I grew up in a rural community, began my career as an organizer in small towns, and now lead one of the largest efforts to rebuild pro-democracy, pro-worker civic capacity in rural America. So I can speak with some authority when I say that President Biden, somewhat surprisingly, has ushered in a new economic paradigm that can radically transform the lives of rural people and build a more politically and economically secure future for all Americans.
He calls his agenda “Bidenomics,” a term that will be hotly debated in the months ahead. But what does it mean? And what’s its significance for rural people?
In simplest terms, Bidenomics arguably is the most significant departure in 40 years from the “free market revolution” that rose to dominance in the 1980s — a dramatic alteration to our country’s economic trajectory.
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The combination of executive and congressional action since Biden took office — from the American Rescue Plan, to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to the CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act and key executive action promoting competition and protecting workers — presents greater potential for revitalizing rural communities than anything since the New Deal. These were huge steps in the right direction, and yet rural people are still struggling. The updated Rural Policy Action Report offers a continued roadmap for how to help rural communities, protect the environment and core freedoms, and renew shared prosperity across geographic divides.
Do they even know that??
Being good for a group of people is not the same as them knowing that you've been good for them. This is eternally where Democrats fall flat on their faces.
I think think that's what this propaganda piece is aiming to accomplish: hopefully it will make them believe it.
Republicans have spent literally decades convincing these people they are the best for them. They have honed that false image and every Republican knows to fall in-line and go after these folks. They hammer that point home every chance they get.
Democrats have a couple of campaign events here or there every couple of years, maybe a couple of articles printed, and then they go back to endlessly pandering to teeny, tiny demographic groups that couldn't get anyone elected.
What drives me crazy is the purity ponies that will go after anyone and everyone (and each other) over navel-gazing bullshit like "intersectionalities" and oppression olympics and so on…
The farmer/decentralized tech enthusiast cross section is probably small. Actually, given their hurdles in jailbreaking tractors and right to repair being so important to so many, it could be higher than average. Huh.
The actual article is in The Hill
To be fair, Republican policies have been horrible for them and they don’t know about that, but that’s two sides of the same coin. I don’t know that liberals have really been able to insert themselves into the rural propaganda space like conservatives have. All they need is some charismatic guy/gal in a folksy voice to talk about family values and the Bible, then just steer it in the direction of loving thy neighbor and taking care of your fellow man. Liberal/progressive values need to be normalized in rural areas and connected to the values they already have. Right now all they’re really hearing are conservative voices.
I don’t know that liberals have really been able to insert themselves into the rural propaganda space like conservatives have.
It probably doesn't help that most of the media targeting them is owned by people that want the regulatory state to go back to where it was in the late 1800s so they can become modern-day Rockefellers and Carnegies
Conservatives taking over AM radio stations in the 90s has had an underappreciated and disastrous effect on this country.
Of course not. Their media is controlled by them. It may be worse than fox now.
Honestly, Lemmy is probably worse than Reddit at challenging a comment like this, but it's better than the shit my father in law turns on when he drives my child around. Challenge it.
How can you tell others to challenge it when you can't even stand up to your FIL?
Honestly, Lemmy is probably worse than Reddit at challenging a comment like this
The power posters tend to be the same Reddit shills and eternal optimists that dominated the old platforms. Who the hell actually even reads The Hill on the reg, anyway? Much less feels the urge to repost it to social media as frequently as this guy? He's been on the site for 3 months and already posted nearly 2k times, all from a handful of mainstream news outlets.
Do they even know that??
Big number go up things get better. What else do you need to know?
Falling literacy rates? Rising infant mortality? Declining life expectancy? Pollution? 100-degree weather stretching into the Fall? Collapsing infrastructure and rising cost-of-living? Ballooning household debt in the face of wages that continue to fall relative to the value of assets and equities?
Stfu, idiot. You just don't understand economics. Life in the de-industrialized midwest has never been better. Say thank you and go back into your living holes. Be grateful things aren't worse.
