The Business of the Red Neck Riviera

Is now business, says Joel Kotkin;

The region's job creation engine is powered by the growth of basic industries: manufacturing, energy, and agricultural commodities. The region from south Texas to Florida now bristles with scores of new steel plants, petrochemical facilities, and factories producing everything from airplanes to canned food. .... Thanks largely to expansion in energy, manufacturing, and engineering services, Houston now boasts a considerably higher per-capita concentration of STEM jobs—those relating to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics—than Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York....

Largely because the natives are friendly;

The magazine Site Selection says that four of the Gulf states are among the nation's 12 most attractive states to investors: Texas topped the list, with Louisiana ranking seventh, Florida tenth, and Alabama 12th. Texas and Louisiana also ranked first and third among the 50 states in terms of new plants built or being constructed. "There's been a drastic change in the business climate here," says Chris McCarty, director of the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. "A lot of regulations have been moved aside, and there's a big push by the state to get out of the way." 

Call it Southern hospitality.