Got to be the stupidest thing I have read here in a long time.
Because it was already so bad, dummy. The South was in a Depression from about 1863 to 1963.
I would say that much of rural Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana are still depressed, just look at the high rates of poverty and teen births and low rates of high school graduation. In an increasingly technologically driven economy those who can't keep up don't slide back, they fall off a cliff.
