Paul Krugman is out of touch with small town America

[Life Long Dem]

Paul Krugman is out of touch with small town America

by noparty

Fri Apr 18, 2008 at 02:04:18 PM PDT

In his opinion piece today, Krugman demonstrates how completely out of touch he is with small town America. Specifically, attempting to rebut Obama's comments on small town residents, he uses data from Youngstown, OH to show how great the 90's were for small towns. The only problem is that Youngstown is not a small town.


In his column today, he states:

Start with the economics. Mr. Obama: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration."

There are, indeed, towns where the mill closed during the 1980s and nothing has replaced it. But the suggestion that the American heartland suffered equally during the Clinton and Bush years is deeply misleading.

In fact, the Clinton years were very good for working Americans in the Midwest, where real median household income soared before crashing after 2000. (You can see the numbers at my blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com.)

That sounds very reasonable and data driven. You can even click through and find a nice chart showing employment statistics with a very convincing graph where he states:

Youngstown, Ohio, is the poster child for towns where the factories left and aren’t coming back. It’s so bad that the city government is trying to convert derelict neighborhoods into open space.
Yet there have been better and worse periods. Nonfarm employment in the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman metro area actually rose in the 1990s, before falling again this decade (I’d add pre-1990 data, but the BLS doesn’t have it.)

So, how large is the "Youngstown-Warren-Boardman metro area"? Well, per Wikipedia and the Census bureau, it has a population of a little over 580,000. Think about that for a moment (and by doing so you will put yourself a step ahead of Prof. Krugman). In his mind, a metropolitan area of over half a million people is a small town.

Let's give that a bit of perspective. The real small town nearest the farm I grew up on had 100 people. That isn't a typo. 100 people, or 0.017% the size of his supposed "small town" example.

His "poster child" small town has a larger population than the entire state of Wyoming (pop. 523,000).

It is amazing that this supposedly data-driven, objective, reality-based economist can be so wrapped up in his own experience and worldview that he can use an "example" so farcically off-base without a trace of self awareness or irony.

Sadly, I really don't believe that he selected this data to bias his editorial or cook the numbers.

What I think is actually much scarier. I think he actually believes that it is a small town. And he is the one that is trying to argue that Obama doesn't "get" small town America.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/18/16247/7168/829/498536

[Barrymores Ghost]

1. Excellent piece and spot-on conclusion...K&R! n/t

[Cant trust em]

2. The full article essentially denies that wedge politics has been used by republicans

He missed a bit there.

[BunkerHill24]

3. Paul Kcrookman is useless to me, I don't pay attention to him...n/t

[QC]

17. Welcome to DU!

I hope you won't spend all of your time here shitting on good progressives--it might give people ideas.

[Ghost in the Machine]

4. Anyone who isn't *from* or living *in* a small town is out of touch with "small town America" ...

Here's MY small town:

Census 2000 Demographic Profile Highlights:
General Characteristics - 37322

Total population
7,885

Male 3,952 50.1%

Female 3,933 49.9%

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_event=&geo_id=86000US37322&_geoContext=01000US%7C86000US37322&_street=&_county=&_cityTown=&_state=&_zip=37322&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=860&_submenuId=factsheet_1&ds_name=null&_ci_nbr=null&qr_name=null®=null%3Anull&_keyword=&_industry=&show_2003_tab=&redirect=Y

[nichomachus]

5. Explain this, Mr. Krugman

A few months ago, there was a Super Walmart opening in Georgia. They had 350 jobs open -- shit jobs, low wages, no benefits. They never advertised the jobs. Still, 10,000 people showed up and lined up around the block for four days trying to get one of those shit jobs.

I don't care what all your spreadsheets and statistical analyses tell you. This is what's going on all over America. And it isn't good.

[Igel]

9. The improvements cited were for the '90s.

The '90s weren't a few months ago. One doesn't need a spreadsheet or statistical analysis to determine this.

One needs a calendar.

As the the last 7 years, Krugman has little good to say about them. His point: Don't lump the '90s in with the '00s.

As for "small town", most small towns of 100 didn't have a large industrial base to be affected by having factories move; this is what Obama was talking about. So non-industrial towns aren't part of the discussion.

