Hardcore Government Statistics Action

Brace yourself, dear reader. There's nothing that can liven up a Wednesday evening like some hardcore government statistics. For example, the news that average personal income grew at 5% in 2005, which is one percent less than 2004, but nevertheless ahead of inflation - which was 2.9%.

What about Ohio - my current state of residence and swing state extraordinaire? Personal income grew by less than the national averages:

Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN - 4.3%
Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH - 3.4%
Columbus, OH - 4.3%
Dayton, OH - 3.0%
Toledo, OH - 2.5%

Keen-eyed locals will immediately recognize that Cincinnati has been lumped together with Middletown, thus bringing together the economically hard-hit urban core with it's booming, subdevelopments-and-bigboxes northern neighbor. What's "growing" is the whole smeary region along the stretch of highway, not any centralized city. This led me to wonder - since the suburbs north of Cincinnati played such a vital role in the 2004 election, how does the average rate of growth for personal income look for blue vs. red states, using the voting patterns from the last election? The answer took some work with a relational database, but rest your worried mind, this intrepid blogger has mad professional skills in this area.

BLUE State Personal Income Growth in 2005 - 4.07%
RED State Personal Income Growth in 2005 - 5.24%

Statistics can be subject to all kinds of misinterpretation. But simply put, people in Red States, on average, had slightly more personal income in 2005. Money saved from shopping at WalMart, perhaps? In any event, how they vote in the next election is dependant on many more relevant factors - anger and indifference among them.

Although people keep talking about gas prices - and the news here is "good". I don't know about you, but yesterday when I filled up the family sedan I practically started dancing around like they did in the "Orange Mocha Frappachino" scene in Zoolander. $2.39 a gallon! Add to this the delightful news that a major American oil company has discovered vast new oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico - and it's time to light up a cigar with a $100 bill while reclining with a drink near my bronze statue of Arthur Laffer that I keep polished in the library.

Tags: Personal Income, Economy, Ohio, Election, Oil, Gas Prices