Struggling Americans Once Sought Greener Pastures - Now They're Stuck

[mahatmakanejeeves]

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The gravity of dysfunction has left folks stuck in low-opportunity areas, pinned by factors beyond their control https://www.wsj.com/articles/struggling-americans-once-sought-greener-pasturesnow-theyre-stuck-1501686801 …

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Struggling Americans Once Sought Greener Pastures—Now They’re Stuck

The country is the least mobile since after World War II, even in economically depressed rural locales

By Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg | Photographs by Mark Felix for The Wall Street Journal

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Aug. 2, 2017 11:13 a.m. ET

WEST BRANCH, Mich.—When she graduated from high school, Taylor Tibbetts was a bright star in this small Northern Michigan town. She won an $18,000-a-year swimming scholarship to Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., and departed for her freshman year with high hopes.
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Like a lot of small towns in sparsely populated American counties, West Branch, population 2,067, is in an economic funk brought on by the decline of manufacturing and farm consolidation. In recent years, a handful of retailers, a flour mill and a carpet shop have all closed their doors.

What is troubling about this rural town and many places like it is that while lots of struggling residents see leaving as the best way to improve their lives, a surprising share remain stuck in place. For a number of reasons—both economic and cultural—they no longer believe they can leave.

When opportunity dwindles, a natural response—the traditional American instinct—is to strike out for greener pastures. Migrations of the young, ambitious and able-bodied prompted the Dust Bowl exodus to California in the 1930s and the reverse migration of blacks from Northern cities to the South starting in the 1980s. ... Yet the overall mobility of the U.S. population is at its lowest level since measurements were first taken at the end of World War II, falling by almost half since its most recent peak in 1985.
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[Warpy]

1. And who the hell is surprised by this? Not me.

Not anyone who has watched the purchasing power of wages drop year after year, decade after decade. Not anyone who has watched offshoring and automation drive wages even lower.

Either there will have to be a UBI or there will be a revolution and I can guarantee you we won't like the outcome.

[HeartachesNhangovers]

2. This is surprising. Large-scale, voluntary mobility

is what has always distinguished the US from other developed countries. The fact that Americans were willing to move where the jobs were, or where opportunity seemed to be better fueled high growth. One of the reasons that European countries (Italy, Spain, France) have high structural unemployment among the young is that young people in those countries, for cultural reasons, are less willing to leave their hometown or region. This reduced mobility - along with an aging population - is making the US trend towards the low-growth economic stagnation that is characteristic of Japan and many European countries.