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Comment by username444 | Hacker News Reader

Lack of upward mobility in rural areas is much more damaging in the long term, mentally, than living in the city.

What evidence do you have for this claim? The article just laid down a lot of evidence that contradicts what you say.

It's not direct evidence, but people continue to move away from rural areas and into cities all over the world, to better themselves.

People will do all sorts of things that aren't good for their mental and/or physical health in order to make a decent living.

I would wager that the overwhelming majority of people moving from rural to urban areas are doing it to better their bank accounts.

It's not to "better their bank accounts", it's to survive, because people need jobs to make money, and money to survive. Modern people can't support themselves on rural land any more, and even 100+ years ago ones who tried had short and unhappy lives (remember sharecropping?). There aren't enough jobs in rural areas to support the people there, so they leave.

That's another point for why universal basic income is needed. It reduces perverse incentives that make people unhealthier.

Maybe, but the simple fact is that city living is far more efficient than rural living. Having a car is a luxury in much of the world, and has a huge toll on the environment, as well as simply being expensive compared to walking. Rural life in America requires a car, full stop. Should people be given enough UBI to afford to live this way? I don't think so. Enough money to live in a small apartment in a city with a roommate (after we figure out how to fix our rents being out of control, compared with other industrialized nations)? Sure. But that won't afford living in rural areas because of the distances and need for a car.

I don't think it's useful to add conditions to UBI - if you want to spend your UBI on a car and I don't agree with that, it's tough luck for me.

You do raise a valid point, which is that a car is a luxury. Having lots of land is a luxury. Having kids is a luxury. Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury.

It's up to the people receiving the UBI to decide which luxuries they want to spend it on. You can't have it all unless you can earn enough to pay for it all.

>I don't think it's useful to add conditions to UBI - if you want to spend your UBI on a car and I don't agree with that, it's tough luck for me.

I never said conditions like that should be added, only that we shouldn't give out enough UBI for people to live a luxurious lifestyle, which is what rural life really is in America, in a way. Think about it: what would happen to poor, rural Americans if we jacked the price of gasoline up to European levels, where it really should be?

>Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury.

It's really not, it's simple geometry. If you pack people into a dense urban environment with tiny little apartments and remove the luxury of a car and lots of land, then a 2-minute walk to a grocery store becomes almost automatic. It's a tradeoff: you simply cannot have a 2-minute walk to a grocery store if everyone has a separate, freestanding McMansion with a giant yard. Anyone with a basic understanding of geometry should understand this. Put everyone into tiny apartments in high-rises and a quick walk to the grocery store is easy to accomplish (make sure the urban area has mixed-use zoning though).

> If you pack people into a dense urban environment with tiny little apartments

You're actually proving their point for them:

>> which is that a car is a luxury. Having lots of land is a luxury. Having kids is a luxury. Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury.

You can totally live somewhere rural and support yourself and a family. There's just less opportunity to make easy money there so it will be harder.

If your optimizing for least effort for a given income level moving to the city is a no-brainer since it's where all the easy money is.

>You can totally live somewhere rural and support yourself and a family.

You can say that about literally anywhere. It's a matter of how doable it is, and how much effort it'll be, versus the reward, compared to just going somewhere else. The simple fact is that there's far fewer jobs in rural areas, and also there's far, far fewer good-paying jobs.

Rural doctors get paid more than urban ones (even though their COL is far lower) because most doctors don’t want to live in rural areas. They choose to live in the cities despite the financial incentives, not because of them.

Not evidence. Just anecdotal. Half my extended family lives in rural areas.

Cities arent perfect. I'm absolutely stressed over the hectic pace of a large city. But I'm not depressed and hopeless like those I know in rural areas.

Maybe we each have to pick our poison.

It’s also worth noting that not all cities are equal when it comes to stress, with some being worse than others (mostly correlated with quality of public infrastructure, in my experience).

I find that cities just poor enough that not enough of rich people live there (rich people tend to convince the city to regulate how others live their lives which results in stress) but not poor enough that there's rampant crime seems to be the sweet spot.

But the article didn't lay down a lot of evidence: there's an observation by two sociologists limited by frames of Chicago's soul asylum in 1930s, and vague estimation of some Urban Design whatever, and finally a paper by a mental health researcher who essentially tells it's an emerging field, and more research needed.

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