Louisiana has long been burdened with large swaths of rural areas that have little or no economic value. These areas offered little future, and the result has been growing poverty and out-migration Suddenly we have been “discovered” by Big Tech, as in at least five rural parts of the state we see the development of massive data centers bringing construction, maintenance and support jobs and hope.
Not to be unexpected the usual cast of naysayers has come out against these developments, but as long as they provide most of their own power and they protect water resources they are a lifeline for a state that has been left out of the 21st century boom in the south.
Clearly areas of rural Louisiana will benefit, but if we are smart and we play our cards right we can use these data centers to encourage economic growth in our more populated suburban and urban areas. Unfortunately New Orleans leaders, mindlessly following Left Wing claptrap, have cast a pall over getting data centers here, but we can still hope that we can tap into their potential.
The future way to break the cycle of poverty and to turn around out-migration of our loved ones is to create a region in which jobs that produce family wealth are the rule, not the exception. If we remain fixated on just promoting our culture, on believing that the types of jobs that we are creating are the way to prosperity, on thinking that somehow the last thirty or forty years of slide away from economic relevancy has been an aberration that will self-correct, then we have learned nothing and we will reap what we must expect, further economic decline.
We have a chance to drag our suburban and urban regions into places of growth and prosperity, but only if we use the message that Louisiana is sending to the tech world, that investment here is not riddled with petty politics, that we will not tax and regulate you out of profitability as other Blue states are doing, that we will not allow wacko Left wing policies make your investments untenable. We are open for business, and we want YOU to lead US to a better future, instead of us continuing to follow leadership ideas that have left us high and dry.
These data centers must be viewed not only as a boon for rural areas, but also an opportunity for all of Louisiana to catch up to the other southern states and cities. We just can’t let our malignant belief that what we have been doing and who we have trusted to do it will ever deliver for our people. It won’t.
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