Most small towns that were industrial back in the '60s--not all, to be sure--were able to be grouped into a larger area for most purposes. I grew up in a small town of some 10k. 5 miles away was a town of 25k. A few miles past that, a town of 50k. Go a few more miles and there was a "town" of about 800k. One never spoke of Baltimore City per se; one spoke of the "Baltimore Metropolitan Area", which was over 1 million, and included a dozen or two "small towns".

[nichomachus]

10. People in small towns

often commute to larger cities to work in the factories. So, they are affected. I lived in a small town.

[nichomachus]

13. He was also talking about a city of 500,000 people

If that's what he means by a "small town," the piece doesn't make sense.

[dsc]

15. youngstown has 80k max

I used to live there.

[ThomWV]

6. Always nice to watch Democrats eat their own.

[Tempest]

7. As a former Youngstown citizen

Youngstown is a small town.

By including the outlying areas, the author has distorted the real population of Youngstown, which has pretty much been whittled away to nothing.

[wuushew]

8. Several hundreds of thousands in a given area must count for something

I mean what makes a city "big", the height of skyscrappers in a city's downtown? :shrug:


top 100 in U.S.


New York, New York (pop 8,213,839)
Los Angeles, California (pop 3,847,059)
Chicago, Illinois (pop 2,842,753)
Houston, Texas (pop 2,117,937)
Phoenix, Arizona (pop 1,469,794)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (pop 1,456,350)
San Antonio, Texas (pop 1,263,598)
San Diego, California (pop 1,257,328)
Dallas, Texas (pop 1,216,264)
San Jose, California (pop 915,668)
Detroit, Michigan (pop 883,465)
Jacksonville, Florida (pop 783,043)
Indianapolis, Indiana (pop 782,871)
Hempstead, New York (pop 750,244)
San Francisco, California (pop 741,025)
Columbus, Ohio (pop 729,748)
Austin, Texas (pop 691,263)
Memphis, Tennessee (pop 669,864)
Baltimore, Maryland (pop 636,377)
Fort Worth, Texas (pop 623,119)
Charlotte, North Carolina (pop 616,075)
El Paso, Texas (pop 598,240)
Boston, Massachusetts (pop 596,638)
Washington, District of Columbia (pop 582,049)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin (pop 576,336)
Seattle, Washington (pop 575,884)
Denver, Colorado (pop 558,663)
Nashville-Davidson, Tennessee (pop 548,286)
Las Vegas, Nevada (pop 544,958)
Portland, Oregon (pop 533,467)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (pop 530,992)
Tucson, Arizona (pop 515,610)
Albuquerque, New Mexico (pop 494,477)
Atlanta, Georgia (pop 476,483)
Long Beach, California (pop 474,307)
Brookhaven, New York (pop 471,475)
Fresno, California (pop 461,454)
New Orleans, Louisiana (pop 452,170)
Sacramento, California (pop 451,743)
Cleveland, Ohio (pop 450,560)
Kansas City, Missouri (pop 444,314)
Mesa, Arizona (pop 442,381)
Virginia Beach, Virginia (pop 437,021)
Omaha, Nebraska (pop 414,447)
Oakland, California (pop 395,864)
Miami, Florida (pop 386,619)
Tulsa, Oklahoma (pop 381,479)
Honolulu, Hawaii (pop 376,879)
Minneapolis, Minnesota (pop 372,674)
Colorado Springs, Colorado (pop 369,156)
Arlington, Texas (pop 362,530)
Wichita, Kansas (pop 355,029)
St. Louis, Missouri (pop 352,572)
Raleigh, North Carolina (pop 342,812)
Santa Ana, California (pop 340,865)
Anaheim, California (pop 333,229)
Cincinnati, Ohio (pop 331,310)
Islip, New York (pop 329,043)
Tampa, Florida (pop 325,800)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (pop 316,299)
Toledo, Ohio (pop 301,728)
Aurora, Colorado (pop 296,861)
Oyster Bay, New York (pop 296,820)
Bakersfield, California (pop 295,769)
Riverside, California (pop 290,417)
Stockton, California (pop 287,069)
Corpus Christi, Texas (pop 282,972)
Newark, New Jersey (pop 280,007)
Buffalo, New York (pop 279,138)
Anchorage, Alaska (pop 275,474)
St. Paul, Minnesota (pop 275,084)
Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky (pop 267,929)
Plano, Texas (pop 250,654)
St. Petersburg, Florida (pop 248,365)
Fort Wayne, Indiana (pop 247,000)
Glendale, Arizona (pop 243,144)
Jersey City, New Jersey (pop 239,395)
Lincoln, Nebraska (pop 239,196)
Greensboro, North Carolina (pop 233,459)
Henderson, Nevada (pop 232,014)
Chandler, Arizona (pop 231,728)
Norfolk, Virginia (pop 230,775)
Birmingham, Alabama (pop 230,726)
Scottsdale, Arizona (pop 227,584)
North Hempstead, New York (pop 222,656)
Madison, Wisconsin (pop 221,545)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana (pop 221,148)
Hialeah, Florida (pop 220,611)
Chesapeake, Virginia (pop 218,219)
Garland, Texas (pop 216,478)
Babylon, New York (pop 215,852)
Orlando, Florida (pop 213,250)
Akron, Ohio (pop 210,771)
Chula Vista, California (pop 210,563)
Lubbock, Texas (pop 209,946)
Rochester, New York (pop 209,662)
Laredo, Texas (pop 208,935)
Modesto, California (pop 206,885)
Reno, Nevada (pop 205,794)
Durham, North Carolina (pop 204,680)

