LA crushed GDP growth between 1998 and 2024

At least the real estate is still dirt cheap

Based on median prices, we are 5th. That means 4 more states are doing better than us economically, and has lower home prices.

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10 least-expensive U.S. states for single-family homes by median sale price per Redfin’s monthly data as compiled by Bankrate; data as of Feb 2025

Iowa — $230,600

Oklahoma — $245,900

Ohio — $248,600

Michigan — $249,300

Louisiana — $253,200

Mississippi — $255,100

Arkansas — $255,300

West Virginia — $258,800

Indiana — $258,900

Missouri — $263,300

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Our 23% is driven by crawfish price inflation

Anything good in the state goes into a handful of people’s pockets and the rest suffer.

Simply look at what Texas and Mississippi has done since federal hurricane relief and places along the Louisiana coast look worse than ever.

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Mississippi has done since federal hurricane relief and places along the Louisiana coast look worse than ever.

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It's a shame our motto can no longer be "at least we aren't Mississippi" because they are passing us up.

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Katrina didn't cause decades of horrible state policies and the data is also over a 26-year time frame. Blaming Katrina is the same as blaming your great-great-grandpa being a slave for why you are still doing poorly and need reparations.

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It’s not just Katrina though. You had a couple major storms (Katrina, Rita, Laura, Ida) and some awful leadership during Covid.

Covid was a total black eye to the state. While all our neighbors were open for business, LA had JBE, Latoya, and Broome in power shutting everyone down.

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You had a couple major storms (Katrina, Rita, Laura, Ida) and some awful leadership during Covid.

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I would think that hurricanes are pretty close to being GDP-neutral in the short term at least. Economic activity increases due rebuilding but the loss of homes, infrastructure, etc is subtracted.

Long term, though, the repair spending replaces what was lost instead of creating new wealth.

Sort of a broken window fallacy.

Still, we can't keep using that as a crutch when every state has natural disasters.

With 2 million workers in a state with 4.5 million people, the percentage of state employees is the only thing that keeps the economy from collapse. It’s currently 560 per 10,000 residents. It’s significantly higher when you factor in private employment from federal healthcare funding.

The state has done nothing to bring new industry outside of LNG facilities, and now we are so desperate to finally win something different that we are allowing META to pass off higher power bills to us for a data center that will not create a ton of permanent jobs or any real tax benefit.

We also pave the way through an easier permitting process for anyone who promises to build a new LNG facility to rape the wetlands that the state bureaucrats spent years enriching the Stream family through mitigation. Mitigation is a nightmare for even just normal landowners but not for an LNG facility. The newest dredging one company did in Cameron Parish last month killed oyster and crab fishermen. It's been a huge controversy here.

We gave huge tax credits (which the state wants to start up again BTW) for Hollywood to film a few movies a year in 3 cities (NOLA, BR and Shreveport) where the actual positive economic impact for a cash-strapped state that didn't really have the tax credits to spare is questionable at best.

I could go on but sure keep blaming hurricanes

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It's a shame our motto can no longer be "at least we aren't Mississippi" because they are passing us up.

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They are crushing most of the nation in education lately. Left Louisiana in the dust, not just passed them up. It's pretty wild really.