[testUser69]

Americas "tech dominance" threatens the breadbasket.

The coastal areas, mostly certain cities, have become "international" and any worker from a rural area who wants to earn a living wage doing a technical job (e.g. STEM) now not only has to compete with other Americans, but everyone in the world.

What exactly do the elites expect people in the breadbasket to do? If America is an international country then we're going to see wealth distribution change. The coastal tech cities may accumulate all the money and have an average wage of $100,000, some of the highest wages in the world, but the inverse will happen to the rest of America. If you aren't in a tech city near the coast you're going to be on the lowest rung, not in America, but internationally. Think about the poorest communities in the world, and as the poor of America merge and become the international poor, we'll see incomes fall to well below poverty levels. Some of the lowest wages in the world.

Look at China, they already have a similar situation where all their wealth is accumulated in their big international cities.

Let China become the world international tech center. Their "breadbasket" is already use to being poor.

The thing about these tech centers is that they are international, it doesn't matter where they are.

As long as the rural areas get a vote and as long as the coastal areas continue to concentrate all wealth in smaller and smaller areas, the more we will see people like Trump get elected. Corporate tech-elitists living on the coast are in a huge cultural bubble. All of our news and media come from these areas too btw.

What I think would really help America (and the world by proxy) is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.

[throwaway729]

This "rural communities don't need tech" narrative is tiring and false.

"Tech" is more than Google. How many engineers do you think John Deere hires? How many scientists does Monsanto have on staff? How many lines of code go into the average modern factory?

If I had a dime for every time I talk to a farmer/laborer who plants fields full of GM crops and/or harvests those fields with impressive machinery, and then insists that "tech" is a useless industry. Or CNC mechanics who insist "tech" is a fad. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Rural america needs tech more than ever before. They'll learn to leverage tech built in coastal cities, or they'll become so irrelevant that not even high tariffs can save them.

> is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.

I came from rural America. So do lots of software engineers in coastal and especially non-coastal cities. There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company. Literally. Nothing.

Seriously. Even in poor rural communities without high school CS courses, you can sit your ass down at a computer, learn to code, then fill out college applications.

The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your primary problem...

[yokisan]

> There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company.

"There's nothing stopping somebody from the ghetto from getting an education and joining a big tech company".

In both cases, sadly there is. And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this.

[throwaway729]

> In both cases, sadly there is

If you read further, I state the obvious: "The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your primary problem..."

> And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this

Huh?

Google et al. already do this. If you're a competent programmer, you can find a tech job. Tech companies don't discriminate against rural hires...

Is your suggestion that Google should hire a bunch of completely untrained and totally unqualified rural folk as software engineers, purely because they're from a rural part of the country, and train them on sight?

Wouldn't improving K12 STEM education and making college more accessible make a lot more sense? Google isn't a school, and education isn't their core competency.

It's one thing to say "we should be more supportive of STEM education and make college more accessible".

It's completely another to insist that Google over-look college educated immigrants because some rural Americans weren't given the opportunity to attend an IIT.

[chillacy]

Would that be some sort of like economic affirmative action? There is some truth to the idea that we're born into an economic class in America. Its also probably less morally hard to swallow than racial affirmative action while having somewhat of the same effect.

[norea-armozel]

As a former Kansan, I have to agree. We need more technology investment in the Great Plains and sooner rather than later. I can't see how anyone assumes there's no need for it out there.

[Arizhel]

>What I think would really help America (and the world by proxy) is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.

There's a big problem with this idea: you seem to be assuming that rural Americans want to live in the international coastal cities. I'm quite sure this simply isn't the case for most of them (it is true for many young people, who do in fact move to the coastal cities on their own volition). So are you proposing requiring tech companies to open satellite offices in rural areas, where there's no concentration of workers at all? And what are these people going to do for the tech companies anyway? If they had relevant skills, they'd already be working in tech, not living in rural areas and working at Walmart.

[dukeluke]

It's a bit presumptuous that everyone living in rural areas is unskilled. I've got nearly two years in the tech industry, hold several certifications, and almost have a BS completed. But because I live in a rural area & all the tech jobs are becoming more and more centralized, it's nearly impossible for me to find work. I don't want to move because my wife is in school and my family also lives in the middle of nowhere. I'm willing to bet there are many people like me.

[Arizhel]

Ok, then how exactly do you propose tech companies hire you when you absolutely refuse to leave this rural area? You think they're going to set up a satellite office just so they can hire one or two people out in SmallTown?

Of course you can't find work, if you choose to live in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't make sense to locate companies in places with very few qualified workers. If it did, companies would be locating in places like that all the time because the cost of living is so much lower, and they can pay a lot less. But they don't, they locate in high-CoL areas.

[dukeluke]

Well I would work remote, but almost all jobs that should be done remotely have been outsourced.

[intopieces]

>they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.

What makes you think two rural Americans per one non-rural want to work for a tech company? Talk about condescending. Rural Americans don't need the charity of American tech workers on the coast. They can figure their livelihoods out themselves just fine, seeing as they've been doing it for centuries.

[supersaiyanverx]

I've yet to hear a convincing argument for why I should be forced to subsidize the American proletariat.

[ihsw]

Wealth has gravitated around massive city centers since time immemorial and China is even more hostile to foreigners. If you think America is the only one artificially gating wealth within the border then you are in for a rude awakening.

Coastal cities in America will continue to be a melting pot of culture but the wealth won't be siphoned off unabated.

The rationale behind the policy is ending the indentured servitude experienced by foreign workers and the hollowing out of the middle class.

[Periodic]

I think there's a more important metric: productivity has concentrated in the coastal cities. Our workforce is more productive than ever before. Much of our economic gains year after year are due to productivity gains: we produce more goods per worker.

In our current economy, if you want to have a high-paying job you have to have a highly productive job. The best way to do that is to be in a city that has high network effects. Centralization and computerization is allowing people in cities to be more and more productive. This is why even Walmart has fewer regional managers and employs more people in cities managing logistics or even doing research in programs like @WalmartLabs.

Being in a city helps you be more productive due to network effects in contacts, opportunities, leads and education. If we want to help people out, we need to help them get those benefits elsewhere or help them move to the coastal cities that already have these networks.

[testUser69]

>Wealth has gravitated around massive city centers since time immemorial

Well yeah, but there were times when wealth was more evenly distributed within America.

When we first started taking in immigrants (when America was founded), we were in a state of high-economic entropy, meaning that there were so many jobs and things to do (and no minimum wage) that we NEEDED to import people from around the world.

Times have changed and the world is changing faster and faster. America is now in a state of low economic entropy, and having a free-for-all international jobs market is not helping that situation.

Is the goal to move the entire world into a state of low economic entropy? We can have big wealthy countries running the world like we're use to, or we can have big wealthy cities running the world like we're aiming toward.

I think concentrating wealth in these big tech centers makes it harder for people in the US to work their way out of poverty. It will be great for the people in Africa living on two dollars a day when their wages go up to 15 dollars a day, but it's going to be hell for people in the US who are use to 50-100 dollars a day going down to $15.

Everyone will be equal though (well, all the poor will be equally poor, and all the rich will be equally rich).