What dynamic areas are there in the state? The coast is maybe the closest and it's nice for the state to have that, but it's still not an economic powerhouse compared to what most other states have. South Memphis is fine, but that's basically just a part of the Memphis MSA economy.
And how are they sandbagged by poor state governance?
By county and (sort of) by rank, I would say Jackson, Harrison, Hancock, DeSoto, Golden Triangle counties, the TVA counties, Rankin, Madison, Lamar. To a lesser degree, Stone, Attala, Jones off the top of my head. There is positive industrial and commercial activity in these areas with new firms entering the market and second/third generation companies reinvesting or growing. In particular, there is innovation and business development that incorporates our historical industries (forestry, agriculture, car and component manufacturing) and is creating higher paying jobs that, critically, are not being subsidized by big corporate tax breaks or require high state investment. Those deals tend to be a net loss for municipalities over a generation and tend to involve more corruption. That's why I'm not including Grenada (Milwaukee Tool) and Kemper County (lol) for example. I was surprised to find out that more money from the Memphis MSA stays in Mississippi counties than I thought would. More in Tate and Panola than I expected. I'm not including Lafayette or Oktibbeha, because I'm not including higher education necessarily in this analysis. There's a lot of cool stuff happening at State and UM, of course.
Our biggest strengths- we can attract industrial/manufacturing sector investment with our low cost real estate, low barrier to entry business cost (outside of employment cost/training), lower cost of living, transportation infrastructure, while offering strongly-bonded smaller community lifestyles.
Our biggest weaknesses are our devastatingly poor healthcare system, crippling lack of health insurance options (we have a relatively weak insurance commission, which is state governance), extremely poor public education system, and far too many institutions of higher education competing for fewer resources than all but 3 or 4 states. State governance failures include a byzantine IHL system that is vulnerable to graft, anecdotal and proven statewide corruption, and failure to expand Medicaid (doesn't matter whether you agree with the federal politics of it, not taking money that is being offered to all states damages only the states that don't take it relative to those who do).
Finally, and here are two things that I think is critical vis a vis state governance. I don't hear a perception of Mississippi as especially fraught racially from most of the people that I encounter. This is a positive. I expected to hear more of this given mass media coverage and history. The flip-side of that coin is that I do hear from many conservative/right-wing industry leaders who think that Mississippi's conservative leaders are very poor retail politicians with whom they don't/can't identify. That's something that stands out. If conservatives from Wyoming/Colorado/California/Texas/New York look at Mississippi and don't identify with their common political base, that frequently translates to a loss of investment from companies that are based in those states. For that reason, thank God for Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor-Greene for really owning that space.
