The elitist brain drain claim

Work skills have value

In their 2009 book “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America,” Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas make the elitist argument that the problem with rural America is that the best people are leaving.

It is an academic way of calling rural Americans “deplorables” and “Walmart shoppers.” It is also an academic way of getting things all wrong.

The problem with rural America is not that small towns are falling apart because their best and brightest are going off to college and never returning.

Let’s say I returned to my hometown of Elkhorn, Wisconsin with my Ph.D. and developed a business. I would more than likely either pay low wages or ship the jobs overseas in search of even cheaper labor. The problem with rural America is not a brain drain but a lack of good-paying jobs.

The elitist argument is that rural American workers are receiving low wages because they lack job skills. If they all went off to elite universities or became welders, everything would be fine.

Yet we see in our everyday lives that a lot of workers have skills that are underappreciated. You see it when you try to buy lumber at a box store from a kid who doesn’t know the difference between piece of plywood and a railroad tie. You see it when lazy workers are too busy talking to each other or playing with their cell phones to wait on you. You see it when encountering rude employees or hang up on someone from the Philippines because you can’t understand what they are saying.

Knowledge of products being sold and services being provided is a valuable skill. Knowing how to fix things when they break, a good work ethic and a flair for customer service are skills that are in short supply. But the elitists running our society have decided people with these skills are losers who deserve low wages.

To save rural America, this nation needs to again reward ability and hard work, not wait for kids who spent four years drinking at major state universities to come home and save the day.