Jim Bacon has been into the numbers again. See “States, Taxes and Laffer Curve” below. (This is a new post since some may not make it past Anon 5:31’s post.)
Good post Jim: Glad you noted the importance of human settlement patterns. That leads to the one concern we have with the post: The problem is not just using “state” data instead of “metropolitan region” data. One has to go much deeper into the data issue before any analysis is of real value.
For example:
Larry G. (is that you Larry Gross?) cites a report by Milken / Greenstreet that makes this case crystal clear.
First on Vocabulary: I am sure everyone who looked up the study noted the authors called this the “best performing ‘CITIES’” but the entries are the top 200 “MSAs” or parts there of (e.g. “MDs”) not a “city” on the list.
If you do not know what you are talking about, you do not know what you are talking about.
Even more important of the top 25 places on the list – what ever you call them – 20 are in New Urban Regions. These are not small, out of the way places, they are parts of New Urban Regions, just as you would expect.
What is more 11 of the top 25 places fall into just 4 New Urban Regions.
In other words there is no reason to spend much time looking at this or other badly aggregated information.
Using “state” data makes any analysis less meaningful than “metropolitian region” data, but not much.
We explore the newly in-vogue term “megaregion” in TRILO-G.
There are problems with going too big as well as too small with data aggregation. Think organic, in the food market and in the data.
charlie: Why “New Urban Region” not “state”? The reason is simple, the New Urban Region is the fundamental building block of contemporary economic, social and physical civilization.
Yes, there are some things that vary by state (or by county or nation-state) but not as many as vary by the organic components of society.
TMT: Think New Urban Region, not “nova,” where ever that may be.
Darrell – Chesapeake: Right on except it is Fundamental Transformation, not fundamental change, that phrase has been hijacked by the Business-As-Usual political spinners.
EMR