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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You seem correct on that at least.

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.

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.

Insults don't get anyone far.

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.

You mean the wealth of the nation would decrease?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

$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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Or are we talking about those who Own things?

I suspect running the numbers would indicate a clear international need for the US breadbasket, and not a decrease in overall cost due to a large drop in supply.

Sugar from the desert levels of subsidies.

Farmers and Food are a voting group and commodity that will always be catered to and protected, no matter what the economic cost.

So meat and maybe gas would become slightly more expensive but the world would most certainly not starve.

The rest of your argument is laden with all sorts of cognitive dissonance. Subsidies are given for things like food because if a society doesn't of have food it's a really bad thing so the government props up the industry in bad times (in this case during the Great Depression) and we don't starve. It's not an altruistic handout, it's way of keeping you from starving to death genius.

The fact that you think it's a generous handout from the "elites" and government indicates that you think it's unnecessary which means the farmers are profitable on their own and your entire asinine "hypothetical" comment about them starving to death without it gets thrown out the window. The subsidies cannot be both necessary and considered a generous handout from the coastal elites. Pick one.

We import about 15% of our food supply right now. Good luck making up the other 85% with cheaper imports. Relying on external food supplies is a massive security risk and disadvantage as well.

Food got so stupidly cheap it makes no sense to grow it in the US anymore. So farmers demanded that people in cities pay for their lifestyles out of our taxes. And then they go around being entitled about it.

I've had enough of farm welfare queens. Get farmers off of welfare and let us import food from places that can grow it competitively. If we can't make up the other 85% from somewhere else, that's great, then US farmers will show that they can grow food at a reasonable place without welfare.

These hateful people that survive on the welfare handouts from cityfolk and then turn around and vote for Republican idiots like Trump have gone too far. Time to cut them off.

It would be better if the subsidies were limited to smallholders on ~100 acres or less, which would resolve the rural depression issue.

if the US stopped growing food, hundreds of millions of people would die just from the famine. many governments would be toppled, probably even a few first world countries.

The unfairness of farm subsidies is that there’s also essentially no _controls_ on the output. The government can’t turn around and mandate particular growing practices, in part because farming companies and larger farmers have gotten used to the subsidies and how they work.

In Canada, at least, subsidies are also tied to production controls and standards.

Don’t get me wrong: I am in _favour_ of most farm subsidies; there is a lot of benefit to it. But the taxpayer should get a bit more control on what’s being spent on. IMO, small farm subsidies should probably increase so that more people have opportunities to work the land if they wish to do so and pay their seasonal workers a living wage so that they don’t have to use undocumented workers. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to see a couple of F35 fighters scrapped in favour of fair farm wage payments.

#2) The US isn't just a net exporter of food, its one of the dominant food producers (in exports) in the world. A country like Canada only became a net exporter of food in ~2019. These US exports are primary stables like corn, beef, pork, etc.

#3) f-35 funding is tangential to the conversation. bringing it up only makes you sound un-informed and polarizes your argument for the issue at hand.

2. They are _American_ staples. They are not necessarily staples in receiving countries, and as noted above, may actually be distorting local markets and foodways. I would also argue that subsidies for American farmers should _not_ be applied to export crops, as noted above.

3. Not tangential at all. America could divert a small fraction of its military budget into meaningful wage subsidies for farm workers that could make farm labour more attractive to more people. America spends more money on its military than the next ten biggest military spenders in the world.

Yes, I exaggerated that a single F-35 could provide this sort of subsidy. My point, however, stands.

Food production is a modern solved problem. The politics of it is not.

No country is giving up food security and voter messaging to the invisible hand of a global market. No one likes corn as much as Americans do, yet its one of your greater exports, simply because of American economic and diplomatic ascendancy.

>I never said subsidies aren't necessary: I don't know how you can infer that point from what I wrote.

Didn't you just tell us that you weren't arguing against subsidies and then you reply with that? Make your mind up you're all over the place. Sounds like I inferred correctly.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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-...

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.

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.

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