An op-ed in the Lake Sun Leader imagines a better Missouri:

Imagine businesses operating as responsible partners in making Missouri a leader, again, in areas such as research and development, in manufacturing, in education and not just in the service industries which pay the lowest wages with the fewest, if any, benefits.

Instead, one by one, Missouri manufacturers go overseas for cheap labor, including the pencil factory in Versailles.

The op-ed makes demands on so many fronts — taxes on businesses, health insurance, education ("Imagine that there is no brain drain from our universities") — that not only is the imagined state far from the current reality in Missouri, but it doesn’t describe anywhere else either. There are always trade-offs, and no state has a perfect record on all issues. You can’t burden businesses with high taxes to pay for everyone’s health care, then expect them to pour money into research and development at the same time. And when your entire population is educated at a state-of-the-art university, it won’t want to sit around making pencils in a factory.