Modern Ghost Towns Anyone?

[Knotical]

It appears that with how the economy is going there are going to be a new crop of ghost towns popping up all over this country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/census-counties-dying-off_n_2874983.html

 

[farouk]

It appears that with how the economy is going there are going to be a new crop of ghost towns popping up all over this country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/census-counties-dying-off_n_2874983.html

Interesting that in some states such as Maine and West Virginia, deaths exceed births. In the case of West Virginia, I think the economic downturn is rather longstanding.

It's probably fair to say also that when one visits some neighborhoods of Detroit and Buffalo, the economic downturn there is very deepseated and longstanding, for which there are various reasons, I'm sure. The decline of heavy industry, a sometimes less than impressive street law enforcement record that makes residents want to move away from some neighborhoods if they possibly can, a long term pursuit of the sort of local tax policies — driven by the desire to expropriate rather than invest — which has the effect of driving away entrepreneurs rather than attracting them, etc.

In Canada, the economic decline of some areas has been going on for at least a century and no amount of subsidies and bailouts seem to reverse it. This arguably evokes a reasonable question: What do hugely expensive bailouts really achieve?

 

[jasoncran]

Lawtey, florida. that has been one for years. and also basinger, fl.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

I think we would find, if we investigated the facts behind this article -- and I'm just guessing, but it's an educated guess -- that the hardest hit counties in this respect would be the small, rural counties, particularly in the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain regions. Counties in those regions have little to offer but ranching as a career, and ranching is going the same direction as the family farm in this country. There is no money in it, and the pressures to earn and live well are felt by the youth in those communities. Consequently, they are moving to the population centers to find a new life.

The Post gives misleading information in claiming that cities like New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, among others, would have lost population if not for foreign-born residents. There isn't an inner city in any major metro area in the country that isn't struggling with population loss, due to continuing, second-generational flight to the suburbs. So while it may be technically true that the central city in a metro area is losing population, I know for a fact the St. Louis metropolitan area as a whole has grown over the last 15 years, not through foreign-born residents but through natural-born and naturalized, successful American citizens relocating, particularly from the West Coast.

This article is nothing more than a badly disguised push to keep the borders open, quoting as it does from a couple sources hyping the value of foreign-born immigrants. I agree, as long as they are legal. However, given that most "foreign-born" residents are illegal, it is far more necessary to close the borders to illegal immigration, as illegals currently enter the country at more than 2-to-1 over the rate of legal immigration.

Epic fail, Huffington Post. Shame on you.