Housing costs are so high that divorced couples are still living together

I find it hard to believe that there were many banks which refused to open accounts for single women or especially widows?

Sometimes I wonder if Americans travel out of the US at all.

In NYC parks are 14% of the city's land area, so it can't account for the whole discrepancy, but it's something!

They get a loan from parents

They rent out their basement

They partner up.

They buy the lower priced 600,000 home and make repairs themselves.

Obviously it's not the cities themselves draining the wealth, but rather a spiral of excess capital accumulation. It just so happens that many of the people perpetuating this cycle live in cities. Generally, increasing one's capital is done by taking money that was being funneled one place, and funneling it to yourself instead. For example, CVS can open a pharmacy and undercut local competition. Once the local pharmacies close, cash flows that were once destined for local pharmacies go to CVS instead. Local pharmacies would have kept the profits locally, but CVS siphons them from the community into the pockets of shareholders, most of whom happen to live in cities. These city-dwelling shareholders can they pay others to perpetuate this cycle.

> Is it possible there's a simpler explanation? That the economy of the twenty-first century is dominated by information and technology.

Is it, though? Consumer spending is about 70% of GDP. What is your personal spending on tech vs. non-tech items? Personally, I spend vastly more money on non-tech items compared to tech items. The margins are obviously much lower, so they don't have splashy stock tickers.

The US overbuilt in rural areas during the late 1800s and early 1900s as the railroads pushed west, others had a major industry that has dried up, and a lot of these areas just aren’t sustainable anymore. But America doesn’t have a system for handling de-ruralization gracefully, you still have to deliver power and phone regardless of whether someone wants to live in the middle of Wyoming. We rarely ever rip up a road, etc. Infrastructure is a one-way ratchet.

On top of that most of americas infrastructure is aging in general and we have a general crisis of insufficient revenue to maintain let alone fully replace it. Everything is built on the assumption that it will catch traction and grow, and when it shrinks then there’s no money to maintain or replace it. This is a general crisis across our whole infrastructure - even apart from de-ruralization we’d have overbuilt infrastructure in most places relative to sustainable revenue.

- Leaving for the big city/college

- Staying in your small town, but slowly becoming helpless as they fall into bad crowds, bad habits, or both

- Staying in your small town, but successfully continuing the way of life

It is unsustainable in its current form, unless you inoculate your children against modern ideas and technology (like the Amish) or make it more desirable for people to stay. I will point to European villages as a counter example. And then I will point to: lack of cultural homogeneity, the tenuous nature of living in the United States without a stable and growing source of income, and a lack of spiritually-enriching outlets as reasons why people move out of small U.S. towns towards cities.

The first leads to unstable communities. The second leads to subconscious unease and anxiety. The last leads to a restlessness which to leads to various mental ailments like consumerism, that can only be fulfilled by staying on the hedonic treadmill.

I posit that it is not cities that have all the opportunities, but that it is small communities that lack them.

Having come from such a town, I would not describe it as safe. Things are cheap and most of the people who are there are stuck there because they have no economic mobility. Yes, there are plenty who choose to and enjoy it but that isn't the bulk of the population.