Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals.
Maybe everyone left behind wouldn't have to work at a big box store or just die to reduce the societal burden.
Edit: Not blaming, just food for thought.
The less fortunate places of today weren't built for no reason, back when they were new there was money to be made to support them. Then economics shifted and there's less money that can be made in that location, so people/businesses move away. Expecting capable people to intentionally stunt their achievements to try and do the equivalent of growing wheat in the desert is just mythologizing places that once served an important economic purpose but no longer do. This notion that you'll never need to adapt to changing circumstances, that there's some sort of societal guarantee of growing old in the same community you grew up in, is incredibly entitled and fundamentally anti-American.
What we need is federally funded moving expenses for lower income earners, that way no one's stuck in a modern-day ghost town.
> Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals.
If I had stayed in my hometown I wouldn't have had the resources to even think about doing those things. The town is in the poor half of a county in a poor state. The best most can hope for out there are part time jobs at grocery stores and fast food restaurants, both paying almost nothing.
I probably could've gotten hired on as a county public school tech which pays decently for the area, but it still would've taken decades to bootstrap the kind of resources required to start a business, because I'd be starting out with almost nothing.
If my parents have not moved to the US. I would've not had good access to a computer as we were relatively poor on the global scale. The stars aligned and I attended a university in the US, where I met influential people who later offered me a job.
I am now in a place where my income allows me to think about paying back.
I am definitely sure I would not have the common sense, the business sense, understanding of self, and the capitol to do anything of value if I have stayed.
In my experience this is a recipe for burnout, depression, social ostracization, and the like. Some places are not fixable, many are actively hostile to the idea of change.
A lot of these places were abandoned for a reason, not just because people felt like it one day.