Heartland

Few beehives of industrial activity have prospered more through the last decade than Elkhart County, Indiana. As the global capital of recreational-vehicle manufacturing, the area prospered from the RV-sales boom after the Great Recession and amid $2-a-gallon gasoline, and then the industry got another accelerant when Americans fled to the great outdoors over the last couple of years in reaction to the pandemic.  read more »

In 1946, the American author John Gunther described Houston as “mostly ugly and barren, without a single good restaurant and hotels with cockroaches”. The only reasons to live in the city, he claimed, were financial; it was a place “where few people think about anything but money”.  read more »

Ford is rapidly laying down the path to the future of the automobile, but in a strange way the new journey is wrapped in its past. That makes for a striking contrast — and promise — in Ford’s revolutionary strategy as the company accelerates production of its F-150 Lightning all-electric pickup truck in Dearborn, Michigan.  read more »

No thanks to President Biden — who botched our star turn in his State of the Union address and refuses to loosen his restrictions on our hydrocarbon industry —but Flyover Country is beginning to experience a major moment.  read more »

If there’s one location advantage for the heartland that’s become clear during the last several years, it’s the edge we enjoy over the coasts in housing affordability.  read more »

The record meltdown of Meta stock earlier this month suggests turbulence in the tech world and a difficult period ahead for the company formerly known as Facebook. But even as Meta’s stock has fallen, the record profits being posted by fellow oligarchical tech firms Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon indicates that Silicon Valley’s hegemony is far from over.  read more »

It’s always been in the background of the nation’s ongoing transition to electric transportation, but now a significant reality has been brought to the forefront by some data-crunching journalists: There’s a strong regional divide in our willingness to adopt EVs.  read more »

Intel Corp. CEO Pat Gelsinger presumably flew right over us this week when the head of the Santa Clara, California-based giant microchip maker ended up in Washington, D.C., to share the podium as President Biden congratulated the company for its decision to invest $20 billion in a chip-manufacturing complex in America.  read more »

Intel announced plans to build two new semiconductor (chip) manufacturing plants in the Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area on January 21. In announcing the largest private-sector investment in Ohio history, CEO Pat Gelsinger told Time magazine (which managed an exclusive “scoop” on January 20). “We helped to establish the Silicon Valley,now we’re going to do the Silicon Heartland.” This will be the first Intel chip manufacturing plant in the Midwest.  read more »

It may be the least opportune time of the year to bring it up, but climate change is something we in Flyover Country are finally reckoning with. And even as the thermometer this week plunges to its lowest levels of the season in much of the heartland, longer-term forces are going to prevail on the issue of our climate, just as spring follows winter.  read more »