City mouse, country mouse
Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum takes on Paul Krugman over his assertion that small-town America is aggrieved because the working-age men are more likely to be unemployed than their metropolitan counterparts. As usual, Kevin brings the charts and numbers to show that while Krugman isn’t wrong, the differences are small and don’t explain “white rural rage.” Kevin notes that while pay is less in rural areas, the difference is mostly compensated by the lower cost of housing.
So whence the grievance and anger? Kevin points the finger at right-wing media:
“So what’s really going on? I’d guess that part of the answer is economic, but not at the individual level. Main street shops have gone away. Rural hospitals have shut down. The nearest doctor may be 50 miles away. There’s no access to broadband internet.
“This kind of slow lifestyle deterioration is unquestionably discouraging, but it’s not really the sort of thing that produces rage. That’s more likely to come from cultural issues like abortion, immigration, race, gay and trans rights, and so forth. I’m still guessing a bit here, but in the past the cultural difference between urban and rural wasn’t quite so stark. Mores were relatively conservative everywhere—in public, at least—and in any case, urban debauchery was a long way away. Today it’s only as far away as your TV set, and urban culture overwhelms contemporary TV, especially among cable outlets. That can feel pretty oppressive.
“Economically, though, I just don’t see it. Rural areas today aren’t doing any worse than rural areas have always done. The city is where you once went to make your fortune, and it still is.”
I can certainly believe that this is exacerbated by the closing of retail, schools and hospitals in rural communities. The bucolic setting of rural America no longer compensates for the loss of local amenities.
Economics and white rural rage
Being one of those country mice gone to the city, I agree the rage is induced. I had a student, I don’t recall the context of how it came up but I had a student call it “induced dyslexia”. Nobody really knows what’s going on and the powers that be are keeping it that way. These day’s there’s just that much more going on to confuse us
Because there are less opportunity in the country, it has ever been thus. Though I’ve read a couple of his books and credit him with sparking my limited interest in econ as something to have limited interest in, sometimes I wonder about Krugman. Has he been west of Nyack? And I’ve been reading young Mr Drum since CALPundit; he’s pretty cosmopolitan too
Brings to mind a question from 101 ~ What’s it worth to live in the big city?
It’s all induced …
@Ten,
My parents lived in rural upstate New York for 20 years after my dad retired. They drove 30 miles each way to the supermarket after the local grocery closed. There was a community hospital about 30 miles away, but when my mom needed cancer treatment, she had to travel five hours to Dana Farber.
They had a house on the Battenkill, and while they were healthy, they didn’t mind the inconveniences like having to get water from a well, drive their trash to the county dump, having to buy a satellite dish to get internet service. It was OK while they were healthy, but when dad started to dement, they had to move to an assisted living community.
Fox News AM talk radio and twisted religion. Just marinate in that toxic brew for a couple of generations.
I completely agree with you.
My Father lived in La Grange, TX (yes, that La Grange) and his neighbors did not mind the lack of modern conveniences, but listening and seeing on TV how “the” Blacks, homosexuals, Mexicans, Mooslims, and unmarried wimmin can get ahead in life because they are treated like human beings was simply too much.
Poor whites could stomach being looked down upon by their rich whites as long as they could look down on Black people…..I wish I could remember the old adage. But when Blacks began to prosper, and were able to begin to get somewhat equal treatment under the law then that was too much for them to stomach. Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and others like TX LT Governor Dan Patrick tapped into this anger and dumped gasoline on it.
Our nation is much poorer for it.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
~Lyndon Johnson
As much as I appreciate Paul Krugman, he seems to be a Big Apple kind of guy through & through. I also grew up in the suburbs of (far) upstate NY state, did not set foot in NYC until my 18th birthday, and have never enjoyed visiting there much, even when my son lived there for quite a few years.
But anyway …
The Mystery of White Rural Rage
NY Times – Paul Krugman – yesterday
(He’s said this many times, and he seems to be ignoring the disruption such changes deliver to working folks, but not the intelligentsia.)
The 2nd paragraph above indicates that he is not entirely impervious however.
That is not any consolation to those whose lives are ruined by technological change.
@Fred,
“That is not any consolation to those whose lives are ruined by technological change.”
No, it’s not. But it is dishonest for you to say that he is ignoring it. He’s not.