Ok, good, so does that mean you'll continue to support Democratic policies in the future? Because rural America has held urban and suburban America in a goddamn stranglehold for the last 23 years and we could really use some economic relief ourselves.
It should be clear from the evidence thus far that conservative policies don't benefit anybody except the ultra-wealthy.
Rural America isnt on lemmy, you're talking to an empty chair unfortunately
Rural American will still vote against it because it’s a put in place by a Democrat.
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In my experience, the bar for a godsend is very low in rural America. If you are hungry there and a McDonalds is still open, it’s a godsend. If they bring back reruns of Andy Griffith at 3 o’clock on channel 2 it’s a godsend.
I guess the point of your post is basically "haha rural America". And yet, after living in several cities one of my biggest goals is to get the fuck out of urban America.
I think the point is that they consistently vote against their own interests, then fall for the demonization of those trying to help them.
Then when modern convenience falls in their lap because it's just too economically unfeasible to not bring it to them… they fall over themselves wondering at the minor upgrade in their living conditions.
I'm under no illusion that urban (or even suburban) living doesn't have downsides… but they pale in comparison to the shit-sandwich that people in rural areas continue to serve themselves.
Imagine the arrogance to think you know better than someone you've never met, who lives their own lives second by second and knows the details of their needs and wants intimately, what's best for them better than they do. Maybe you should be their dictator.
As someone who spent their first 20 years living in rural and very rural areas, they didn't say anything out of line from what I've experienced.
Watching your entire community have terrible health, no job opportunities, awful infrastructure, and little to no access to healthy foods while constantly taking every opportunity to stand in opposition to any politician, bill, or outreach program that may help them is hard to understand.
But I can vouch for the fast food remark. When a Burger King opened in the town I was living in, the line was wrapped around the building and holding up traffic on the road during every mealtime. It was like that for weeks. I moved before the hype died down. A Whopper is a luxury when your other choices is what can be had at a Dollar General and a gas station that sells bruised fruit and single potatoes.
Please explain to me how banning medical procedures helps the crops grow.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I agree. Rural people know what they want. They want to get one over on those damn city folk who always make fun of them. Also, they want the benefits of living in a city without paying for it or moving there. Also, they want their damn benefits payments.
As someone who's done it I'll tell you it's worth it. Sure, you get some real bumpkins out there. They can be rough but they're mostly friendly. Some of them are stupid, but that's anywhere. They're usually simpler for sure, and the pace is slower, and the rules are more lax, and that can be hard getting used to, but once you're used to it, no traffic and your amazon packages are still on your doorstep waiting for you.
Just avoid tweaker towns, which is harder than it sounds.
Yeah, it's fine. If you're white.
You don't have a fucking clue dude
Ok, bye
They grow your food and usually make shit you need to survive because they can be taken advantage of. This creates a culture where they don't always have as much or access to the same things urban dwellers do. What a condescending statement to make.
They really don't grow your food most of the time. Corn and Soy are the most grown crops, and 70+ % of either are ground up to feed animals or make biofuels. Biofuels don't even make economic or environmental sense at all, it's only created because the government mandates its addition to gasoline and diesel, making both more expensive. That's 40% of all corn grown literally going up in flames for absolutely no reason other than to subsidize farmers who are overproducing corn.
American farmers also massively overproduce milk too, mostly because they can feed cows the unlimited soy and feed corn available and because the US government will literally buy up all the excess milk (and turn it to cheese and stockpile it) or pay farmers to dump it down the drain to keep the prices up.
And it's not just milk, soy, and corn that's overproduced, it's everything. The amount of agricultural subsidy is insane, and most of it is to keep farmers in business who are growing stuff nobody wants or are growing stuff in areas where the land is so poor that without massive subsidy, there would be no profit, in the first place.
And all of this overproduction is absolutely destroying the environment. Actual cities and towns filled with people doing actually productive things are running short of water because the government insists on keep Joe farmer's irrigation dependant farm in the goddamn desert in business producing soy beans that are then exported to feed pigs in China. Hell half the time it isn't even Joe Farmer, it's Joe Farmer Corp owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who realized growing that same crop in their desert was unsustainable.
