|
I agree that many people move away from cities to "escape", but it's important to recognize that for many decades now, rural residents have received significantly more benefits from the government than they pay in taxes, while urban dwellers pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Essentially, those who live in cities are living within their means and subsidizing those who live in rural areas. This is a commonly repeated factoid, but it's not really true. Or at least, it's very misleading. Let me explain. Rural populations tend to be older. That means more spent on Social Security, more spent on Medicare, and so on. This is by far the largest reason why people say that cities "subsidize" rural areas. But if those old people moved to cities, they would still be receiving Social Security and Medicaid. So it would be more accurate to say that young people subsidize old people. Farm subsidies exist and probably should be reduced (or eliminated) but in the grand scheme of things, we're not talking about much money. It was about 22 billion in 2019, according to NPR [https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/fa...]. That's comparable to some of the increases in yearly budget that are being talked about for Amtrak, a program that mainly benefits cities. So don't move to a rural area believing that the federal government will shower you with cash. In general, it won't, or at least not more than it does for city dwellers. On the other hand, being old or poor may cause the Feds to shower you with cash, but not more than you would have gotten in a city (and many things will be more expensive in a rural area than a city). |
One of the best analyses I've seen is from Strong Towns - a blog devoted to building livable and financially solvent towns and cities. In their deep-dive analysis of Lafayette, LA, they find that the only part of the region generating enough revenue to sustain the maintenance costs was the dense old-town city center. [1] Most of the costs examined come from infrastructure (roads, power, gas, water), not social services.
I imagine the calculus is different when considering federal government expenditures (as you point out), as the majority of federal expenditures are towards social security, medicare, medicaid, and the military. However, there is significant federal subsidies to farmers as you point out, and huge sums of cash for highways, power, and other infrastructure.
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...