people you can depend on.

------
EliRivers
_“The American dream is kind of to stay close to your family, do well, and let
your kids grow up around your parents,” he says._

This, I feel, is telling. The dream is becoming the hope that your children
can live as you did. It's not about each generation doing better; it's about
not doing worse. It's about maintaining.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
It's becoming more like Europe. Once everywhere's been settled it's more
expensive to move around. A new frontier is needed.

------
str33t_punk
Cause when they pack up and move to a city everyone moans that they are
‘gentrifying’ and should move back we’re they came from.

~~~
jrs95
Can't win with this one. Either you're the modern day segregationist for
wanting to live in a nice neighborhood, or you're gentrifying by not doing
that.

Fortunately there's also a large number of people, probably a majority, who
don't give a shit about this political nonsense and just want to go on with
their lives.

------
8bitsrule
_consternation among economists and pundits, who wonder why Americans ... lack
their ancestors’ get-up-and-go....loss in self-confidence._

Nothing valuable about friends, family, community, environment, culture ... so
far as these guys can see.

And, just maybe, Americans look back a couple of generations to their
immigrant ancestors, and see what that was _really_ about.

"A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a
golden land of opportunity and adventure!"

------
analog31
I looked through the comments, and a lot of interesting ideas are presented,
but I have to speculate about two additional issues:

1\. A lot of people are tied down by responsibilities to others, such as
parents and relatives who need care.

2\. If a young person from a rural town has acquired a portable skill such as
programming, it's quite likely to be because they already left that town -- to
attend college.

~~~
prawn
In times past and in other cultures, someone might migrate solo and later
bring their family over. I've read stories of European migrants doing this to
Australia. Sometimes, it would be years later.

Were people then more willing to leave partners or kids behind? Or elderly
parents?

I don't think I'd ever entertain the idea of moving without my partner and
children like that.

Even in a very connected world, my partner is not interested in being away
from her circle of friends for any serious length of time, let alone a major
career/lifestyle move.

------
tw1010
Why Does Everyone Assume 300 Million People Agree About The Idea That Money Is
A Virtue?

~~~
cjsawyer
It's probably because 99.5% of the population relies on money to live in a
house and to buy food.

PS: Why Do You Type Like This? It's Very Hard To Read.

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
He wrote in headline style as his comment is a "translation" of TFA headline.

------
slantaclaus
Inertia. Fear of change. Cost of living, moving. Friends. Satisfaction.
Myopia.

~~~
SubiculumCode
Home.

~~~
sp332
I think this gets overlooked a lot. "Why don't you move?" "Uh, because I live
_here_."

~~~
SubiculumCode
Community is important. Friends, way of life, values, food, out doors living,
fishing, hunting, days at the river drinking beer, a support system in place
with neighbors helping out. So there are good things that can keep you in a
place. But there is also that when you have little, all those things are
harder to give up. Find yourself in a city where no one knows you, no one
cares, and the things you found easy before, aren't easy anymore. Poverty
presents so many barriers that it really hard to see the inertia it presents.

~~~
hinkley
Given the sort of value judgements on this list, one might expect that a boom
town will be over-represented with a mix of people who have no fear, nothing
to lose, or no strong attachments (a superset of “people who don’t give a shit
about anybody else”).

Some of those traits are maladaptive for long term stability of the town and
its industries. Now I wonder how this feeds into the boom/bust trope...

~~~
closeparen
Isn’t it pretty normal to have “no fear, nothing to lose, and no strong
attachments” as a fresh college graduate? Those are more phases of life than
character traits. Graduate, explore, slowly put down roots, then stay rooted
until your own children leave the nest and start to do the same.

~~~
freshhawk
No, it is normal for graduates with rich parents as a safety net to play act
these traits. I think the comment mean actually having no fear, nothing to
lose and no strong attachments.

~~~
closeparen
Is having a 22-year-old living at home any more expensive than having a
17-year-old? Presumably their bed is still there, the marginal cost of an
extra portion in each recipe was already accounted for, and they don’t outgrow
clothes as quickly. The safety net of moving back in with mom and dad does not
require mom and dad to be rich.

------
dv_dt
Incidentally, the recent tax cut bill removed the individual deduction for
moving expenses when moving to a new job. So the financial costs of relocating
have increased.

~~~
maxerickson
You have to account for the different brackets and larger standard deduction.

People that would have deducted high bracket income using the moving expenses
see increased costs. People that probably weren't itemizing will see decreased
taxes whether they move or not.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You have to account for the different brackets and larger standard
> deduction.

Not to address the _marginal_ costs of moving, which is where the
(dis)incentive comes from.

~~~
maxerickson
Like majormajor below, I think the flexibility from increased income is going
to be just as much or more of a factor as the tax incentive.

