Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

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"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

03 August 2015

Most Okies are Better Off than Most New Yorkers

When discussing the impact of the current New York state minimum wage of $9.00/hour and the law requiring that the minimum wage for fast food workers will rise in stages to $15/hour, I discovered how surprisingly bad off compared to the national household median income most New York residents were.  Because I have family in Oklahoma and it is considered to be backward, poor, and only worth flying over by New York Progressive Elitists, I have decided to do a comparable comparison of Oklahoma to New York.  After all, Oklahoma is the home of many poor Native Americans and a land of people who should have fled the dust bowl in the 1930s in abject poverty, right?  This should be an easy contest for New York.

So once again I will find the cost of living in Oklahoma cities and towns and use that to adjust the median household income of each city or town.  This recognizes that income goes much further when the cost of living is low than when it is very high, as tends to happen in areas with a big government mentality.  Or at least this happens until the costs cause so many business failures that housing values collapse as people flee the area for jobs in areas with more limited government.

Now the total population of the state of Oklahoma is about 0.2 times that of New York state.  So, the size of the cities and towns in this list will be smaller.  I chose all of the bigger cities and towns and a few to represent low population areas of the state.  The results in the table below for Oklahoma should be compared to those for New York in my previous post.


City or Town
Cost of Living % Compared to National Average
Median Household Income (National = $53,046)
Effective Median Household Income
% National Effective Median Household Income
Broken Arrow
93
$64,411
$69,259
131
Edmond
109
$71,216
$65,336
123
Woodward
82
$51,811
$63,184
119
Bartlesville
80
$48,036
$60,045
113
Guymon
81
$47,775
$58,981
111
Norman
88
$48,248
$54,827
103
Clinton
79
$43,216
$54,704
103
Ponca City
78
$40,434
$51,838
98
Oklahoma City
80
$45,704
$51,353
97
Altus
80
$40,429
$50,536
95
Ardmore
77
$38,383
$49,848
94
Enid
84
$41,515
$49,422
93
Lawton
89
$43,953
$49,385
93
McAlester
81
$39,291
$48,507
91
Tulsa
85
$40,781
$47,978
90
Durant
80
$36,863
$46,079
87
Cushing
78
$35,553
$45,581
86
Muskogee
79
$32,621
$41,292
78
Vinita
78
$32,109
$41,165
78
Okmulgee
79
$32,022
$40,534
76
Sallisaw
82
$29,524
$36,005
68
Stillwater
91
$31,243
$34,333
65
Hugo
76
$21,639
$28,472
54 

Whereas, the residents of New York City had effective median household incomes of only 80% of the national average and those of Buffalo had such incomes of only 78% of the national average, most of the residents of Oklahoma have higher incomes.  Most of the population in Oklahoma enjoys median effective household incomes which are 90% or more of the national average.  For most Oklahomans, the cost of living is below 90% of the national average.

Only three towns were found with effective median household incomes below 76% of the national average.  One of these, Hugo, has a population of only 5,325 and is in the table only to represent the low population southeast area of the state.  Its effective median household income is better than that of larger Ithaca, NY, population 30,016 and home of Cornell University.  Another, Sallisaw, has only 8,779 residents, of whom most are Native Americans.  Stillwater, home of Oklahoma State University, has a population of 45,584.  None of the other towns are worse off than Buffalo.

The biggest city in the state, Oklahoma City, has an effective median household income of 97% of the national median.  The other colossus in the state is Tulsa with an effective median household income of 90% of the national median.  The third largest city, Norman, home of the University of Oklahoma, has an effective median household income of 103% the national value.  Broken Arrow, number 4 in size, is at 131%, #5 Lawton is 93%, and #6 Edmond is at 123% of the national median household income.  There is no contest between Oklahoma and New York.

The Progressive Elitists of New York are famous for telling the rest of the country how to manage the finances of the country and about how concerned they are about income inequality.  They assure us that the big government model is best for reducing income inequality and will generally make most people better off.  Now, there are many very wealthy and high income people in New York.  But the median household income tells us that income point at which half the households make more and half make less.  Thus there can be a minority of people who are have very high incomes who do little to shift the median income level up when most households are making far less than they are.  New York state is famous for its income inequality in fact.  Not withstanding the preaching of its controlling Progressive Elitists.

The minimum wage in Oklahoma is the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour.  According to the advice now being given to us by many Progressive Elitists, it should be $15/hour.  They claim this would give so many more purchasing power that they would spend their local economies to a condition in which everyone would have higher incomes.  But, the people of Oklahoma have managed to do far better than New Yorkers for the most part by ignoring this advice.  They have also ignored advice on the advantages of big government to a considerable degree.  It appears that the experiment has been done here.  The people who inherited the land of the dust bowl and a large Native American population are better off economically than New Yorkers, who have the national financial and business center of the nation.

There is far less income inequality in Oklahoma than in New York.   Most households have higher effective median incomes.  Wow!  The people of fly-over country are beating the pants off of those New Yorkers guided by the all-knowing Progressive Elitists.  Now who would have thought that Okies could win this contest so handily?

So, hi Mom, Betsy, Scott, Peggy, and my nieces and nephews in Oklahoma.  Congratulations on beating those New Yorkers economically and for not following their advice on matters of politics.  It is a very good idea to keep the cost of living low and the cost of doing business low by keeping government smaller.  Keep on trucking!  Keep electing those smaller government Republicans and leave those Big Government Democrats to the New Yorkers, who are killing themselves.

2 comments:

geran said...

Typo, third to last paragraph

"...land of the dust boll and a large Native..."

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

Thanks for pointing out the misspelling. I think the boll weevil and the dust bowl must have experienced leakage currents in my brain. Both were catastrophes.