Country vs. city

On Friday, a man who has spent most of his life in the very heart of the nation’s most populous and economically important metropolitan area was inaugurated as president in the very heart of its sixth-most populous and fifth-most economically important metro area.

Who put Donald Trump there? People who don’t live anywhere near the heart of populous, economically important metropolitan areas.

It’s not quite as simple as city vs. country. Jonn Elledge, writing in the UK’s New Statesman, points out that struggling, smallish industrial cities lean extremist/populist, while affluent suburbs and college towns lean progressive/establishment. He cites a University of Southampton scholar who favors the terms “cosmopolitan” vs. “shrinking.” In the US, Mark Muro and Sifan Liu of the Brookings Institution figured out that the counties that voted

for Trump account for only 36 percent of US gross domestic product, and described the electoral divide as “highoutput America” vs. “low-output” America.”

City boy Trump was able to get rural support mainly by harnessing discontent that is present almost everywhere but generally stronger the farther you get from a big, thriving metropolitan area — generally, those cities with at least 500,000 people and a state capital or a university (or both).

There are lots of reasons for that discontent, but I can’t help but focus on the economics. And . . . they really don’t look good for rural and smalltown America. All the trends that have been driving growth toward metropolitan areas — and wealth toward the heart of those metropolitan areas — look set to continue.

None of this is a political forecast. Politics have a habit of surprising people (like me) who focus on demographic and economic trends. But demographic and economic trends also have a habit of thwarting the sometimes unrealistic yearnings of voters.

Justin Fox, Bloomberg View