Not dishonest. I soon noticed he covered himself, that he gets that people may not see things the way he does. But generally, he’s looking at the long term, that the economy rights itself eventually, and that’s progress.
ABOUT WHITE RURAL RAGE
i doubt rural whites have outsize political power. You look at the Electoral College…invented to limit the outsize political power of large states..like slave holding Virginia…and make a mountain of a molehill.
what the white rural voter has is the “power” to be manipulated by the rich and sophisticated to give the rich a tiny advantage in a close election. get rid of the ElectoralCollege and the rich are smart enough to exploit the inner city vote to beat that rather clueless “progressives” every time. count on it.
as for”it’s core principles” some people think “they” are the last defenders of America’s core principles…you know, family, freedom, character. They may be fooled, but not any more than the rest of us.
You have to look at this in terms of election year politics. Incumbents and their echo chamber tell you how great things are, non-incumbents focus on the problems. All this reminds me of 2016. Krugman was hyping the Obama economy. Meanwhile there was discontent in the hinterlands. Hillary could never come up with a coherent message. We all know the outcome.
@John,
“Incumbents and their echo chamber tell you how great things are, non-incumbents focus on the problems. All this reminds me of 2016.”
Remind me: who was the incumbent in 2016?
Joel:
There was no incumbent (which you already know and are being pointed in asking) other than people’s ignorance. The mice, ducks, dogs, etc. voted trump in with the anything but trump or Clinton vote. While living in Michigan, I loved rubbing their (Michigan voters) face in the mistake Democrats made.
Have you forgotten that a Democrats was the incumbent in 2016? For many Hillary represented a continuation of the Obama administration.
@John,
For anyone who understands the definition of the word “incumbent,” neither Hillary nor Trump were incumbents. Obama was not on the ballot, ergo there were no incumbents in 2016.
For many who voted for Obama, Hillary was not a continuation of the Obama administration.
@Fred,
He’s said this many times, and he seems to be acknowledging the disruption such changes deliver to working folks, not just the intelligentsia.
FIFY
“Is the glass half empty or half full?” … “Half full” means optimistic and “half empty” means pessimistic. (Wikipedia)
IMO, Paul Krugman is typically a ‘half full’ kind of guy, who expects others to be so also.
To be fair, New York City based writers made good money selling NYC to the world as a crime-ridden hell-scape. There used to be a web site call NYScout by an NYC based location scout. He was now and then asked to find suitably hell-scape like locations for movie and television shows. He usually found something that worked, but it was hard to find actual menace.
PK: “I have no good ideas about how to fight it.”
I would suggest you start by finding something about which you can agree. It can be tough since the things you really want to talk about will break up the conversation. Until you can have a nuanced discussion you cannot have progress. Political rallies, protests, or anyplace with cameras ain’t going to work.
Nor 68 word comments.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
~Upton Sinclair
In context it would appear you are saying that getting Krugman to understand (rural) Republicans is difficult because his salary depends on writing about how wrong they are.
@Arne,
This is the context of my comment:
“I would suggest you start by finding something about which you can agree. It can be tough since the things you really want to talk about will break up the conversation. Until you can have a nuanced discussion you cannot have progress.”
You cannot have progress or even a nuanced discussion when the other side is motivated, by money or something else, to not understand.
I don’t know Krugman personally, but from this article, it appears that he is motivated to understand and has a pretty sound grasp of things.
Another vote here for AM talk radio. I was working construction in the early 90’s and was amazed to arrive at a site to have Rush screaming out of a boombox, reaching every worker on site.
Driving in the country, often there may be a classic rock station, a country station and AM talk radio. You can only listen to Stairway to Heaven so many times, but every day on talk radio Sean Hannity will give you the days talking points, from Trumps lips to him the nite before.
Krugman is much more of a Democratic cheerleader than the mostly reality-based voice he was 20 years ago. If he said the sky was blue I’d go out to check.
The problem with rural communities is that they are populated by xenophobic bigots.
Rural communities are only a problem for the United States because the constitution makes rural areas into rotten boroughs. These areas can be vote farmed, at an extremely low cost, by candidates who validate rural hatreds.
Politicians generally have to give something–be it good jobs, public services, or infrastructure–to people in order to earn their votes. This is expensive and is unpopular with billionaires who don’t want to fund the society that made the wealth which lines the billionaires’ pockets.
