On: Governments should compete for residents, not busi...

[comte7092]

Even in the era of remote work, businesses are attracted to places with strong (as in a well developed & highly skilled workforce) labor markets.

Workers who have high career capital are mobile and can generally choose where they want to live.

Nothing about this is unserious just because it doesn’t fit your worldview.

[bluGill → comte7092]

That depends. Factory work is often attracted to a dieing town in the middle of nowhere they can scoup up cheap labor that is just skilled enough. You can only get your factory so large doing this though, but there are towns of 5-10k people that fit the bill just fine for manufacturing cheap in the US.

[comte7092 → bluGill]

Yes indeed, however that isn’t really an economic development model most would want to hold up as an ideal.

[bluGill → comte7092]

Those small towns won't get anything better and know it do they consider it their best possible model.

[comte7092 → bluGill]

Yes, I’m just saying that I don’t see how that is a generalizable mode outside of that narrow circumstance.

There may be a large number of small towns, but most people and most economic activity happens in larger urban areas, and that’s what is germane to the article’s argument.