Operating profits are taxed at the headquarters, owners’ profits aren’t.
The most illuminating thing I heard about the South and the North came form an old black friend in Mass. many years ago: “We had it good here until those [southern] ‘field niggers’ started coming up here”.
The War on Poverty was/is instigated as a ‘war on southern migration’. I’ve heard aid to Mexico described in much the same terms, years ago.
And those you often argue with on these threads don’t want to hear that the war could have been avoided by national investment and the South enabled to recover by it.
Spoken like a true Whig. And I don't disagree. But "national investment" is the last thing antebellum Southern Democrats (a majority in the Southern states) wanted. They didn't think they needed "internal improvements," or the taxes to pay for them. "National investment" also would have threatened the "sovereignty" of state governments and the power of the planters.
And after the Civil War, a "Marshall Plan" for the South? Well, it's not something people thought of at the time -- or even after WWI. After bitter wars, an act of such generosity (with other people's money or with one's own) would have been too much to ask for. That the country managed to go on without more trouble and rancor than we actually did go through was enough for most Northerners.
A program of "national investment" for the South would have gone against limited government principles. It would also potentially have threatened Southern White control over the Black population. Certainly when it was attempted generations after the war, the effect was to open up racial and political divisions. So I doubt such a program was ever seriously in the cards.
The most illuminating thing I heard about the South and the North came form an old black friend in Mass. many years ago: “We had it good here until those [southern] ‘field niggers’ started coming up here”.
A lot of people posting here claim to have Northern friends or acquaintances who freely toss around the n-word. It's kind of a tradition. This is the first Black one I recall, though. I've never actually met any of those Northerners who are n-wording all the time, so I have to wonder how many of them are real.
Apart from that, it's not a foolish or malign policy -- at least not any more foolish or malign than the rest of the welfare state may be. In recent decades most of the job growth has been south of the Mason-Dixon line (or south of the Rio Grande). It doesn't make much sense for Southerners to come North for jobs that don't exist or aren't being created up here, or for welfare benefits that are determined by the high cost of living in Northern cities, rather than lower cost of living in the rural South.