Rural people, however, demand nothing of any value. They will crawl out of rotting houses, along washed out roads, and over collapsed bridges, to vote for anyone who tells them it’s right for them to want to kill the people who live in the next city down the highway.
The only cost to getting rural votes is the cost of building a propaganda network to tell rural people what they want to hear.
AM radio stations are cheap.
The attraction for the billionaire class to rural bumpkins and their innate hatreds should be obvious.
These people are broken. They cannot be fixed.
well, first there’s this
“Technology eliminates some jobs, but it has always generated enough new jobs to offset these losses, and there’s every reason to believe that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.”
The economists fail to notice that the people getting the new jobs are not the same as the people who lost the old jobs.
And where they are, they had to move to the city to do it.
But mostly It’s the R’s understanding the lower cost of mind-farming in low population areas, but don’t blame the Constitution. Blaming the Electoral College is a product of the same short winded thinking that produces MAGA voters where that is what the leaders and professional communicators ask for. Look at the “small” states when the Constitution was written.
Then find out when City Mouse and Country Mouse was written.
and try to overcome your own “racism.” while the South was enslaving blacks, the North was killing Indians.
500 BC
and before there was Rush, there was Paul Harvey.
The South was also enslaving and killing Indians. They only brought in slaves from Africa because they had depopulated the region. In the North, the big trade item was animal skins.
John H
there was an incumbent Party. I knew what you meant. so did the voters.
Hi:
When Kevin mentioned hospitals closing, he missed (a) point(s) of why they are closing. For one thing their costs are higher. If they are going to offer an ER, it has to be staffed 24-7. There also has to be doctors or NPs for other services which may be found in metro-hospitals. Then, where do these people live? It takes a particular type of person to live in rural, who has a family with children. Does the area have adequate schools a medical person may want their children to attend?
Some reading on rural hospitals here, here, here, and here.
The other aspect to not having hospitals in rural areas being they are being bought up. The larger entities promise to keep parts of the hospital open, and the they are gradually closed. Many (50+%) rural hospitals do not deliver babies anymore or have maternity care. The distance for either is greater than 40-minutes.
Any one of those articles posted by someone(?) else explains the issue. Why would a larger metro hospital buy up a smaller hospital in a smaller and lesser economical area? Well? Maybe the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The 340B program, which was designed to help safety-net hospitals serve low-income patients, allows qualifying nonprofit and government-owned hospitals to purchase discounted drugs from pharmaceutical companies.
That is just maternity care, primary care, hospital care availability in rural areas. Doc Hollywood left for real to better digs.
I also looked for job growth in rural areas. It decreased pre-pandemic. Pres. Biden – “Over $5 Billion to Support Rural Communities During Investing in Rural America Event Series.” in 2023. They could probably use triple the amount.
Tried looking around for job growth, It decreased as compared to Urban. Kids do not go to college, they go into the military to learn how to shoot a 155mm. Not really, but, they still lack adequate jobs skills when they get out and companies hire them for peanuts.
I am not sure what Drum is thinking.
Arne
it strikes me that joel missed your point.
it also strikes me that almost everybody here is right, sort of.
but not all of. starting out by thinking the guy you disagree with is broken and can’t be fixed….well i wonder what the “economic motive” of that position is, but i am sure it can’t be fixed.
also, i am grateful that Bill points out some of the inconveniences of rural life, especially in the new daze when the predators have found ways to make money off of the rural poorest, now that many of them no longer own farms and have become workers subject to short notice. but there have always been inconveniences to country living balanced by the friendliness of country folk (friendliness is the only word i could think of to stand for a whole slew of things that at least used to go into making country living more attractive than city living….and racism was not one of them).
etc etc etc
Fascinating … again as a country mouse gone to the city: most of this is moot in the generally accepted vernacular, a waste of time and air, in that even the most rural of America these days is pretty darned sub-urban. Speaking for myself there just isn’t that much difference …
Ten
i think i agree. it is not the inherent racism of country folk, it is the skill of political manipulators to prey on universal human emotions in low media cost areas.
not all that different from the skill of political manipulators to prey on universal human emotions in low-per-person media cost areas with different problems.
do you know what the election margins are in “red” states?
To a Yankee, it seems a lot like a ‘South Shall Rise Again!’ deal.
World War II seems to be joining the Civil War as one of their big lost causes.