The South’s Economy Is Falling Behind: ‘All of a Sudden the Money Stops Flowing’
 

This is about "the South" but certain cities are mentioned as examples and exceptions. Others could be. Let's approach it from that perspective: To which cities does it apply, which others may be an exception,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sou...=hp_listb_pos5

From what I see is how they tabulate their numbers, states with higher urban pops will do better (incomes) even though income is hardly an example of practical QOL. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina are relatively rural and relatively poorer states for any number of reasons but Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina are not.

Delete

I have a subscription to the WSJ, read the article [print version] this morning while drinking a cup of coffee.

My initial thoughts were, the South is the only region to have long term gains while the midwest is pretty much Steady Eddie.

"the South, the only region to have enjoyed such a dramatic rise in the postwar period"

And to Obadno's point, cost of living continues to skyrocket in the Northeast and West Coast, while it remains more stable in the south. Talking about nominal numbers while not factoring in CoL isn't an accurate depiction of the situation.

Also, there is a tale of two Souths. Jackson MS is quite the opposite of Charleston, not to mention Raleigh Durham, Charlotte and Atlanta. What's occurring in Memphis has little to nothing to do with Tampa.

^^I think the general argument that southern states have tried to boost their economies with low wages (= "right to work" laws) and low taxes is true. The further point that they invest less in education is less widely true but true of certain states--Georgia, on the other hand, stands out as a subsidizer of higher education for residents. And as a result, I think there's a good argument that Atlanta is an exception to the economic stagnation argument.

The general point also emphasized that "cities with concentrations of capital and educated workers" are doing best. Since Texas got a general pass in the article, I'll argue that Raleigh-Durham is another exception to economic stagnation based on this reality. With three major universities quite close to one another and a number of US headquarters or research facilities of major corporations, the "Reasearch Triangle" lives up to its name. Indeed, long term I'd put my money here rather than on Charlotte. I think Charlotte got a transient boost from the success of one company--Bank of America--and time is now moving on.

Wrong. Its all the same to these people. Its just a piece to prove conservatism sucks. Low-taxes, right to work, segregated past etc etc.

We suck here in the South, fine. Stop moving here.

Interesting, being that the Wall Street Journal is a conservative publication.

Even non-unionized cheap labor manufacturing jobs in southern states can't compete against low cost foreign competition. In addition, lots of traditional southern manufacturing jobs like textile manufacturing or furniture and cabinet manufacturing have all gone off shore. Drive through small southern towns off of the interstate and you'll see an endless number of small to medium sized abandoned factories and other businesses. It is not much different from what you find in similar cities and towns in the Rust Belt. There are, of course, exceptions, but they tend to be large and medium sized cities with diverse economies.

Texas gets lumped in with the south but it's not really apart of the south. It's its own thing; we have tacos, armadillos and oil.

Well, yeah. That's the Fake News narrative and it's of course totally false, fortunately most people can read behind the headlines.

There are some areas within the SUN BELT that are falling behind the overall trend and well behind the other boom cities. This is a long term trend that won't stop anytime soon, so long as the SUN BELT continues to provide housing solutions and low taxes that the established north and west coast cannot.

I always hear liberals say this, which probably means they are in the middle.

In any case, a quick look at the writer's twitter proves, without a reasonable doubt, she is not a conservative by any means.

Because the Wall Street Journal is well-known for its conservative-bashing--and this was on the front page.

Come on--you can do better than that. And as I said, they give one of the most conservative states, Texas, a pass in the article.

I personally love the South and it's agreat place to vacation or retire. But if I we're a 20-something with a new STEM degree from almost anywhere, there are very few southern cities where I'd look for employment.

Does anybody care to mention any where I might look and what industries/employers are there?

East Texas--the most east part next to Louisiana--is awfully "south".

It's about where the southern cotton economy once ruled (and, if you wish, where cactus lives), and that includes far east Texas. But again, the article I started this with rules Texas out from the general rule it is espousing, giving it credit for a thriving tech economy in parts and a thriving energy economy in other parts as well as great education, medical and tech-focused institutions. The importance of the latter is that Texas youth, wherever they are educated, can come home to work and earn a good living, using their educations. That isn't so true of other southern cities and states.

If you believe the Murdoch-owned Journal, the paper of record for Conservatives, is "in the middle", you have a very skewed perspective.

Anything short of fascism or revolutionary rhetoric will be "in the middle".

