Is the Rural-Urban Divide A Myth?
Do We Have A Common Crisis With A Single Solution?
Today I was listening to the Forgotten America podcast and the story they were telling, as usual, was kind of depressing. However, it did get me thinking about something significant. The podcast speaks about issues facing people in rural America, which is where my family is from and where most of my family remains. It often speaks of Appalachian culture, which is something that interests me insofar as it has shaped my own family culture, especially with regard to music and religion, though I doubt my family recognizes this fact. Today they were talking about Kevin Williamson’s book Big White Ghetto and it really drove home the fact that poor rural areas really are more comparable to inner city ghettos than to suburban America.
We tend to think of rural Americans as ignorant rednecks, which isn’t entirely untrue, but we often forget the problems of poverty that create ignorance and bigotry. Those of us that are more left-leaning also tend to forget that prejudice/ignorance is not a uniquely rural/white phenomenon. Anti-LGBTQ sentiments are common in poor black communities too! Black nationalist ideologies that erase the history of indigenous people and promote hatred towards the “white race” are prevalent in certain urban communities. Anti-black sentiments can be quite prevalent in Mexican and Latino communities. Black Lives Matter organizers have had issues with black men physically attacking queers and trans people at their events. Ignorance and bigotry are not solely a white phenomenon, though power dynamics certainly ought to play some role in how we view and respond to these issues when it comes to criminal justice and politics.
Bigotry (whether directed towards racial groups, LGBTQ folks, women, or immigrants) is largely a problem of ignorance, which reflects deeper social problems that can’t really be addressed on a large scale without addressing the underlying issues of poverty and precarity that breed ignorance. People who work 60+ hours per week, are constantly stressed about where their next meal is coming from, have to jump through hoops for government assistance, or who are constantly worried about losing their jobs or welfare benefits — they don’t have the luxury of philosophical speculation and heavy reading. People that live in crime-ridden and impoverished communities, where they don’t feel safe and have to resort to crime (or crime-adjacent activities) in order to survive, who resort to drugs or alcohol to cope with the harsh realities of poverty/insecurity, who don’t feel safe in their own community/home— they don’t have time for philosophical speculation. Yet ethics, political philosophy, economics, and policy analysis are fundamentally philosophical pursuits that require leisure in order to be explored.
The drug/crime problems that result from precarity, poverty, and the lack of a just “basic structure” — this is a universal American problem! Since we don’t have a just “basic structure” (that is, institutions and regulations that ensure everyone is taken care of) we have rampant poverty, inequality, and precarity in our society. This isn’t just an urban crisis or a rural crisis but an American crisis. This is both an urban and a rural problem. Poor people are all in the same boat here. The divide is a rich-poor divide rather than an urban-rural divide.
The manifestations of these problems are different but the problems are the same nonetheless. The same crisis is going on in urban Haughville/Riverside in Indianapolis as well as in rural Shelbyville. And the problems associated with this singular crisis stem from an unjust economic system. Poor families in rural and urban America both are torn apart by alcohol, opioids, and a criminal justice system that treats poverty and addiction as a crime instead of a social problem and a public health issue.
The political ignorance and bigotry manifested by people (whether rural or urban) is so often just a direct result of the precarity and poverty produced by a fundamentally unjust economic system. Most of America’s problems stem from ignorance — and, our rampant ignorance is a direct result of poverty/precarity and the lack of leisure in our society. Philosophical speculation is a thing pursued by people with free time — people with the ability to relax and reflect, a luxury that many do not have. Even when someone escapes the poverty, they feel the precarity looming over them and keep running full-speed on the wage-slavery treadmill, rather than allowing themselves to enjoy any sort of leisure. They don’t feel safe to (or don’t have the energy to) engage in higher pursuits like meditation, spirituality, speculation, reading, volunteering, etc. Our competitive individualist/consumerist culture is fueled by the fear of death. Under the influence of our ancestral sin, the precarity of life makes us feel the need to always run on capitalism’s treadmill so that we can gain more security, accumulate more resources, etc. We are all sitting on exercise bikes trying to outrun each other in a race that no one can win. The other people in the gym should not be viewed as competitors whose “victory” detracts from our own. We should be working together and encouraging one another on this journey. We are in this together and everyone is better off when everyone is better off.
The tragedy is that the solution to the whole problem of ignorance, bigotry, and shitty politics is simple: end poverty and precarity with some sort of minimum income guarantee or universal basic income. There are multiple ways to do it but here are some of my favorite proposals: (1) Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax,” which guarantees a minimum income by making the tax rate negative on lower incomes, resulting in a subsidy/transfer, (2) the FairTax “prebate” scheme of Neal Boortz and John Linder, which links a universal basic income to a consumption tax, which is similar to Andrew Yang’s proposal for a basic income funded by a value-added tax, (3) the proposals of Thomas Paine, Henry George, and Leon Walras to treat land as communal property by collecting a land value tax (or ground-rent) and distributing the revenue in the form of a citizens’ dividend, and (4) the proposals of Oskar Lange, Abba Lerner, and James Meade to utilize profits from competitive nationalized industries to fund a social dividend. The first two proposals are conservative proposals whereas the latter two are more progressive but they all essentially give everyone a minimum income guarantee (or universal basic income), thereby virtually eliminating the poverty and precarity that is inherent in the status quo.
Bigotry is something that can’t be eradicated apart from leisure. How do you get a person to stop being a bigot? Let them travel, see the world, go places and meet people that they would not otherwise meet, read books, engage in philosophical debates, volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter, etc. Leisure may not end bigotry or guarantee its eradication but the elimination of bigotry (racism, homophobia, misogyny, anti-immigrant sentiments, etc.) is impossible without giving people more leisure, income security, and free time.
A minimum income guarantee or universal basic income is absolutely essential to addressing the bigotry problem in America. But it is also essential to addressing the crime problem, the addiction problem, the rioting in the streets problem, the political extremism problem, the lack of civic engagement problem, the depression problem, the suicide problem, the mental health problem! Income security is essential to addressing the ignorance problem at the root of our political instability and dysfunctionality as a nation! Unless the injustices of poverty and precarity are thoroughly addressed, our society is doomed to slide either into chaos or into fascism/totalitarianism. Yet, the problems that are created by the lack of the sort of just basic structure that such a solution would provide is also the biggest impediment to its implementation.
The failure of the United States to implement some sort of a universal basic income or minimum income guarantee at this point is an egregious moral failing that ought to bring one to tears. The creation of some sort of minimum income, or basic income, guarantee will be the crowning achievement of America, the perfecting of our republic! This goal logically follows from the republican principles of our Founding Fathers and the highest form of patriotism is the struggle for this end.
