Everybody's moving to flyover country

re: That same Constitution also banned importing slaves from abroad, which seems like a strange thing to do if their only motivation was the maintenance of slavery.

By 1861 international law had banned the slave trade and the British navy (with an assist from the French) enforced that ban quite effectively on the high seas. There's a scene in the movie Amistad where a British man o'war destroys a Portuguese slave depot on the Guinea coast-- which is exactly what happened to the slave trade.

Re: The greater attraction for these car companies, however, isn't an incentive but a lower likelihood of having to deal with the U.A.W.

Interesting that they are perfectly OK with siting factories in Ontario where they have to deal with the CAW, and a fairly liberal regulatory regime. But what they don't have to deal with are employee healthcare premiums.

Re: The British thought they could win by pacifing the South. They were wrong. After defeats at Cowpens, Gulford Courthouse (technically a British pyrrhic victory but I think that is another way of saying loss), King's Mountain, and of course, Yorktown, the Brits gave up.

The French navy blockading the British at Yorktown had something to do with that. The Brits really tried everything (apart from scorched-earth genocide) in the Revolution. They first tried to pacify New England, then seized New York City and Philadelphia then, scratching their powdered wigs, had a go at the Carolinas.

Re: The South and West are home to a majority of the Army bases, Air Force posts, Naval bases, and associated things such as shipbuilding.

Which did not descend upon them like manna from Heaven. Rather they were put there quite deliberately through the influence of Southern senators and congressmen bringing home the bacon.

Not to question the influence of Southern and Western members of Congress on getting military bases in their districts, but I suspect that the large number of military bases historically found in the South and the West also has something to do with the fact that the South lost the Civil War and was under military occupation for a decade afterwards; and the West was, in effect, a war zone for much of the second half of the 19th century.

In other words, I think many of these military installations had already been established out of military necessity before they came to be viewed as desirable sources of jobs, etc.

Fleeing...not running to.

California's Gold Rush Has Been Reversed
Entrepreneurs are fleeing heavy taxes in the state.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154816733469917.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Excerpt:
Citizens are burdened by all manner of state regulations. To mention just one example, this year a new law enacted by ballot initiative bans cages chicken farmers use on the grounds that it is inhuman to put birds in cages that prevent them from spreading their wings. Complying with the new law will cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars, which will force many to leave the state. And that will force us to buy our eggs from other states and, possibly, others nations, such as Mexico.

And just as a fallen tree can divert the flow of water in a creek, bad economic policies divert the flow of investment. Entrepreneurs and investors, seeking the path of least resistance, leave when it becomes easier to make a living in more business-friendly states. In 2000, according to the state's Department of Finance, about 150,000 people moved into California. But in the years that followed the in-migration slowed, and in 2005 it reversed, when a net 52,000 people moved out. In 2008, the outflow topped 135,000 people.

Consequently, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming all have unemployment rates around 5% at a time when California is suffering an unemployment rate of 9%. Californians are moving east and creating jobs in their new home states.