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Comment by URSpider94 | Hacker News Reader

I would love to see the data, but from the data I have seen, the data conflict with the popular (populist) narrative. A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.

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Part of this has to do with how we've been able to drive down agricultural costs by means of automation over the last century which has driven a move away from family farms to larger corporate farms. In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent.[1]

Sure the coasts are creating more economic output by far, but people need to eat food. Agriculture is always going to be important, but lot less people are involved in it than ever before. This is part of what's led to the urban/rural divide where the rural folks feel left out - there just aren't as many of them as populations have migrated to cities. This is why people in rural areas feel increasingly left out. It's mostly due to economic forces that are out of their control.

[1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...

I definitely don't think we should ignore or minimize the contributions of rural Americans. I do think we need to do a better job of making the costs associated with rural life more explicit. This is a big deal in California, where people have pushed further and further into the wilderness, putting themselves at huge risk for wildfires while also increasing the number of miles of power lines that need to be built and maintained; these very power lines are one of the main causes of wildfires.

New power lines are almost never the cause of wildfires. Old, poorly-maintained lines are. For example, the Camp fire that killed 86 people was caused by a hundred year old line that hadn't been serviced in decades. For miles of line around the origin site of the fire the C-hooks looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/r42KsHR.jpg

Total installed powerline length vs population is a problem.

Whether they're new / old or well / poorly serviced is just a difference of a few decades.

If there isn't money to service old lines now, then there won't be money to service formerly-new lines in 30 years.

It's not a question of insufficient funds. They spent five billion dollars on shareholder dividends while corporate documents show they were completely aware the equipment was breaking down and posed a wildfire risk, and they broke multiple state regulations to do so.

Some background to add to the above: https://twitter.com/tubetimeus/status/1306366930899460097 and https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/30/CFReport/PGE-THE-CAMP...

The Camp fire report was riveting after-work reading. The financial engineering to avoid opex and instead magnify capex as a way to bilk the ratepayer is ingenious and evil. Further, their operating procedures and culture seem carefully engineered as a liability dodge. Read the report, it's amazing.

You have to be careful with the 80/20 US Census split numbers between urban/rural. Between myself and a couple neighbors, we're on 100 acres next to even more conservation land. One neighbor has an apple orchard. Another a Christmas tree farm. The town I'm in is considered urban because we're near a major city and adjacent to another small city.

But you are urban. You are near a major city, and adjacent another small one like you said. Urban versus rural is not a measure of closeness to nature, it's a measure of closeness to other humans.

It depends on your definitions. A lot of people would object to defining urban as encompassing having to drive anywhere except to connect to immediate neighbors. I can basically go to my two immediate neighbors. Otherwise I have to get in a car. Is that urban?

Sounds like a suburb. The real inefficient structures.

In what suburb do you have only two neighbors within walking distance?

Does America have a concept of walking distance?

It's a country road. There are no sidewalks. So no. It's not something you walk along. (And hardly unique to the US.) The ESRI categorization is ex-urban. The basic point is that the census bureau categorizes areas as urban unless they're really rural, as in small and pretty far from an urban center.

Rural is defined in USA here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...

So that basically says that essentially no one in the state of MA is rural and that almost no one in the state of CA is rural. Which probably doesn't correspond to how average people think about rural vs. urban. So the fact that I can look off my back deck and see nothing but trees is a reasonable urban environment.

> and that almost no one in the state of CA is rural

Kinda crazy to see the entire I-5 length between San Francisco and Los Angeles classified as "metro". Perhaps the metric they're using doesn't work so well when counties (which is what they classify) are so large, and they primarily care that some city of over 50k people exists in it "somewhere". Some of those counties appear to be as large as or larger than some of the smaller states in the Northeast.

I'm sure there are reasons for the current classification. But there are certainly differences between I live on a hundred acres but I have decent shopping and culture relatively accessible and the nearest Walmart is 100 miles away.

As you suggest, a lot of what is classified as urban is not urban especially by the standards of someone who barely considers the South Bay as urban.

