I’m guessing you don’t realize how offensive that statement is.

I’d like to know what percentage of GDP is done “in the sticks”. It’s one of the more viable ways to address NIMBYISM and locality problems.

20 percent of the population, 10 percent of GDP. So the entirety of rural USA has a GDP 3 points higher than the NYC metro area.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/redefining-rural-am...

A couple things:

That census definition of urban/rural is different from the colloquial definition. The census link allows an "urban" classification as low as 2,500 people.

Colloquially-defined rural areas have been decimated by globalization in the last 40 years. The "rural" area I grew up in had thousands of manufacturing jobs; now it may have 200. The drop in GDP goes far beyond urban sprawl enabled by ICE vehicles.

2000 is far far too low to declare things urban. That line should be drawn at least above 10k-20k, I think.

Also critical infrastructure is out “in the sticks” like dams, power infrastructure (lines/plants/storage), and the support of the container trucks. Then there’s agriculture. It all needs to be electrified and reachable by electrics.

I generally hate that rural areas are so over-represented in US politics but jesus, some of the comments in this thread are making me question that. There is some serious big city myopia going on here. Not everyone can and wants to live their entire lives in a dense city and that's perfectly fine.