> Note that nobody's calling for the federal government to spend zero money in rural areas, when they talk about subsidies, they usually mean spending a disproportionate amount of money there.
This is interesting because I think this is the heart of a disagreement between urban and rural folks.
From the urban side, there's the perspective of "we're sending more to the government than the government is spending on us!". This is totally valid, and can be frustrating as a city-dweller. This is also exactly what we'd expect, though, given that the whole conceit of cities is that they introduce economies of scale and industrial concentration. Cities specialize at producing a lot of value without taking as much infrastructure or upkeep.
From the rural side, though, there's the opposite perspective. Of course there's more of a maintenance cost: you can't centralize ten-thousand acres of farmland, it is expansive by its definition. Likewise, you can't centralize resource extraction: the resources exist where they exist, and at the density they exist. A local mining operation may only need a few dozen workers, but those workers need roads, electricity, water, and housing which cannot scale. The purpose of this disproportionate spending and investment is to make possible the economies of scale within cities that consume this rural output.
A simple metaphor here is the idea of organs within the body. Your gut subsidizes the rest of your body calorie-wise: your intestines send far more calories to the rest of your body than they consume. Then again, of course they do, because if they didn't they would serve no benefit.
Cities may consume a lot of resources, but produce disproportionately more money. Rural areas may consume a lot of money, but produce disproportionately more resources. This is to be expected, since they're each specializing in separate things. If we're expecting farmlands to be as economically efficient as cities, then it's only fair to expect cities to be as agriculturally efficient as rural areas.