Huge parts of the California desert are also classified as urban as the counties are so large, some of those places are extremely remote. Even the western central valley, other than i5 cutting through it is remote and sparsely inhabited.

And, by the way, if you're going to go with binary definitions, it's perfectly reasonable to say that within 30 minutes of a Walmart and within a couple of hours of a significant city is a reasonable benchmark versus truly back of beyond rural. Just just don't expect that to correspond to an urban environment as many people understand that to mean.

Certainly I can normally go into town for an evening of theater but most people would consider my house to be in an urban setting.

I don't think your definition of rural matches with people who live in rural areas. Maybe that's why conversations around Urban vs Rural never make sense.

Statistically, most "towns" are considered urban, regardless of where they are located.

This has also happened to manufacturing and coal mining to a certain extent. But, unlike agriculture, the demand for certain resources like coal is significantly less than it used to be, but people in the affected areas haven't been able to find work in other fields.

Because they're not willing to move.

It takes money to move, and it's unlikely they have the financial resources to handle living in an area with a significantly higher cost of living, unless the job pays very well. Given the fact that public school graduation rates are relatively low where they live, it's unlikely they would be able to secure one of those high paying jobs if they don't have at least a high school diploma or GED.

But only a slim slice of rural living is on farms, or are you talking about immigrant Latinos who are left out of the political picture?

The supermajority of people working American farms and meat shops are Latino immigrants.

Farms have gotten bigger, but family farms still dominate.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-structure-...

I guess you can argue that a large closely held company isn't a family farm, but it isn't what "corporate" is meant to conjure up either.

The majority of production comes from a small minority of farms with > $1MM ARR. Most are still family owned, but I would argue they are “what corporate is meant to conjure up” in the sense of the scale and methods driving the farming operation (just not the legal structure and governance.)

That’s why the overall number of farms and farmers has gone down - the little guy can’t make it work economically.

But they are the little guys, they just swallowed a few neighbors.

People complaining about corporate farming are talking about outside money coming in and taking the land.

I think the reason they think it's subsidizing the rich enclaves is because they believe the rich enclaves aren't really working - they're just generating revenue from information advantage. We're just building systems of control and making money from it. Compare that to them cleaning out a grain cart or chopping up a 300 pound pig. What is work? And why did I make nearly $300 today vs them who will make $300 for that pig that they had to raise for 6 months?

> Compare that to them cleaning out a grain cart or chopping up a 300 pound pig.

Here is employment data on meat industry workers:

https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-demographic...

Here is ag farming:

http://www.ncfh.org/facts-about-agricultural-workers.html

The people you are holding up as exemplars are not the people who hold the views you're discussing.

> And why did I make nearly $300 today vs them who will make $300 for that pig that they had to raise for 6 months?

Effort has little to do with value. Utility also has little to do with value. See the diamond/water paradox for that second part.

There are certainly abuses in our society, rent seeking and outright fraud exist. But this childish rejection of capitalism that’s become trendy lately is tiresome. Capitalism is a technology that lifted billions out of poverty. Brilliant, earnest people (as well as some very evil people) tried alternatives in the last century and they failed horribly. No one has proposed plausible alternatives.

By all means we ought to couple capitalism in the private sector with a robust public sector, but to be against capitalism at this point is to be against human flourishing.

> become trendy lately

It’s not a new phenomenon, or unique to America or the west.

You can dozens of passages of the bible critical of the merchants and money makers, and many of them are arguments still echoed today.

> this childish rejection

Insults don't get anyone far.

Are you sure? Isn’t that the just world fallacy?

Rent extraction in the information landscape?

You seem correct on that at least.

The need for many government programs (money spent on enforcing hollywood copyright) and the tax rules that create corporate wealth but cost other areas must be considered. The midwest could do away with many expensive budget items but are forced to pay a share.

The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import duties were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.

Things are the way they are because the powerful like it.

> The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import duties were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.

You mean the wealth of the nation would decrease?

