Conservative Is Better, Part MMMCMLVI
By Mitch Berg
Growing up in North Dakota, there was a palpable sense that you could still feel the panic of the Great Depression; some nooks and crannies in downtown Jamestown still had grit from the Dust Bowl tucked away into back corners.
Tied to agriculture as it has always been, it’s always been a fairly conservative place (although the friction and turbulence of agriculture have also made it the hotbed of extremists of all types – it was the home of the leftist Grange movement in the 1890’s, as well as Bill Langer and the “Non-Partisan League” in the thirties; it was also a hotbed of the Deutsche-Amerikanische Bund in the thirties and the Posse Comitatus in the seventies and eightes. But they were very much the outliers). It’s voted Republican, if memory serves, in every election since statehood. Even in the Democrat landslides; North Dakota (and its cheap copy, South Dakota) gives Utah and Nevada a run for their money.
And that conservatism springs from a life that is by its very nature pretty conservative; Kathleen Norris, in her classic book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography says that people who thrive in the Dakotas have an attitude not unlike that of monks – self-denying, humble-to-the-point-of-self-abasing, penurious, expecting very little.
I had to get out of there.
But the place has its attractions. One of them being just about the strongest economy in the nation, right about now:
While almost a quarter-million California properties were involved last year, South Dakota had only 50 homes in foreclosure in 2007, a nearly imperceptible 0.007 percent of homes in the state, the New York Times reported. Nevada’s nation-leading rate was 3.4 percent, but North Dakota was below 0.1 percent, along with Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
…
Rick Clayburgh, president of the North Dakota Bankers Association in Bismarck, offered similar explanations for his state’s escaping the subprime fallout.
Farmers received record prices for a bumper wheat crop and other commodities. The Williston Basin oil patch is booming. The Canadian dollar’s strength against the U.S. dollar has fueled tourism.
“But nobody wants to live there…”
Well, duh, yeah, you Rhodes scholar you…:
“States like North Dakota and South Dakota are not exactly retirement destinations,” [Curt Everson of the SoDak Banker’s Association] said from his office in Pierre. “That’s what drove the housing boom in Nevada and some of those other places.
But still; the Dakotas have ridden out the last two recessions and the ongoing decay in the agriculture business (forget about ethanol; the Dakotas are dry and windy, which makes for lousy corn country) much better than the nation as a whole. This is a departure from history (especially when I was growing up there), and a direct result of a very conservative style of government.
Which makes sense, more or less.
And before some nutslap chimes in with Paul Krugman’s incontinent blather about the Dakotas getting more “aid” than they pay in taxes, just stop. While much of that aid is in farm subsidies (and I’ve opposed them for over 20 years now), much of the rest of it is in federal land ownership (the feds own about 5% of both states), military spending (the states host three Air Force bases and about 150 Minuteman missile silos – down from 450 during th eighties), big federal land and water projects, and several Indian reservations. All that money, against a combined population of about 1.3 million, skews the “aid” numbers to the point that you’d have to be as addled as Paul Krugman to present them out of context.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I am confused, you claim N Dak’s economy is one of the strongest in the nation (with no indication how that is measured) and its b/c of the state’s conservative style of government.
You then point to the main reasons:
1. Ridiculously low foreclosure rate
2. Very high commodity prices
3. Weakening dollar
Of the reasons you stated, two have nothing to do with the state’s conservative style of government. The third, the foreclosure rate, may or may not have anything to do with the state’s style of government.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Mitch educated: “South Dakota had only 50 homes in foreclosure in 2007, a nearly imperceptible 0.007 percent of homes in the state, the New York Times reported.”
Cause there’s no competition for housing, no speculation by half-witted real estate investors who think home prices only go up. And cause it’s not so hard to make a $27 a month mortgage. All of which is due to the fact that it’s the last place in America anybody would want to live.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Fulcrum,
Good economy rarely has all that much to do with government actions, for or against; bad economies frequently do.
The Dakotas have a fairly (although not dogmatically) hands-off state government (with some exceptions; the only state-owned bank in the country). When times are tight, the government doesn’t have to go begging for more tax money, since it’s always kept in fairly strict limits anyway.
How conservative is it? State legislators haven’t gotten a pay raise since statehood. They still get $5 a day.
Oh, and North Dakota’s school kids vie with Minnesota’s in the “Best Scores” department; a year in a ND school costs about 2/3 what it does in MN. And don’t be talking about “urban problems”; rural education has its own.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
All of which is due to the fact that it’s the last place in America anybody would want to live.
