BuckeyeBlog

What state is declining fastest, according to Forbes?

The turmoil of the mortgage market granted a temporary reprieve from hearing about the woes of America’s Rust Belt. That doesn’t mean things are better. Despite a decade of national prosperity, the former manufacturing backbone of the U.S. is in rougher shape than ever, still searching for some way to replace its long-stilled smokestacks.

Where’s it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities–Detroit and Flint–making the ranking.

But don’t worry, state leaders are taking care of pressing issues, like banning payday lending. Of course, they did pass an “economic stimulus” bill that spreads around money to politically-popular projects and saddles future generations with debt. Too bad they aren’t doing something to actually address the state’s problems, like reducing Ohio’s increasing tax burden on individuals and businesses.

Robert Scott, the author of the EPI report which I criticized earlier today, defended his study in a response to my post. In that defense, he draws heavily upon statistics and models from which his conclusions and assumptions are drawn. It’s easy to get caught up in numbers and leave the principles that give them meaning far behind. But detailed observations don’t always reflect the truth, and it’s easy to fall into a trap when one forgets which is the master and which is the servant. For thousands of years, humans observed the sun moving from the east in the morning to the west at night. From this observation, they developed the theory that the sun revolved around the earth. They were so convinced of their beliefs that they were willing to kill others to preserve their theory. As we now know, however, they were wrong. Data and observations by themselves serve only as the various colors on a painter’s palette. One must have the principles to use as a brush if he wishes to paint a picture.

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Columbus native and Northwestern University economic prof Lynne Keisling in her excellent Knowledge Problem blog dishes up the meow mix to WSJ’s Rebecca Smith for a badly misinformed analysis of the impact freer electric energy markets are having in Texas.

Perhaps Ohio’s recent decision to extend government regulation of electric utility energy will protect corporation bottom lines and manufacturing jobs in the short run. Eventually, however, the distorted or completely missing signals of true prices for consumption and true returns for production investments will cause Ohioans to lose out on jobs and prosperity to places with freer markets such as Texas.

BTW, Texas added 139,000 jobs so far in 2008. Ohio has added a paltry 6,000 jobs.

In anticipation of the Fourth of July, Steven Chapman at Reason magazine has an interesting article about how freedom (specifically economic freedom) is essential to the pursuit of happiness:

Two things, it appears, are needed to increase the supply of happiness: freedom and money. As it happens, a substantial amount of freedom is crucial to the creation of wealth. There is no such thing as a rich totalitarian country, as even the onetime totalitarians in Beijing finally realized. So in a very real sense, freedom is the key to happiness.

The survey, by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, involved asking people in 97 countries two simple questions: “Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy or not at all happy?” and “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”

What the researchers found is that in the 52 countries where the poll has been done over the last couple of decades, the percentage of people giving upbeat answers rose in 40. Among the places where smiles have been spreading are such developing countries as China and India, which have grown freer as well as more prosperous.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was the guest speaker last night at the Ashbrook Center’s annual gala, filling in for Tony Snow, whose return to health all should be praying for.

Even taking into account an expected bias in reporting on his eight year’s tenure as governor, Gov. Bush has an impressive record of free-market, conservative accomplishments.  As such, his tenure serves as a benchmark for understanding why Florida is a place where jobs and prosperity grow, while Ohio is where they are in decline.  See this WSJ op-ed from 2006 for more details.  

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