A large segment of Donald Trump's base live in rural areas that have been abandoned by their major employers. He told them that he would bring their jobs back. That not very likely. This article explains why suburbia may become more like rural America. Corporations are moving the headquarters, and the jobs that went with them, to large cities like Chicago. They are doing it for business purposes. Younger, well educated Americans prefer to live in large cities like Chicago. Large corporations are competing for them and they a moving to where the brains are. It is also where most of their customers choose to live. General Electric is moving its corporate headquarters from suburbia to Boston because it needs the highly educated workforce in Boston to pursue its business objectives. Donald Trump told his supporters in rural America that its jobs were lost to low wage workers in foreign nations who were cheating them. Those decisions were made by US corporations for business reasons. The recent decisions by large corporations to move their headquarters to large cities are also being made for business reasons. Those decisions are bound to lead to economic disruptions in many suburban areas. Its important to understand that business decisions drive most of what happens in America. Governments need to be in position to deal with those disruptions. There is not much that can be done to prevent them from making necessary business decisions.
This trend also shows the importance of America's university system to its future. Our superior research universities attract numbers of students from other nations across the globe. Conservative attacks on our university system for political reasons, based upon claims about their liberal bias, are a threat to our economic future as well as to liberal democracy.
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