Reply #1: When the local economy falls apart

[Joy Anne]

I know where you're coming from, and the prior poster, too. I wouldn't want to go back to the days of separate male and female help-wanted pages either, but something appalling has been happening to the economy.

I don't have any quick solutions, except mine, which is to be self-employed and do all my work via the Internet or FedEx. Pennsylvania is working on rehabilitating brownfields to make them industry-ready, setting up incubators especially in college towns, extending infrastructure (such as high-speed Internet; I wouldn't move anywhere that made me use dial-up) to remote areas of the state, and trying to identify and fund emerging industries that are well suited to the state. I don't know if this will help; I hope so.

Town and city rejuvenation is going better. We have lots of small towns whose run-down Victorian houses have been rehabbed by people who are sick of living in suburbs, as well as some new city housing, and downtown improvements have followed.