Few readers will disagree with this sentence: “There are real economic challenges confronting small towns, many of which struggle to add jobs and retain population in today’s knowledge-driven economy.”
That pretty much sums up Columbia and the whole of this region of South Mississippi during the last few years. This area has yet to bounce back from the 2008 recession, and Mississippi as a whole is one of the few states that is losing population. Much of the rest of America seems to be doing better than a decade ago, but we are not. This creates an inevitable insecurity as to whether the local economy ever will improve.
The sentence in question is from a paper by the Brookings Institution, where two researchers published a report last week that suggested ways to help rural areas.
One key element of their case is that establishing policies to help mid-sized cities grow — rather than lumping everything into America’s biggest cities — also will help nearby rural areas.
Their suggestions are an excellent economic development playbook for Mississippi, which has an abundance of rural areas and only a few mid-sized cities to go along with them:
• Give local officials, instead of those at the state level, more say in economic policy. States like Nevada, Tennessee and Virginia have started planning from the bottom up rather than the top down by focusing on regional economic development groups.
• Prepare workers for the modern economy “by strengthening existing universities, community colleges, and workforce readiness programs.”
• Get the federal and state governments to address current disparities with more digital skills training and rural internet access.
• And finally, the one that will be most difficult for job-hungry Mississippi to shake — “align public investments to prioritize homegrown job creation, not recruitment of individual companies.” Or, to put it more bluntly, stop subsidizing large companies with hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, since relatively few areas benefit. The better way to help small communities is to promote existing industries and to encourage entrepreneurs to give their ideas a chance.
The Brookings researchers said rural America depends heavily on cities. The title of their report is, “Why Rural America Needs Cities.” From a tax standpoint, urban prosperity subsidizes public spending in rural areas. Thriving cities help nearby smaller towns, and one analysis has found that some rural residents help their hometowns by returning after gaining new skills and experiences in a city.
Realistically, small towns are small because they cannot compete with larger cities. But the Brookings report states that one of the best ways to help rural America is to support the development of “economically vibrant” small and mid-sized cities. This is exactly what South Mississippi needs.
