Rural living will not be pleasant in the future.

Or it might be wonderful if you don't need to go into the rat hole cities. All the people with money in old world Europe left the cities for the country side to escape the crime and disease.

If you’re a free man and not a debt slave, rural America may be the perfect place.

Good luck with that. I didn't say cities. But economies of scale wise, if you aren't suburbs or able to walk to public transportation you expect a ****ty existence.

We live an hour South of ATL, 133 miles round trip every day. We used to take separate cars. Not any more. The Jeep is parked and the '99 Escort is purring along getting about 30 mpg per tank @ 170k+ on the odometer. We leave the house at 0600, drop me off at 0700, the wife is at the DOL downtown by 0800. I make my deliveries and she deals with unemployment issues all day. She leaves when I say my route is done and am RTT, Return to Terminal. She is waiting when I pull the truck back in and park. Sometimes my wife waits for a couple of hours. She'll nap or read or knit to pass the time. All of our shopping is done en route, no special trips.
We actually value our commute time together. It is our little decompression bubble.

This is our new normal.

When the kids are out of school we will move into the city, if all heck hasn't broken loose by then.
We have our place on 4 wooded acres and 16 more acres of pasture down the road. I still want to keep at least one of them.

There are no decent jobs for our skill sets within a close distance. To hear them talk, even local professionals are in a tight spot. The wife used to be a legal secretary for a small town lawyer and went to work for the State for the benefits. When she reads what they are like in northern states for public employees she is shocked.....Drifting off topic.
The county where we live has 42.4% of students on reduced or free lunch.
Raising gas prices will probably make that figure go higher.