If you're feeling a little sprightly about things and you can't figure why, worry not: the New York Times' economic columnist is here to drag you down.
Crack open a bottle of well scotch and a bag of goldfish -- if you can afford better, you must be Canadian or something -- and settle into his most recent breakdown of the Great Recession, which includes an interesting theory on how lawmakers from heartland states are ruining the recovery for everyone else.
David Leonhardt is the columnist, and he's a smart fellow, full of depressing facts for every occasion. This week, among other knowledge, he drops this:
The Heartland Is Doing O.K.The hardest-hit parts of the country have been manufacturing regions, like Michigan, Ohio and Rhode Island, and areas that had huge housing bubbles, like California, Florida and Nevada.
The least affected area is a band running from the Dakotas and Minnesota down to Texas and Louisiana. Continuing the concentration theme, this band includes some of the manufacturers and other businesses that have emerged from the recession the quickest.
This pattern probably helps explain why the Senate has taken such a leisurely approach to helping the economy in recent months. Many of the states in the best shape also have small populations and, as a result, outsize political power. In Nebraska, where the unemployment rate is 4.8 percent, there is one United States senator for every 900,000 people. In Florida, where the unemployment rate is 11.4 percent, there is one senator for every nine million people.
Using the same advanced math, Kansas (6.5 unemployment rate, and very heartland-y) has one U.S. senator for every 1.4 million people. Missouri (9.1 percent) has one for every six million, unless you count Kit Bond, in which case the number drops to three million.
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