Matthew Yglesias explains what sucks about the South:

This is, of course, but a small slice of the larger southern politics tradition which has always insisted since the end of the Civil War that cheap labor and a low-tax, low-service, high-inequality social and economic system are the key to prosperity. This approach left the South perennially poorer than the rest of the country, but over the past couple of decades this made-in-dixie failed approach to economic development has come to dominate national policy. Not coincidentally, during this period the United States has begun to fall behind high-wage, high-service, low-inequality northern European countries in terms of average living standards.

I’ve lived in the South for essentially my entire life.