[dsc]

18. and your post shows just how dishonest that comparision is

those are the populations of all the cities only. Youngstown doesn't even make your list nor are you even close to getting there. I konw the area in question and it is no comparison to say Durham.

[AteAlien]

11. After years of great articles and inspiration

I refuse to turn him into a cartoon character as most on the left usually experience attempts at.

[Juche]

12. eh so what

Krugman went to MIT and has won one of the highest awards in economics. He probably hasn't lived in a small town in 30 years or more. I don't see what the big deal is if he thinks Youngstown is a small town. Krugman doesn't like Obama, but that is his perogative.

[dsc]

14. unlike the author of the kos piece

I acutally lived in the area in question for decades, including that of the 1990's. First, the notion that it is some big city area is nothing short of absurd. Youngstown, the only decent sized city in that area is under 100k and every where else is around 50k or lower. To get to that 580k you have to add all of Mahoning, Trumbull, and Columbia counties which include some damn small towns. The fact that area did better in the 90s is testament to Krugman's point.

Oh and shock of shocks the worthless author can't even give us a link. So I guess I have to find exactly what Wikipedia did to come up with the numbers.

[El Pinko]

16. This seems like a rather petty attack, IMO

The fact is that the 80s were shit for small and midsized towns in the midwest. The 90s were better, but the truly good-paying jobs never really came back.

And now the midwest is in worse shape than ever (with the rest of the country catching up rather quickly)

This quibbling about whether Youngstown is small or not seems rather petty. Youngston's population is 82,000. I'm from El Paso, and I'd call that pretty small.



And one more thing. I'm sick and tired of people being accused of being out of touch with small-town America or rural America. Guess what? Most Americans don't live in small towns anymore.

I don't give a crap about being in touch with small town America per se. I'm all for the government making sure that their economic needs are met and all, but honestly, I couldn't give a rat's ass about

small-town values or what small-town voters think. I spent every damn summer of my youth in a small town of 5000 in N. Texas - a place that made El Paso look like San Francisco.

There were some notable exceptions, but mostly what I heard from everyone there was ignorant, racist, backward, bible-beating nonsense.

"We don't got down t'Dallas anymore because the nigras/Mexicans have taken over."

"The Mexicans are takin' over the whole country. Pretty soon they'll move into Bowie - and once they're here, you know the nigras won't be far behind."

"Catholics aren't Christians."

"The nigras were better off under the confederacy. They gave them food and shelter and they had no worries at all. Now look at'em, living in a bunch of housing projects on welfare and killing each other."

"You don't know what it was like after the Civil War ended. The Yankees let the nigras run wild and they were raping the young girls all over the place. They NEEDED the Klan to keep the peace."

When I was a little girl, a bunch of gypsies came through town, and they did nothing but steal and.. (etc. etc.)

This is all the kind of crap I heard CONSTANTLY from my family and neighbors - in the 1980s. These people were so delighted in 1985 or so when the Wal-Mart opened, and none of them seemed to make a connection when the downtown was all boarded up within 3 years.


I am so SICK of politicians pandering to small-town idiocy. (and yes, I KNOW there are some good intelligent people in small towns!)


If there's a problem, it's not that politicians or pundits or city people are out of touch with small-town America. It's that small-town America is out of touch with reality, and out of touch with the way the vast MAJORITY of Americans, who live in cities and the suburbs that ring them, think.