Originally the Intel Ohio One fab was being lobbied for by some housewife in Lorain. It went to New Albany because that part of Northern Ohio couldn't get its act together in contiguous land acquisition.

> that led to interest rate rises

Interest rates didn't rise because of industrial revival acts; they rose because they had been artificially low for a decade and someone had to throw water on the economy to cool it lest hyperinflation hit.

> and a TON of tech layoffs!

The nature of tech layoffs and what has happened in the Midwest over the last 50 years are completely different. When a guy is let go from Meta, he's let go from a job that earned him well over the median salary for Americans. Provided he hasn't blown it out his ass on courses at microdosing at Esalen, he should have something in savings. He has resources. He has connections. He has opportunities. When you work in an area with that much money in it - remember, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg each have a net worth that puts them on par with the yearly gross economic product of small American metropolitan areas - you can recover.

When a guy was let go from an automotive parts supplier in Michigan in 1988, he's making near that median salary. He has far less cushion. The nature of his work does not allow him to simply open his laptop and toy around with new business ideas, or open a startup; his former employer was the employer in town. When it went under, the town went under, and he had no way to get out.

And that's before accounting for what the rusting hulks of machinery did to the town. Chemicals dumped before regulation poison the water and soil. Major swathes of real estate needing millions of dollars in cleanup before any real redevelopment can occur. Maybe the Feds will get around to it with the Superfund in a generation or two; the developer from back east sure as hell isn't going to pay for it. By the way, can the town - which is already short on funds - give them tax increment financing for that redevelopment? They'll never come out ahead otherwise. You can't just convert a former brake pad manufacturing plant to lofts like you can with a former tech headquarters in San Francisco.

> And are you saying that the US media doesn't pillory Californa as a liberal hellhole? I actually don't even know what distribution of media you consume that doesn't handwring over the morality of liberals.

... where are you getting that from OC's comment?

> Interest rates didn't rise because of industrial revival acts; they rose because they had been artificially low for a decade and someone had to throw water on the economy to cool it lest hyperinflation hit.

I hate "artificially low" why artificial? What makes something artificial and what makes it real? In economics, there's an idea of a natural interest rate: the interest rate which is the lowest under which inflation will not occur. That has been trending lower, see https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/rstar. It absolutely is not artificially set anywhere: the fed doesn't set the natural rate of interest, it accommodates it with a policy rate and has to deal with a 12-18 month lag for their policy to be effective (a fun quirk - there's a cool badeconomics thread on this) which is why it was hard to deal with inflation caused by the russian invasion: you can't predict that 12-18 months out!

> The nature of tech layoffs and what has happened in the Midwest over the last 50 years are completely different.

No data backing this up.

> where are you getting that from OC's comment?

OC talking about media calling them 'flyover country' as if it matters / is somehow out of bounds conduct at all.

> I hate "artificially low" why artificial? What makes something artificial and what makes it real?

When people have cheap access to money, they spend it. When they spend it in such a manner that it outpaces the ability of the supply side to, well, supply, the result is inflation. And that's what we saw in '21 and '22. You had someone handing out PPP loans like candy and forgiving them outright, you had stimmy checks (that weren't backed by anything real, but that's another story), you had people sitting around looking for stuff to pass lockdown with, etc.

So at that point, by definition, we're lower than the "natural" interest rate. This showed that a lot of businesses in the tech industry couldn't survive without dirt-cheap money to give them ever-increasing amounts of runway. You can't just hyper scale like Uber when borrowers expect the rate of return dictated by the now-higher "natural" interest rate.

> No data backing this up.

Besides decades of economic, social, environmental, and political events and trends, you're right. Wanna have a bottle of water from Flint, MI? I can pull one out of the cellar. 2015, a fine year.

> OC talking about media calling them 'flyover country' as if it matters / is somehow out of bounds conduct at all.

1) that's not indicative of the stuff you were charging 2) yeah, it is out-of-bounds conduct. It's an a-hole move to belittle poorer regions in your country, whether explicitly or in more tacit ways. If you do it long enough, you get where we are now. Anyone happy about that?

> And that's what we saw in '21 and '22. You had someone handing out PPP loans like candy and forgiving them outright, you had stimmy checks (that weren't backed by anything real, but that's another story), you had people sitting around looking for stuff to pass lockdown with, etc.

Yes, this is my whole point. The American Rescue Act and subsequent policies that were very much propping up salient jobs (certainly not wfh tech jobs that are, definitionally, resistant to lockdowns) fueled inflation that led to the end of zero interest rate period which led to large layoffs in tech.

> Wanna have a bottle of water from Flint, MI?

Flint falsifies your point, it is a democratic bastion. If you'd expect that to radicalize people, it should be deep deep read.

> yeah, it is out-of-bounds conduct

Out of bounds is a social norm over time. Donald Trump, their far and away champion, gives such egregious conduct I can't read this with a straight face.

But we can go further back. Was 'just say no' not egregious enough for you? AIDS shaming? The vicious anger against gay people? I can take any snapshot of the past - conservatives will always be the cry bully at any of the years in time you want to pick.

> Yes, this is my whole point. The American Rescue Act and subsequent policies that were very much propping up salient jobs (certainly not wfh tech jobs that are, definitionally, resistant to lockdowns) fueled inflation that led to the end of zero interest rate period which led to large layoffs in tech.

Those are of little consequence compared to FRS interest rate policy. Also, those people need a place to work. Sorry.

> Flint falsifies your point, it is a democratic bastion. If you'd expect that to radicalize people, it should be deep deep read.

Democratic or Republican doesn't matter. When you have no more money because of major regional economic changes, you can't do the basic functions of government. There's also demographic differences.

> Out of bounds is a social norm over time. Donald Trump, their far and away champion, gives such egregious conduct I can't read this with a straight face.

That's what rage does.

> But we can go further back. Was 'just say no' not egregious enough for you? AIDS shaming? The vicious anger against gay people? I can take any snapshot of the past - conservatives will always be the cry bully at any of the years in time you want to pick.

You're confusing "conservative" with people in the part of the country that we're talking about.