It's not mentioned in the article at all, but Minnesota is #2 in the nation for giving away money to other states.
Yeah, I was surprised by that. How comes Minnesota is so well-off?
We have a highly diversified economy and a well educated populace. Minnesota was a very middling state prior to the 1960s. Several major governmental reforms during the 60s and 70s greatly improved education and infrastructure by making government spending equitable. This redistributed tax revenues but still allowed local control.. so no matter where you lived in MN, you'd have good police and fire coverage, access to recreation (parks, etc), and good schools. A lot of rural Minnesota boomed after this after stagnating for decades. And because incomes and prosperity grew so much, tax rates could remain lower and we didn't have to soak the wealthier communities.
The governors in the past 30 years have also been huge "salesmen" for Minnesota-based products and services. We've had a lot of lucrative trade deals with foreign companies and governments thanks to the idea of "governor as advocate" started by Rudy Perpich back in the '80s.
We also have little exposure to large banks compared to most places. Most people here bank with small community banks and credit unions. While many got caught up in the real estate bubble, meaning we have the 5th highest rate of banks with excessive amounts of bad debt... we also have a ton of banks.... most of which were more conservative in their lending which meant we weathered the financial crisis better.
The only large bank with a big presence in Minnesota is Wells Fargo, which fared much better in the financial crisis than the other big banks (like Bank of America, Chase, etc).
In my town of 30,000 people... Wells Fargo is the only of the large banks. But I can name off like 12 other banks that only have branches in my town or in the surrounding towns.