Any quality would decrease, and some people value that, so in that argument the wealth of the nation would increase.

Most all the income and productivity gains from globalization and go to the wealthy, so if they lost billions of dollars, it is true that the nation would be less “”wealthy””…

> Most all the income and productivity gains from globalization and go to the wealthy

Income gains, perhaps. Productivity gains no. People buy foreign goods because they tend to be significantly cheaper. Capital in the US tends to be reinvested, so we would stagnate in innovation.

> Most all the income and productivity gains from globalization and go to the wealthy, so if they lost billions of dollars, it is true that the nation would be less “”wealthy””…

That's a popular trope, but not really supported by any evidence. Take, for example, sanctuary cities...which can be seen as a form of illicit globalization. The popular trope suggests that undereducated and low income native American citizens would lose by attracting large quantities of low cost labor. But the exact opposite is true: native blue collar employment and wealth increases, welfare dependence and poverty decreases.

Perhaps the purveyors of the popular narrative should read up on David Ricardo. It's been 200 years since he died, and people still haven't caught on that more trade is a universal good...something economists have nearly universally accepted for literal centuries now.

> The need for many government programs (money spent on enforcing hollywood copyright)

Okay, I'll bite: what government programs would you categorize as "money spent on enforcing Hollywood copyright"?

Often forgotten about "subsidization" of one group to another - which area is more likely to have higher participation in the military and armed forces, and deaths in foreign conflict zones?

Judging by the racial makeup of the military, probably inner city neighborhoods have a disproportionate amount of military participation.

The military doesn’t track deaths in combat zones by race. They do track participation: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military

Per those numbers whites/blacks/Hispanics are more represented in the military than similar civilian occupations.

There is a higher percentage of Hispanic and black women in the military that might lower combat death numbers but there are a lot less high level black & Hispanic high level officers to make up for that.

It’s a long way of saying there isn’t good data on this but the US military is an extremely diverse group especially at the enlisted level.

The diversity of the military respective to the civilian population is not uniform (no pun intended). There are significant racial differences between services, and branches within services (e.g. infantry versus a combat support branch like quartermaster). It's very difficult to find accurate public data on this subject, but "the military is extremely diverse" is not as clear cut a statement as many seem to think it is.

Sure. The document I listed shows a pretty outsized portion of the marines & Air Force are white.

But the fact remains the military is more diverse than the civilian work force. Which given no other data implies we can rule out arguments that military service is a particularly interesting form of sacrifice for the USA in racial dimensions.

I think it's worth considering whether or not rural vs urban is the best way to partition the argument. Cities tend to be very office/payroll dense, and rural areas more home dense. Some of the people who work in the city, and generate some of that revenue, may live in a rural area and consume services there.

As far as cost scaling, I kind of disagree. That calculation doesn't work well in the US, where a large portion of the people who work in the city commute. I come from a rural area and live in the bay area now, and I can say without a doubt I spend much more time on the road here. Same with emergency services, they were waaaayyyy better in my (very small and poor) hometown in terms of response times (or responding at all), and I can't see how that would cost more than running the same services here.

>Same with emergency services, they were waaaayyyy better in my (very small and poor) hometown in terms of response times (or responding at all), and I can't see how that would cost more than running the same services here.

It matters on a per capita basis. What's the ratio of emergency service workers and their salaries to residents in your small and poort hometown compared to the bay area?

Also infrastructure (roads, running water, electricity) are much more expensive on a per capita basis than less dense areas

I'll agree with the latter point, but I think having less per-capita emergency services is a bug as opposed to a feature. I'd be willing to bet it's a matter of the land/buildings/employees necessary to run such services are far more expensive in areas where land/labor/everything is more expensive.

There are less absolute services available in rural areas and less services per capita and that lower level of services still costs more per capita to maintain, because for that one ambulance to serve ten people it had to travel 200 miles and took ten hours instead of having ten ambulances serve four people each in two hours.

If you look at only the most rural areas sure, but that isn't where most people outside of cities live.