As usual, Crawford, you have no discernment. The Journal is in near-agreement with liberals when it comes to something like immigration: They favor mass in-migration of low wage workers just like the Democrats.

But on other issues they are indeed conservative.

But let's try to get past blaming the messenger here and talk about the message. Where in the South has a thriving globalist economy that's only gotten better since the Great Recession?

Fake News?

Everything is Every Thing
 

This thread and these comments are rather amusing in their attempt to put things in a box.

Alright, but it really is just saying conservative economics and governmental policies suck. So my response would be:

Alight, well stop moving down here then!

I will hold my judgement of the source from now on :D

Fair enough, and honestly, I dislike people 'killin the messenger.'

In any case, the point seems to be that conservative economics and governmental policies don't work. My response to that is fine, but could so many people stop moving here.

And really, and this is purely me just thinking outside the box, I don't think places like Alabama, Arkansas(which I know well), or Mississippi want the change that has happened to Texas. Sometimes people pick different things over purely economic rationale.

I had a Saudi come speak to my M.E class and he said something I will never forget. He said that he, and many people in Saudi Arabia, can't wait until the country runs out of oil. They dislike foreign influence and decadence and would rather have a more traditional country like before. I don't know how many people actually think like this guy, but I assume its a decent amount. Economic and "progress" achievements are sometimes secondary compared to other wants and needs. Not saying I fully endorse this viewpoint, but I think its important to note.

You might want to check your biases. By nearly every measure the WSJ is near the middle to at most slightly leans right. I saw a few measures that even said it slightly leans left. I would guess to you anything to the right of Vox or HuffPo is fascist propaganda.

I mean, on the statewide level, there are basically two different souths, each of which comprise seven states.

The "growing south" is VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, TN, and TX. Each of these states has some combination of a major urban area and/or draw for retirees from elsewhere in the country which cause a significant positive inflow of domestic migration. However, in the case of Virginia and perhaps Georgia, the states appear to be "maturing" to some degree, relying more on international immigration to keep afloat. In terms of raw numbers, TX and FL due to sheer size hoover up almost all of the growth.

The "stagnant/declining south" is WV, KY, AL, MS, LA, AR, and OK. Population growth as a whole is relatively low, in large part due negative or barely positive domestic migration. They may have some small metro areas which are fairly healthy, but these are not enough to cancel out the rural decline elsewhere in the state.

It's important to note this half/half thing, because you really don't see this in the other portion of the country which is growing - the West. Cali seems to have topped off, NM is a troubled state, and WY and AK have demographic hangover related to the fall in extraction employment. But basically every other state in the west is growing like gangbusters right now.

As to the WSJ, the editorial page is surely right wing, but the regular news articles don't really display any ideological slant in particular.

I think its foolish to even do an analysis on "the south" this is a region of over 100 million people and the most diverse demographically. It smacks of outdated thinking.

surely nobody thinks of "the north" encompassing everything from Minnesota to Maine and nobody would consider diagnosing the macro-situation across such a region. "Oh coal towns in Pennsylvania and old industrial cities in Ohio are blighted, guess that means the North is falling behind!"

Huh? Are you new to this country? They do exactly that for the north. The south is not along in being encompassed into an arbitrary box.

The whole point of the original article is to deconstruct the whole "southern miracle" thing.

Basically, the "New South" is confined largely to the southeast coastal metros, the major Texas cities, and Nashville. The interior south - and even rural portions of growing states - aren't really seeing any benefit.

People do not refer to Illinois and New York in the same sweeping generalizations they apply to the south.

Yes they do, Illinois is lumped in with Midwest, New York with the Northeast. It's literally the same thing.

No the Midwest and the Northeast are much more reasonable distinctions than "the south" Which can encompass everything from El paso to Miami and the Suburbs of DC to the Mobile bay

The greater Midwest centered on Chicago and the Urbanized northeast centered on NYC are more reasonable and more useful resolutions of analysis than "the south"

East Texas sure but that's a small portion. Even much of Louisiana doesn't fit neatly in the southern box.

Lol no it's not any more reasonable, the Midwest can include anything from Ohio (even western PA) to North Dakota which is just as if not more absurd. The Northeast can be anything from Maine to Virginia.

