Frustration in rural America, which has long felt left behind in federal attention and dollars, has been a major driver of right-wing populism. To counter that, the Biden administration has bet literally billions on the idea that federal investments can turn those places around. The infrastructure act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act all contained special incentives aimed at improving the economic prospects of rural towns and small cities across the country.
It’s too early to tell whether it worked.
Stockman then notes a recently published Brookings Institution Report seeking to assess just that--whether these investments are working. In particular, it tracks "$525 billion in private investment in advance technologies like clean energy and semiconductors" and "found that a significant portion has gone into economically depressed places that hadn't seen those types of investments before." Here's a bullet point form the Bookings Institution Report:
So far, economically distressed counties are receiving a larger-than-proportional share of that investment surge relative to their current share of the economy. With comparatively low prime-age employment rates and median household incomes, these counties account for about 8% of national GDP but have received 16% of announced strategic sector investments since 2021.
The NYT blog post focuses on Haywood County, Tennessee and Matagorda County, Texas, which are seeing the benefit of these investments.
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