Someone made a comment on Facebook (Yeah, we know how that works) about rural America being depopulated as part of the U.N. Agenda 21. I figured it might not be a bad idea to offer up an alternative explanation, trying to channel Robert Reich on this.
Actually, it's not UN Agenda 21 so much as it is the failure to enforce anti-trust laws.. Where there used to be thousands of small manufacturers, stores, small businesses, we got into a bigger is better trap.
Merger after merger ended up with bigger and bigger corporations - who'd turn around and consolidate work forces, lay off excess employees, and close unneeded facilities. Small companies couldn't compete against the big box stores, the global mega corporations, etc who could overwhelm them in the market place and out lobby them with the government.
The Big Boys could also exert a lot more leverage on their work forces, keeping wages down, killing off unions, and threatening to move out of state or even out of country.
It was all good because it A) increased shareholder value - an invented concept to rationalize this, and B) if you couldn't show consumers getting hit with higher prices, it was considered OK by the 'regulators' - never mind people who lost jobs or had their wages driven down. It's a Wall Street versus Main Street fight, and Main Street is losing.
Rural areas are depopulating because the small businesses and manufacturers that used to provide good jobs have been decimated. The service sector needs customers - which is why people are moving to cities, where those service jobs and their customers are.
There’s another side to it as well. With the loss of those local companies, rural governments lose a big chunk of the tax base that makes it possible to fund services. Without that, they can either try to raise taxes on the remaining population (already under economic stress) and/or appeal to the state and Federal government for help.
We know how Red State governments work — no help there. As for the Federal government, the GOP has pretty much shut that down too. So with all this, you also get a lot of anti-government rage and feelings of abandonment.
The industrialization of farming has also been a factor. Family Farms are an endangered species. Between the cost of machinery, chemicals, and energy, if you can't go big, you go under. Federal policies that support Big Ag over the little guys (see the point about lobbying above) and policies that make farm land more valuable as real estate also don't help.
You don't need to blame the U.N. for what is explained by the simple power of lots of money in a fewer and fewer hands.
IF Democrats want to do something about jobs and people outside the urban areas, bringing back meaningful anti-trust actions would be part of the solution. What do you think?