Escaping the wealth gap can mean fleeing hometowns

[Cryptoad]

Source: ap - excite

DANVILLE, Ill. (AP) — This Illinois city already was struggling when Tara Holycross and her friends were kids riding their bikes to Custard Cup, swimming at the park district pool and hanging out in the Wendy's parking lot.

Manufacturers that provided thousands of well-paying, middle-class jobs — General Motors, General Electric, Hyster — were closing. Neighborhoods were crumbling. By the time Holycross graduated from high school in 2004, a city best known for its massive downtown grain elevator was scrambling to create new opportunities.

Ten years later, this city of 32,500 still is struggling. But Holycross and some of her classmates are doing just fine — because they moved.

They're doctors and athletic trainers, software specialists and financial advisers. They're living all over the country — from Chicago to Charleston, South Carolina, to Boulder, Colorado — where they found solid jobs that reward the kind of education they have. Holycross and four classmates interviewed said about half of their class of fewer than 50 left town, and those they're in touch with landed good positions.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20141110/us-wealth-gap-moving-on-abridged-906460f81c.html

[Cryptoad]

1. Are we going to have another Great ,,,

Migration like we had in 30's. The South is liable disappear into the nether>

[hack89]

2. Not just the South

Rhode Island can't provide good jobs for its graduates. I assume that when my kids graduate from college they will move out of RI.

[jeff47]

3. Depends on which part of the South.

For example, North Carolina has Charolette making a pretty good run at NYC on banking, and RTP making a pretty good run at being Silicon Valley - East.

It's more rural vs urban than regionalism. There just isn't much work anymore until you get to urban areas. "The kids" are moving away from small towns and used-to-be-cities because those towns don't have jobs.

I'm not so sure this is a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, it sucks for the people stuck in those towns. And there's a lot of former-cities and towns that are evaporating. But getting everyone into higher density areas would have a lot of benefits.

[obxhead]

5. That might be true for high density areas that have great public transportation.

I just moved away fro northern VA, a very high density area. Public trans was available, but inadequate. I traded a couple of bucks an hour to get my life back. In northern VA I spent an average of 24 hours a week sitting in my car pumping smog into the air, today in sw FL I drive less than 6 hours a week.

Stacking people can potentially help save on resources and pollution, but the fact is we're always 30 years behind on what's really needed to make compact high density areas thrive.

[jeff47]

6. Yes, but that high density at least makes it possible to do something.

N. VA hasn't spent enough on expanding mass transit. But it's at least just a "spend the money" problem. (Back when I lived there, I rotated my hours around the clock so I got on I-66 just after it stopped being HOV-only)

On the other hand, the dying part of upstate NY I recently left is so spread out that public transportation could not work at all.

And in addition to mass transit, there's lots of other infrastructure that becomes easier with higher density - you're sending water, power and fuel into one, smaller area. That makes switching where we get water, power and fuel a lot easier.

There's also a lot of efficiencies in delivering goods and services when they're going to fewer, more dense places. A lot less cable to pull, a lot less concrete to make and pour, hauling stuff a lot shorter distance, and so on.

But it is a mixed bag - aside from the cities that are evaporating, you have to not "pull a N. VA" and underinvest in infrastructure.

[obxhead]

11. 25 years ago

they built a bridge over a river to extend the HOV lanes on 95 southbound an additional 15 miles. That project should be in the final phases today. They just began the actual road project to finish that 25 year old extension in 2012. I looked at that bridge just sitting there with envy for 2 decades, just dreaming of the day the state would do something with it and extend those lanes.

They are 30 years out of date. Everything they are building in northern VA today would have worked, 30 years ago. Today it's not enough when completed, and the construction just makes things so much worse.

Build it now, fix it later. That's the mentality that we need to change. Right now we build commercial and residential, then tear shit down at HUGE cost to build the infrastructure to supply it so much later.

Our transportation systems are like the 90's were for our space program, billions of dollars sitting on top of delivery systems built by the lowest bidder on technology so out of date we should be defining it as antique.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Watch for this to happen.

Migration from the Red States will accelerate in coming months as Corporations struggle to find workers. They know states with weak or backassward educational systems are going to be losers and and the few remaining progressive states will see big time inward migration. You can only deal with STUPID so long and you just go broke. Corporations are profit driven only. H1B visas has it's own side effects that being the slow assimilation of the incoming talent. Many local business groups are suddenly anti foreign workers. Still a Old White Guy World for the most part and it will be ten years before it starts to change.

[shenmue]

7. Happened to me

A bunch of times. I've moved a lot since I was 19. I don't like it.

[closeupready]

8. There was never much of a future in the Danville area.

Obviously, if you feel a need to stay close to your immediate family, then there was always some kind of manufacturing job, but for the ambitious, it was never an area in which you'd stay if you dreamt big or wanted to make a fortune. I mean, since the 70's, rural Illinois is pretty much a jobs wasteland.

[jwirr]

9. While we are talking about south to north there is a lot more coming. States that have water

shortages and long term droughts will also see migration. This has of course been going on for a long time. In the 50s the people from rural areas like Iowa migrated to California. However in this era we are not going to necessarily have the kind of jobs that were available then. It is going to be ironic when we are fighting over a job in McDonalds.

[villager]

12. Well don't come to California for the water!

"Water? What water!? -- We're in the desert here!"

"I was misinformed."

[Brigid]

10. Terre Haute, IN, is another excellent example of this.

After about 40 years of "brain drain," there isn't much left. There are numerous colleges in the area, but that does not help because there is nothing to do once one graduates unless one leaves. I vividly remember struggling to find a job there back in the '80's. Armed with a college degree and a stint in the Marine Corps, I figured I should be able to find something. Instead, I was treated like a space alien. I moved to Indy for a number of years, then moved back because of family issues. This job-hunting experience went pretty much the same way it went before. The last straw came when I found myself scrubbing vomit off the carpet in the dining room of a nursing home where I was working. I moved back to Indy a few months later. Now I am well on the way to finishing a paralegal degree. The opportunities in crappy little Rust Belt towns just aren't there, and no amount of "positive thinking" will change that. It's like looking into an empty box -- if there's nothing in it, there's nothing in it.

[jwirr]

13. Exactly. I don't think today that it is about where you live so much as where the jobs are at and

unfortunately a lot of those jobs are outsourced. I think that when these kids finish college and start moving they are going to find the same situation in most communities regardless of size.

They have unemployment all across the US and it is no longer because you do not have a degree. One thing that worked for the members of my family was looking at what jobs cannot be outsourced. Most went into healthcare. Those who still want the other jobs that are competing with outsourced jobs are working low income jobs.

[Odin2005]

14. Small Town America has been dying for 70 years, now. Not a surprise.