There's Something the Matter With Ohio Too

In the wake of the white supremacist march and the killing of a protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, my Bloomberg View colleague Tyler Cowen wrote an excellent piece about how the state is a multicultural success story. Economically thriving, Virginia also is home to a large number of immigrants from all over the world. Those who attack that success are putting themselves on the wrong side of history.

Virginia, of course, benefits from being close to Washington. Other states, such as New York, California, Texas and Illinois, have succeeded economically because of the wealth of huge, diverse cities like New York City, Chicago and Houston. And many sparsely populated states such as North Dakota are prospering mainly because of large endowments of natural resources. Meanwhile, states with none of these natural advantages, such as North Carolina and Minnesota, are making progress by leveraging higher education and technology clusters.