"For decades throughout the 20th century, it notes, the industrial economy — combined with large federal expenditures, particularly in the South — drove a “great economic convergence,” in which poorer states steadily caught up with better-off ones.
"But more recently, the development of the knowledge economy, whose benefits are largely concentrated in cosmopolitan hubs, has reversed this trend. Meanwhile, in many red states — mostly in the South — the model of weak unions and low wages, which made them competitive for business inside the national market, is faltering in the face of globalized production.
“'Blue America is increasingly buoyed by the knowledge economy,” the analysis concludes, while “red America is struggling to find a viable growth model for the twenty-first century.'”
"How did this happen? A big part of the problem, the authors argue, is conservative governance." -- Greg Sargent summarizing an analysis by Jacob Grumbach, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson that's part of a forthcoming book on American political economy. Sargent's article highlights how Republican governance is harming constituents in their "low road states." It's worth a read.
