Any plan that puts North Dakota and Minnesota together shows the lack of knowledge of the planner. If everything went to heck, the Red River of the North would be a border.
It could be that Minnesota doesn't want North Dakota, of course, but tbh Fargo's getting fairly cosmopolitan, surprisingly enough, and is closer to the Cities culturally than most anything else in a few hundred mile radius.
Anyway, this discussion is probably completely irrelevant to about a billion percent of normal Hacker News readers. Gotta represent your people, though. :)
The Bakkens does change things but the east west probably only exists as a I-29 to I-94 link and giving voting difference isn't even a majority.
Yes, Fargo and Grand Forks tend to look more towards MN (specifically the Twin Cities not MN in general), but they also have a large student population with a large percentage not from ND due to tuition and quality of education (e.g. aviation).
> Anyway, this discussion is probably completely irrelevant to about a billion percent of normal Hacker News readers. Gotta represent your people, though. :)
From the down votes, you are probably right, but judging economic impact via population is really, really dumb as the only metric (you didn't - others did).
You're probably aware (but others may not be) that the East Dakota / West Dakota proposal has a long history: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/609-had-the-cookie-crumbled...
Lastly, why do residents of Fargo seem to pay no attention to Winnipeg? I've never heard anyone from the area talk much about driving North for a bit of culture, despite it being a little closer than the Twin Cities.
Its easier to drive to the Twin Cities than Winnipeg (heck its easier to drive to the Twin Cities from Grand Forks) than to cross the border and use different currency. That border crossing is a pain in the rear. I did the crossing before 9/11 and it was a pain then.
It just confirms how myopic people who live on the East Coast are about our "flyover" country.
When you're talking about any sort of economic or tax impact, cities of around 100,000 people are barely a suburb on a map like this. Hell, even after the super-charged growth of the last decade, the combined GDP of North and South Dakota is less than $100 billion. The Minneapolis metro area's GDP is over twice that.