I'm confused at how you go directly from "subsidizing" to money flow. By taking a low-paying job that makes middle-class life possible for you, aren't they foregoing income (and thus isn't this costing them)? Heck, push it to the limit—if a farmer's wages were $0, who's benefiting at the expense of whom here? Who's subsidizing who? If you never see the cash, vs. having it deposited and then withdrawn from your account, does that suddenly change the direction of the subsidy? Does the intrinsic/moral direction of a subsidy necessarily need to match the technical/legal definition?

I'm no expert in this, but as a layman, the question of who's subsidizing who is really only meaningful if you look at it from a human/moral standpoint rather than a purely legal/technical one. Otherwise you're using it to solve math problems, not human problems. And the latter seems like a really tough nut to crack to me. I don't know how to do it personally, so I don't know who's right. But I don't get how people talk about it as if it's some patently obvious thing you can figure out by looking at tax dollars or cash flow in the economy. It seems to me you'd need to assign some intrinsic moral value to all jobs so you can compare them against what they "should" cost or what they're "worth", and that is pretty darn difficult by itself, let alone the subsequent political controversy that would surely follow if such a thing was done.

Here's the point, and I'll lay my cards on the table as being more progressive in the political spectrum. Progressives, by and large, don't actually care that our tax money goes to help a lot of other people. We actually like it, in fact. I do think that I should help subsidize the costs of providing things like postal service and broadband internet to people who live in the middle of nowhere. The paradox is that conservatives and libertarians are the ones who get all worked up about their tax money being spent to help others when, in reality, they are more likely to be net beneficiaries.

Oh, I see. Thanks for clarifying, I see what you mean.

I drove through a few of the counties (eg. baker) mentioned in the article to visit a dog breeder, and the breeder had (nearly) her own highway exit. Complete with 2 overpasses. Must cost millions to build and maintain.

Her house was the only one visible for as far as you could see from that exit. All i could think about was how much better her life was for that exit and how all her total tax income forever could never ever come close to covering the costs society bore to build that exit.

I have always lived in very liberal, expensive, coastal cities and have always heard talking points about waste on welfare to cover poor inner-city americans (typically by rural/suburban conservatives), and all i could think was how backwards this was, and how many families could be fed by the cost of this one exit ramp.

Does this mean that society shouldn't build that ramp? I don't know because rural farmland obviously needs to access the rest of society (to ship food), and everyone sorta deserves to access the road system

How many families are you going to feed with that extra million you saved now that the numerous farms you couldn’t see from the highway overpass can no longer ship food?

“I have always lived in very liberal, expensive, coastal cities” — please, please venture out of your safe bubble more, for the sake of all of us. Go tour a real farm, not the local micro-organic commune one nearby. See how they work.

Obviously we still need to be able to ship food, i said that.

I don't live in those cities by choice (well, i chose jobs there... lots of tech in BOS/SF/etc).

There's a false dichotomy, because everyone in the US is subsidising a super-caste of 0.1%ers.

They're the ones who pay PR companies, think tanks, and other influencers to create the illusion of consensus narratives by generating these talking points and making sure they're repeated by various apparently independent sources.

It makes it almost impossible to argue the merits of public subsidy funding on its own terms because the truth about costs and benefits is aggressively obscured.

> and the breeder had (nearly) her own highway exit

This is the key assumption on which your statements are based on. How do you know the state built it for her, rather than, she built her house next to the highway exit? I find it hard to believe that the state would build a highway exit specifically for a few normal individuals.

Obviously it is the other way around! She is just likely one of the only people who uses it since there is few others around

I wish i could edit still.

My point was not to somehow cast this woman in a bad light, or claim that this exit shouldn't exist.

My point was...

(in my bubble) I hear the argument from conservatives that social welfare (for inner-city people getting checks) is bad because it takes away from everyone else, and wastes money.

I just wanted to point out that there is a lot more money subsidizing the livelihood a lot more people than just the poor city people getting some sort of social welfare check.

This appears to be a variation of the "who would build the roads" argument.

