Where I worked 25+years until a year ago was almost the same thing. Couldn’t find enough skilled help so they trained their own. Until about 10 years ago when they were bought out by a small conglomerate. Death spiral started then. Now what was the town’s largest and highest wage employer is an empty campus of buildings. The machines inside were hauled out so there is no chance of re-opening. The skilled tradesman were able for the most part to drive 30-40 miles for comparable jobs and benefits. Those older & unskilled or trained for that one job? Most are working for 1/2 their former wages while also driving the same 30 miles.
If I can get
why wouldn’t I want to
I wouldn’t care that some think I am
Didn’t this country (USA) once have a Rural Electrification Act? It had to be government instigated because the good ol’ Invisible Hand didn’t find it profitable. Maybe it’s time for a Rural Broadband Act.
Nah… just kidding. Rural folks would never elect the kinds of politicians that would allow make such a thing possible.
There are plenty of jobs that can be done remotely. Instead of debating" Do we move the people or the jobs" let’s help them get jobs that they can telecommute to.
Most People get bored lying on a Couch all day. Sure, it’s nice to have one week of vacation just Relaxing if your normal days are stressful. But five weeks and you are forbidden to do anything other than watch TV? Wouldn’t you get bored very quickly?
One indicator for this is when broad Surveys are taken from People who have a Job about what’s important to them: the Money they make or the Job they do, and the circumstances of the Job (times, Management, colleagues)? Even in the US, Money is not everything.
Most People prefer a useful activity to a useless make-work, because doing something worthwhile is a Basic human necessity just like Food or a place of your own Maslow's hierarchy of needs - Wikipedia. Many People - even with full-time Jobs - are active in charity or volunteer work. Look on the Internet: Linux and co., Mozilla and co: all People who love their work and share it.
It’s true that also a lot of People, esp. in poorer circles, are discouraged from childhood in their inqusitiviness, and stop looking for their talents, stop being interested, and at Age 20, don’t know what do with themselves besides lying on the Couch watching TV. That’s why I said social workers necessary: to reach those People and get them to rediscover their purpose and their interests.
Most of These Jobs are done by People near cities (the pork belt), not out in the real rural Countryside. Because to telecommute, you Need skilled workers - most of which have moved away from dying places already - and a good infrastructure - which dying places lack.
Laying thousands of miles of broadband cable to provide villages with 500 People, of which 80% are pensioneers, is not profitable. A similar Problem was in Africa with telephones: building Long lines of telephone cables to small villages would never be profitable for private companies, and the govt.s don’t have enough Money (plus, with metal Prices rising, theft of cable to sell for Money would have been a big Problem on top). In that case, a jump in Technology to cell phones, which Need only a few Towers, and can be charged with solar chargers for 30 bucks, solved the Problem.
In this case, I do think the natural solution (Young People moving away, old People dying off = ghost towns) will happen, because everything else requires a big effort by govt. - which I don’t see happen in the US. What govt. will do is a few Grand empty gestures that don’t do anything.
If a basic income only covers the minimums, just enough bland food to eat, just enough space to rest your head, access to educational materials, and maybe a bit of entertainment ( a couple hours a day at most), you are probably going to be willing to exert yourself and do more to earn yourself some luxuries above the basic minimum.
And if you don’t, no big loss, it won’t cost society much to keep you alive laying around on your couch.
Almost all of us aspire to something better than sloth and poverty. If some small number are satisfied with that, ok then, let’s move on with the rest of us doing better.
Bertrand Russell proposed something very much like this nearly a century ago. It wouldn’t take very long for everyone to settle into their expectations, and voluntarily work as hard as they needed to to reach them. Those willing to work and those desiring to consume would reach equilibrium.
The upside is the gain in creativity and other uncompensated productivity. People who wish to be creative could do so without having to give the Walton family 40 hours a week as greeters.
And that is part of why I think it would work well.
You might get bored sitting on your couch, only getting 2 hours a day worth of TV.
So, if your only other sources of stimulation are educational materials (I would give full access to all the online courses and classes and educational youtube videos [no cat vids, though]), or your own creativity, then there’s a good chance that you will end up learning something useful and productive, or that you will create something that some others may find worthwhile.
