But the wider argument, which I suspect I didn't make clear in my OP, is that the systematical changes are making rural areas and small-town America simply unsustainable.

Rural America's been in decline since FDR. It hasn't had a serious upswing under JFK, Johnson, Clinton, or Obama, nor have the downswings under Nixon, Reagan, Bush I & II been all that remarkably part of their policies.

Those knuckle-draggers in fly-over country can't get a break, even from those like us who hold those bitter backwater bumpkins in such high regard.

It could be. For sure, Trump has no interest in small town America. Hell, he doesn't care much for city dwellers.

I suspect there will be a lot of disappointed red-state inhabitants over the next few years. Most, if not all, of Trump's promises were unrealistic in the extreme, or if realistic are already in the works.

The wall? Pretty much all of the border where a wall/fence makes any sense is already there.

Deportation? We're already deporting people at record levels, have been for years. I suppose one could argue that we're deporting the "wrong" people, but from Trumps latest comments about "concentrating on criminals" we're doing that, too.

Registries? Pretty sure most immigrants are already 'registered.' They are only de-listed when they accept citizenship.

Trump is a huckster, and he just did his best sales job on the red states of America. I certainly don't see much in his policy or his recent actions that would bolster small town/rural America.

Coal, for a variety of reasons, is not coming back. Even IF he brought back manufacturing plants, they would probably come to urban areas and thanks to automation they wouldn't employ as many people as they did in the past.

As idiot-proof as they make machinery, I've seen far too many idiots destroy far too much expensive equipment at my job.

Ever see a guy spray a bank of 480-volt control panels for a factory floor with a high-pressure hose because he thought he needed to clean it off? He was lucky he even survived! That mistake cost us $25,000 in a fraction of a second, a full day of lost production time, and got him walked out the door. And we thought he was one of the smarter ones!

No access to health care is deadly. And no one will build a hospital in an area where they know that it will be overrun by uninsured patients.

As it is, we are losing farmland to development and bad business practices.

Any comments on this?

If vertical farming proves effective then even farming communities might suffer.

First of all, you gotta know the difference between rural land West of the Rockies and east of them.
fed. Gov owns a LOT of "rural" in teh West.

Here in Ala. most of the land is owned by individuals, and Ala. is 80% rural.and a lot of that land has been in the family for 100 years or more.

What sustains rural living here is trees, for timber, cattle and other market animals, and farming.
Also people tend to have various side jobs in addition to their land based income.
About every 5th person I meet is also a forester. Neighbor across the street is a forester and has a real estate company ( real estate not doing well here at all).
Couple of military bases help with the economy, plus the space research in Huntsville, plus a very large collection of hospital complexes and private medical centers in the state, which support workers who live in rural areas and commute to the cities.

Surprising number of people are getting their post grad education in-state, and working here.
People who move away after high school often come back at some point, I have run into a surprising number of them.

Lots of retired folks here to spend their pension/Soc. Sec..cause good housing in pretty cheap.

Southern rural life is not as expensive as other areas of the country, and people can grow a back yard garden to help out,
Heck, I live IN town and we had chickens for awhile. Law allows them.

does anyone expect Trump and his peers to support small family farms? Ag has been succumbing to agri-business for decades. If anything, I would expect this to accelerate. Again, increased mechanization and automation will not lead to jobs in agricultural communities.

Unless you inherit a farm, there's virtually no chance you could even buy good land in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Georgia.

Then you get to try and survive based on whatever ADM, Cargill et. al. feel like paying.

Oh, and you get to compete with agricultural imports from Chile, China, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Mexico . . .

Meanwhile out west, a lot of red-state territory is depopulating. Some parts, like the Dakotas, might be viable farm country but won't be because of lack of hospitals, schools, and grocery stores.

Other parts are heading that way because of changing rainfall patterns and because of lack of water as they pump their aquifers dry.

So of course folks in those parts vote for Trump and the climate change-denying Tea-publican Party.

Go figure.

They've always been a fall back position, or even a full time profession, in our economy. But self driving trucks are coming on fast, and that means something like 3.5 million jobs possibly disappearing.
Will Trump outlaw them to save his constituency?

. . .more jobs lost as there are fewer parts and services needed for those vehicles.

Even Trump can't stop those, either. That ship has also sailed.

That alone will keep rural areas going at a good clip.



Personally I wouldn't live anywhere that my GSDs can't run free.

or health care availability that is killing rural America, it's education too.
I went to 12 years of school in small town OK, graduating in 1978. When I say small, I mean tiny. There were 7 people in my class, 54 in the entire school.
The pay and living conditions were crappy and so the teachers were bottom of the barrel. If you got a good one, they MIGHT finish out the school year. During 4 years of HS I had one math class and one science class, both taught by the PE teacher.
Most people were married before graduation, a lot of guys dropped out to work, hardly anyone went to college. I was one of the lucky ones. I figured it out early enough to educate myself with the librarians help at the county library. I squeaked into a Jr. College where I had to prove myself before being accepted into a University. It was quite a shock at first to find that even with all the extra work and leaving with a 3.8, my education was Jr High level at best. Eventually I obtained 3 degrees, in Broadcast Engineering, Audio Engineering and Nursing.
Ah, but that was nearly 40 years ago you say, surely the school has closed or standards have been raised. Nope. I have friends that still live in that twilight zone and their kids attend the same school with the same outcomes. Some friends who have tried to better themselves have seen the light and moved to where their kids have more opportunities than they did. More will be doing so in the near future.

And they have all Republican reps who for nothing for them.