“I believe that each of us who has his place to make should go where men are wanted, and where employment is not bestowed as alms,” advised New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley in a famous 1871 letter. “Of course, I say to all who are in want of work, Go West!” Basically, Greeley was telling Americans to pick up and go to where the jobs and opportunities are.

Americans were once more willing to heed Greeley’s advice. From the end of World War II through the 1980s, the Census Bureau reports, about 20 percent of Americans changed their residences annually, with more than 3 percent moving to a different state each year. Now more are staying home. In November, the Census Bureau reported that Americans were moving at historically low rates: Only 11.2 percent moved in 2015, and just 1.5 percent moved to a different state. Yet many of the places where people are stuck offer few opportunities.

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Schleicher cites one of the odder contentions for place-based subsidies, made by the Stanford law professor Michelle Wilde Anderson. If Oregon taxpayers subsidize public services in economically declining rural areas of the state, Anderson argues, the country people will stay put and be an inspiration to city dwellers. “In my view, historic places and modes of living have existence value, even when they have trouble attracting residents and businesses in a competitive system,” she writes. “Just as there is existence value to the forest ecosystems themselves – humankind made spiritually and morally more whole through the existence of households and environments beyond the hustle bustle of urban materialism.” Basically, stay on the farm and in small towns in order to gratify urban fantasies about how hardy country folk live.