One thing I've been noticing about responses to today's column is that many people still don't get how strong the forces behind regional divergence are, and how hard to reverse 1/ nytimes.com/2018/11/19/opi…
Maybe it will help to focus on a specific comparison. The San Francisco-San Jose complex -- the Bay Area -- is among the best-educated metros in America. Fresno, about 2 1/2 hours away, is among the least-educated 2/ brookings.edu/blog/the-avenu…
So what would it take to induce high-tech companies to relocate to Fresno? Even quite large subsidies probably wouldn't do it. After all, they're still concentrating in Silicon Valley despite huge increases in real housing costs relative to other areas 3/ 
What companies want is a big critical mass of high-education workers. And that won't materialize unless lots of other companies also move to Fresno, generating both that critical mass and the amenities such workers demand. So it would take a huge Big Push 4/
That's not going to happen -- and even if it did in Fresno, that would just add another superstar metro, and do nothing for all the other left-behinds.
The point is that you can do a lot for the people in such locations -- give them health insurance, subsidize their wages 5/
The point is that you can do a lot for the people in such locations -- give them health insurance, subsidize their wages 5/
But can you really revitalize the locations themselves? Maybe here and there, if you're lucky. But the economic logic is pushing us toward big concentrations 6/
