Back when I was an electrical engineering undergraduate student and thoroughly unhappy in that collegiate setting, I am not sure if I would have immediately jumped on "economic geography," even if somebody had expressed that to me like in the "plastics" scene in The Graduate.
The reality is that I had always been thinking about economic geography without ever knowing that there was a field of study called economic geography. I couldn't care about how electrons traveled and about silicon chips. I was sincerely worried about the poverty and illiteracy and open defecation and more that was all around. A silicon chip was not going to do a damn thing about those human problems.
Graduate school took me to an intellectual world that was unknown to me all through my formal years of education in the old country. Books and journals and talks and ...
Decades later, as I noted here, when people ask me what economic geography is about, one of the examples I give them is what I refer to as a big-picture question. "Why are some countries rich and some poor?" It is, after all, one of the pressing questions to which, as a teenager, I was struggling to find an answer.
People always get excited about this example. Their response is typically along the lines of "wow, I had no idea that geography includes such topics. I would love to take your classes."
In a huge country like the United States, that question can also be scaled down to "why are some regions rich and some poor?"
That economic geography question easily translates into the political world. Hillary Clinton spoke the truth to struggling workers in the coal belt, when she told them coal wasn't coming back, and that her government would invest in job-training programs to help them find alternative jobs. tRump, on the other hand, blatantly lied to them that if elected he will bring even more high paying coal jobs to the region.
The liar won.
But, the liar cannot remake economic geography. The poorer regions are getting relatively poorer, but they continue to vote for liars!
2000: Gore won 659 counties accounting for 54% of the US economy.
2016: Clinton won 472 counties accounting for 64% of the US economy.
2020: Biden won 477 counties accounting for 70% of the US economy.
Notice both the trends: A decreasing number of counties won by Democrats but representing increasing percentages of the national economic output.
Though I detest tRump, and have no patience for those who voted for him, I worry about this trend. It does not bode well for the country, for democracy, and--more importantly--for the people who voted for tRump in the lagging regions.
Blue and red America reflect two very different economies: one oriented to diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services occupations, and the other whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on “traditional” industries.
There are reasons why immigrants are going only to some places. The reasons have a lot to do with economic geography.
Therefore,
If this pattern continues—with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority—it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places.
The challenges are in plenty. Starting with how to make people understand the basics of economic geography in their own lives. How do we convince people about the importance of truth?
I hope that Joe Biden and his team will be able to do these. If they fail, we all will fail.
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