Could the Rust Belt become the New South?

[12th Doctor]

I challenge the premise.  The Rust Belt is not really that poor.  Basically, the people who have good jobs have them and there are alot of other people who have no jobs.  The region is still in a period of adjustment.  Granted, Michigan and large parts of Ohio, and western New York are basically like the East Germany of the United States, but Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and the Twin cities are either just fine, or in the process of recovery.

[12th Doctor]

Really, there were a couple of major cities that have never really recovered from the end of the Midwest industrial era... Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Flint, but it was the small cities that were totaled; places like Altoona, Johnstown, most of the area within a hundred miles north and south east of Pittsburgh, Youngstown is probably the worst, and really any other city of fewer than 150,000 people in the region, except Erie.  Those places have become massively depopulated, because the one or two major manufacturing firms that employed half the town have pulled out, and they really didn't have that much else going for them.