Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
S-Town, the stunning new podcast from the producers of This American Life and Serial, features John B. McLemore, a brilliant and disturbed resident of rural Woodstock, Alabama, who, despite his talents and intense desire to leave, can’t force himself to escape his home. McLemore could probably succeed anywhere — he’s one of the most talented antique clock repairers in the country — but there’s something magnetic about home that prevents him from leaving.
The podcast reflects a broader American struggle: the Springsteen Dilemma. Should someone who’s struggling to make a good life in her hometown take a note from a Bruce Springsteen tune, pack up her car and skedaddle? The evidence suggests that fewer people are taking this option. Americans are much less mobile than their parents and grandparents. Interstate migration is now 51 percent lower than the 1948-1971 average. Additionally, Americans are less likely to move to different counties within their own state.
Essentially, folks are staying at home. This phenomenon is especially prevalent among young men. For the first time since 1940, young men are more likely to live with their parents than with a romantic partner. Their participation in the labor market has dropped off. Economist Erik Hurst found that non-college-educated young men who don’t participate in the labor market spend nearly 75 percent of their leisure time playing video games. Many of the Americans who, in decades past, would migrate to bustling centers of commerce, open a business and start a family now stay at Mom’s house, sit on the couch and play video games.
Economist Tyler Cowen believes that Americans need to start listening to more Springsteen. In his new book, The Complacent Class, he writes, “Poverty and low incomes have flipped from being reasons to move to reasons not to move … those who most need to move are, on average, the least likely to do it.” He blames American homebodies for some of the recent stagnation in economic productivity. If we can get Americans moving again, the economy will follow. But where should immobile Americans go?
One obvious answer would be America’s big economies: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., or San Francisco. But, as McLemore knows, people have a deep attachment to their place of origin. McLemore calls his home “Shit Town,” from which the podcast gets its name. But he cannot pull a Springsteen.
What’s more, the political homogeneity of America’s cities might dissuade non-urban Americans from moving in. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was stronger in urban areas than former President Barack Obama. This is true for coastal and non-coastal cities alike. In 2012, for example, Obama won Harris County — which hosts Houston, Texas — by less than one-tenth of a percent; in 2016, Clinton won by more than 12 percent. Additionally, 90 percent of counties with fewer than 100,000 residents reddened between 2004 and 2016. In American politics, a chasm separates the urban from the rural.
For folks of a conservative rural background, moving to a distant coastal city — which are often liberal, secular and careerist — might be too much of a culture shock. And, quite frankly, our centers of cultural exchange shouldn’t be ideologically homogeneous.
Federal and state governments should push to create communities in “flyover country” that supply accessible economic and intellectual opportunities for Americans who don’t want to move to a giant coastal city. Recently, political writers have suggested policies to accomplish this goal. Communities cohere when something — a college, a business, an arts scene — brings people together. Matthew Yglesias at Vox proposes moving a number of D.C.-based government agencies to the midwest. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggests levying a massive tax on elite university endowments unless they open satellite campuses in poor, rural regions, such as “Harvard-on-the-Mississippi.”
Americans need to get moving again, but government policy could ease the journey. Cities should beckon striving Americans with economic and cultural opportunities without forcing folks to move into an alien cultural milieu far away from home. Because for Americans like us, baby, we were born to run.
Max Foley-Keene is a freshman government and politics major. He can be reached at maxfkcap2016@gmail.com.
