I was listening to our local radio station yesterday KSJD. They have a great show called the Big Fat Farm Show. The show is an example of perfectly executed small town radio. A local host talks with a local agriculture specialist about timely topics. They tend to cover beef prices, the drought, agricultural bills in congress, soil, etc.. But they also tackle bigger issues, climate change, international agricultural trade, things that are bigger than rural America. In my opinion the show perfectly shows the power of local public radio.

On a recent show, they talked about an op-ed from the New York Times about a visit to the rural America by a sheep farmer from Matterdale, England. As the sheep farmer talked about his visit to rural America, he noted that in most things, England tends to follow the lead of America. And in this, he feared that England would soon follow and share the plight of rural America’s movement away from local farms and ranches toward larger more industrial agriculture. This movement, or industrialization, has largely been absent from recent talks about the decline of rural America, a topic on the minds of most after the 2016 election. Much, however, has been written about the fact that rural America has declined (1, 2) and the political ramifications of that decline. Most of the blame, probably rightly so, has been placed on globalization. Other’s though, particularly those from coal or oil and gas producing areas have blamed regulation. Many think rural areas in crisis largely lead to the election of Donald Trump.

It’s interesting though, the decline of rural America brought to power the party of bring yourself up by your bootstraps, the Republicans. They are against social programs because they think that they disinsentivise work, and they hate regulating the free market. But what I don’t understand is rural America is living in a bring yourself up by your bootstrap moment. Free trade policies and the free market have decreased the number of jobs in many small towns. Low skilled labor has moved to where it is cheapest, namely, not America but places like China. And when agriculture is concerned, small farms have been outpaced by larger, more efficient, more profitable large scale industrial farms.

So, why haven’t those communities, who have lost so much, turned their plight around? They can’t. Economists and politicians over sell that job losses can be replaced with better training or moving. But in reality this doesn’t happen. Right now so many small communities across the country are suffering from opioid addiction, higher suicide rates, more single parenting, etc. as a result of declines in employment. The reality is, people don’t actually pull themselves up by there bootstraps, they flounder.

And rural America tried to elect a president who would help them, Trump. He said that he would bring their jobs back and give them healthcare that was cheaper, make Mexico build a wall to decrease competition for the few jobs they have left. Alas though, with the introduction of the Trump’s first budget and congresses American Health Care act, it appears this will not be delivered.

It’s important to note, some communities will pull themselves out of this troubled time. The rural community I live in has done alright. Mostly I think, because we live right next to Mesa Verde National Park and have public lands all around us, bringing a constant stream of tourist cash into our economy.

But other communities have not been so lucky. They continue to struggle. Research shows that when jobs leave rural communities, they have a really hard time recovering. Communities with fewer employed males suffer from increases in drug addiction, suicide and single or separate parent homes. These effects can last even after economies rebound. Think of the intercity communities riddled with poverty and drug addition (crack epidemic) in the late 80s and 90s. Those communities are still dealing with the effects two decades later.

This brings me back to our sheep farmer. If America is going to lead the world on an agricultural path towards forgetting its rural communities, we are doing just fine. But if we want to support our rural communities, which Trump supposedly campaigned on, we need to start prioritizing support to these communities. Despite that so many believe the bootstrap fallacy, it is just that, a fallacy. If we do not intentionally support these communities they will continue to be a blight for the millennial generation.