re: Breakdown of how Alabama became so much richer than Canada

Well, it should be noted that those numbers are from the era where Huntsville became the largest city in the state with some frankly incredible growth for a city in this era. Unless Huntsville scales appropriately, they will face similar limitations, depending on their geography, as other cities tend to. Also, the sheer speed of their growth generally causes bureaucracies lots of issues which can be compounded by poor decision making.

In addition, Alabama's other major cities saw a decline in population, likely with moves to the suburbs, so I would suggest that Huntsville's growth is less to do with good economic policy at the state level and more to do with Federal monies coming in.

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You may be correct but there are numerous cities that were on the largest cities in the US list in 1960 that are no longer in the top and cities on that list today that would have been huge surprises in 1960 if they had a sneak peak of what it is today.

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Well, Alabama isn't immune from this trend. Both Birmingham and Mobile had larger populations in the 1960 census, where Birmingham was among the top 40 cities in the country by population, and now is 140k smaller, and is now 130th or so in US cities by population, with the metro area also only growing from 800k to around 1.2 million today. And the total population rate in Alabama was higher then than it is now.

There really isn't any indication that the population and economic trends are limited to southern states, as the demand for homes in the economic centers of the US is still high. Broadly, US economic policy tends to favor ports and coastal regions as well as certain metropolitan areas. It is more likely that Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi see population benefits from the massive growth of Texas and Florida. And looking more closely at the demographic numbers, I am even less convinced that there is going to be some great restructuring of American population or economic centers. That potential money is far more likely to leave the US than it is to somehow find its way to the Gulf Coast.

In addition, the big issue limiting Alabama is that it simply does not have a world-class engineering school or a world class school in general. The same is true of Mississippi and Louisiana. The growth of many US metropolitan areas can be linked to direct access to high-quality engineering and associated disciplines. Seattle's growth is very much tied to UW's CS and other engineering programs, in the same way San Francisco benefitted greatly from Stanford and UC-Berkeley. Heck, every UC school is pretty highly regarded. Even Nashville and Atlanta have access to Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech. Those areas have also seen growth that dwarfs the Gulf Coast as well.

I'm very skeptical of this specific set of claims, as the current trends (which you yourself referenced) don't seem to support the claim.

Clearly the US should relinquish the state and let Alabama prosper as its own country

One thing that I have learned through my life is that you can twist numbers in order to “‘prove” anything that you want to. The idea that Alabama is richer than Canada is patently ridiculous.

That is like something you would hear on one of the political punditry channels.

On another note, we need more Tim Horton's in America!

Law Co is full… stay out, they do not want you either

LSU Engerneerinf likely better than all of those you listed there. Has some intangibles but really great

Somewhat rebuttal

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Has Virginia not made money in taxes from Amazon?

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I only know what I've read and that is Amazon's promise was around 25k jobs paying over $150k and they've only made it to 7k now and have been cutting jobs instead of adding recently.

I'm sure there are other advantages in Amazon attracting other tech businesses to Arlington but it hasn't really been the economic "home run" promised. Very mixed reviews.

Also, different areas need different things. As someone who lives in Brooklyn and has a business somewhat near what would have been the Amazon corridor, I'm not sure an Amazon tech corridor would have addressed the main problems in any way.

In this Queens/Brooklyn border area, there's already head turning development and growth.

the main issue for most who live and have businesses there is Private Equity gobbling up all the retail space (and much residential) and claiming a "market value" for retail space that far exceeds what any real displaced business could/would pay to cook their books.

The area already has an rapidly exploding population of young professionals making good money and rent prices skyrocketing.

I'm no financial wizard but "growth" can often mean big profits for far flung investors without a direct benefit to the area that's growing. Strip mining.

A tech corridor in what's already one of the most competitive, fastest growing real estate markets in America didn't necessarily mean solving what the actual issues here are.