Heartland

My latest column is now online at Governing. It is a recapitulation of my analysis in my American Affairs piece on Indiana  read more »

As long as we promote and encourage the growth of companies that get their start in Flyover Country the economic gains for our region will keep on coming. Often the benefits will be offset by the involvement of coastal startup or exit capital, because we're a long way from being able to completely bootstrap our own continued rise. But there are great benefits, nonetheless.  read more »

The announcement that Our Next Energy just lined up $25 million in Series A financing had an unfortunate if familiar cast to it when the Michigan-based electric-vehicle technology outfit announced its latest venture funding a few weeks ago.  read more »

Sacramento politicians and the urban growth lobby they so diligently serve have created a narrative that there is something very wrong with living in (or wanting to live in) a single-family neighborhood. Single-family neighborhoods are -- so the narrative goes -- “racist,” “immoral,” and “evil.”  read more »

When Matt Crisp rang the bell a couple of weeks ago opening trading on the New York Stock Exchange because his St. Louis-based company, Benson Hill, had just completed an initial public offering, it ranked as a happy but unfortunately uncommon occurrence.  read more »

Cambria and Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafes are among smaller companies in Flyover Country that have joined some of our largest corporate citizens, including Walmart and Target, in recognizing a truth that is becoming increasingly important to our economy: The more that legal immigrants can be assimilated by learning English, the more valuable they will be as employees – and the more fulfilled as Americans.  read more »

Joe Biden may present himself as a ‘working-class hero’, a claim reiterated recently in the leftist American Prospect, but increasingly America’s workers are showing signs not of common cause but disquiet.  read more »

Back in 2008 was I one of the first people to start talking about how corporate headquarters were moving back to the global city in the form of the “executive headquarters.” An executive headquarters is one with just the top executives in the firm - from a handful of people up through 500 or so.  read more »

Jim Farley’s decision to invest $7 billion in green-field new battery and electric-vehicle assembly plants in the mid-South is not only a huge new commitment by the Ford Motor Co. CEO to the fast-gaining propulsion technology. It’s also a mammoth declaration by America’s iconic carmaker that the future of the auto business in the United States will remain anchored in flyover country.  read more »

Located on the Southern Plains, far from America’s coasts and great river systems, the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area epitomizes the new trends in American urbanism. Over the past decade, DFW has grown by some 1.3 million people, to reach a population of just under 7.7 million, making it the nation’s fourth-largest metro, based on new figures from the 2020 census. Rather than building on natural advantages, the metroplex owes its tremendous growth to railroads, interstate highways, and airports, plus an unusual degree of economic freedom and affordability.  read more »