Trends, to economic development, are little bit like fashion is to clothing – you never know what the next year’s hot topic will be. Nevertheless, economic developers are, or should be, scrambling to keep up with state-level legislation that either encourages or discourages people to come to the state and feel secure enough to remain there. At the same time, working people respond differently to the legislative environment they find themselves in according to their earning potential. Both the level of this kind of legislation and its partisanship have registered at the extreme end of the spectrum within the last few years. Either state legislatures/governors (generalizing here) are not paying much if any attention to the economic development impacts of their lawmaking, or economic developers are not doing a good enough job of making these connections. One of the ironies of this situation is that rural areas generally hold a clear advantage in establishing policy, at the state as well as national level, and these are the same areas that tend to be disadvantaged as locations for economic activity of any kind. Consequently, rural areas can benefit the most from focused economic development: both strategic planning and professional recruiting, retention, etc.