The author is a labor lawyer from Minnesota and should know better. He writes as someone who has never left the coasts or large cities. As someone who lives squarely out in Banjostan, it pisses me off when a writer like this tells an audience how my part of the world is doing.

It is interesting how the BBC thinks population 3,300 Blue Earth MN and population 500k Kansas City have something in common.

That jumped out at me as well. KSC is growing and becoming a tech hub for one and only one reason: Google Fibre. They got lucky and were the first to get the service before Alphabet realized how hard it is being an ISP and got bored with it. Nashville is pissed that they gave Google a ton of money and cash kickbacks to get Google Fiber and are getting less than shit for the return on that investment.

This reminds me of the articles from a while back on call centers moving back to Minnesota and the Midwest a grand wonderful thing. Because $9/hr jobs with no benefits are the lowered expectations that have been beaten into us over the last 40 years.