This particular movement, to its credit, seems to acknowledge this flow of money. It's about morality and control for them.

I think it’s about something that they aren’t talking about openly.

Oh, they talk a lot about the financial benefits — lower income taxes, looser land regulations — it’s just that the personal costs of a lower minimum wage, increased sales taxes, and less educational funding from the state aren’t going to fall on the people who are driving this.

These days its more a massive accumulation of debt and unfunded liabilities in suburbs and rural areas, but basically yeah

> A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.

You've made up this narrative of what 'the other side' thinks.

I'll recast it for you.

* start narrative *

A lot of people in america seem to believe that their wages have stagnated while witnessing the wages of those living on the coast, who often disagree politically with them, rise stratospherically. To them it seems like the coastal elites do nothing, while they are quite literally breaking their backs to earn a paltry wage, that they then owe to the very coastal elites they feel are doing nothing.

It seems like they take the money, pay it in taxes, subsidize us and tell us we should grovel to them for it, while simultaneously opposing policies we feel would reduce the dependence. For example, they tell us we can't water our farms because of 'global warming', and instead should rely on their benevolence. But we don't want that benevolence.

* end narrative *

When you put it that way, you realize the 'hardworking real Americans' actually have a lot in common with far-left labor activists. And you'd be right. It would behoove everyone to have more compassion and charity towards their countrymen.

Anyway, there is a drastic shift in the Republican party that has gone completely unnoticed. Trump, everything from his personality to his tactics are more reminiscent of the pre-neo-liberal democrat party establishment than anything else. There is a real warming up of the republican base to social programs, government spending, and unions, so long as those institutions prioritize what they believe to be important issues. This is a far cry from the anti-spending, anti-union GOP of old.

How does this viewpoint square up with the partisan divide over $15 minimum wage?

This one's not really about partisanship but rather about cost of living and purchasing power. $15/hr would buy you a lot more in a red state, where things are cheaper, than a blue state where things are more expensive. Honestly, a federally-mandated minimum wage does a disservice to the poorer areas of the country. Why would a company (and thus a tax payer) move to a place that's farther out, has fewer services, etc if they have to pay the same for labor. It's no wonder that these places end up being resource-extraction driven -- the labor pool, which naturally would be cheaper, has been given a price floor.

$15/hr min wage makes sense in Cali and other high cost states. It should be up to the states, and really ought to be set at the local level.

I don't see much difference between the "new Trumpian GOP" and "old GOP" in terms of concrete policy. Both are staunchly anti-immigration, both reject social programs aimed at helping those in poverty (including healthcare, such as the Affordable Care Act), both want to increase privatization of government services (such as education and the post office), both oppose unions (arguably one of the best ways to ensure a consistent increase in wages). And most importantly, both the new and old GOP define themselves mostly by what they aren't: all those smart-talkin', book-larnin' liberals on the coast.

Hot top: it isn't the coastal liberals who are causing stagnating wages. It's the anti-union, labor-exploiting wealthy who are the stars of the GOP.

> Both are staunchly anti-immigration

Anti-immigration is a new GOP sentiment. Traditional small-government libertarianism/conservatism is pro-immigration. Look at Bush and Reagan. Anti-immigration is more in line with the labor movements, like the one run by Cesar Chavez.

> both reject social programs aimed at helping those in poverty (including healthcare, such as the Affordable Care Act

Not true at all. Many GOP members I know would be pro-gov't healthcare if we had our borders under control. The main difference I see between the dems and GOP in this regard is nationalism.

> both oppose unions

Not really. Trump's policies are incredibly popular among union members even if not popular with union leadership. Those two groups have different interests.

> It's the anti-union, labor-exploiting wealthy who are the stars of the GOP.

Who no one in the GOP likes anymore. Honestly, go read patriots.win or something, they'll tell you exactly what they think of the wealthy GOP.

The whole "who's subsidizing who" is a bullshit talking point for both sides.

