Florida, California, Texas, New York, and to a certain degree the unique states, Alaska, Hawaii, do have, "something special," about them due to their sheer size or uniqueness.
What does Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan have? They need to be really attractive places to live because they aren't inherently (though some parts are, they are really far away from population centers). People don't go on, "vacation to the Midwest," they go to other, better landscapes. I'm sure there are outliers and I know there are outlier locations, I'm speaking in generalities here. I have driven over a significant portion of the Midwest, it's few and far between. You can't arbitrarily make beautiful mountains pop up in Iowa, and it's cold. At least if you're in Arkansas, it's got the Ozarks, warm weather pretty much year-round.
So really the only thing we midwestern states can do is look deeply inward and improve ourselves, that's really the only thing, other massive or more interesting States can rest on their laurels for a bit because people are inherently going to want to move there. Can you tell I'm not running to be the Governor of Minnesota any time soon? ;-)
What does Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan have? They need to be really attractive places to live because they aren't inherently (though some parts are, they are really far away from population centers). People don't go on, "vacation to the Midwest," they go to other, better landscapes. I'm sure there are outliers and I know there are outlier locations, I'm speaking in generalities here. I have driven over a significant portion of the Midwest, it's few and far between. You can't arbitrarily make beautiful mountains pop up in Iowa, and it's cold. At least if you're in Arkansas, it's got the Ozarks, warm weather pretty much year-round.
So really the only thing we midwestern states can do is look deeply inward and improve ourselves, that's really the only thing, other massive or more interesting States can rest on their laurels for a bit because people are inherently going to want to move there. Can you tell I'm not running to be the Governor of Minnesota any time soon? ;-)