re: Why has nearly every southern state seen an economic boom except La and Mississippi

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Texas has become an economic powerhouse and has taken many companies from California

Florida as well taking companies from NY

NC has become one of the banking capitals and SC has grown as well


Georgia has been growing non stop the past 2 decades

Tennessee the past few years have exploded with economic opportunities


The problem will likely never be solved for La. because people there are too many juvenile brain adults to understand the how they lost what they had and how to try to get some of it back. Louisiana is way to proud of being know for party and fun and being different ... all things that investors and businesses see as contrary to being conducive to productivity.

La. thinks politicians fix economics but it actually private business and investors that fix economies. Look at all the states listed and each one has one or more cities that created an economy by having a business first vision and creating an environment that investors were willing to send their money.

La. does not have a city that has a business environment that will draw interest for any new industry outside of O&G. Texas was an O&G reliant state but business leaders in the cities reinvented their economies to not be reliant on any one industry. They saw what happened with the up and down cycles of relying only on O&G and did something about it.

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Tennessee the past few years have exploded with economic opportunities

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Few years? More like the last 20-25 years.

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South Louisiana actually did extraordinarily well for about 10-20 years before the 1980s oil bust.

Louisiana way too corrupt.
Mississippi way too black.

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I was in a meeting with the head of the Alabama Economic Development Partnership years ago and he was talking about luring the Krupp steel plant to Calvert, AL. Krupp was deciding between a spot near Hammond, iirc, and Calvert. He said the one factor that made them go with Calvert was that every single LA official was asking for some kind of palm greasing in one way or another and they thought if it was this bad before they sunk a few billion into the development it would only get worse once they invested and couldn't move without losing it all. On other had, AL ranks as one of the most corrupt states, so it doesn't exactly track, but that's what he said.

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AL is on a long trend of getting better WRT corruption, city of B'ham aside. Among "pure states", which just means ludicrously corrupt DC is excluded, LA still leads. Link for the quote below

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Former Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin liked to say that “half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment”. Historically, Louisiana has consistently performed poorly in the report and it is the worst offender among pure states with 2.71 convictions per 10,000 inhabitants. The problem of corruption and the state’s reputation have proven so bad that Louisiana legislators passed a set of reforms dubbed the “Gold Standard” a decade ago. Unfortunately, critics have lambasted loopholes in the new measures that have allowed legislators to lawfully enrich themselves while in office.

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My granddaughter flew back to Louisiana after her summer visit and lasted a week. She' came back almost immediately and plans to finish school here.

She just couldnt do La anymore.

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Every time I go back home (Baton Rouge area and Shreveport area), it feels like I have steeped back in time 25-30 years. It's not a good thing. It's the attitudes of the people. Having lived in Texas for 30 years, it just feels like Louisiana is totally behind the times in every single way. If people's attitudes don't change and become at least a little more modern (the thing TD folks seem to hate the most), you will stay behind. Companies don't want to go to states that are backward. They don't want to do to states with poor education systems and pitiful race relations. It wouldn't matter how favorable the tax laws, etc were. Companies wouldn't be able to get folks to move there and stay.