[lordCarbonFiber]

I feel like you haven't spent much time in rural America. As someone who grew up in South Carolina, it's not someplace you want to be. No one opens offices in the heartland because the cheap land doesn't offset the difficulty in attracting talent (at least for software where office costs even in SF or NYC are dwarfed by personal costs). Intelligent people want to congregate, and the regressive policies of the American south and midwest (anti lgbt, anti women's rights, rampant racism, religious cultism, and strong currents of anti-intellectualism) give people no reason to reject the call to shinnier shores. At this point the only thing that can save these communities are universal basic income and you know the republicans they insist on electing won't provide that.

Repeal the House member cap passed in 1912 and let the representatives actually proportionally represent the population (and the Electoral college too) and all of the social issues caused by a gross minority of backwater states goes away.