StrangeSox

I never said they were random blue states. They were chosen as states with comparable statistics to Texas. Again, the point here is to examine Texas's economic policies, whether they result in the "miracle" of job growth, what sort of jobs are being grown and if those economic policies are a necessary condition to obtain similar unemployment rates. Showing that some municipalities* in Texas have comparable wages and lower COL to some municipalities* in NY state and Massachusetts doesn't address that. The argument isn't well laid-out because, again, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. You cannot conclude that the claim that most of Texas's job growth is low-wage is a "myth" by looking at the average wages in Harris County and comparing them to part of NY, NY and to Boston. That information simply cannot tell you what the wages of the jobs Texas is adding are. You need to compare wage trends for that. Picking a small subset of data set and comparing it to another small subset of another data set doesn't tell you anything about the validity of comparing the two complete data sets and if one if "garbage" or not. What you've said here is that "sure, the numbers look great for PK if you focus on the comparison he's actually making (state v state), but if you look at an arbitrarily chosen subset of that data, well!" Also, he doesn't exactly refute PK's claim that Texas has an usually high uninsured rate--instead, he points out that Texas has a large Mexican immigrant population, many of them illegal and most working low-wage, low-benefit jobs. Which, uh, was sort of PK's point: yeah, Texas is adding jobs, but those jobs suck. At the end of the article, the author even says "well even if Krugman is right and all these jobs really are s***ty, low-wage jobs with little or no benefits, hey it's better than not working at all!" That seems to me at least, to be a partial admission that Texas is adding a lot of crappy jobs but that its better than adding no jobs. I'm focusing on the parts of the article that are blindly, glaringly nonsensical: completely illogical arguments and comparisons. This is an interesting quibble here because it seems that's essentially what Williamson is doing: making off-base comparisons with minor parts of Krugman's article. *what's a good catch-all category for the category of counties, cities, and neighborhoods? does such a category even exist?

I want to add Krugman could still very well be wrong here, but that article doesn't make a cogent case for it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 10:56 AM) The other ones are randomly chosen to try to make his article look as good as possible, just like the author did in response. They weren't randomly chosen. They were chosen because, yeah, they make Krugman's point that you don't need a business environment like Texas in order to have comparable unemployment rates; that can be achieved in liberal tax-crazy bastions like NY and MA. His argument isn't that every blue state is better than Texas. Unless this author's goal was to chose three different civil levels (county, city, neighborhood) in a satirical attack on Krugman choosing these states and wasn't actually trying to make the argument laid out in the article about "McJobs," then it makes no sense at all. It's not misleading or incorrect for Krugman not to analyze city-by-county-by-neighborhood each civil level in each state in a discussion on state-level policies and economics. You cannot claim that "McJobs" is a myth by comparing Houston, Brooklyn and Boston current average wages and COL. It just doesn't make any sense.

Well, Texas is the obvious one because that's what the article is about. The other would be "states that are performing comparably to Texas but are often denigrated as liberal bastions of anti-business satanism where growth is impossible." You can point to counter-examples like California. You could do the same average-wage vs. cost-of-living analysis at the state level, since that's what the contention is. Maybe the "McJobs" claim really is a myth, and Texas' average wages and average benefits/health insurance coverage rates haven't plummeted as they would if all this growth really is low-wage. What doesn't make sense is comparing a county in Texas to a neighborhood in New York and city in Massachusetts in a discussion over state unemployment and job growth levels. Absent from the article is any data showing that Houston, Brooklyn and Boston are reasonable proxies for Texas, New York (state) and Massachusetts in terms of employment, wages and job growth. How do we know from this article that Houston hasn't been completely stagnant and thus would be immune to the "McJobs" effect? We don't, and his argument makes no sense. "McJobs driving growth in Texas is a myth" does not follow from "Harris county, Brooklyn and Boston currently have comparable average wages while Harris has a lower cost-of-living."

Anyway, I'm glad we can agree that Krugman never picked these cities/counties/neighborhoods as a comparison point. Can we also agree that maybe it's a little odd to compare an entire county, a neighborhood and a city in a discussion regarding state-level economics?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 16, 2011 -> 10:36 AM) It makes the point of Krugman's mistakes/mislead. By comparing arbitrarily chosen cities? Why not Dallas or Ft. Worth? Austin? San Antonio? Why one specific borough in New York? Why not the entire city or Albany or Rochester? If Krugman is making claims about trends at the state level, how does showing that some cities chosen by the author don't exactly match state level trends (maybe, his argument as presented does nothing to refute the McJobs claim) lead to a claim that someone was misleading or made a mistake? It's a different, albeit related, argument.

Inglorious Basterds

Another thing, he calls it the "McJobs" myth that most of the growth is low-wage because hey lets compare average wage in three arbitrarily chosen cities (wouldn't it make more sense to look at changes in average wage to see if the average is being brought down, or average wages of new jobs?), but then comes back around later and says much of the growth is driven by Mexican immigration, which means lots of low-age, low-benefit jobs.

New York (the state) and Massachusetts are not cities.

huh? Krugman's article doesn't mention specific cities.

In an argument about states, why does he pick three cities/counties to compare? I'm not sure that this statement is true if those millions of unemployed people were engineers, lawyers, doctors etc. and are now fry cooks. Massive underemployment while we've billions (trillions?) in idle capital isn't exactly a recipe for a vibrant economy.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 15, 2011 -> 08:55 PM) TEX WINS. PAEARRRY FOR PREZ! The digging is hilarious to watch. digging? you kinda just need to glance around quickly.

No. Cameron Todd Willingham.

UK Riots: To understand is not to condone

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 15, 2011 -> 08:50 AM) Honestly as good as the show is, if you went too much longer it would fall apart. I'm glad they're taking this road. There's a natural story arc here and no reason to drag it out beyond that.

Perry's just closing the inequality gap between states, that's all. A noble, egalitarian cause.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 12, 2011 -> 03:33 PM) We don't have cable but we have Netflix and Hulu Plus. 95% of our tv needs are covered there for 1/5th the price. The problem is sports. Baseball and NBA you get the occasional WGN/WCIU/FOX games, otherwise you're stuck watching it online through some Eastern Bloc link or going to a bar. same situation. I need to get a better antenna to pick up CBS before football starts, though.

Rick Perry is quite the douchebag.

I already posted that in the financial thread. How dare you.

OBAMA!!

No I'm rejecting the victimization of Fox News

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 12, 2011 -> 02:06 PM) That's the problem. It doesn't get done enough across the spectrum. Attacks on media rivals for minor, inconsequential mistakes in a statement doesn't happen enough?

11th Circuit finds that the mandate is unconstitutional but is severable.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 12, 2011 -> 01:58 PM) Which is exactly what was done here. No. You said yourself that he could make the same point with 10%. What Fox routinely gets called out on is for making arguments that completely fall apart without their distorted or misleading numbers.