It would drive expansion in areas outside of Jackson. People aren't moving to Jackson. They'll live in Brandon, Madison, etc.
OT: Anna Wolfe Going to Jail?
- Thread starter SteelCurtain74
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Young people are abandoning small town life. The world is so much smaller with the internet and they see things they never saw before. Unless a small town has a great school, and work nearby it's going to die. Property values are low and the tax base dies.
Lets be honest do you any of you really think anyone not from Miss gives a **** about this story. I watch every cable news network. I can honestly say I have only seen it mention twice since it took place and the only reason why then is because it involved Bret Farve. No one cares outside the state. I deal with our agents from 12 different states. I have gotten to know many of them very well and I bet if I mentioned it to them they would not know what the hell I was talking about.
They also had many family-owned stores, that all closed up when Walmart came to town. Main Streets went to crap with it.
More like swimming parallel to it. Which is how you survive a riptide!
I don't know, I think people over 30 prefer suburban/small town life. But a New Yorkers idea of "suburban" probably differs from my MS view.
True, but we're talking about MS: less than 1% of the population of the US. We don't need to please the majority, we just need a niche. Hence, don't follow the path of literally every other state!
It's at the farrrr edge of Jackson Metro. Plenty of rural areas north of it. I'm curious if the readily available jobs has caused that area to not decline like say Perlington has.
That's the rub. I'm arguing for finding a niche that revitalizes our small towns. Remote workers can be only a part of this, but an important part! They are on the decline as idiot CEOs push back on it, but it will only grow over time. We should incentivize it with tax breaks and subsidies, 10 years from now when people talk about remote work options MS should be one of the first places they mention. Our "Brian drain" youth should aspire to work out of state for a big employer, make their bones, then transition to remote work back near home and family.
But that can be only part of it. We need small towns with stores, restaurants, at least some entertainment for the teens, etc.
Flora is a good example of what can happen in a small town IMO.
I think you have to carve out a safe, fun area for young adults. Bring what jobs you can. But the days of a major company building a factory in the urban center are long gone. Even corporate jobs prefer the suburb these days. I'm all for investing in Jackson, but I'm not for fighting against the tide and intentionally setting up bidding wars against every other state. That's exactly what the corps want, because they see the spoils. Let's give Nissan-level tax breaks to businesses within Jackson. SMALL businesses. Let the ripple effects revitalize Jackson. As much as it can be anyway.
I think with strategic placement of jobs (factory/warehouse) placed around the state so there's always a few within say 20 minutes of most rural areas, combined with revitalizing small town main streets, then you can keep the drugs at bay enough to have people want to live there. Too much research shows the drug culture takes hold when the quality jobs leave. If we don't change course now, our rural areas will be as bad as our inner cities are now. I don't think most people get that.
i.e Grenada with the huge Milwaukee tool plant.
Real, lasting change in Jackson (if that's possible) will have to start with the voters in Jackson. No outsider is gonna make it happen.
I respect y’all’s opinion, and I see the strategy, but if we can’t agree that Madison and even Flora are in the Jackson Metro, and also that their success is due to being in a metro area (and Nissans decision to locate there), then we may as well not even keep this discussion going.
Again, I say that investment in all these small towns has already been happening, ie the Milwaukee plant as DCD mentioned. But without a consolidated effort and some momentum in a place, it’s not moving the needle.
I can’t see this as swimming perpendicular to the tide. We are falling behind so fast that it literally doesn’t matter. Y’all honestly need to see what’s happening in other cities outside the state. Literally ALL growth is there. We all should know, just like in the other thread, as soon as someone mentions moving to MS, we all tel them to move to an out of state metro.
But we’re talking about our small towns? Let me ask this - Home Town came in and invested in Laurel - has that moved the needle for MS? Heck no. Maybe if a town in every single county got that, we might see a bump, but that’s next to impossible.
Again, I say that investment in all these small towns has already been happening, ie the Milwaukee plant as DCD mentioned. But without a consolidated effort and some momentum in a place, it’s not moving the needle.
I can’t see this as swimming perpendicular to the tide. We are falling behind so fast that it literally doesn’t matter. Y’all honestly need to see what’s happening in other cities outside the state. Literally ALL growth is there. We all should know, just like in the other thread, as soon as someone mentions moving to MS, we all tel them to move to an out of state metro.
But we’re talking about our small towns? Let me ask this - Home Town came in and invested in Laurel - has that moved the needle for MS? Heck no. Maybe if a town in every single county got that, we might see a bump, but that’s next to impossible.
Canton is an interesting test case. It has the good fortune of being directly in the path of the growth north of Jackson and has had the good fortune of some serious industry coming in with Nissan years ago and now Amazon, etc just outside of town.
It was a prosperous town many years ago and still has one of the nicest town squares in Mississippi.
But it's got a lot of problems and not much real private reinvestment is happening in the town proper. It has a lot more going for it than the vast majority of Mississippi towns, but the obvious issues will be hard to overcome.
It was a prosperous town many years ago and still has one of the nicest town squares in Mississippi.
But it's got a lot of problems and not much real private reinvestment is happening in the town proper. It has a lot more going for it than the vast majority of Mississippi towns, but the obvious issues will be hard to overcome.