Do you have any idea how many companies – and jobs – decamped from New York to Sioux Falls?
(Lots).
And while it’s not a place you might choose to live – and I moved away in October of 1985 only because I missed the June bus – it has a lot to recommend it, if you’re wired for that kind of place.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Other reasons why ND gets more gov’t money then it pays…..Big freeway system across a lightly populated state. Takes many dollars to pay for that so the trucks can go from Blue state Minn to Blue state Washington.
Slow population growth means older population means higher payments to individuals (aka Senior-Americans).
Yes, rural education may not have the issues of trying to educate students speaking 15 different languages, but the small districts with declining enrollments have hard times. And they do very well with what they have.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
There’s a lot of land out thataway, too. There’s a lot to recommend it for retirees, I think – but you’d have to be wired a certain way and be in pretty good shape.
I happen to like North Dakota (and NW MN) quite a bit.
But calling South Dakota a “cheap copy”? Nonsense. They’re totally separate, parallel universes. They have about as much in common as MN and poor WI.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Recipe for Happiness: avoid living in a place that has “buffalo”, “prairie” or “devil” as part of its name and was settled by “hardy Scandinavians”.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
“Do you have any idea how many companies – and jobs – decamped from New York to Sioux Falls?”
Um, can you name one?
(Hoping it isn’t Citigroup or Verizon!)
May 9th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Citigroup is one of several banks and FiServ companies that moved its operations to SoDak. They may have left their for-show headquarters in NYC – but a couple thousand jobs migrated west, yes indeedydoo.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Please. Citi has operations all over the world. Their “for-show” headquarters in the 59-storey Citigroup Center has approximately one zillion employees, including the company’s smartest, most educated and most highly paid. NYC has “for show” headquarters of 53 Fortune 500 companies. SoDak? Zero. Wall Street is in no danger of moving to the Badlands, my friend.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
This thread may be dead, but I should be able to find some Minnesota (high tax Democrat state) companies that fled to Republican SD. I used to go out with a gal who had relatives in Pipestone who would talk about how businesses are leaving Blue Minnesota for Red South Dakota.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Wall Street is in no danger of moving to the Badlands, my friend.
Well, I know the office of NYKlownKo is crowded with strawmen! Never Wall Street was in any danger. Merely that SoDak’s gain has been a loss for NYC to the tune of a couple thousand jobs.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Back in the 80’s I had to go to Bismarck to service a disk array at the state hospital. Driving there from St. Paul was like driving off the edge of the world. Sodak & Nodak together have about the population of the Twin Cities metro area. People there, outside of the Indian Reservations, tend to be very intelligent. SAT scores show North Dakota is #1 at 1815. South Dakota is ranked #4 at 1772. New York is rated 43rd(!) at 1486.
FYI the top 10 states ranked by SAT scores are N.Dak, Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Tennessee.
Sucks to be from New York.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I believe no statistics from wingnuts that don’t include links. In any case, the pool of people taking the SAT is self-selected. Similar numbers could result from dumb farm kids staying home to plant corn rather than trying to get into college as they might in the more civilized states.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Jeepers, AC, that’s a pretty lame rationalization.
Howzabout you google “SAT’s ranked by state”. I can’t help but think that you’re on the left side the bell curve yourself.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I did just that, Terry (though I left out the incorrect possessive – wonder what you got on the SAT). From the top hit:
“Average SAT scores are not appropriate for state comparisons because the percentage of SAT takers varies widely among states. In some states, a very small percentage of the college-bound seniors take the SAT. Typically, these students have strong academic backgrounds and are applicants to the nation’s most selective colleges and scholarship programs. Therefore, it is expected that the SAT verbal and mathematical averages reported for these states will be higher than the national average. In states where a greater proportion of students with a wide range of academic backgrounds take the SAT, and where most colleges in the state require the test for admission, the scores are closer to the national average.”
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/research/RDGuideUseCBTest020729.pdf
Man, turns out Angryclown is right even when he’s talking out his ass!
Fish in a barrel.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Average SAT scores are not appropriate for state comparisons because the percentage of SAT takers varies widely among states.
And, given that literacy rates are vastly higher in the midwest than on the Coast, I think we know what that means.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Another assertion you fail to back up with evidence. SitD SOP.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
So angryclown is arguing that it is unfair to compare average SAT scores because coastal folks are too dumb to know how stupid they are?
I think I will let you win that argument, angryclown.