Did anyone else live in a town/city like I did?

[Nikia]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x1328341#1328484. (I probably didn't do that right. The "Good Ole Days" thread.
A city/town (include metroarea if applicable, I'm not talking about central city flight) that is or recently (within 30 years)experienced a population decline, general economic decline, and socioeconomic decline of the average person. What is the best strategy for local government/business to deal with this situation? What should people do who live in places like this besides move somewhere better.

[Joy Anne]

1. When the local economy falls apart

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.

[Nikia]

2. Maybe I worded this wrong

I know that outsourcing and the fall of manufacturing has caused this problem in other cities and towns too. It continues to happen as towns and small cities lose major employers. Isn't this an important issue or is just too depressing to talk about?

[Joy Anne]

3. losing major employers

It is an important issue. States and localities fought this for years, mostly by competing against each other with tax abatements, free job training specific to the corporation's wishes, and other taxpayer-bleeding actions. Then, instead of moving to cheap-labor, low-tax, union-free states, the businesses moved out of the country altogether.

I don't know what can be done other than the actions Pennsylvania is now taking (see previous post) until we have a populist administration that will (1) change the tax code and government contract bidding to reward rather than punish companies that stay put and (2) revise or rescind NAFTA and our other dysfunctional trade treaties.

But then I'm just one self-employed person with a one-course background in economics who's been using the tax code to fund a puny retirement plan with a Pax socially responsible mutual fund.