While that’s completely true from a delta perspective, agriculture is a minor industry in the NE part of the state. You have more workers than jobs. Here we have more jobs than qualified workers. Emphasis on the qualified. The problem in Ms is the huge gap between the educated, ambitious workers who can get a job anywhere and succeed and often do that out of state and the absolutely useless meth heads and baby daddies running from the DHS.
Who is saying they arent?
I don't think Nissans "success" (I have often heard they regret choosing that location, as the cheap labor wasn't worth it) has much to do with Jackson proper. It does have much to do with the surrounding areas they are part of the "metro".
The main streets in these towns tell a different story. And I believe the point was a consolidated effort.
And we've already missed the boat. We need to swim in a different lane.
Less impossible than turning Jackson into Nashville.
More like turning it into Memphis or Birmingham, ie something not terrible. Something that will produce a metro where people will actually move from out of state, and businesses will willingly locate (not be coerced with incentives). That’s not impossible.
Do that, and then you can revitalize all the small towns you want (again, which we are already doing).
Lucedale pellet mill
Grenada MT
Winona lumber mill
Attala County power plant
Kemper plant
I could go on and on.
And the Toyota plant is essentially Tupelo, which is a strategic location, along with the Jackson Metro ones, and now Steel Dynamics in the GTR. Those are smart investments that move the needle.
This really reminds me of when I hear city folks like the folks that live in New York putting down the country folks, or the rural people. That's funny. I never seen a podcast you can eat. There are not a whole lot of vegetables or cows grown on a downtown street. they always say if you can make it in New York you can make anywhere, those bitches would die in the middle of backcountry Mississippi.
Not happening. Especially by trying to do the same thing that other better places are already doing better than we ever could. That is like trying to beat Bama by hiring away their coaches and outrecruiting them. That's not our lane.
You call what we have now, revitalization? For the meth trade, sure, it's vitalized like a mf.
Not even a start.
They're smart, but they don't really move the needle. They have to be built on, and we haven't done well at that. We mostly squander the gains.
Those wins don’t move the needle, but if you took them out of those areas and moved them to smaller towns, they WOULD move the needle? Is that what you’re telling me?Not happening. Especially by trying to do the same thing that other better places are already doing better than we ever could. That is like trying to beat Bama by hiring away their coaches and outrecruiting them. That's not our lane.
You call what we have now, revitalization? For the meth trade, sure, it's vitalized like a mf.
Not even a start.
They're smart, but they don't really move the needle. They have to be built on, and we haven't done well at that. We mostly squander the gains.
Yeah, the convo is now pointless to continue.
Please respond to the points I make, instead of making up things I never said.
In reality, rural areas are heavily subsidized by suburban and urban areas. Which, I am mostly fine with - we as a country need our rural areas to flourish for a whole host of reasons.
The return for the rural area is pretty bad. Out of area big construction firms do the building, out of area firms get maintenance contracts, the tax deal means no revenue to the rural govt. The benefits are jobs for the residents, and rising home/land values a bit (slanted to new development most likely). The impact of jobs for the residents is muted a lot if people are dumb with their money, and if too much of it goes right back out of the area. Unfortunately, with modern American economics, that's like 99% of it. All I can think to improve these is to link the state-approved tax deals to small town improvement, with the downstream benefits being shared with the corporation (extension of tax breaks?).
Forgot about that. Just announced the other day. Theres quite a few small manufacturing companies in Olive Branch and Marshall county now too.
That’s a win for the Memphis Metro essentially. But still great to have inside the state’s borders. I just hope we didn’t spend too much ‘state’ political capital on that project.
The boss should be the one going to jail.
Not in all rural areas. Tupelo orbit is doing pretty well.
Yep. Jackson will not change at all as long as the same people are running it. Nobody will ever invest in the place as long as they are, and that includes the state.
EXACTLY.
Tupelo is not exactly rural. Metro population is 140K. Above 50K general signals more urban.
Funny, I'd argue the government, and people in general, are pushing me to seek solitude.
"Those" people, huh?
Maybe if Jackson had the state pulling for it instead of hamstringing it for decades....
But hey, what the city needs isn't to stop all that hamstringing, it's to put the people that have been working against it in charge!
The downfall of Mississippi is infrastructure. I have discussed this before here and folks forget or ignore it. I have family in rural politics. When the big companies come in to an area they ask for submissions. First page lists criteria about 4 lane highways, railroads, airports, etc. Then they evaluate training potentials, ie jucos. Then it is a matter of land costs and tax breaks.
Mississippi has screwed over the rural areas with abandoned rail lines, 4 lanes that never get finished, and we only have a few heavy lift airports.
Grenada, Canton, Blue Springs, the new battery plant, Continental all have easy access to a 4 lane and railroad. And heavy lift airports aren't that far away.
If the rural area doesn't offer the mass transportation needs of the company they are out.
Mississippi has screwed over the rural areas with abandoned rail lines, 4 lanes that never get finished, and we only have a few heavy lift airports.
Grenada, Canton, Blue Springs, the new battery plant, Continental all have easy access to a 4 lane and railroad. And heavy lift airports aren't that far away.
If the rural area doesn't offer the mass transportation needs of the company they are out.
Elections have results and Jackson is a prime example of what its residents voted for. Their biggest problem is what is facing them in their mirror.
Jackson residents never voted for the state to screw them over at every opportunity. City leaders have their share of the blame, but no one could have led Jackson to success with what they had to work with and what the state did to it.
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