Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#91

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #85

jdhn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too surprised by the makeup of this list. West Virginia and Kentucky are resource extraction states that are primarily focused around coal, and Oklahoma is focused around oil & gas. New Jersey and Connecticut have high taxes, and are having a wave of retirees leave and take their spending dollars with them. Vermont has very low population growth and is also facing a demographic issue just like Jersey and Conn…

The demographic and internal-migratory questions remind me of the EU and the problems faced by e.g. Greece. I wonder if it will result in a campaign against internal migration. Is freedom of movement within the United States explicitly part of the Constitution?

> Is freedom of movement within the United States explicitly part of the Constitution?

Interesting question. Not explicitly, but the Federal Government reserves the right to regulate "interstate commerce," which is a power granted specifically to prevent hard state borders, among other things.

States/municipalities do have mechanisms to screw with people from other states via tax and transportation manipulation. But, for the most part, I've never heard of any animosity towards local residents from other states, and I live and work in a city whose metro-area spans three states. Immigrants from other regions are different beast though.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#92

Post by jxramos » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #82

jxramos wrote: post #76

I'm always leery when media begins to tout a new word. Maybe economic contraction has some history to it and a precise definition, but maybe its being coopted or is void and ready to fill with whatever new line of rhetoric we will soon be assaulted with. Would be great to have a headlines database to see trending terms and when something is really unprecedented in headlines.

"Economic contraction" is an economic word with many, many decades of broad use behind it. Your own personal ignorance to it doesn't turn it into some media scheme that you have outed.

Definitely personal ignorance to the trends and history around it. I've vaguely heard of it before, but can't recall a time I've actually seen it in a headline. It's definitely not unprecedented though (https://news.google.com/search?q=%22economic%20contraction%2...).

I thought the more interesting bit was the ability to scan headlines. I'm not claiming to have outed any media scheme, but that's a pretty catchy phrase you've come up with.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#93

Post by Symmetry » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #84

Symmetry wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but mostly I assume that the alterior motives are things like "Make the reader excited to read more here (and make us more money)" or "Don't make the reader feel confused (and possibly go away and stop making us money)." It's unusual that you have situations where a news purveyor has forces acting stronger than the idealism of its employees or the necessities of the markets.

You say this, but we see partisanship and ideology placed before profits all the time, almost every time. How many major newspapers are worth basically zero; how many broadcast news have seen their viewership fall into the toilet; how many internet newsies have lost their jobs - all because they do nothing but grind axes all day and do their best to covertly manipulate their audiences?

Mostly I see broadcast news programs trying to survive by flattering the ideological preconceptions of their target audience while viewership falls for other reasons. There's a greater diversity of entertainment available which sucked for cable news. And Craigslist in particular decimated the income of most newspapers. Also changes in the media landscape open up the possibility of competition in a way that didn't exist when ABC, NBC, and CBS had their comfy oligarchy. And these days, as far as I can tell, the salaries of the reporters I respect seem to be payed for by the ad impressions viral clickbate put out by the same journalistic outfits except for the weekly I'm paying $225 a year for.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#94

Post by SllX » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #85

jdhn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too surprised by the makeup of this list. West Virginia and Kentucky are resource extraction states that are primarily focused around coal, and Oklahoma is focused around oil & gas. New Jersey and Connecticut have high taxes, and are having a wave of retirees leave and take their spending dollars with them. Vermont has very low population growth and is also facing a demographic issue just like Jersey and Conn…

The demographic and internal-migratory questions remind me of the EU and the problems faced by e.g. Greece. I wonder if it will result in a campaign against internal migration. Is freedom of movement within the United States explicitly part of the Constitution?

It is governed by the Privileges and Immunities clause under the authority of the States (not Congress) and has been judicially recognized as a fundamental right tied to that same clause since at least 1823.

It was considered so fundamental during the drafting process that there wasn’t a need to enumerate “freedom of movement” specifically.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#95

Post by metalliqaz » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #70

metalliqaz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have a natural tendency to discount things that are unpleasant. A site like this one contains a lot of people that have a lot to lose if the economy makes a downturn. This kind of blind spot was featured prominently in The Big Short, especially the Brownfield Capital plot line (2015 film). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias#Decision-makin...

> Humans have a natural tendency to discount things that are unpleasant. I think it might be more accurate to say we discount things that do not support our world views. If something is unpleasant, but supports our world view, even if that thing is not entirely true we give it a lot of weight. If the unpleasantness does not support our worldview however, well, yeah, even if it is completely true, we tend to dismiss t…

I think what you say is true, but I was referring intentionally to unpleasant things in general. It goes beyond worldviews. There are plenty of things that don't really have to be filtered through a worldview to be bad, like losing your house to a flood, or having your entire retirement wiped out, or being under-insured when you get cancer. Even professional analysts tend to lowball the risk on doomsday events.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#96

Post by elliekelly » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #78

smileysteve wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Washington Post Is Jeff Bezos running for Political office too? You just moved the line from running for Presidential party nomination, skipped over mayor of major city, and jumped right to billionaires. Add on; If all of a sudden you can't be wealthy and own (part of?) a media company, it really hurts the quality of journalism; you'd be left with small town or independent blogs; more susceptible to fake news -…

On the contrary, the media consolidation that has left papers in the hands of a few individuals has been tremendously bad for journalism. The only safe types are either diverse private ownership (more than two owners) or blind trusts. Yes, this rules out a lot of existing news outlets. Virtually all the UK papers are now narrowly owned by individual billionaires whose agendas are very visible in the paper.

