03.10.12
Compared to Paphlagonia
Krugman took up the business media’s yen for comparing how things work in some part of Paphlagonia, and then loudly proclaiming that the place with the insignificant population means something as compared to where large majorities of Americans live.
So Krugman takes on a piece in the Wall Street Journal, one claiming North Dakota could be a lesson for California because of an alleged soaring economy.
This is all about the minor oil boom in the Bakken Shale, one which continually spawns stories about how that’s where all Americans can go to get high-paying jobs. These stories always center around Williston, which because of the oil boom, has expanded from 15,000 to 30,000.
Williston, even expanded, is still only a fifth the size of Pasadena.
“Workers are making $120,000 a year in Williston,” reads this representative piece. This is made to seem remarkable. For a small town, it is. But in comparison with a place like Pasadena, there are more people here earning more that what is earned in Williston, no boom, and it has been so for a very a long time.
Nevertheless, insists one of the new denizens of Williston: “The world has changed, you just can’t make it with a normal job anymore.”
The subtext, of course, is if we all migrate to Paphlagonia to mine oil shale, our problems are solved.
“Williston sits atop the Bakken Shale, which will later this year be producing more oil than any other site in the country, surpassing even Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, the longtime leader in domestic output,” reads the Wall Street Journal piece ridiculed by Krugman. “This once-sleepy town is what the Gold Rush might have looked like had it happened in the time of McDonald’s …”
Krugman notes North Dakota is, essentially, a speck of fly shit compared to California.
He doesn’t put it quite that way but is appropriately supercilious:
[Following] a link to Allan Meltzer led to to a report that’s bad even by current WSJ standards: Stephen Moore telling us to compare California with North Dakota to see what works economically. Because a resource boom in a state whose total population is basically that of one neighborhood in LA, as compared with a slump caused by the mother of all housing bubbles and its aftermath, totally shows that free markets rool.
Incidentally, California’s job gain since the bottom in 2009 is, if I’m not mistaken, bigger than the entire adult population of North Dakota.
In the past, I’ve noticed the same types of idiot comparisons, often — for example — using Singapore, the semi-famous wart on the tip of Malaya — to describe how things ought to be done, as opposed to how they are badly done here.
On Paphlagonia, USA — from the archives.