I grew up in Kansas and Nebraska, still have family in small towns there. In addition to the bleak outlook, high risk of failure, stress, physical labor, etc, I would submit this is ground zero for the phenomenon of cultural dispair. Americas secular ideals were Davy Crockett and Abe Lincoln: physically strong, white, male, working the land. Now's it a hipster with a MacBook repping for the right causes. That cosmopolitan knowledge economy may well be everyone's future, but it's not what they know, or something they even see a path too.