Keep decision-making at the local level!

In the Daily Caller, Joel Kotkin writes in part,

…The pandemic has shown, in stark terms, how different New York is from most of the country. New York City is easily the densest place in America, and accounts for over 40 percent of all transit commuters in the nation. All of this contributes to what demographer Wendell Cox calls “exposure density ” as workers go from crowded apartments to packed subways and buses, and head to dense workplaces. Add to this the incompetence of city leaders, the poor sanitation of the subways, and an already creaking hospital system, and you have a formula for disaster.

Much has been made of the notion that the pandemic will bring on “the death of small-town America,” as suggested by the New York Times in a story based largely on anecdotes from one New Hampshire town. To a large extent, outside of ski resorts and health-challenged places such as Native American reservations or around meat-packing plants, the hinterland has so far avoided the worst impacts from the pandemic. Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota now all have among the lowest rates of COVID-related deaths in the country, twenty times lower or more than the pace of New York. These divisions have been so widespread that some states have tried to keep people from high-infection areas from entering their states.

…Levels of lethality naturally shape political perceptions and priorities. So too does the way in which people make their living. In smaller towns and cities, the economy tends to be more connected to production — in factories, warehouses, farms, mines, and the energy sector. These industries are not well suited to “social distancing,” although they may have great potential to grow in the post-pandemic era as we become more dependent on filling online orders, while manufacturing shifts back here from China and the U.S. becomes fully energy self-sufficient.

…Energy, already targeted by progressives for extinction, also faces a huge drop as people around the world drive less and hunker down. The collapse of fracking could devastate economies from Pennsylvania to Texas. Similarly, with restaurants sidelined, many agricultural enterprises are in crisis, while aerospace production, widely seen as a hope in southern states like South Carolina and across mid-America, could face a decade of decline.

In contrast, far less impacted are those “symbolic” professions that dominate the cosmopolitan centers on the coasts. As local papers die, restaurants, Main Street shops and factories shutter, the national and international media continues to function from their apartments or country houses. Financial analysts can also work from home, as many professionals, even doctors, have found ways to work remotely. This could constitute as much as 37 percent of the workforce.

…California, for example, has placed a green oligarch billionaire, Tom Steyer, in charge of the recovery. As he directs the “recovery,” Steyer is certain to push the climate agenda to its extreme, threatening many non-tech businesses already reeling under California’s brutal regulatory regime. In New York, corporate shill McKinsey, one of the prime architects and advocates of off-shoring dependence on China, will outline New York’s recovery, something that may be greeted with enthusiasm by developers and big businesses but should send a shudder down the spines of anyone outside the elites in the big coastal cities.

The key here, if we want to remain the United States, is allowing decision-making to remain at the local level where conditions now vary widely. The pandemic has already expanded the power of governments at all levels to unimagined heights. But if this becomes a policy driven from Washington, the threat to the federal system could be profound.

Read more here.