Re:Suicides in Rural America Increased More Than 40% in 16 Y...
by throwanem on Sunday March 19, 2017 @12:19PM
(#13907965)
Not that hard to convince people to stay, I think. On balance, I'd rather have; even now, I'd much prefer it be possible for me to take what I've learned and become, the things of which I'm now capable that I never was before, back home. I'm not sure what decision I'd make if it were possible, because I've come to love Baltimore much more strongly than I would've imagined possible when I came here. But that's moot, because the career I have isn't one that I can go back home and still sustain. There are a lot of companies that talk about taking remote work seriously. Almost all of them are lying, and those few which are not have tall stacks of applications from engineers much more distinguished than I ever hope to be.
Had it been possible to build this kind of career without leaving home, I would have done so. Make it possible for others to do so, and they will. The subsidy model has been shown to work by Silicon Valley VCs; I see no reason why it can't be made to work with federal dollars in Mississippi, too, alongside the sort of education subsidy you describe. If you see a need for an inducement to stay, which I'm not sure I do but all right, you could add a stick to the carrot by building the education subsidy on the extant student loan model, and tying payment deferral and eventual forgiveness to locality - if you move out of state, or outside a certain radius of states, or whatever, within some period after graduating, then you can do that, but you do it at the cost of paying back your loans yourself instead of having them forgiven. Too, this neatly straddles the divide between the sort of handout so destructive to pride, and the need to convince people to accept help when they need it. You do that by making it feel earned, and this would at least come closer to achieving that requirement than the sort of pie-in-the-sky UBI schemes so often mooted here.
Of course nothing like that is ever going to happen, because it makes far too much sense. Don't pretend the Democrats are going to do it, either, any more than the Republicans will - to do so would constitute an insult to your own credibility, and the intelligence of anyone who might happen to read such a comment. In a world where Sanders had a genuine shot at the DNC nomination, I might say otherwise, not least because he'd have won it overwhelmingly. (I'd also have voted for him.) But recent events demonstrate that we do not live in such a world, and I voted for Trump in full knowledge that scaring people and breaking things was the most he might possibly accomplish. That I judged this a more desirable outcome than a third Clinton term should perhaps frighten you - it certainly frightens me! But here we are.
Had it been possible to build this kind of career without leaving home, I would have done so. Make it possible for others to do so, and they will. The subsidy model has been shown to work by Silicon Valley VCs; I see no reason why it can't be made to work with federal dollars in Mississippi, too, alongside the sort of education subsidy you describe. If you see a need for an inducement to stay, which I'm not sure I do but all right, you could add a stick to the carrot by building the education subsidy on the extant student loan model, and tying payment deferral and eventual forgiveness to locality - if you move out of state, or outside a certain radius of states, or whatever, within some period after graduating, then you can do that, but you do it at the cost of paying back your loans yourself instead of having them forgiven. Too, this neatly straddles the divide between the sort of handout so destructive to pride, and the need to convince people to accept help when they need it. You do that by making it feel earned, and this would at least come closer to achieving that requirement than the sort of pie-in-the-sky UBI schemes so often mooted here.
Of course nothing like that is ever going to happen, because it makes far too much sense. Don't pretend the Democrats are going to do it, either, any more than the Republicans will - to do so would constitute an insult to your own credibility, and the intelligence of anyone who might happen to read such a comment. In a world where Sanders had a genuine shot at the DNC nomination, I might say otherwise, not least because he'd have won it overwhelmingly. (I'd also have voted for him.) But recent events demonstrate that we do not live in such a world, and I voted for Trump in full knowledge that scaring people and breaking things was the most he might possibly accomplish. That I judged this a more desirable outcome than a third Clinton term should perhaps frighten you - it certainly frightens me! But here we are.