This throwaway line is actually very astute. The only way to get people to live or businesses to operate in shitty places is to provide some sort of benefit to do so. Since states cannot change their location, they must do something else to increase desirability. Hence, lowering taxes is the easiest, and often, most efficient way to do so.

However, the reduced revenue cycles to crappier schools, fewer services, less maintenance of public investment, etc. which in turn makes it less desirable and the need again to reduce taxes again to improve desirability. This is very simplistic, of course, but I see you Kansas and Wisconsin (contrasted to Minnesota).