------
shorttime
Is it even worth it to post now that this article has been up for a few days?
Funny how all of these comments just sit there on a server somewhere.
Produced. But what value does it add? Will anyone even look at this?

For me it's about the job but I'm sure everyone has their own reasons. I'm
secure and don't have to struggle. I apply for jobs and don't hear back,
interview and don't get the job, etc. I'd be willing to move somewhere new if
I knew I had a job lined up. While savings is good, it's stressful and scary
to have no income. It's like holding your breath and eventually panic sets in.
Doesn't feel good. I'd love to move to a bunch of different cities but many of
those places don't seem to have jobs that fit my background. I'd jump to a new
career but not sure I could float the expenses while also saving for the
future.

------
jrs95
Maybe these people don't want to leave their families & communities and be
complicit in destroying their home town just because they can make some more
money by doing that, and some economists and journalists they don't know
insists that they all have no future.

------
dsfyu404ed
The elephant in the room here is politics. A better chance of employment is a
lot less appealing if it's in a city where you know nobody, there is no sense
of community, most people are not at all like you and think people like you
are backwards hicks.

~~~
preordained
There is truth to this. As a rural Illinois boy I traveled to Chicago to
intern and it just wasn't my cup of tea...plain and simple. People are
different, culture is different. In my town in the "sticks" we have brown
people and immigrants--plenty (will come as big shock to some who think we're
all just inbred corn eaters out here). _That_ is not the difference...to get
that mandatatory political correctness dance out of the way. Rather it is
simply the way people relate to each other, attitudes, community or what
passes for it.

------
AnimalMuppet
If you grew up in a town, and maybe have seen a couple of cycles of better and
worse, growth and decline, it's hard to really believe that this time is
different. You think, "This will be kind of bad for a while, but we've been
through that before. We'll be all right" \- because that's all you've known.

------
Bucephalus355
A lot of similar things were said about San Francisco after the 1906
earthquake.

This is one of the reasons behind the rise of Los Angeles in the early 20th
century. Also of note is that after they (temporarily) figured out the water
problem, they were able to lure movie investment seeking to escape Edison’s
patents on the east coast.

------
ggg9990
I have lived in several countries and I know I would have a terribly difficult
time emigrating from the US and living elsewhere, even if things got really
bad. It’s probably the local version of the same thing.

------
gerdesj
Judging from the comments here, there is a real US _ism_ which I find
fascinating. It looks like one that is so obvious to the locals that it is err
obvious.

~~~
toasterlovin
Yeah, Europe is established. The US is not. I have a German friend whose town
(Liepzig) celebrated it's 1000th anniversary recently. It has a _book fair_
that is 400 years old. The city that I live in (Portland, OR) was a forest 150
years ago. We're still figuring out where all the permanent settlements are
going to be and how many people will live in each one.

~~~
maxerickson
The numbers of people living in European cities has changed quite a lot. The
population about doubled since 1900.

They also likely benefited (as cities) from the rebuilding that was necessary
after the World Wars.

------
jdhn
Cost of living due to rampant NIMBYism in the most economically dynamic
cities, as well as the feeling of community that would disappear if they were
to move.

~~~
stevenwoo
They gave an example of the coal plant worker who found a high paying job at a
somewhat isolated dam in Washington state but moved back to Ohio for a much
lower paying job because he, his wife and kids missed their relatives and had
trouble making new friends, so it was only the community if one can call it
that and more a trouble with adapting to a new place that would happen with
any move. It feels like if that family had help with adapting that move could
have stuck permanently.

~~~
cesarb
> The landscape of central Washington state was more desolate than they were
> prepared for. The nearest Walmart and McDonald’s were almost an hour away.
> Flights back home were expensive. Tiffany had almost no contact with other
> adults when Randy was at work.

To me, that sounds more like the high paying job was in the middle of nowhere.

~~~
souprock
It also seems she is used to the sort of place where it is normal for one
income to support a family. There, she'd have neighbors to visit with during
the day.

------
internetman55
For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but
from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

------
HumanDrivenDev
Really good article - didn't come across as preachy and condescending as a lot
of "big media organisation interviews poor white people" stories tend to go.

I myself would love to buy a house in a small town. It's a much more realistic
option for me than buying in a city. And I'm sure as a programmer I could find
a job. But then what happens when - or if - that employer shuts up shop? It's
a massive risk.

~~~
randomdata
I’ve spent my almost 20 year career as a developer in a rural area and found
that there are plenty of places trying to hire developers, not to mention that
remote work is also available. I personally have never seen it as being all
that risky.

The very worst case is that you move back to the city, which is exactly where
you’d be if you never left.

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
What sort of places want developers in rural areas?

