Is rural America financially leeching off metro areas? Commenters on this site often like to point out that rural areas receive more in benefits from tax dollars than they pay in. But that's only part of the picture. We also need to take a look at how metro areas benefit from the vast amounts of wealth being sucked out of rural America.
The wealth generated in our rural communities does not remain there to benefit the local people. Instead, most of it is siphoned off to be invested in the financial institutions, infrastructure, and economy of metro areas. Giant mining, timber, oil, bottled water and other earth-exploiting entities with corporate owners in metro regions tend to pay only a pittance for the right to extract important resources from rural areas, making huge profits off the land and the people, while sometimes doing great harm to local communities.
A few examples:
Water rights issues:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-01-20/environmentalists-fight-to-shut-down-bottled-water-operation
Mining impacts on rural communities:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/14/wall-street-coal-country-hedge-funds-coal-mining-appalachia-west-virginia
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/a-framework-for-federal-mining-reform-impact-planning-benefits-sharing-and-asset-based-revenue-management/
The corporate world also controls the markets for agricultural goods, setting the rules for how the markets function and who profits from them. The Wall Street Futures Market can be seen as a legalized gambling casino, where metro multimillionaires make their millions playing games at the expense of rural people, often unpredictably and drastically affecting supply costs and crop prices, endangering the livelihoods of farmers who have no say in it.
On top of that, the vast majority of food processing facilities are located not in rural towns near the source of the food, but in metro regions. So as a result of metro control over the markets, rural folks only receive a small fraction of what you pay at the store for your food:
Farmers are falling further and further downward toward the status of “serfs”: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311327/farmers-factory-farms-cafos-animal-rights-booker-warren-khanna
"The agricultural industry has an unusual structure: Virtually every node in the industry is highly concentrated around a few megaproducers. That’s true for seeds, for pesticides, for machines, for production. And concentration has been increasing.
But the food is still grown, and the animals still raised, on family farms. These farms are, in theory, independent, but in practice, they bear the risks of independence without the expected freedoms. The megaproducers they buy from and sell to have all the leverage; farmers are left with little choice save to accept the onerous, binding contracts they’re offered. As the Center for American Progress puts it, “growing corporate power has left relatively small farms and ranches vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of the oligopolies with which they do business.”
Then, of course, there are multinational retail chains, like Walmart, whose stores in rural areas provide a few jobs, but otherwise contribute little to the community, while using their corporate clout to get preferential deals on wholesale products, supplies, and services from metro areas (and sources abroad), bypassing local suppliers and pricing out locally owned stores, causing many to shut down.
Most of the wealth created from these extractive businesses flows to metro areas, where it can be invested in such things as arts & entertainment, museums, medical facilities, major league sports teams, and jobs — including jobs processing the foods taken from rural areas. The vast amounts of rural-derived wealth invested in large financial institutions in metro areas further strengthens their power. And it sometimes even adds to the tax base there, supporting such things as public transportation, libraries, fire protection, and other social services that are too often insufficient or nonexistent in rural communities.
Some call all of the above a form of economic colonialism: https://inthesetimes.com/article/rural-america-economic-colonization-corporate-agriculture-exploitation
In other words, our metro-dominated economic system is sucking rural America dry (literally, in some cases).
So again, who is leeching from whom?
It seems clear from the examples above that while we urban plebs and rural peasants fight each other over scraps and crumbs, the rich and powerful win by leeching off all of us.
(This is just a bare summary of the situation. For a detailed and in-depth understanding, please be sure to read the articles with the links provided.)