Once upon a time, a rising tide of economic progress would lift all boats in all communities all around the country.
Nowadays, we're in a bizarre reality where a 200% productivity gain among the average worker nationwide means a 1500% productivity gain in the top 10% of counties, coupled with a 55% productivity loss in the bottom 90% of counties. (Numbers generated randomly for illustrative purposes).
One would expect that productivity-boosting technology such as computers, robots, cell phones, and various forms of automation would increase productivity for nearly every person on every square inch of this planet. That is no longer the case, and it is something I plan to study in depth at a later date.
I agree with your assessment and the irony with respect to this topic is a big contributor to the current state of things in places like the Rust Belt is what other's have said is not feasible; jobs moving to the people. If all that manufacturing can move to China why can't FAANG move to Toledo?
Because most people who want to work at FAANG don't want to live in Toledo, and it's a lot harder to find competent software developers than factory workers. Not that there aren't competent devs in Toledo, but the supply would be dried up pretty quick, and good luck convincing rich, coastal, Elizabeth-Warren-beat-Hillary-in-my-district Californians to move to an area with lake-effect snow in a state that just passed a heartbeat law for abortions.
Obviously painting with broad strokes, but FAANG companies would have to fundamentally rethink the kind of person they'd like to hire if they want to move out of affluent Urban cores.
> but FAANG companies would have to fundamentally rethink the kind of person they'd like to hire if they want to move out of affluent Urban cores.
And yet Apple seemed to have figured out this type of problem quite nicely during the 80's and 90's when they moved their manufacturing from places like Carleton TX, Elk Grove CA and Fountain CO to places like Singapore and Ireland.
Once again, manufacturing. Not design. You can teach anyone with a high school education (even less, see 3rd world factories) how to solder or how to operate machinery efficiently. VLSI, circuit design, operating system development, FPGAs, even app development requires years of specialized training just to be competent at the fundamentals, usually taking the form of a degree. So if you want to hire designers with minimal costs you go to where the largest relevant talent pool already lives, and it ain't Toledo. It's MIT, Stanford and similar places.
It's the same reason any company prefers to hire local when they can. Much easier to entice someone to drive somewhere else in town in the morning than to entice someone to uproot their life and move 1000 miles.
Haha, yeah it's the "just" part that's the issue. In all seriousness I'm actually helping my wife learn to code at the moment. Her last job was as a pharmacy tech, but she hated that job and isn't satisfied with me as the sole breadwinner. She hadn't even touched the command line until a couple of years ago. She's come a long way from zero and is now learning React, but it'll still be at least another year, maybe two before I'd say she's ready to produce something professional-quality on a professional schedule. And that's with me taking care of the bills, funding the educational resources she's using (not a 4-year degree), doing a LOT of tutoring in the first year and and passing along insights I didn't get until my first job. And she's put a minimum of 30 hours a week into it, often more.
I can only imagine what someone with greater responsibilities, less time and no mentoring would go through. Not saying it can't be done, clearly it has. But just because a few talented/lucky/insane people can start from nothing and strike it big doesn't make it accessible to the average coal miner. If it did our salaries would be a low lower.
Nowadays, we're in a bizarre reality where a 200% productivity gain among the average worker nationwide means a 1500% productivity gain in the top 10% of counties, coupled with a 55% productivity loss in the bottom 90% of counties. (Numbers generated randomly for illustrative purposes).
One would expect that productivity-boosting technology such as computers, robots, cell phones, and various forms of automation would increase productivity for nearly every person on every square inch of this planet. That is no longer the case, and it is something I plan to study in depth at a later date.