That’s 40% of all corn grown literally going up in flames for absolutely no reason other than to subsidize farmers who are overproducing corn.
They do this because the first primaries of the season are in Iowa, so they want to keep those corn farmers happy or they lose the primary.
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The picture of a pair of boomer ass landowners is not helping them with the message
If you were already a PMC with a bunch of invested cash and property, you'll be happy to know that the 80-year-old insurance industry flak turned bagman for the Obama administration turned white savior for the liberal establishment is going to be propping those inflated asset prices up one more business cycle.
But if you're watching Congress go into another round of cut-backs on domestic services, privatization of education and health care, ramping up of the national security state, and war-mongering abroad while the President rubber stamps it all… well… maybe just shut up and Vote Blue No Matter Who because the alternative to the Kyrsten Sinema Senate will be even worse.
I personally think the biggest driving factor in the rural/city divide that causes rural populations to skew conservative is services.
Rural communities are criminally underserviced. It makes sense why from a logistical view. When people are gathered in small areas, they are easy to provide services to. It's much easier to provide quality power, plumbing, roads, essential services, and prettyich everything to high density areas. It's more effective to service cities.
It's hard to provide reliable services to rural areas. With everyone spread out so much, you need longer wires, longer roads, longer pipes, more people, more everything. So it makes sense to allocate less to these areas. But it's also horrific.
These are people. It makes perfect sense why rural communities distrust and resent government, and oppose increased spending on social services. They don't see the benefits. They see money being spent on things they can't use. Then manipulative politicians swoop in and tell them that these services are bad.
The solution is to suck it up and give everyone equal access to services. Spend more money on rural communities, even if it's less efficient. Because they are people and deserve roads and hospitals and internet equivalent to cities.
Public transit is cheaper and easier to build when the land is less developed.
It's easier to build, but much less efficient to operate
Seems like we could make life easier with policies encouraging increased population density even here. Sure, everyone spreads out in a rural area, but it shouldn’t take much to build up some sort of walkable town center. If you want services, you could drive into town to get them
People should be able to live where they want, and any government that demands participation must provide equal services to everyone.
These motherfuckers are pulling out all the gaslighting techniques. Things are only doing well for the wealthy, the poor and working class not so much
No! We need to make all these people go bankrupt! Then banks can take the land and sell it to large corporations that has no ties to the land and staff it with immigrants on "tourist visas" which when they expire we can treat as slaves! That is the only way we can decreases the cost of a large fry at McDonald's by 10 cents!
I used to live in an extremely rural area, and it was probably about 3:1 Republican to Democrat. And almost all of the people were on the dole in some form or another, thanks to the Big Government that they hated so much, most especially the Republicans that I knew.
It's almost as if the more they were personally benefiting from services from mostly Democratic policies, the more they resented "those libruls" and voted even harder for the far right.
now if anyone would believe it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In simplest terms, Bidenomics arguably is the most significant departure in 40 years from the “free market revolution” that rose to dominance in the 1980s — a dramatic alteration to our country’s economic trajectory.
Family farmers have been driven out of business in droves by ever-growing multinational companies running massive factory farms that pollute the air and water in local communities.
And a continual wave of tax cuts that too often benefit only the wealthiest and most powerful have placed an incredible strain on the essential infrastructure that rural people need to live and work, including schools, healthcare, internet and roads.
They developed a policy roadmap that can rebuild local communities; elected leaders of all stripes would benefit from adopting this popular agenda that connects strongly with rural voters.
The combination of executive and congressional action since Biden took office — from the American Rescue Plan, to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to the CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act and key executive action promoting competition and protecting workers — presents greater potential for revitalizing rural communities than anything since the New Deal.
These policies rest on the indisputable fact that everyday people — small-business owners, family farmers, workers, even unpaid caregivers — drive our economy.
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