The net inflows/outflows from any given state aren't that big on a per capita basis. They're small enough that anyone who either wants to not have to be told what to do by big city liberals or doesn't want to be held back by rural conservatives that would consider it a small price to pay for freedom.

Those people in the middle of the country believe that if they all quit their jobs and demanded a government-given wage, that the country would starve to death.

If all of the people at facebook, google, and twitter quit their jobs, however, all that would really happen would be that the country would get a bit more peaceful.

You're talking about how much is taken in taxes. These people are talking about how much is given in life.

Sounds like someone's been watching a bit too much Fox Propaganda.

Farms are already subsidized by the government. Imports are already subject to tariffs precisely to protect farmers. Who do you think pays for those subsidies, and who pays for the tariffs? Yeah, the "coastal elites" that you've been trained to hate.

In farmers stopped benefiting from the largess of the coast, _they_ would starve to death, and everyone else would have cheaper food.

Just FYI if they starve to death there's no one to plant or harvest the food.

Also, if your argument is that the subsidies are unnecessary that would indicate that farming is profitable and they would in fact not starve to death. The point you're trying to make kinda collapsed on itself bud.

By “they” are you talking about the enormous masses of uneducated immigrant workers, frequently derided as illegals, who work in the dirt on the farms and meat production lines of the US? Those that constitute the supermajority of agricultural labor, and who see almost none of the fruits of their labor?

Or are we talking about those who Own things?

Are you arguing that indentured servitude is a good thing? It sounds like you're siding with the employers here.

> Imports are already subject to tariffs precisely to protect farmers.

I think you got these backwards. Subsidies are provided because other countries imposes tariffs on US farm products.

Because thats the divide? Silicon Valley vs family farms. Give me a break...

To take this view you've shared charitably, what would "Those people in the middle of the country" who keep up from starving want in order to be satisfied with ... life? America? whatever bothers them about the current arrangement?

To be clear: these aren't my views. I live on the Coast, and probably work at the same company some of you guys work at. I just also happen to have close friends who live outside of the bubble we all inhabit.

They think that they want to be left alone. They don't want what they perceive as coastal values forced upon their kids in school.

What values would those be?

Classics liberal here, recently moved out of west coast city to west coast rural area in large part due to critical race theory and fairly radical trans activism. Couldn’t stomache the current school curriculum around both topics.

Is this suggesting we could actually live without Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Many of us did that for many years of our lives. At the time, I never anticipated with the internet and eventually the web is that people who had never experienced life without it could so easily be caused to lose sight of what is possible, in favor of the mess we have today. The biggest impediment I see to positive change is that younger generations are being indoctrinated into a world where "tech" companies, intermediaries supported by advertising, are perceived as an essential part of using the internet. This is of course patently false. But these companies are ultimately surveilling and controlling the dialogue. After all, internet subscribers use these "tech" company intermediaries to communicate.

Before advertising took over the internet, the inter-network's user base was relatively small. Folks who used the internet recreationally during that time were likely to be technically minded people who enjoyed computers, the type of people many of which who are working with advertising supported "tech" companies today. Few of them are going to portray an advertising-free internet as a viable option. Their livelihoods today depend on advertising. Supporting Big Tech is their "work".

Anyway, it is good to see at least one commenter can contemplate a better course for the future.

It is possible to communicate and share over the internet without the use of Big Tech. However, as long as advertising-supprted "tech" companies sit between users, operating as intermediaries, that truth will keep getting buried deeper with every new generation.

Are you talking about immigrant Latinos, who constitute the supermajority of the farm and meat production labor you're talking about? Yes, I can totally see how they feel left out of the American political process; sometimes they are even called "illegals"!

And the families who own farms capture the lion's share of the fruits of labor!

You should make friends with some of those immigrant Latinos and ask them which is more important: a stable, reliable food supply, or faster file retrieval for twitter videos.

Easy choice. I'd pick food, lumber, minerals, manufacturing and energy every time over iFart apps, collateralized debt instruments, oxycontin and Disney movies.

