[lentulusgracchus]

Further to my last, what you just did is the Marxian equivalent of pivot-and-shoot. Coming off very obvious economic reasons why all these Southern answers to Edison's lab and Ford's assembly line didn't spring out of the ground (and there were geological reasons, too: the South had Appalachian coal in the Alabama Hills and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, most of which was sucked into the maw of the New York economic machine, but the huge, cheap iron and copper deposits were all in Minnesota and Michigan), you then insert a typically Marxist social criticism that would seem to call for a vanguard-led "revolution from the top" to lead us all into the sunny uplands of Marxist-Leninist comradely equalitarianism. Which still doesn't tell us where the money is going to come from.

.....and he pivots, jumper, andHakeemgoesupwithhimREEE-JECTEDDDD!!!OHwhattablock....

No basket, Ditto. Would you like to try for the rebound? Don't mind Charles's elbows -- they're always like that.

[Ditto]

"Further to my last, what you just did is the Marxian equivalent of pivot-and-shoot. Coming off very obvious economic reasons why all these Southern answers to Edison's lab and Ford's assembly line didn't spring out of the ground (and there were geological reasons, too: the South had Appalachian coal in the Alabama Hills and eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, most of which was sucked into the maw of the New York economic machine, but the huge, cheap iron and copper deposits were all in Minnesota and Michigan), you then insert a typically Marxist social criticism that would seem to call for a vanguard-led "revolution from the top" to lead us all into the sunny uplands of Marxist-Leninist comradely equalitarianism. Which still doesn't tell us where the money is going to come from."

LOL. You're starting to sound like Stand Watie or Twodees --- anyone who shoots at your Lost Cause Myth and self-pity is a Marxist. That's ironic as hell since my post extolled the virtues of the northern capitalists who built America into the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. If your neo-confederate dictionary defines that as Marxist, we must live on different planets.

BTW. New York City had no need for coal from Alabama. Pennsylvania is right next store and to this day can provide enough coal every week to bury New York 100 feet deep. As to your mythical geographic advantage of the north, explain to me what advantage New England had in textile manufacture. Their raw material had to travel 1000 miles! Why did the south wait until the early 1900s before they started to build their own textile mills to process the cotton grown right there? Why did Pittsburgh that had coal just like Tennessee but no iron ore become the steel capital? It would be as easy to ship iron ore from Minnesota to Nashville, Chattanooga, or Memphis as it was to Pittsburgh --- maybe even cheaper since you could take the Mississippi the whole way. Where were the southern Carnegies to take advantage of those opportunities? There was no geographic reason why the south could not have joined the industrial age. It was their culture that prevented it. The reason is that southern culture until the last few decades was always about looking backward, not looking forward. And 100 years later, ironically, the regions have somewhat changed positions. Now it is people in the rust-belt who cling to outdated institutions and pine for the “good old days” of heavy industry and refuse to embrace the future as the sun belt has done.