re: Tier 1 of shittiest states list; Alabama says goodbye to Mississippi and Louisiana

As for the thread itself, Alabama has benefited from a couple of extremely effective U.S. Senators (Shelby and Heflin), a couple of solid governors, and some strong to solid mayors (Battle, Stimpson, Maddox, etc)

I also think Alabama benefits from having a few natural resource and location advantages that Louisiana and Mississippi simply don't have. Louisiana has the advantage of a couple of massive ports but that is negated somewhat by Louisiana's serious coastal erosion problem not to mention being so vulnerable to hurricane surges leading inevitably to seriously high insurance rates. Throw in ineffective state and local government leadership and maintaining the population and tax base you do have much less actually sustaining consistent economic and population growth becomes very difficult.

Mississippi is doing better than Louisiana but it too is at best stagnant having actually seen a tiny decline in population since 2020. Mississippi has the MS river but doesn't have a sizable port on the river although it does have Gulfport which has a fairly decent sized port. It also has a large shipyard with impressive operations like Ingalls Shipbuilding and Chevron in Pascagoula and of course Stennis in Hancock County. Mississippi does have a pretty impressive number of fairly large bank headquarters. While it has improved significantly in a lot of areas, Mississippi only has three designated metro areas and the two that are growing have grown only 1.36% and 1.20% respectively since 2020.

Alabama, on the other hand, has 7 metro areas growing faster than that. It also has a few advantages and resources that neither Louisiana nor Mississippi thru no fault of their own have. A popular beach for tourism and a high tech boom town area in Huntsville along with two college towns with strong automotive factories and/or automotive supplier bases in Tuscaloosa and Auburn. Not to mention a metro area of nearly 1.2 million in Birmingham which back in the early 2000s had 7 Fortune 500 headquarters with all the leftover operations from that still in the area.

I think Alabama also benefits greatly from bordering three high growth states in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee whereas Louisiana (for example) is hurt by bordering high growth Texas. Alabama in recent years has started getting a little bit of spillover growth from those neighboring states.

yup. just look at our governor. as republican as we could have ever imagined, but more corrupt than any other governor has been in recent memory.

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& Mobile in decline due to skyrocketing crime causing urban flight.

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That may be true, but Mobile is on track to be the third largest city assembling aircraft behind Seattle and Toulouse; France, and the USACE is about to dredge a Panamax turning basin at the container port. There are other big projects lingering behind the curtains. New bridge, new civic center. It’s going be interesting here over the next ten years

NEW MEXICO says hold my beer.

Places is worse than MS delta.

Without federal laboratories and military this economy is shite and only has Oil/Gas in SE NM.

Mental health and drug addiction is very high per capita.

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What are the other prevailing theories why Alabama is no longer in the same tier as Mississippi and Louisiana on the shittiest states list.

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Proximity to the Georgia.

If Alabama is the shittiest then I had it pretty good while I was there.

Alabama is very nice IMO.

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WV is not nearly as bad as folks here make it out to be. Some of the most beautiful country I've seen was in WV. We go skiing there and they have some very nice resorts.

That said, the bad parts are really bad. I'e been through area where I've wondered, "How can people live like this?" Then again, same could be said for LA and MS.

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And I've still felt safer in bad parts of WV than the major cities in the US I've been to.

I grew up in an average part of the state in the sticks. I knew all my neighbors and saw them in church on Sunday. People care for one another there. My parents and their neighbors make dishes and grow stuff to give to one another. Was just back home last weekend and brought home some tomatoes and cucumbers the neighbors gave my parents.

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This poster is shitty on every page

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We were homeboys once, Daniel. Once we homeboys we always homeboys.

I was talking about OP man. Text me don’t put personal stuff out there homeboy