And the idea that us smart people should just outsource all that physical labor stuff to 3rd-world mouth breathers may work for the moment, but just wait until there is a crisis or war.

If me and my coworkers stopped working, significant parts of the countries education system and essential services would stop working. I make 16 dollars an hour.

> A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves.

By far the most heavily subsidized, most expensive, poorest and least educated people in the United States are the poor living in urban zones. It's not even remotely a close comparison in terms of numbers.

You can see it in the crime statistics, you can see it in the drop-out rates, you can see it in the homelessness rates. And so on.

You can also see it in the cost of incarcerating violent criminals (not drug offenders, which are a shrinking, smaller share of the incarcerated population), which urban zones produce radically more of to go with the extreme poverty found in US cities. The urban zones - which are hyper dangerous in the US - produce the overwhelming share of all murder in the country. Who pays for the very expensive policing necessary to keep terrorist groups from burning Portland to the ground? That isn't going on in rural Oregon. Who pays for the very expensive policing to try to control the extreme murder rates in Baltimore or Chicago? That isn't going on in rural Maryland or Illinois; the per capita murder rates in Baltimore are 50x to 100x higher than in rural Maryland. These things are all subsidized by the urban high income brackets, and it's a huge cost.

And it's also true that the urban zones have far higher incomes, so they pay higher taxes and push more money into the welfare system accordingly. They subsidize both their local urban poor and the rural poor outside the cities.

The bottom 10% in Los Angeles represent a de facto third world standard of living and it's a very large population. Those shocking, unbelievable homeless camps in Los Angeles look like something out of a sci-fi dystopian movie. And that's just a very small fraction, a small visual representation, of the extreme poverty in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago.

Rural areas are pretty similar.

Just fewer people. Trailer parks instead of projects. Same crime, same misery.

The stuff that shocks the soul is a small fraction of the struggle and misery.

[citation required]

Even the worst parts of LA are miles ahead of the poor rural suburbs. There is just more visibility in LA due to the concentration of people.

In reality, the facts don't back up anything you said. :/

> violent criminals [...] which urban zones produce radically more of

That's just not true. A quick google pulls up this visualization from 2017: https://www.santarosa-lawyer.com/united-states-crime-map-201...

And you'll note that... there's basically no correlation with urbanity at all. Highly urban states like CT are very peaceful, but so is Idaho (but not Montana, which is pretty bad). Two of the worst states are NM and Alaska, which have near zero urban population!

There may be some rules to glean from the data, but the one you picked is not it.

Your analysis lumps all violence equally, and suffers greatly from the variance inherent in reporting of “light” violent the crime.

Homicides are much better to look at. There is very little difference between Alaska and New Orleans in their reporting of homicides. And when you judge rural vs urban by homicide rate, urban is much larger. Of the top 10 counties with the highest homicide rate, 4 are major metropolitan areas. This is particularly shocking because small sample sizes of small counties should make it so every single member of the top 10 is rural, but it’s not.

https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-...

> Of the top 10 counties with the highest homicide rate, 4 are major metropolitan areas.

Easiest way to tell someone is lying with statistics is when they try to make a point by counting outliers at the edge of the distribution.

I don't see how what you're saying follows at all. It seems just as likely that broad exurban counties are more economically inclusive while urban counties tend to cluster very-poor high crime areas more densely while leaving the safer adjoining suburbs (very much part of the "urban" population under discussion here) in different buckets.

Are "cities" killing more people per capita or not? Seems like that's a simple matter of adding up some numbers, so your attempt to spin here seems a little suspect. Again, my read is that there is almost no correlation at all.

I hear it’s healthy to ignore data that contradicts your prejudices because you’re “suspicious.” /s

If you want to investigate it more, then that actually would be healthy. But instead you look at some colors on a map delineated by state lines, and think that’s convincing evidence. It’s clear you’re only interested in validating your pre-existing beliefs when you jump with such energy into flimsy data that corroborates your prejudices while dismissing other analyses out of “suspicion” when they contradict you.

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