Tara Westover notes:
“Broadly speaking, the modern economy works well for
cities and badly for the countryside. In recent years, growth has been
hyper-concentrated in our cities, which are hubs of technology and finance.
Meanwhile, the hinterlands, which rely on agriculture and manufacturing—what
you might call the “old economy”—have sunk into a deep decline. There are
places in the United States where the recession never ended. For them, it has
been 2009 for 10 years. That does something to people, psychologically.”
