Oh yeah... No state income tax is going to make me want to live in Iowa!

Keeping Iowa's Young Folks at Home After They've Seen Minnesota -

NY Times

But $600, the average yearly state income tax for Iowan 20-somethings, is not enough to undo decades of social erosion. The problems Iowa faces are the very solutions it chose two and three generations ago. The state's demographic dilemma wasn't caused by bad weather or high income taxes or the lack of a body of water larger than Rathbun Lake - an Army Corps of Engineers reservoir sometimes known as "Iowa's ocean." It was caused by the state's wholehearted, uncritical embrace of industrial agriculture, which has depopulated the countryside, destroyed the economic and social texture of small towns, and made certain that ordinary Iowans are defenseless against the pollution of factory farming.

(snip)

There is not enough life in the small towns of Iowa to keep a young person, and there is no opportunity on the land. The state faces an excruciating paradox. It can foster economic development of a kind that devours farmland - the sort of thing that is happening around Des Moines. Or it can try to reimagine the nature of farming, with certain opposition from farmers themselves and without any help from the federal government, which has fostered industrial agriculture for decades.

If milking cows and slaughtering swine is your bag, god bless. But with the increasing efficiency of agriculture (while millions starve, we are now burning corn for fuel) and the lack of diversification of the economy of Iowa, I don't see a reason for the economy of rural areas like Iowa turning around without major government intervention.