There are times when you really have to wonder if this country has a chance to survive.
I am a regular reader of Paul Krugman’s blog as well as his column in the Times. I would have assumed that his blog readers would, by a process of self selection, be relatively intelligent and somewhat comfortable with the maths. But apparently quite a few of them, but to be clear, not all, have math abilities that are fuzzy in the extreme.
The specific point at issue at the moment is as follows: North Dakota has a relatively low unemployment rate, thanks in part to a recent spike in energy related jobs (the state is allowing itself to be raped). The claim has been made that opening up other state to oil extraction would have similar results in other states. Krugman has been struggling, in multiple posts, to explain why an increase of X number of jobs in North Dakota might have a huge impact on the unemployment rate there, while an increase of that same X, or even a slightly higher Y, in, say, California, would be almost statistically meaningless. Apparently, some folks can’t quite wrap their heads around that, which makes you wonder if there’s any hope for a country in which so many people are so innumerate.
I had first hand experience of this phenomenon when I was on the Groton Town Council. People could not understand that the increase in their property valuations during a revaluation year did not necessarily mean an increase in their taxes. If all values rise in exactly the same proportion, the absolute tax would be dependent solely on the mill rate. If your valuation increases, but its percentage increase is less than the average percentage increase, then your taxes go down assuming a constant mill rate. It was absolutely amazing how the folks whining about their perfectly justified assessed value increases could not or would not understand this.
I guess we are all, or too many of us anyway, Mississippians now.
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