I grew up in a rural community, began my career as an organizer in small towns, and now lead one of the largest efforts to rebuild pro-democracy, pro-worker civic capacity in rural America. So I can speak with some authority when I say that President Biden, somewhat surprisingly, has ushered in a new economic paradigm that can radically transform the lives of rural people and build a more politically and economically secure future for all Americans.
He calls his agenda “Bidenomics,” a term that will be hotly debated in the months ahead. But what does it mean? And what’s its significance for rural people?
In simplest terms, Bidenomics arguably is the most significant departure in 40 years from the “free market revolution” that rose to dominance in the 1980s — a dramatic alteration to our country’s economic trajectory.
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The combination of executive and congressional action since Biden took office — from the American Rescue Plan, to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to the CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act and key executive action promoting competition and protecting workers — presents greater potential for revitalizing rural communities than anything since the New Deal. These were huge steps in the right direction, and yet rural people are still struggling. The updated Rural Policy Action Report offers a continued roadmap for how to help rural communities, protect the environment and core freedoms, and renew shared prosperity across geographic divides.
I personally think the biggest driving factor in the rural/city divide that causes rural populations to skew conservative is services.
Rural communities are criminally underserviced. It makes sense why from a logistical view. When people are gathered in small areas, they are easy to provide services to. It’s much easier to provide quality power, plumbing, roads, essential services, and prettyich everything to high density areas. It’s more effective to service cities.
It’s hard to provide reliable services to rural areas. With everyone spread out so much, you need longer wires, longer roads, longer pipes, more people, more everything. So it makes sense to allocate less to these areas. But it’s also horrific.
These are people. It makes perfect sense why rural communities distrust and resent government, and oppose increased spending on social services. They don’t see the benefits. They see money being spent on things they can’t use. Then manipulative politicians swoop in and tell them that these services are bad.
The solution is to suck it up and give everyone equal access to services. Spend more money on rural communities, even if it’s less efficient. Because they are people and deserve roads and hospitals and internet equivalent to cities.
Seems like we could make life easier with policies encouraging increased population density even here. Sure, everyone spreads out in a rural area, but it shouldn’t take much to build up some sort of walkable town center. If you want services, you could drive into town to get them
Public transit is cheaper and easier to build when the land is less developed.
