Reader responses to Paul Krugman's "rural rage" column

From New York Times readers in response to the January 27, 2023 column by Paul Krugman, which I wrote about here:

Mr. Krugman’s piece on rural resentment illustrates, in its inadvertent condescension, the very reasons rural people resent big-city elites.

Mr. Krugman details the reasons rural complaints about big government are wrong, noting, for example, that much more federal assistance and more investment funds go to many rural areas than come in through taxes. This misses the deeper issue: Human beings need to be needed, to feel that the work they do matters to the larger community.

For decades now the jobs that help men to feel they are contributing something essential, such as coal mining, manufacturing and farming, have been disappearing. We’ve created an economy that cuts off access to meaningful work, and then told people we’ll “help them” with welfare. Who wouldn’t resent that?

Carol Frances Johnston
Indianapolis

To the Editor:

In my town of approximately 5,000 people, there are at least five farms. Those federal farm subsidies go mostly to corporate farms, leaving family farms the crumbs. Who helps young people who want to farm to buy farmland? Who helps farmers construct decent housing for their migrant workers? Who helps food producers convert to organic farming or to crops that pay them more? 

What if the government reopened the rural hospitals that were closed and subsidized them, staffing them with nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives who know when to send their patients to doctors and when to treat them on-site?

What if it helped locals revitalize Main Street, set up food co-ops when the only supermarket leaves town, and replace the only bank when it closes?

These projects will turn rural residents’ negative opinions of “the government” around.

Andi Weiss Bartczak
Gardiner, N.Y.

To the Editor:

When my kids graduated from a rural high school in upstate New York in the mid 1980s, every classmate with decent academic skills and ambition went away to college, most never to return. They were applauded and encouraged by their teachers and the community.

Those left behind must have had some feelings of resentment. While they are proud of their children’s achievement, their children and grandchildren now live far away. The kids may have picked up more liberal social values and no longer attend church.

Thus, the resentment toward “elites” in a rural area may be less that they feel disrespected, but that the elites have taken their family away. Economic issues are secondary.

William Hussey
New York

To the Editor:

As a product of rural Ohio and a current San Franciscan, I disagree with Paul Krugman’s argument about the disrespect rural Americans feel. It is not a simple manner of which side makes fun of the other.

White rural Americans have felt they have been progressively losing the culture war on the battlefield of our cultural institutions (entertainment, media, education, politics) since at least the 1960s.

These institutions have been used to change or advance views on various issues — race, gender and sexuality, political correctness, to name a few — and this has been seen as an affront to a deeply held identity rooted in faith and family traditions. This affront is where the rage comes from.

Seth Andrzejewski
San Francisco

The Daily Yonder published this response to Krugman, by Claire Carlson.