Well, my post yesterday about how anti-growth policies and Huey Long-style populism has produced long-term decline for Louisiana brought some interesting responses. My point was quite simple: if you use government to produce a negative environment for business, offering incentives to “buy” company headquarters and facility sightings simply will not remedy that problem, and the current governor is a clear practitioner of Louisiana’s ongoing mistakes.

Most of the reaction, I suspect from supporters of John Bel Edwards, went something like, “It’s been happening a long time, leave it alone.” The simple answer is yes, it has been happening a long time. But if one bothered to read the Advocate story about how DXC Technology has missed its hiring and salary targets and will now have to refund economic-development-incentive money back to the state one would find that during the last few years, as our state becomes less attractive to business which is the sole source of prosperity-producing jobs, the departure of Louisiana’s most talented people has been accelerating. Ironically, under Jindal, the trend had actually reversed as slightly more people had moved into our state.