MUNCIE — The Braun administration has published a rural economic development plan for Indiana. It looks a lot like plans offered by GOP and Democratic governors over the past 75 years.

Indeed, the only element distinguishable from such a plan in the 1960s is broadband. Back then, we were worrying about better phone service.

Michael J. Hicks

Braun’s plan discusses improvements in public services to farms and an increased focus on attracting manufacturing jobs. It calls for reducing taxes. Puzzlingly, the document mentions climate when talking about farms — not something one expects from the GOP. It also mentions protecting Hoosier farmland from China — a statement meant to placate voters with, it must be said, mediocre intellectual gifts.

To be fair, the plan might be a good political document that reflects longstanding concerns from stakeholders in the agricultural and manufacturing communities. It should make many of those special interest groups happy.

The one thing this plan won’t do is help grow rural communities. In fact, if its main ideas — tax cuts and an increased focus on business attraction — are implemented, economic conditions will worsen for most of Indiana’s already beleaguered rural communities.

The main problem with rural economic development plans is a shortage of honesty. I get it. It is hard to engage in truth-telling about the difficult future of Indiana’s rural economy. It is even harder to admit that any potential remedies will take decades of hard, expensive efforts before they bear fruit. It’s far easier to double down on ineffective 1960s policies and claim victory against those darned Chinese.

Here’s some truth.

First, there will be fewer agriculture-related jobs in Indiana over the next two decades — and maybe forever. This will happen even as food production continues to grow, though it’ll never be more than about 1.5 percent of the state’s economy.

Tax policies won’t change that. Indeed, when counting taxes and subsidies, the farm industry in Indiana actually pays a negative tax. That’s right, industry-wide, farms already receive more subsidies than taxes.

If you are a farmer who is paying more taxes than the subsidies you receive, you don’t need a tax cut; you need a better accountant.

The big risk to the agricultural industry today is the decline of rural communities and loss of working-age adults. The plain fact is that the agricultural industry needs rural communities a heck of a lot more than those rural communities need farming or agricultural jobs.

Second, Indiana has been working hard to attract manufacturing jobs since the late 1960s. But we now have fewer factory jobs than in 1973, and fewer factory jobs than last year.

There is no manufacturing employment renaissance. Indiana will have fewer factory jobs next year than we have today, fewer in 2030 than we have today, and fewer in 2040 than we will have in 2030.

Manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back, even as we hit new industry production records. Nothing is going to reverse that trend, and anyone who tells you differently is either stupendously ignorant or lying to you. Though, to be fair, some could be both.

No tariff, no onshoring trend and certainly no state tax policy will change this. When counting both taxes and subsidies, Hoosier manufacturers pay the third-lowest total taxes of any manufacturing firms in the country, and about a quarter of the tax rate paid by the average business in Indiana. More tax cuts won’t boost jobs. If they could, Indiana would be growing factory jobs, not losing them. We are losing them.

Now, even with fewer total factory jobs over the coming decades, a few counties might see more jobs, though the vast majority will see losses. The pie is shrinking, and yesterday’s policies focus on getting a bigger slice of a shrinking pie rather than growing the pie.

The truth is that rural Indiana manufacturing is hampered by a declining pool of well-educated workers. Counties that get good-paying factory work will mostly be on the fringe of large urban areas (think Shelby or Boone counties). There, they can access a large labor market in the nearby metropolitan area.

Any manufacturing job growth that occurs in most rural counties will mostly be low-wage, lower-skilled jobs. That has certainly been the trend of the 21st century.

The real limit on rural economic success is, and has long been, a lack of people. Rural communities suffer a lack of people who have the skills to work in the growing occupations of the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Ironically, Indiana’s rural areas should be doing well. We are a compact state, with 85% of the population living 20 minutes from a metropolitan county. We also have many small towns that are pleasant places to live. Our climate appeals to many — Hoosier summers are spectacular. We have lots of rivers and lakes, and among the best state park systems I’ve encountered.

Also, the post-COVID increase in remote work should really benefit Indiana. In fact, Indiana has had some population growth in recent years, but all of it is clustered in just a few counties, primarily in the Indianapolis suburbs. And that reveals some of the challenges of Indiana’s rural counties.

The plain, and frankly uncomfortable, fact is that for every nice downtown, there are several struggling places with little choice of restaurants or recreation. And, for every high-performing rural school system — think Batesville or Jay County — there are several small, tired, underfunded school corporations.

The best example of this is Advanced Placement STEM classes. Roughly 60 Indiana school corporations— almost 1 in 5 — offer no AP STEM courses in chemistry, biology or calculus. Nearly all of these are rural schools. Even the top graduates of these high schools face deep disadvantages in pursuing a college degree.

It has to be said that the types of families rural Indiana desperately needs to keep and attract are precisely those folks who are reluctant to send their kids to a tired, underfunded school. But it is to these people that the administration’s rural plan says, “I don’t care about your interest in well-funded schools.”

Not every rural Hoosier community is going to survive the 21st century. Those that do will have made themselves attractive to young families. They’ll have good schools, not just claims about good schools. They’ll have downtowns that offer recreation and more.

State government cannot save most places. Perhaps the best thing it can do is get out of their way.