Rural News

Many Americans have an idyllic view of rural life, picturing it as of the highest quality. Fewer than one in five Americans live in rural communities. Most of those communities are losing population.  The percentage of Americans living outside cities has shrunk in every census since the Nation was established.

We idealize rural life but we do very little to support America’s rural communities. Many of the fixes proposed for rural communities are urban strategies. The fantasy is that an urban fix, reduced in size and budget, will work in a country town, but because rural communities are simpler, should be much cheaper.

Conversely, much of the funding supposedly targeting rural America goes to urban centers. The zip code to which the most crop subsidy dollars are mailed is in downtown Houston.

We’ve been lucky to spend most of our lives in rural communities.  Between us we have nearly one hundred person years in rural community issues and health services. From time to time, this news piece of our web site will give web visitors selected bits of rural news.  This an an unapologetic, liberal biased, rural focused piece of the web site. 

Web visitors  may want to subscribe to the Daily Yonder (its now a weekly) at https://www.dailyyonder.com. You an also search it for old articles by Wayne Myers.