Reply to Why didn't Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana boom along with the Sunbelt?

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[quote=Anonymous]New Orleans is effectively the "HQ" of that region. It, along with Mobile, AL and Gulfport, MS do a large business in trade/shipping. The South Louisana ports (New Orleans + Baton Rouge) do more tonnage of cargo than any other US port in the country. Gulfport moves lots of seafood and fruits (especially bananas), and Mobile is huge for coal, steel, and forest products. You just don't hear about this much if you're not in that industry.

Alabama is home to massive auto assembly plants for Mercedes, Hyundai, and Honda. If you drive a Mercedes GLE SUV, or Honda Odyssey, it was probably built in Alabama. Mississippi is big for Nissan and Toyota, for example the Toyota Corolla is built near Tupelo. Again, if you're not in the auto industry, you wouldn't know about this.

As others have mentioned, the major issue is no "megacity" in the region. Even New Orleans metro area (including Metairie) is only 1mln people, about the same as Fairfax county. It's difficult to reach "scale" as a big player without that. MSY (New Orleans) airport is the the largest in the region and still ranks only 47th in North America in passenger traffic.

Don't count these areas out. I think we'll see big growth there in the next 20 years, due to business-friendly policies and lower cost of living. Compare that for example to Maryland, where as of July 1 people have to pay a 3% "digital services tax" on Netflix and any other online service.. with the only justification being that the state needed more money.[/quote]

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