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by nightski 3319 days ago
It's amusing there is so much misinformation on rural America on HN. You'd think it was mostly 3rd world by reading most of the comments on this post. I come from ND, which is an extremely sparsely populated state. However, don't let the rural nature fool you - per capita tax revenue was one of the highest in the nation. It's filled with rich farmers making more than many engineers here on HN. Most of the income comes from Oil & Farming but that excess money is being invested in developing a growing technology scene.

I regularly visit CA/SF as I have clients there. It's a beautiful place, but many things about living in ND are much more attractive.
5 comments
adpirz 3319 days ago
I feel like ND is a bit of an outlier though, I can try and find the data to back it up. I lived in rural MS for a while, and parts of it felt close to parts of rural India that I've visited.
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accountyaccount 3319 days ago
I don't disagree with you, but ND is a bit of an outlier. There are huge swathes of the once-prosperous rural south and midwest that are slipping into developing nation territory as their infrastructures degrade over time.

Many of the prominent examples of a successful rural area are either very self reliant (parts of NH serve as good examples, but the opioid epidemic is taking a toll) or reliant on a single industry that might just up and leave (airline manufacturing or fracking come to mind).

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boomboomsubban 3319 days ago
You're ignoring large chunks of your state, the reservations. They tend to better than the SD ones, but still have things like 50% unemployment.
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satsuma 3319 days ago
ND is in a weird place thanks to the oil fields. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and while it was a pretty good living and I never felt like I was in a developing region, there were places that was closer to reality.
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BoiledCabbage 3319 days ago
That's not a very good analogy. If you're going to compare ND and it's oil boom, then you need to contrast it with somewhere like Saudi Arabia which has very little economically except for it's oil production.

Or more accurately compare any of the non-oil related rural areas in the country. Or any of the particularly poor rural areas of the black or white southern US.

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