More on the Urban Rural Divide

Not long ago, Will Wilkinson described the cultural divide which is becoming more evident over time:

If the United States has shifted slightly toward survival values and away from self-expressive values in the aggregate, it seems likely that there has been a large shift toward survival values in large swathes of the country that swamped the forward march of college towns, and big cities, toward self-expressive values. Likewise, a small aggregate shift toward secular-rational values can conceal a much larger shift in the places liberals live, offset by a somewhat smaller shift toward traditional values elsewhere. 

That suggests that the United States may be dividing into two increasingly polarized cultures: an increasingly secular-rational and self-expression-oriented "post-materialist" culture concentrated in big cities and the academic archipelago, and a largely rural and exurban culture that has been tilting in the opposite direction, toward zero-sum survival values, while trying to hold the line on traditional values.

And he continues:

...for a certain group of Americans, liberalizing post-materialist cultural change has been ongoing. For another, it has stalled or reversed. 

What if rural places haven't been able to take part, in knowledge use constructs which could even make it feasible for them to embrace a post-materialist world? The possibility is not yet on offer! Nevertheless, Trump - despite his city dweller status - played a role in a temporary reprieve (albeit in somewhat roundabout fashion) for forgotten places where public schools can feel like a sad window view to the "real" world.

In an article for Brookings, "In 2017, rural places won a little more, but will it last?", Mark Muro and Jacob Whitman observed that contrary to expectations, rural areas "actually had a pretty good year in 2017":

Rural areas in fact outperformed their share of the economy to generate some 16.6 percent of the nation's job growth.

Of course the caveat - this is most likely a temporary boost:

Many of the industries that added jobs in rural communities in 2017 - such as logging, mining, oil and gas, and construction - remain cyclical given economic and commodity trends larger than any Trump-era deregulation drive or tax cut. At the same time, a slump in prices for corn, wheat, and other farm commodities over the past five years has cut total U.S. farm income in half, with further declines expected over the next decade. Equally worrisome, the types of physical or rote jobs prevalent in rural American remain disproportionately vulnerable to automation and globalization in a digital era that seems to favor the biggest, densest cities with their high education levels and powerful "agglomeration" economies.

Given the prior claims on high value knowledge use that remain in place, did Trump perhaps acknowledge rural realities in the only commodity driven way that is presently possible? Especially since our taxpayer funded public schools - which instead of creating local means to participate in knowledge driven economies - are mostly a battlefield for economic access. And this battlefield - of late - has taken an increasingly mean-spirited turn.

Perhaps the real issue for forgotten places and individuals has little to do with conciliatory policy redistribution, ill conceived trade negotiations or elite bashing, but instead, whether we can give ourselves permission to reassess the possibilities of wealth creation in a digital era. Could today's participants in high skill services production, help to bridge the present divide? Would our prosperous cities be willing to reach out to struggling areas, thereby sharing organizational capacity for the use and production of knowledge? After all, a free market emphasis on the future use and application of knowledge, which treats time as a valuable commodity, could be the best means we have, to bridge the urban rural divide.