It's a lengthy article and it's in The Wall Street Journal (not that I've read the entire article, but Richard Florida is used for comment and is not behind the data.) I'm not surprised you don't have a criticism of the article itself.
Ok fine the study is junk because it omits Florida and Texas. Two very Southern, Republican-dominated states who have been driving population/job growth at a national scale.
This is an urban/rural problem, not a Southern one. We're also seeing divergence in places as "Southern" as eastern Washington and rural Minnesota, while metroes like Atlanta and Dallas continue to surge ahead.
This is just more elitist liberal circle-jerking about how the South is full of all the "wrong" people. Yawn. Invent something new already.
This isn’t a comparison of the rural south to the urban south. It is a comparison of all the south to the nation as a whole. Even if the south is more rural than the national average, it doesn’t negate the fact that the region is falling behind. Texas is not comparable to the rest of the south...neither is Florida. Midland and Fort Worth are not the south... Houston perhaps.
To me it seems as soon as the GOP really took over down south, the gains in prosperity reversed. And the more prosperous parts edge ever closer to the Democrats.
