Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

@lcd+1fVQ9T4q

I did go to college in the big city, a very progressive one. This is one reason I choose not to live in the paved over urban hellscape. If you don't think there are uneducated id--ts living in every area in the country, you really need to get out more. Ride mass transit much? Or do you just cruise in your Subaru straight from the gated community to work?

@1eqv+1fVQ9T4q

lol. Unincorporated cities! The humanity! What will we ever do! You really should get out and about more.

@htg+1fVQ9T4q

lol. I hope you're right, but so long as there is cheap land, labor, and less bureaucratic hoops to jump through, there will always be people living in rural areas. If not, good, my neighbors are a bit too close anyway.

Automation isn't a great concern, it'll ki-l jobs everywhere, and people will transition to other things, like they always have throughout history. Tech will open new doors. I can do my 'big city job' from anywhere. This appears to be breaking news to some, but most rural folk aren't farmers. There's been so much consolidation in that industry over the last century that it's a pretty small minority doing it out here. Kinda like how not everyone in the city is an office drone. Stereotypes rarely hold up.

Anyway, like I said before, I am glad that you guys love the big city (or it's sprawling burbs). That is GREAT news and appreciated.

@1eqv I think you’re missing the point. It will be fine.

This has been going on forever. People adapt. Newsflash. Farmers used to have a zillion kids and the family were “the workers!” Sounds like the spouse will pitch in and someone else will open a restaurant or be a teacher in her place. This is exactly why the hire illegal immigrants to pick all over the country. I’m not arguing with you that it’s not a concern but the entire world isn’t doomed. Are you a farmer? What does this have to do with layoffs at WF? Feel free to move your a$$ out to BFE and start a farm. There’s plenty of land in our country to do so.

@1lzy+1fVQ9T4q
Wildly missing the point. 7 years to lose half its population? That’s high. The collapse is still happening. They are shrinking, not growing. But when farms around these towns begin to automate, other farms will feel the pressure to reduce farm staff and do the same. The farm owner will continue to make money but the people they employ will look for work elsewhere. Where to go when the majority of farms are all modernizing and automating? Those people will relocate and if they’re married most likely their wife and family comes along, removing more people from the town. Maybe the spouse was a doctor or teacher. Maybe they ran a business in that small town. Now since they have to move that resource closes too. It ripples outward and has been for the better part of a decade. Regional small cities (30k-75k) will grow marginally but more people will move closer to large cities. Rural towns like the ones you both mentioned are doomed. You don’t have to like it but it doesn’t make it not true. You’ll see larger waves of them “un-incorporating” in 2 decades or less.

@1weg You are making a lot of assumptions. “As they collapse.” Have they collapsed? No. You are talking about a town of 179 people of which have only lost about 100 people since 2015. That’s 7 years! Maybe those 100 people were old or died of covid. Who knows. If the people there rely on farming so heavily (which I believe we ALL do seeing as we don’t have orange trees, green beans and cows in our backyards), then maybe go next door and help/buy some food directly from said farmer. It looks like the majority of everyone’s livelihoods would be farming there anyway. I’ve lived in Springhill and Columbia, TN, which are very small. Everyone finds groceries and supports our local farmers at the same time. Calm down.

@hpr+1fVQ9T4q
True rural towns like Walnut Grove TN for example - where there aren’t larger cities for quite a stretch - are nearly almost all supported by farming and services supporting those farmers. As those collapse it will drive them to bigger towns, and if those bigger nearby towns are also collapsing, they keep going until they find a big enough city. Which in many cases starts to nuzzle up to larger metro areas. It’s been happening for 15+ years in the plains states and southwest.

@toz While farming is in danger, you’re acting like everything in rural areas is farming. It isn’t. Sometimes rural areas are just land with nothing but woods or small towns with dinners or plants to manufacture goods/cars. Farming is not the end all, be all of rural life.

@tce you apparently only think there is urban and rural. i live in fort mill outside charlotte. this is not rural. it used to be. a lot of people live in suburban areas where all you list is not really an issue. Try living somewhere where your neighbors are ignorant people that talk like the guy from slingblade and knocking up their cousins. That’s real. No thank you! Glad I left and traveled/went to college.

Also, the correct word is, “too” not “to.”

If you don't think farming will eventually be automated, go read up on vertical farms and the quality of product they can kick out. Rural farming isn't going to hold a candle to that.

@ tce+1fVQ9T4q
When the jobs dry up, you’ll see. When doctors offices won’t stay open for the aging farmers (average age is 55+ in most states), schools don’t have enough kids for teachers to remain employed or when schools move to hub based remote teaching, and technology infrastructure is no longer updated due to low return, maybe you’ll see it too.

Look at trucking now - every major US and some international auto maker is pouring money into automating trucking now, and it increased sharply when the mo--ns did their “freedom” rally. People moved from major urban cities a lot the past few years, but the majority stayed within the greater metro areas and every single state saw major migrations all towards their largest cities. I’m not saying small towns will completely die. There will be regional hubs. But many small rural towns will cease to exist. The people there will move to regional hubs which will grow briefly, then shrink rapidly as boomer exit this plane of existence. Without young people and farmers to keep the cities and towns afloat the picture is grim for many rural areas.

Depends on the rural area. They can't build houses fast enough in my neck of the woods.

I do chuckle at the city folk when they talk about these issues. I've lived in 2 major cities over the years, and if at all possible I never will again. To much crime, to many riots, to many rules, to many taxes, to many Karens, to much noise, to many bureaucrats, to many self righteous chuckleheads telling other people what you do, how to live. On and on it goes. It's a miserable way to "live". The only reason for me to live in a city is for work, and with WFH increasing by the year, that's less relevant by the minute. Some people love urban living, and I say "thank goodness". The more that do, the less will move to rural America. That's a good thing. The things that the country "doesn't have" aren't things I'm interested in, or at best are things I can visit and then go back home where I belong. There's a lot of things that urban America is 'missing' also. Peace and quiet, nature, wide open spaces, respectful folk, the ability to leave your car unlocked without worry etc.

So yeah, if you like the big city and hate rural areas GREAT. We appreciate y'all for staying there.

Maybe that strengthens the shortfalls in social security

@aez+1fVQ9T4q
You under estimate the power of the dollar. As jobs dry up due to automation in farming, those small towns will have less people from “the boonies” supporting their businesses. They will close and have little choice but to move or be jobless. They might have been baby machines but COVID has ravaged lots of those areas and a COVID infection can also severely hurt reproduction chances as well. Sky rocketing dr-g abuse in those areas eventually adds to the misery. It’s going to be an avalanche of change for those people, and it’s going to happen fast once the automation wave becomes affordable. Why else would Bill Gates own such a massive chunk of farmland in multiple US states?

@ays I think you’ve severely underestimated the type of people living in those areas. I grew up there and half of them are just baby machines. They’ll recoup just fine and continue their long reign of d-mbassery on the rest of the nation. They take pride in it. It wont be long before we will become a total Idiocracy.

Combine that with the migration towards metro areas, and it’s not hard to see why. Small rural areas are dying and will continue to wither for another decade or so. Small regional hubs for farm workers and shipping will be all that’s left in maybe 2 decades.

Yeah, duh. Like, nearly a million ppl have died of covid just here. I don’t know the number but I’m sure that was a factor and half of them did it to themselves. If there was bubonic plague where you die a horrible death or your pe--s shriveled up, EVERY MAN would have been in a vaccine line. Seriously, the ignorance. Sorry, that was just the government plant inside of me speaking. Covid isn’t real. Lets go brenden or whatever.