{"id":46316,"date":"2014-08-11T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T17:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=46316"},"modified":"2014-08-11T13:19:45","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T18:19:45","slug":"chanting-points-memo-our-slammin-econony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=46316","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo: Our Slammin’ Economy!*"},"content":{"rendered":"

The left is jumping up and down proclaming that Minnesota’s economy is lighting up the charts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And it is – in the same sense that I’ve got the best chance of being the best pitcher in my division (if the other teams started Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Andrea Bocelli).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as Bill Glahn points\u00a0out, it’s less about “economic strength”, and more about the comparisons that the Democrats are highlighting<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Most of the recent bragging around Minnesota\u2019s economy centers on a single fact: that Minnesota\u2019s unemployment rate (4.5%) is below that of Wisconsin\u2019s (5.7%). But Minnesota\u2019s unemployment rate has been lower than Wisconsin\u2019s since February 1997.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wisconsin’s economy has always been focused more heavily on manufacturing – and manufacturing has been on a slow decline for decades.\u00a0 Minnesota’s economy focuses on financial services and healthcare (insurance and devices), both of which are hot tickets these days, and parts of which have been getting lavish government subsidies.\u00a0 Of course they’re doing<\/em> well<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two states’ relative positions not only predate Walker, they’re the same as when Wisconsin was dominated by idiot liberals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As to the purported “job growth” (with emphasis added):<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Minnesota\u2019s job growth during the past year has merely kept pace with the job growth in the rest of the country<\/strong>…Iowa (4.4%), South Dakota (3.8%), Nebraska (3.5%), and North Dakota (2.7%, the nation\u2019s lowest) all enjoy lower unemployment rates than Minnesota. We may be beating Wisconsin, but we are losing badly to those states with which we compete for new residents and businesses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I’d be very interested in seeing how the states compare if you leave out manufacturing in Wisconsin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the claim that the Twin Cities have the lowest unemployment rate of any major metro area in the country?”\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps – but the smaller metropoli around us, Fargo and Des Moines and the like, are smoking the Twin Cities:<\/p>\n

The \u201cnation\u2019s lowest\u201d claim only comes by comparing MSP to the biggest American cities. If you are a sprinter, you\u2019ll be happy to edge ahead of the fattest guy in the race, but you need to notice that all the other runners have already crossed the finish line.<\/p>\n

Rather than comparing Minnesota\u2019s economic performance to the relevant benchmarks, it seems we are determined to find someone, somewhere we can brag over. Yes, we are doing better than Detroit, but does that really mean we are doing well?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And don’t look now, but downtown Detroit is a lot more vibrant than downtown Saint Paul on a non-hockey night.<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The left is jumping up and down proclaming that Minnesota’s economy is lighting up the charts.\u00a0 And it is – in the same sense that I’ve got the best chance of being the best pitcher in my division (if the other teams started Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Andrea Bocelli).\u00a0 But as Bill Glahn points\u00a0out, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-chanting-points-memo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46322,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46316\/revisions\/46322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}