America is getting divided into two economies by a political chasm
Amazon’s headquarters criteria illustrate forces behind divergence in conditions
Alittle over a year ago, Amazon invited cities and states to offer bids for a proposed second headquarters. This set off a mad scramble over who would gain the dubious privilege of paying large subsidies in return for worsened traffic congestion and higher housing prices. (Answer: New York and greater D.C.)
But not everyone was in the running. From the beginning, Amazon specified it would put the new facility only in a Democratic congressional district.
OK, that’s not literally what Amazon said. It only limited the competition to “metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people” and “urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent.” But in the next Congress, the great majority of locations meeting those criteria will, in fact, be represented by Democrats.
Over the past generation, America’s regions have experienced a profound economic divergence. Rich metropolitan areas have gotten even richer, attracting ever more of the nation’s fastest growing industries. Meanwhile, small towns and rural areas have been bypassed, forming a sort of economic rump left behind by the knowledge economy.
Amazon’s headquarters criteria perfectly illustrate the forces behind that divergence. Businesses in the new economy want access to large pools of highly educated workers, which can be found only in big, rich metropolitan areas.
In other words, there’s a cumulative, self-reinforcing process at work that is, in effect, dividing America into two economies. And this economic division is reflected in political division. In 2016, of course, the parts of America that are being left behind voted heavily for Donald Trump, who promised to bring back traditional jobs in manufacturing and coal mining — but that promise was never credible.
Even if they’re personally doing well, many voters in lagging regions have a sense of grievance, that they’re being disrespected by the glittering elites of superstar cities; this, all too easily, turns into racial antagonism. So the regional economic divide becomes a political chasm. Honestly, I doubt this chasm can be bridged.
So the bitter division we see in America — the ugliness infecting our politics — may have deep economic roots, and there may be no practical way to make it go away. America, then, is a divided nation, and is likely to stay that way for a while.