We Don’t Want You Anymore: The Plight of Rural, Native-Born New Yorkers

Driving around my once beautiful and prosperous state of New York has become equivalent to attending a wake.

Closed factories seen in Utica, N.Y. in this file photo. Over the years, most of America’s manufacturing capabilities have been outsourced to third-world countries in an effort to eliminate labor costs and boost earnings, according to a number of economists. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Commentary

Driving around my once beautiful and prosperous state of New York has become equivalent to attending a wake: You see there’s a body lying in the casket—it looks kind of like it did when it was alive, but you know it’s really dead.