It's absolutely a topic worth discussing and considering from a college or advanced high school level perspective imo as there is debate to be had. IDK if you saw it, the article I linked does discuss a lot of the benefits, and it discusses a lot of the downsides to those benefits. Like cotton from the south was definitely cheaper, but putting all their eggs into the slave estate basket meant they didn't have a well developed industrial base, which you can see caused them a lot of issues in the civil war. It was also bad from their overall economy.