Leaving Louisiana

By Tom Roberson

Louisiana is a state both blessed and cursed with natural resources such as oil, gas, timber, seafood, and agriculture. But a recent Wall Street Journal article drove home the depressing fact that educated young people are fleeing Louisiana for better opportunities. Our hardworking citizens have been fortunate to have good paying jobs producing and refining these resources while alleviating America's need to rely on foreign sources for these commodities. However, our myopic political class has squandered opportunities to diversify Louisiana's economy beyond natural resources and forced us to ride the boom and bust cycles of the commodities markets. We lived well in the 1970s as oil prices skyrocketed due to Middle East influences only to crash and burn in 1984 as the bottom dropped out of oil prices. Our seafood industry was decimated last year by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and has yet to overcome the unfounded fears that our seafood is unsafe. Our timber industry is at the mercy of Canadian loggers who are able to flood the market.... (Read Full Article)