That's a pretty complex financial problem that you're over simplifying. The flyover states can't very easily invest more, they don't have the growth to do it. The coastal areas do largely have the growth to invest (in some cases a lot of growth), which makes it dramatically easier to do so. They have the flowing tax base expansion, the labor expansion.

It's the difference between being Facebook with 45% net income profit margins, and being a manufacturer in Ohio with 4% net income margins. If you're Facebook, you're drowning in opportunity and cash. Growth does that for you, in many cases it begets further easy growth. The manufacturer's scenario is rock and a hard place stagnation, and if they slip up even a bit, it's bankruptcy.

In 77 years, Arkansas has added one million people. They might add 20k to 30k per year in a good year.

West Virginia hasn't grown its population 84 years.

Mississippi has added one million people in a hundred years.

Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania have barely grown their populations in half a century.

Some of this is down to their mistakes, some of it is shit luck of getting slammed by very large macro economic forces, huge technology changes (whereas earlier technology changes had blessed those locations).

These states are perpetually trapped in a scenario where they can't afford to make the moves to attract sustained growth, and they can't grow because they can't afford to make those expensive moves. It's stagnation hell. The only likely way out, is a major technology inflection point, and being sure to catch the wave.