America's Polarization Threatens to Undo Us

[packman]

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On top of America’s long-running political divide between red and blue states, and its widening economic divide between the rich and the poor, there is a troubling gap between its geographic winners and losers. The United States is growing spatially more unequal, in ways that are ripping the country apart and threaten to undermine prosperity for all of us.

New data released earlier this week by Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program get to the heart of the matter. Bigger cities are prospering more than smaller cities, and much, much more than rural areas. And the trends are accelerating.


Far from Making America Great Again, Trump and the GOP are putting into place a backward-looking economic and social policy that threatens to undermine the key pillars of American innovation and economic prosperity. They are curtailing immigration and excluding global talent; slashing federal spending for research and development; lashing out at gay and women’s rights; cutting back on spending for state universities; and making efforts to undermine and preempt cities.

Once America’s innovative engine is dismantled, and talented people start to go elsewhere, it will be hard to put it back together again. For the first time in a very long time—perhaps since the Civil War—America’s divides threaten to put it on the wrong side of history.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/americas-polarization-threatens-to-undo-us/551483/

[vi5]

1. 100% right.

Unfortunately the only way we are going to get back on track is to tack pretty hard and fast in the opposite direction (what used to be called center-left but is now referred to as "far left&quot to undo this damage. And I'm not sure based on past and recent history that our elected officials are going to have the stomach to do that and to withstand all the pearl clutching from the media.

As history shows us, Republicans knock us back ten steps and then Dems play nice and only get to push us 5 steps forward before the media cries and they get skittish. This was the cycle from Reagan/Bush to Clinton, then Bush to Obama and Trump has taken that 10 steps backward and pushed it to 20 so we are in even more dire straits this time around.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

2. Small towns are dying out like the Dinosaurs.........

While on road trips, I have long noticed that small towns are dying the slow death. There is little industry to keep them vibrant. Little tourism to keep the money coming in. Less uniqueness that make them the place to go.

One of my favorite small towns is Galena, Illinois. Friends of ours once owned the outstanding Resturant the Perry Street Brasserie. They closed it at the end of 2016 after close to 20 years in business to retire. Galena has that uniqueness and history that keep tourists and the money coming in. We go there 3 times per year.

But the rest of this vast country, small towns are dying.