Economy
The economic engine of the region ranges from the diversified economy of Greater Birmingham, to the college town of Tuscaloosa, to the heavily industrialized economy of Anniston and Gadsden.
The primary economic center of the region is Greater Birmingham because of its size and diversified economy. It is home to the state's most diversified employer, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). UAB is not only the state's largest single employer with some 20,000 employees on its payroll, but also one of the largest medical districts in the Southeast. In addition, most of the state-based corporations such as Alabama Power, AmSouth Bancorporation, Compass Bancshares, Energen Corporation, HealthSouth Corporation, Regions Financial Corporation, Saks Incorporated, and Southern Research Institute have their world headquarters located in the area. Though the Mercedes-Benz and Honda automotive production facilities are not technically located in any of the Greater Birmingham metropolitan counties, they are both considered as substantial contributors to its economy.
Tuscaloosa is the retail business center of a several-county area in Alabama and nearby Mississippi, and is chiefly a university town. The city hosts the University of Alabama's main campus as well as Stillman College and Shelton State Community College. Other major components of the economy include government, health, and industry. The city's largest industrial employer is the Mercedes-Benz production facility located ten miles from the main part of the city next to Vance.
Anniston and Gadsden are very similar in their heavily industrialized economies. Gadsden, however, is a river town so it has helped in building and creating a tourist industry to slight the blow of its declining primary industry. Gadsden is now home to many riverfront-based festivals that goes on throughout the year to boost its economy. Anniston, on the other hand, has also suffered a major blow on two fronts with the closings of Fort McClellan and many iron smelting facilities in the 1990s. However, it has turned more towards military production at the Anniston Army Depot with several government production contracts issued to this facility.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)