South Ensuring Detroit Won't Rise Again

It's no coincidence that Dixie senators derailed the Big Three bailout, since the South—with anti-union laws, low wages, and modest taxes—has built a counter-Detroit that will ensure that neither the Motor City or the South will rise again, Michael Lind writes in Salon. The same tactics were used to poach Northern textile factories early last century, he adds, calling for a "Third Reconstruction" that puts a halt to the South's spiraling "race to the bottom."

Foreign automakers have spied an outsourcing opportunity in the affordable South that threatens not just the North, but Southerners themselves. Their desire for good pay, education, and public services will be "sacrificed to the greed of the well-connected few," Lind says, unless Congress and Barack Obama—oft likened to Abe Lincoln anyway—push federal control over Southern wages and regulations.
(More financial crisis stories.)