Almost by definition fewer people want to live in rural areas.

It's not that people don't want to live in rural areas, on the contrary most people would probably like to. It's just that there aren't any jobs in rural areas, and ultimately putting food on the table is what matters.

Well, any given rural area of the same size. America only recently crossed the 50% urban threshold.

Hmm, I suppose it depends on how you defined "urban," and the particular area (etc), but a quick google generates a lot of results that show the U.S. generally passing the 50%-urban threshold around 1910-1920...

E.g. the graph here seems typical: http://blogs.census.gov/2012/04/04/how-do-we-measure-urban-a...

That's a pretty flippant statement, just like the one in the main article. When did having fewer people make it junk/worthless?

Rural/urban is a function of density, not quantity. In a lot of places, the distribution of people that live in urban and rural areas has been about 50/50. If the distribution tips more towards urban, than that might be an argument.

I don't know about the intent of the author here, but there are huge salary gaps between rural and urban locations; even after controlling for cost of living a gap can remain.

I agree. My salary at my IT job pays about 20k less than I would get if I lived 3 hours east of where I'm at. While it's considerably more expensive to live there, I am still losing about 10k / year.

True, but there are also significant cost of living differences between urban and rural areas. More generally, there are valid reasons why some people enjoy living outside of large urban areas, and I don't think dismissing them as undesirable bolsters the author's argument.

Agreed.

The idea of landing a job in some bucolic university town actually has an appeal for some folks. I have relatives that are professors in a relatively small US city and they seem to love it.