~~~
randomdata
There are lots of tech companies, relatively speaking. But also I've found
software developers in some less obvious and surprising places. For instance,
the mom and pop funeral home in town maintain their own software. My first
development job was at a warehousing business on their inventory management
system.

------
JustSomeNobody
Because: [http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-
househ...](http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-household-
finances/index.html)

------
gerdesj
inertia

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echotango
If this article had been published in 1992 when NAFTA, free trade and
immigration were actually being debated, it would have been ridiculed by the
establishment as backwards and probably racist anti-globalization propaganda.
Even now, questioning the govenment economic policies that directly resulted
in this mess lands you on a professional blacklist at 'respected'
publications.

~~~
wahern
It wouldn't have been written in 1992 because interstate net migration rates
were near their historical highs. See, e.g., Figure 1, page 41 in
[https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201130/201130p...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201130/201130pap.pdf)

~~~
echotango
That's not what the article is about. Its about whole cities becoming
unemployed as a result of factories moving overseas, and unfair trade deals
signed in the early 1990's. The people in that figue moved because they found
work somewhere else, not because their entire community was terminated
overnight.

~~~
wahern
The decline of the Rust belt began in the 1970s, and by the 1980s you already
had movies like Gung Ho

    
    
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_(film)
    

dramatizing existential crises of factory towns in the face of manufacturing
off-shoring.

Factory towns are nothing new, and neither are factory towns disappearing
overnight. What's relatively recent in modern American history is the
reticence of Americans to move, thus the _title_ of the article. But this
reticence is probably a regression to the mean, much like everything else
about the post-post-WWII economy.

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Andre_Wanglin
I can leave cheaply, hustle remotely, and use my (technically - thanks, Solo
401K!) low AGI to go on Obamacare. Why should I get a "career" in a major city
and live hand to mouth while never being able to afford real property?

~~~
marsrover
If you're in tech there is no reason to live hand to mouth in a major city.
Maybe in San Francisco that's the case, but I make a very decent living in
Atlanta (not suburbs) and save a huge chunk of my income. I'm sure I'm not the
only one and that this isn't the only city.

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
I'm a cowboy. Hence the hustle. Even if I passed a corporate sniff test, could
I put away 60% or more of my income every year? And why would I want to live
in Atlanta or someplace like it? I hate commuting. That's a major reason I
work from home in a small city and take whatever remote gigs I can wrangle.

~~~
wutbrodo
Fwiw, this is definitely possible. I've saved about 80% of after-tax income
for the last decade or so in SF. I don't consider my life very ascetic either;
in fact, it's pretty awesome. If I wanted to cut down further for some reason,
the number of wonderful free/cheap things you can do in popular cities is
insane.

(Though bear in mind that I'm not yet in the phase of life where I have a kid,
where this stuff gets a lot more complicated)

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
Yeah, I have a six bedroom four bath house because of the kids. Bought it for
cash. I shudder to think what that would cost in SF.

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BigChiefSmokem
I attribute the loss of confidence and the old "get up and go" attitude of our
ancestor Americans to the complete failure of the culture and the K-12
education system in most rural counties around the country.

This trait is now more commonly found in immigrants coming into the United
States.

~~~
felipemnoa
>>This trait is now more commonly found in immigrants coming into the United
States.

Just want to point out that your ancestors were once immigrants coming into
the USA.

~~~
mattnewton
Agreed, I think the population sample is biased- inmigrants are by definition
people who got and and left a place in an attempt to find a better one, and
most current USA ancestors were immigrants.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Well, all current USA residents had immigrant ancestors, even if they came
over via a land bridge more than 10kya.

------
taivare
Noticed, recently state or fed money was given to tear down old abandoned
factories in small towns in PA. post election. I believe they are trying to
bring work in. However, I also believe they don't want the middle age people
telling the younger generations that's where gramps worked and earned a
livable wage back in the golden era ( Demand Side Economy ). I caught the
tail-end as a kid. The factory towns were nice then. I have family members who
won't even visit their hometowns, they get sad at the run down appearance and
hopelessness 40% unemployment for working age men , tend to believe it's
higher. A good job is with a gas lease, timber but not much else.

------
Karishma1234
These are mostly elitist concerns. The ordinary folks on the ground often turn
out to be pretty happy. They have a routine life, friends and community and
they simply dont care about opportunities at that point.

~~~
scarmig
...what? Flyover country doesn't care about their jobs and their economies?

Suicide rates[0] and drug abuse statistics would suggest otherwise.

[0]
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm)

~~~
randomdata
Ohio, featured in the article, is only slightly above the national average. Is
that significant?

~~~
scarmig
Ideally we'd have more granular data. Not all of Ohio is dead--it has several
major metropolitan areas. And, likewise, the Central Valley in CA probably
isn't doing that great, but it's outweighed by the California cities.

