Daily Yonder editor disputes urbanites' assertions that rural America gets too much federal money

Two pillars of the Eastern liberal establishment keep propounding the false assertion that rural America gets too much federal money, Bill Bishop reports in the Daily Yonder. "The Brookings Institution and The New York Times are convinced the federal government spends 'vastly more' per person in rural areas than in the cities," Bishop writes. "Why do they continue to get this story wrong?"

Bishop, co-editor of the Yonder, generated some data and graphics to rebut the assertions:

Bishop cites data from the Ecomomic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ERS also provided data for this chart:

"The nation doesn’t have a plan for rural communities either and several advocates have concluded that rural America will never get much notice from what they consider the most urban-centric administration in memory," Bishop writes. "Nobody is happy. And blaming Iowa or Obama for the general disinterest in both rural and urban America hasn’t done much good. Better if we all complained less and worked more. To that end, the Daily Yonder will publish a two-part series, beginning Monday, on what a national rural policy should look like." (Read more)