Blind trusts are a political fiction.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#97

Post by russler23 » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

troydavis wrote: post #33

leereeves wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you downvote the wrong comment? It was a different comment by the same author, with the same unique format, that cited the Daily Mail.

(Update: I'm no longer sure whether this is correct. More on this, for the three other people who care: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21969051 ) No, OP subsequently edited the comment without saying so. This whole reply thread is now useless.

Eh, nothing changed for me. People probably just got lost in the hierarchy on mobile or something.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#98

Post by cossatot » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #85

jdhn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too surprised by the makeup of this list. West Virginia and Kentucky are resource extraction states that are primarily focused around coal, and Oklahoma is focused around oil & gas. New Jersey and Connecticut have high taxes, and are having a wave of retirees leave and take their spending dollars with them. Vermont has very low population growth and is also facing a demographic issue just like Jersey and Conn…

The demographic and internal-migratory questions remind me of the EU and the problems faced by e.g. Greece. I wonder if it will result in a campaign against internal migration. Is freedom of movement within the United States explicitly part of the Constitution?

Internal migration is much more common within the US than within the EU, and societal norms are much more accepting of intra-US relocation.

Based on the data I can gather from a brief search, it looks like in 2017, 58% of Americans live in the state of their birth [1]. Because many people move states and then move back (for college or a temporary job or something) then it's reasonable to think that perhaps 50% of Americans move states at least once in their lives.

In 2016, 93% of EU residents were living in the nation if their birth; 4% were from outside the EU and 3% from another EU member nation [2]. (In the US, 14.4% of the population are immigrants, and this is ~20% of the total global immigrant population [3].)

Furthermore (and in the absence of any supporting data), I think that the assimilation process is for the most part easier for Americans moving between states, especially those who are at least second generation American. While there are definitely strong cultural differences between US regions, we generally all regard each other as American (although this is surely different for those from American territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam or American Samoa). Relocation may also be quite challenging for minorities, especially those moving to whiter states. But for the typical white American moving states, it is probably easier to relocate than for an Italian moving from Calabria or Napoli to Lombardia.

I've lived in 8 states and I think that some half-hearted jokes about dating cousins or eating possum are about the most trouble I've gotten by hailing from the Ozarks. In my experience there are also larger biases against neighboring states (sports rivals) than far-away states. Freud's narcissism of small difference and all that.

That being said, since at least the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, there has been some local to regional resistance to internal migration. Interestingly, today much of the resistance is put forth by residents of less economically developed regions against those from more well-off places moving in, pricing the locals out, and changing the culture. These changes are a sort of Californication, the gentrification of mountain towns by richer and more liberal whites, rather than poorer immigrants bringing down property values or taking manual labor jobs. While there is little by way of legislation against this, there is talk of some [3].

[1]: https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/03/mobile-stuck-us-geograp...

[2]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...

[4]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-10/go-back-...

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#99

Post by blaser-waffle » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

thathndude wrote: post #15

If this is true/accurate, and for the reasons others note, we’re right to be skeptical, what makes it BS in my mind is the effort to suggest that it’s indicative of a systemic issue. It may well be that is the precursor to a nationwide contract. But looking at the list of states, this also looks like a simple continuation of the ongoing shifting in populations to larger, urban economic cores. The only one that surpri…

Yeah was kind of surprised to see PA and NJ shrinking that hard, too. Like parts of both have had reputations as part of the Rust Belt or "Springsteen Country", but they both have a lot of large metro areas.

Re: Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

#100

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

jeffmk wrote: post #67

1. West Virginia 2. Pennsylvania 3. Delaware 4. Montana 5. Oklahoma 6. Vermont 7. New Jersey 8. Kentucky 9. Connecticut

Tech is clustered around a few areas in the US, driving tons of population growth and money to those areas causing other areas to depopulate (directly or indirectly). the irony is those places receiving the growth want it the least, at least if you ask their indigenous populations (most CA voters are extremely anti growth, for example).

I think there would be a lot to gain by incentivizing growth to occur in a more balanced way across the US. there's so many second order industries (like construction and countless others) that would benefit massively from this, along with the populations they support as well.

Currently, all that tech wealth just gets dumped into higher and higher real estate prices, not really benefiting anyone much. it could be put to so much more productive use in states/cities that actually want growth.