Is There an Urban-Rural Divide?
7th January 2019
Antiplanner looks at the situation.
Fundamentally, however, it isn’t urban and rural that causes the divide. It is middle class (meaning college educated with jobs that are based on thinking) versus working class (meaning jobs that are more based on physical labor). The nation has always had far more working class people than middle class people, and that remains true in rural areas. But in urban areas the middle class has grown while the working class has not. This has led to the appearance of an urban-rural divide, but that really just disguises the middle-class/working-class divide.
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The real surprise is not that there is a middle-class/working-class divide, but that the working-class are so heavily Republican. At one time, the working class was heavily unionized and union workers tended to vote Democratic. Today, the strongest unions are public employees unions, and they are middle class. Most working-class workers — mechanics, electricians, plumbers, and so forth — are no unionized, and many own or aspire to own their own businesses, which puts them in the Republican camp to the extent that Republicans oppose regulation and taxation of small businesses.