The Midwest has the same phenomenon as the south but the proportions are reversed so the media focus is on the rust belt. Minneapolis, Columbus, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Omaha, Des Moines, Madison, Fargo, Sioux Falls, Bismarck and Rapid City are all healthy urban areas with robust growth but most people outside of the region associate the Midwest with the post industrial cities of the Rust Belt. There is a new and old Midwest, just as there is with the south; and really what is going on in both regions is that the modern cities are still doing well while those that have economies that are rooted in the previous era have greater challenges. The difference is that the less dynamic parts of the south are just entering their decline while in the Midwest it has been an issue since 1980 or so.

And you can't even really equate the "rust belt" with solely the "old Midwest" either, since it includes cities like Buffalo and Rochester, and arguably stretches all the way to Connecticut and western Massachusetts. Frankly, most of these regional shorthands are outdated. Cleveland and Detroit arguably have more in common with Birmingham and Memphis than they do with Columbus or Omaha. Not that Cleveland and Detroit really shared many geographic or cultural similarities with places like Omaha to begin with, despite all being ostensibly "Midwestern" cities.

I mean...are rural areas in any part of the country doing particularly well? How would the NE look if we took out large cities?

Rural Massachusetts does great, actually. Most of rural New England is in fair-to-good shape. The Berkshires, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, these are New England’s interior playgrounds. Tourism, small-scale organic farming and dairy, universities, and a quickly accelerating cannabis cultivation / edibles industry go a long ways when you’re only two hours away from Boston. The far reaches of Maine are in decline, but we’re talking about Aroostook County on the Canada border: 70,000 people spread over 6,800+ sq miles of dense forest.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but why are you saying "where cactus lives"? East Texas is largely pine forest and looks like the rest of the south. Looks just like much of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, Georgia, and the Carolinas (and hills but not mountains). It also has the same humid, wet climate as the rest of the South. This region extends way west of Louisiana, depending on latitude, and then transitions to the post oak belt, and then to a strip of midwestern type grasslands, and then to cedar and oak covered hills, and then eventually to a southwestern landscape.

I'm from that region and I know the geography, vegetation, and climate (as well as all of the state). Again, perhaps I misunderstood your point, but wanted to make sure this wasn't a mischaracterization of Texas.

Culturally, the East Texas piney woods are identical to the rest of the south (the rural portion anyway). That's not a compliment either, when we're talking about the rural South. I think everyone knows what I mean. When we used to have family reunions in Lufkin or Palestine and places like that, it was painful to hear constant racist and homophobic comments, just for starters. Listening to cousins talk about how evolution is a hoax, and Arizona's petrified forest is man-made (because the Earth is only a couple of thousand years old) is more than painful.

Texas outside of its large cities and western parts shares a lot in common with the rest of the South. Oil props up many of the small towns though throughout Texas and into Oklahoma. That is a major difference between that region and the rest of the South.

You're either getting paid to say that or very mistaken. My company subscribes and I've read it quite a bit...clearly slanted pretty far right, both in what they cover and how they cover it. Not all of it -- opinion more than news, and business rather than social -- but that's the trend. It's very focused on and friendly to its core audience of certain industries, and generally trending toward older vs. younger readers.

This is dumb. Again, the WSJ is the paper of record for Conservative thought, like the NYT is the paper of record for Liberal thought.

If you believe truly it "slightly leans left" you really need some perspective.

Rural Mass is mostly college towns and second-home/weekend country. There are no substantial deprived areas because there's nowhere too far from Boston or NYC, or lacking colleges.

Once you get more than 2-3 hours from Boston or NYC, there are deprived areas (Upstate NY and parts of Vermont and NH). There are areas of NY and NE that are basically colder, less religious West Virginia.

Oh yes, especially rural northern NH and ME. These places are in the throes of a deep heroin / OxyContin epidemic too.

That's actually a really astute observation, one that we all know intuitively, but kind of smacks you in the face when you read it in relation to what is now happening in the south and in the context of their "narratives."

Rural northern New England and Upstate NY (and much of the rural upper midwest, for that matter) have many issues, such as a lack of non-tourist jobs, declining/aging population, heroin, high suicide rates, etc.

However, it's not fair to say it's just like the rural south in terms of social outcomes. There tends to be higher levels of education, lower levels of chronic health issues, and higher life expectancy. This is true even if you only compare the rural northern population to the rural southern white population.

Basically, rural areas everywhere in the country are doing poorly, but they tend to be doing worse the further south you go.

I lived in New Hampshire and spent a lot of time in Vermont and I am from Upstate NY...these areas are absolute ground zero for opiate and heroin and entire towns being are decimated. Along with W. VA. Read about Barre, VT....

