Will technological advances lead to mass unemployment? People have been asking that question for two centuries, and the answer has always been “no.” Although technology eliminates some jobs, it has always created enough new jobs to compensate for these losses. And there is good reason to believe that trend will continue for the foreseeable future.
But progress comes with pain. Industry insiders and some economists may tout the virtues of “creative destruction,” but the process can be economically and socially devastating for those on the destruction side of the equation. There is a possibility that This is especially true when technological changes undermine not only individual workers but entire communities.
This is not a hypothetical proposition. It’s a big part of what happened to rural America.
This process and its effects are described in devastating, horrifying, and puzzling detail in a new book by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. I say “devastating” because the suffering of rural Americans is real, and I say “terrifying” because the political backlash against this suffering is now evident in our democracy. I say “incomprehensible” because, on some level, I still don’t understand politics. .
Schaller and Waldman argue that technology is a major factor in rural decline. In fact, American farms now produce more than five times as much as they did 75 years ago, but thanks to machinery, improved seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, agricultural labor has grown by about three times less in the same period. decreased by 2. Coal production has recently been on the decline, but thanks in part to techniques such as mountaintop logging, coal mining as a means of subsistence has long since disappeared, even though production has roughly doubled. Regardless, the number of miners decreased by 80%.
The decline in small-town manufacturing is a more complex story, driven by imports but also by technological innovations that favor large urban areas with primarily highly educated workers.
In other words, technology has made America as a whole richer, but it has reduced local economic opportunities. So why don’t rural workers go where the jobs are? Some people have it. But while some cities’ restrictive zoning makes it impossible to pay the cost of living — something blue states are doing wrong — many workers are also forced to leave their families and communities. I’m hesitating.
So shouldn’t we be supporting these communities? Yes. Although federal programs (such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) are available to all Americans, they are disproportionately funded by taxes paid by wealthy urban areas. The result is, in effect, a huge transfer of money from wealthy urban states like New Jersey to poorer, more rural states like West Virginia.
Although these transfers will alleviate some of the hardships facing rural America, they will not restore the sense of dignity that has gone with rural jobs. And perhaps that loss of dignity explains both the white rural anger and why that anger is misdirected — why this November, America’s It’s clear whether the majority of rural whites will vote against Joe Biden again. As president, Biden is trying to bring them jobs. To the community, and to Donald Trump, a con man from Queens who offers nothing but validation for their anger.
This sense of loss of dignity can become even worse. That’s because some rural Americans have long considered themselves more hardworking, patriotic, and perhaps even morally superior than their big-city residents. That attitude is still expressed in cultural artifacts like Jason Aldean’s hit song “Try.” That was in a small town. ”
In the crudest sense, rural America and small towns should be full of hard-working people who hold to traditional values, not the kind of corrupt urbanites on welfare. However, economic and social reality does not match this self-image.
Men of prime working age outside metropolitan areas are significantly less likely to be employed than men in metropolitan areas. Not because they’re lazy, but because the jobs simply don’t exist. (For women, the difference is much smaller, perhaps because jobs supported by federal aid, such as in the medical field, tend to be designated for women.)
A significant number of rural states also have high rates of homicide, suicide, and births to single mothers. Again, this is not because rural Americans are at fault, but, as the sociologist William Julius Wilson long ago argued about urban problems, what happens is because of social disorder. When I lost my job.
If you draw attention to these realities, you will be accused of being an arrogant urban elitist. The response to this column is sure to be…interesting.
The result, which is still difficult to understand on some level, is that many rural white voters support politicians who tell the lies they want to hear. This explains why the MAGA narrative paints relatively safe cities like New York as crime-infested hellscapes, and why rural America is the victim not of technology but of illegal immigration, wokeness, and the deep state. useful for.
At this point, you’re probably hoping for a solution to this ugly political situation. Schaller and Waldman offer several suggestions. But the truth is, rural white anger is arguably the greatest threat facing American democracy, but I don’t have a good idea of how to combat it.