I find the tone of articles like these to be patronizing.
Let's be clear, the hollowing out of rural economies is a direct and explicit effect of trade policy, and not some accident of economics and markets.
The precise dynamic in this article is that where previously cities provided capital and farms provided food, with a spectrum of services in between - with globalization, cities no longer depend on their regional rural partners, and can meet demand for food and goods using cheap international suppliers, financial flows of hot money, and massive debt funded deficits.
Unskilled labour and manufacturing don't have a problem when countries enact policies with a national interest because tariffs and anti-dumping rules create a price preference for nationally produced goods and services.
It has almost nothing to do with the skills or qualifications of rural workers. This is policy. The Bloomberg author's false lament for these "left behind" workers is nothing but sanctimonious cant.
edit: tl;dr: what's more likely to prevail, a system of globalization or the interests of rural people? I know where I will place my bet.
Trade policy? Lets start with some basics here: farms are getting larger, and there is no longer available farm land that wasn't already converted to farm land. That happened a long time ago, before me anyway. Farmer Jo has 4 kids and one farm. That farm only produced enough income for one family to live on, if they are lucky and expanded, maybe two. So Farmer Jo + One kid and family. All the other kids have to go elsewhere. You go look in town (maybe 5000 people in a good healthy farm town), and the jobs there are bleak as well. Cook, mechanic, hardware store, etc. Or you enter the trades: plumber electrician. But in small towns, there is still only so much room for them. These small towns have a form of "max capacity". So most of the kids move way. Out of four, on average 2 kids will stick around, but not enough for the town to "grow". Keep in mind, not every farm kids wants, or is cut out to perform farm labor.
Again, why do the kids leave? The town economy is based on farm economics, and is limited by the availability of land. Once the land is taken, the town will stop growing. And farm income is not what you call "stable" either, so the town goes thru a lot of boom and bust cycles. Infrastructure levies take a hit if you are talking about multiple years of taxes, simply because the farmers don't know what next year's income will look like.
Do you need to flee to the city? Depends on what you call a city. There is probably a neighbor town with +20,000 people in it. We call them cities around here (examples: Twin Falls Idaho and Algona Iowa.) In those vast metropolises you can work produce factories, car dealerships (the small towns don't have them), and other areas.
Source: I'm a farm kid with an older brother, from a small farming town in southern Idaho, and most my friends are former farm kids as well. My dad gave me the "talk" in high school, he knew I wouldn't make a good farmer. And those who stuck around are often not the lucky ones. They are just trying to hold on. (was not a fun heart-to-heart with my brother last night who thinking hard about selling out and becoming an EMT after 30 years of farm life).
I don't think GP's distinction between cities providing capital and rural areas providing food is really the line drawn by the article, or typically when comparing regional inequality. For example, the article notes that CoL adjusted average income is greater in Beaumont, TX and Birmingham, AL than NYC and SF.
Automation probably is what has caused farm unemployment, but trade policy can absolutely be blamed more for manufacturing unemployment in areas that aren't "big cities". The Syracuse or the Altoona metro areas aren't exactly farmland, but they definitely aren't NYC or SF, either.
The interests of rural people in the US are, depending on the state, protected by the electoral college and Senate allocation. Look for more attempts to abolish these things, which would be civil war-risking changes to government.
To me there's no reason that old, beautiful towns couldn't become parts of the information economy, as long as they have decent internet access and are within an hour or two of a decent airport. I also think that sheer class disdain is part of the problem with regional inequality. Many media contributors in the US -- almost always in the major cities -- have recounted the apparent economic success of these same cities with an almost gloating tone, putting themselves on the "winning" side of an inevitable historical progression.
> The interests of rural people in the US are, depending on the state, protected by the electoral college and Senate allocation. Look for more attempts to abolish these things, which would be civil war-risking changes to government.
The reason why there are attempts to abolish these things is because rural states have, arguably, been abusing that advantage to the point where the larger states are getting frustrated. The situation where a minority of a population can not just veto the majority policies, but impose its own, even in face of the supermajority (the US system allows the constitution to be amended with support of less than 25% people, so long as they vote in the right places), is not going to be sustainable for long.
And, by the way, the people who have set the system up knew that putting it on paper is not enough. There's a warning in the Federalist Papers (#22):
"It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
Originally it was about something else, but in a very similar context (small states trying to get a unicameral 1-vote-per-state).
Let's be clear, the hollowing out of rural economies is a direct and explicit effect of trade policy, and not some accident of economics and markets.
The precise dynamic in this article is that where previously cities provided capital and farms provided food, with a spectrum of services in between - with globalization, cities no longer depend on their regional rural partners, and can meet demand for food and goods using cheap international suppliers, financial flows of hot money, and massive debt funded deficits.
Unskilled labour and manufacturing don't have a problem when countries enact policies with a national interest because tariffs and anti-dumping rules create a price preference for nationally produced goods and services.
It has almost nothing to do with the skills or qualifications of rural workers. This is policy. The Bloomberg author's false lament for these "left behind" workers is nothing but sanctimonious cant.
edit: tl;dr: what's more likely to prevail, a system of globalization or the interests of rural people? I know where I will place my bet.