How to they get people to live here?

I was passing through South Carolina and central Georgia the other day and thinking to myself, how do they get people to live here?  You'd have to pay me, pay me a very large amount of money, to get me to do anything more then pass through.  We stopped for lunch, and I am looking at the attentive staff and thinking, why are they here, why haven't they fled?  I wonder if they have not seen the opportunities that exist in more developed parts of the world - like Tijuana.  Even if you want to live in a rural area, why be so far from the modern world.  We passed an outlet mall with a packed parking lot, a rare sight, the outlet world was over built and most have failed.  We asked, why, think about it, there is no other place to shop for 150 miles.