America's Fastest-Dying Towns

The picture of a successful town presented here is of a place that has given up any hope of surviving without the patronage of people who live elsewhere, that is, in cities—where, presumably, actual things are still being made.

It suggests something about the hollowing out of the American economy that, by the 1990s, even those living in actual cities had begun to make the story of the town we must leave behind their own. If you feel stifled by Chicago, that’s your fault.

Efforts to reinvent downtown Middletown always struck me as futile. People didn’t leave because our downtown lacked trendy cultural amenities. The trendy cultural amenities left because there weren’t enough consumers in Middletown to support them. And why weren’t there enough well-paying consumers? Because there weren’t enough jobs to employ those

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