The map shows a strange phenomenon: America's central strip is aging and dying out. The heart of America is emptying. People is concentrating in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean cities. America will consist in 400 million mixed people living in two urban concentrations separated by 3,000 km. That may have been the reason that Buffet invested in trains.
Unlike Israel, the USA hasnt any population distribution policy. Like Siberia, the heartland of America will be, once more, wildland.
10 comments:
The dark colored strip corresponds to an area that is best suited for highly mechanized wheat farming that requires increasingly fewer people to implement. Now 1 man on a giant tractor can farm hundreds of hectares by himself. Otherwise there are very few attractions to keep young people there - no big cities, no industry, etc. The old people who grew up there remain and collect their pensions but young people cannot find jobs or excitement so they leave as soon as they are grown.
There are plenty of big cities not near the east or west coast, just not in that strip - Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio , Phoenix - half of the top 10 cities are not on the coasts. Note most of these are in the South and have grown rapidly in the last 50 years - air conditioning made it possible to live in these areas.
K
A population distribution policy? In the USA? Ha!
That would require someone to be looking ahead, like, more than a year.
We don't need no population distribution policy. The Soviet Union had a population distribution policy. This means either that you force people to live somewhere they don't want or you "direct" them there with market distorting subsidies. People fully on their own left the stinkin' hellhole of Detroit and moved to union free Texas where the jobs are and that's how it should be.
K
Apart from retirees who moved to Florida or Arizona, the counties with the highest % of old people seem to be rural areas in Tornado Alley or the spring or winter wheat growing areas. Somewhat dry, dusty, flat areas with cold winters and hot summers, rural isolation, farming, and few opportunities for young people — these areas might see extremely automated farming in the future.
You dont see what I see: the rot of depopulation of the center of the country spreading east and west. Someone said something about too many eggs in one basket...?
J - America is unimaginably large (and empty) by Israeli or even European standards - the distance from Los Angeles to New York (4000 km) is same as the distance from Lisbon to Jerusalem (or Jerusalem to Bombay). Seattle lies slightly north of Budapest. Miami lies south of Luxor in Egypt. And this is putting aside Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. If this is putting all your eggs in one basket, it is a very large basket.
K
Perhaps there could be a negotiation for a new promised land somewhere in the Mid-West?
Anon.
What kind of country is when you have two population centers separated by 4000 km of empty land?
It's not empty, just underpopulated by 20th century European standards. Soon Europe will have fewer people too, everywhere. At least the US population is still growing overall.
K
J, one of those population centers is Hispanic. In some ways the map reminds me of the mid-1800's, when most of the White population was located on the East Coast, and a few daring pioneers lived on the Great Plains.
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