Just posting on a message board has value, sharing your ideas against those of others, acting as a teacher, a peer, or at least a foil for the ideas of others.
The U.S. mover rate is much lower than it used to be. 12% down from 20% in the 60s.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-47.html
Whether that’s a cause or effect is a matter for discussion. Do people have (or perceive) fewer opportunities, or are they less willing to take them, perhaps due to increased moving costs or social ties?
It will happen eventually, but that’s the kind of thing that happens over the course of generations. I live near a rural area that used to depend on coal mines for employment, and the communities have been in serious decline for about a century, but there are still plenty of people left.
I’m going to speculate that while the “push” to leave depressed areas is as strong as ever, the “pull” to move is much weaker.
Leaving declining Oklahoma after WWII for the booming Southwest was an easy decision. Leaving declining Oklahoma today for the also-declining Southwest? Not so much.
The Southwest isn’t declining in an absolute sense. But it is declining if your goal / expectation is a so-called “good job”: one with long term job stability at living wages for mostly low-skilled work. For those jobs the depression is nationwide and permanent. So moving is mostly pointless.
Anyway, the friendly cities will become more vibrant with about 17% of the USA moving in, allowing enough left to maintenance the farm robots.
Bit cramped and a strain on utilities; but jobs can be provided by getting them to construct their own shacks.
All Oakies too.
There was a thread some time back about why People from poor Areas who can’t find Jobs don’t move to other Areas (generally speaking) and the answer was that most People who can get out are Young and able-bodied (in case of 3rd world countries, where the travel to Europe is more expensive, often a whole big Family saves together to send one Person to Europe to earn “lots of Money” and send it back to feed 10-20 People at home).
Because it starts with having enough Money saved (from a shitty low -paid Job) to pay the bus ticket - if you are too poor to own a car - or the gasoline to travel hundreds of miles. Then, once you arrive in a City, you Need to find a Job real quick, so you can pay for your Food, and find an Apartment - and a lot of cities have become expensive. Young People can start low-skilled in a City and get an apprenticeship, but who’s going to hire a 40-year old with low skills (because lack of Schools in poor Areas, or lack of Money to pay for education with low-paid Jobs)?
Also, everybody who has People depend on them - elderly parents who Need care, Young babies, or just a spouse - can’t move. Moving with a spouse means that two People Need to find a Job, Need Food, Need a place to stay, so it’s easier for one to leave and, once settled, let the other follow - provided the spouse has a Job back home, which is not always the case in a poor Region with few Jobs.
The housing market fiasco has made things worse for People who have to move: selling your house for less than you bought it is a Problem; buying a new house is a Problem.
With increasing survivability, the sector of retired Americans is the fastest growing demographic. They do not need to live near jobs. Any small town anywhere could groom itself as a retirement community, and at least maintain a sustainable economy of senior citizen consumers and a base that serves their requirements. I wonder why this is not happening.
The model is in the sunbelt, where towns have done this successfully, but it would seem that many retirees would opt for a retirement lifestyle closer to their family, giving up only the winter sunshine as the trade-off. A lot of retirees in Michigan look north, and have settled in the Upper Peninsula.
It’s not something that is likely to spontaneously pop up, it would require a dedicated effort by a small town to sell itself as a regional retirement mecca. Not something with a great deal of promise in the Dakotas, but could be attractive in the belt from Kansas to Virginia.
There are lots of marginal cases who could be productive if given the right situation. They need the structure of a job to get their lives in order and can contribute to the economy. McDonalds has made billions off the labor of unskilled teenagers.
Broadband internet in the sticks would make it easier for poor people to stream movies but how does it help bring jobs?
How much would this cost?
Virtually all hiring is done online these days, not having broadband makes this harder, if not impossible. (I have seen a few job applications where they test you, which means that you have to watch some videos and answer questions. Hard to do on dial-up)
Many jobs allow you to telecommute, if you have a broadband connection.
Most places of employment are going to want to have good internet access. Without good internet access, the job isn’t going to move o your town in the first place.
If you are talking only about McJobs, like you were in a post upthread, well, those jobs are not enough to support an individual, much less a family, and in any case, those jobs are on the way out.