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I urge you to look past the suburbs that ring metro areas, and a bit further out. I've just driven out to Whidbey Island this past weekend - a 70 minute drive from Seattle. Beautiful place. Economically, it's also dying, and not because the people who live there are lazy bastards. If it didn't have a US Navy base, it would be dead. As a young person, you'd be insane to stay there. In order to feed your uncle and father-in-law, small towns must have something to export. It could be lumber. It could be coal. It could be applications for social security. It could be people, who work in the city, and live in their community, 40 miles away. But it has to be something. Small towns that have an export - one big enough to feed all the doctors, cops, plumbers, politicians, realtors, teachers, babysitters, bricklayers, HVAC installers, and other people who bring no money into their economy can do reasonably well for themselves. Those that don't are in a death spiral, and it won't matter if you replaced every person in them with a skilled contractor overnight. |
1) the American Dream has included a college education as a general requirement for quite some time now. People that live in small towns, esp. mid-sized ones that rely on Naval bases or other similar economic drivers as the example you provided generally aren't part of this group
2) it ignores that the Dream is alive and well elsewhere
Nobody should expect to get a college education and go live in any given town and be set for life. That's not practical. Economies change, but the opportunities are still out there.
If you believe people should be entitled to make a living wherever they grow up (or choose) forever, then yes the American Dream doesn't exist because your expectations are out of line with capitalism.
That's not fair; it's alive if you aren't stubborn with occupational choices and where you live. It sucks to move but people need to get over that fear.