Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
Low wages, ability to pollute, cheap land, low workers comp, and other factors like them are all key. At least to the extent you're hiring workers as commodities. Other industries tend to cluster in big, expensive urban centers, one reason being that the (highly-paid) stars of those industries like to live there, as well as the synergies and inertia of clustering.
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Yes, all of those are factors in addition to lower taxes and corporate welfare that is being aggressively offered by jurisdictions.
I would only add that it's not as if places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and some others are bad places to live. Companies are not by and large setting up shop in Mississippi. Some sectors like medicine, law, and energy are not exclusively setting up in the South because they can pollute and because of worker's comp.
And while some of this is a southern thing, let's not ignore the fact that places outside of the South are able to attract jobs in these ways. Lots of businesses that were in California have left for surrounding states for
some of the same reasons that the South has been gaining jobs in certain industries. Places like Utah and Colorado rank pretty well for business-friendliness.
We've been more of a service-oriented economy so jobs are going to go where the people are and the people are going to go where the jobs are, so the South and West were actually underserved for a long time. All markets need retail, construction, and other service jobs.