re: Why are certain red states poor compared with blue states.

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Don't short change Education.

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agreed and look what LA has done to Higher Ed

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Is one of those policies that uses the natural free market the one where tax dollars are used to go about the world touting a states uneducated and undemaning workforce to attract industry?

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Yes and no. In part, that is a state government trying to educate outside investors about opportunities in their state. All states have economic development agencies whose mission is to help facilitate investment in their state. That can be spent educating outside investors or helping interested firms find suitable locations.

One can argue whether or not that is a good use of tax dollars or whether that should be done by the private sector. In reality, it's just advertising and everyone does it (even blue states).

It shouldn't be necessary, but because states vary so much in what they can offer and how their regulatory/tax environments function, it is often a necessary government function.

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Are you seriously going to use Cleveland, OH as your example ?

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A beacon of success for the left and minorities to point to in a successful red state. Beautiful and booming Cleveland.

Your inference is very simplistic.

Lower population do to climate. Hot and humid South. Desert South West. Mountainous regions, and dry prairies. More people equals more money and potential. The South has only really taken off with the widespread use of air conditioning!

South was always less populated than North even in Indian days. Plus heat and disease discouraged European immigrants. Number one reason for black slavery in South. Pay for passage of European indentured servants: most die and survivors go free. Pay for African slave: most live and serve for life. Money talks.

Less natural resources. Yes, I know oil. First, you can run a car on oil, but it takes iron deposits to make one. Second, oil is only in western part of South. Texas has used theirs more intelligently. Wonderful big government a-holes like Huey P. squandered ours. Southern resources were and are agricultural.

North and Midwest have better transportation. Water was prime transportation in past. Great Lakes, St Lawrence, and Erie Canal to the Port of New York plus iron equals industry and money. Even the Mississippi favored the North. The current flowing south allows rafting goods down River, but it takes effort and mechanical boats to push up River. More population, more industrial resources, better transportation equal more economic development. This allowed more industry to start and better transportation in railroads, roads, and airlines.

Then there was that little thing call The War of Northern Agression and "Reconstruction". Proportionally more prime working aged Southerners were killed and maimed. More infrastructure was destroyed and worn out. All money, Confederate Dollars, became worthless. Economically the South was prostrate. Whites had to rebuild, pay taxes, and pay labor with worthless money. Blacks left slavery with nothing but the crappy clothes on their backs. Forty acres and a mule were pipe dreams. The South couldn't afford them, and the North was taking not giving. There was no Marshal Plan. There were carpetbaggers. The South didn't really recover until after World War II.

Or we can just keep it simple like a normal volod thread, and just say conservative white boys are the problem!

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Texas went to net taker in 2008 - so nine years ago. Do you have a point? I was referring to right now because that's what I thought we were talking about.

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So was Texas some liberal holy grail in 2007? What caused the switch?

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agreed and look what LA has done to Higher Ed

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I do think LA has a chance to turn things around. They have a world class institution with a good reputation in Tulane, they also have a fun and attractive place to live in New Orleans for after they graduate. But, it's all about the money. But I can easily see Louisiana being a center for one of the hot new industries like biomedical research much like how NC NC State and Duke have become.

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Why are certain red states poor compared with blue states.

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Blue states, like California, New York and Illinois, whose economies turn on finance, trade and knowledge, are generally richer than red states.

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Because the goob author doesn't count debt.

AUstar

For an Alabama puke, you know your stuff.

These are some very good points. Federally invested Infrastructure development in the north was also much much greater than in the south. The federal government helped build many of the canals in the north and did essentially nothing for the south until the aftermath of the 1927 Flood and the Depression-era creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The South was left to benign neglect, since 1776, much of it not even being established until 1812. That's 50 years of benign neglect up against around 80 years of investment in yankee infrastructure.

What little infrastructure that was built in those 50 years of benign neglect were destroyed in 5 years of war and purposefully not rebuilt for the next 20 during "Reconstruction". That's another 20 years worth of advantage for the North and coastal states.

For the next 50 years, federal investment began to leak westward to fuel the rise of California, but the bulk was still focused in the north. The South slowly rebuilt its infrastructure, but was still primarily an agricultural economy.

The 1930's brought the ACOE, WPA, and TVA to finally start building Southern infrastructure with outside investment for the very first time. Added up, that is a nearly 140 year advantage in infrastructure building on top of a war which set the south back another 50 years in infrastructure. By that logic, the Northern states have 200 years of advantage on infrastructure, the Eastern colonies have 350 years of advantage, and the West Coast has 50 years of advantage.

No wonder the rural red South is behind.

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Its not only resources that control wealth, but how to manage and distribute them.

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Exactly. In the good 'ol days before automation, the jobs were in extracting and transporting resources. When that became mechanized by steamships and mechanical tractors and excavators, the focus shifted to turning those resources into new products (i.e. manufacturing). As technology made that less man-power intensive, the jobs shifted to selling those products. Now, the internet has even centralized selling and marketing. That means that the last human-intensive portion left is making decisions and dealing with regulations.

As the number of people needed to perform a part of the resource life chain (extraction, processing, selling) is reduced, we have to keep inventing new resources and/or services to keep people employed.
Entitlements keep people from finding those new opportunities by giving them the option not to. However, cities provide more municipal services, so being poor in a big city offers a lot more opportunities than being poor in an isolated rural community. You can be an artist, a performer, and walk to libraries and stores and potential employers. In rural areas, you're trapped without a car.

Rural areas are impacted more harshly because decisions are not made there. People flee until there aren't enough people there to justify even serving those locations. Small towns typically sprouted up around the local industry. Maybe it was a small factory, a lumber mill, or just where the local farmers lived. To support a population, they had to have a school, a police department, a hardware store, a grocery store, and insurance office, a florist, a mechanic, a baker, etc. All of the essential goods and services the people in the town needed had to be provided by a merchant in that town. Then came merchants like dollar general and Wal-Mart that combined many of the above services into one store. That meant cheaper prices, but fewer people employed. Then, automation reduced the number of people needed to plant and harvest crops, reduced the number of people needed at the local factory by 90%, or maybe closed the factory all together. Those who didn't have jobs largely fled. The children of those with jobs flee because there are no jobs for them when they graduate high school. The internet allows everyone to buy their goods online, so Wal-Mart goes bye bye. Now, there's no workers, no industry, and no stores, so government services dry up and consolidate in a death spiral.

This is what rural areas are facing. We need to either completely rethink the way resources are exploited, the way entitlements are distributed, or the way our populations are distributed, or all three.

Remember, every dollar given to someone on an entitlement program must be either borrowed or taken from someone who works, not for the government. Every dollar paid in salary or pension to someone who works for the government (teachers, bureaucrats, police officers, firemen, etc) must come from that same pot as well. Products can only be consumed if there are people that can afford to buy them. When the choice is work or starve, people work. When the choice is steal or starve, people steal. When the choice is to do nothing or work, people do nothing up until work becomes more advantages. If doing nothing is always better in the short term, most people will keep doing nothing.