Still, 15 percent of the people did get good jobs. Two-thirds of their salaries didn’t leak out. This was good news. But what was the whole picture? Perhaps oil in Louisiana represented a strategy for economic growth conservatives pulled for—what sociologists Caroline Hanley and Michael T. Douglass call a “low road” strategy. Union bans, lower wages, corporate tax rebates, and loose implementation of environmental regulations are used as lures to get industry that exists somewhere else to move to one’s own state.