A good illustration why Western Mass isn't a typical rural backwater. It's now getting train service from NYC:

https://boston.curbed.com/2019/6/12/...rak-pittsfield

Rural areas connected to nearby metropolitan centers are kind of a different typology. They may be green and sparse, but they have remote workers living part-time, sustainable restaurants, high culture and the like. The Berkshires have Tanglewood, MassMoca, Williams and other heavyweights.

And the Berkshires have been a desirable area for over 100 years. It was an area that the stupendously rich would go to, especially after Newport but before returning to the city. They poured money not only into their county houses but also into the institutions around them.

Not that I disagree with you, but I swear to God two months ago you were challenging me on a comment I made in a discussion on secondary markets about a close friend working remotely in the tech industry in Traverse City as being an odd decision.

^ but traverse city isn't really connected to a nearby major metropolitan center.

it's a 4 hour drive to detroit and a 5 hour drive to chicago, and has no rail links to anywhere.

it's a lovely place in a lovely region; if you're gonna live in a small and remote US city, you can certainly do FAR worse than traverse city.

but it's definitely "out there", at least in the context of the eastern half of the nation.

I’m not dying on any crosses for TC or the Berkshires, but the reality is that there isn’t much difference between 3 and 5 hours. TC may get it’s own rail line to Ann Arbor/Detroit and GR has rail to Chicago. People aren’t commuting to NYC from the Berkshires any more than people from TC or Grand Rapids are commuting to Chicago. Chicago money is all up and down the Western Michigan coast, though, just like NYC money is in Western Mass.

TC is twice the distance from Detroit as the Berkshires are from NYC and Boston. To me, that's a pretty sizable difference. The NYC CSA already extends to the Litchfields, in CT, on the Mass line. They're also basically next door to Hartford and Albany. There are about 40 million people in the NE corridor within a few hours of the Berkshires. In contrast, there are very few people living within the equivalent distance from TC. And the Berkshires have the Boston Symphony in the summer, one of the best art museums in America, one of the best colleges in America, etc.

But the previous conversation was a bit different. I recall you were saying TC was a great deal, and a good option for folks who like to travel. I disagreed (and would say the same about the Berkshires; too isolated, horrible for flights, and could never live there full-time).

The Berkshires are functionally different because they're filled with weekenders, and people who part-time telecommute. Lots of folks will work in NYC or Stamford a few days a week, then work the other half in their country house, whether on the East End of LI, the Hudson Valley, the Berkshires, etc. I seriously doubt that large numbers of Detroiters or Chicagoans are splitting their summer work weeks between TC and primary home. Now somewhere like St. Joseph (for Chicagoans) or Port Sanillac (for Detroiters), that I could see.

There is no weekender rail line planned for TC. GR has nothing to do with TC. And no, the Berkshires line is strictly planned for weekenders. TC is at least as much Detroit as Chicago money; Chicago dominates everything south of Ludington, but NW Lower Peninsula is very Detroit-heavy.

And, yeah, if you're saying TC isn't like WV like the Berkshires aren't like WV, I agree, obviously. TC isn't poor, neglected and dying.

I get what you're saying about the Triangle, but what you're saying about Charlotte simply doesn't jibe with reality. You say "time is now moving on" as if Charlotte is getting left behind or something which is the exact opposite of what's happening.

Bank of America certainly played a big role in Charlotte's ascendancy but you're grossly oversimplifying the issue. Much of the Southern banking industry overall has consolidated in Charlotte. First Union was the other big Charlotte bank that grew rapidly after interstate banking was permitted and it acquired another big regional NC-based bank, Wachovia. It fell victim to the recession and was acquired by Wells Fargo but now WF has its largest workforce in Charlotte. And of course more recently, NC-based BB&T merged with GA-based SunTrust and is moving the new bank headquarters to Charlotte. Ally Bank is growing its presence in the city and is currently constructing a new office tower in the city and there are rumors that its headquarters could relocate there as well. Aside from banking, you have other companies that have moved their headquarters to the region or established major operations there. It's quite obvious that the rise of BOA wasn't some isolated event but rather a catalyst for rapid economic growth that continues until this day with very little signs of slowing down. If the boost that Charlotte got from BOA's ascendancy was truly transient, the recession should have ended it, and indeed many wrote Charlotte off around the time. Instead it recovered much more quickly than folks thought it would and the city is undergoing its biggest building boom right now. So yeah, this talk about a "transient boost" and "time is now moving on" is beyond perplexing.