It's like they are trying to hide that it is the WSJ or something.
But I appreciate the posting. The article itself is NOT wrong even though they get to the point in a round about way.
But really this by itself is just plain gobbledygook:
"The policies that drove the region’s catch-up—relatively low taxes and low wages that attracted factories and blue-collar jobs—have proven inadequate in an expanding economy where the forces of globalization favor cities with concentrations of capital and educated workers."
Either low taxes and low wages work or they don't. The truth is they do work to attract low wage jobs in manufacturing...for awhile. A corporation making huge profits off of cheap labor will soon find lower wage areas and move on. As the remaining businesses become a little richer, wages rise and taxes are needed to make infrastructure improvements to keep up with business. But there are few to no taxes being paid by low wages workers and low tax industry. So the remaining businesses leave too and it just falls back to where it was. You have to keep investing and taxing to make a functioning economic system. Since the South didn't do that, industry moves off to other cheap labor areas or to more affluent locations that have the infrastructure to provide the needed services.
So the bottom line is low taxes and low wages only work temporarily.
The article eventually says that but in a round about way.
When the crash hit my rural southern area, the textile industry had already moved on to India and China. The furniture and parts factories went next. What remained were chemical and fertilizer factories. Eventually they left too, though a few of the more odoriferous ones remained. What was a once booming corridor of industry is now overgrown fields dotted with disintegrating buildings. But it's peaceful.
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