When you consider how Missouri has failed to keep up with states like Florida and Texas in economic and population growth, the reasons may seem obvious. We didn’t get the sandy beaches and warm weather that Florida and Texas got, not to mention Texas’s fossil fuel reserves. But that explanation isn’t good enough. It doesn’t account for another state that is leaving Missouri in the dust: Tennessee, the state I grew up in.
Tennessee and Missouri have a lot more in common other than our shared love for blues and barbeque: Both states are landlocked and have little or no fossil fuel production, similar spacing between their large cities, similar demographics (race and urbanicity), beautiful landscapes and tourist destinations, and much more. However, there are also some key differences—one of which manifests itself in the form of heart-shattering pain every time I go to a…
