The Test Tank

Here are some interesting facts about Wyoming. It’s likely to have a $1.8 billion budget surplus next year, even though state spending has jumped by more than 50 percent in the past two years. In the past quarter, Wyoming had the highest per-capita income growth rate in the nation and the third lowest unemployment. It usually ranks at the top of the “best business climate” charts, because it has no personal or corporate income taxes. [...] The other interesting fact, of course, is that the country wants a lot more of what Wyoming has in abundance — coal and natural gas — and is willing to pay for it. The price of natural gas at the wellhead has gone up by more than 150 percent in the past seven years, often spiking much higher. That, coupled with the Bush administration’s freewheeling approach to energy development, has resulted in a petroleum boom that is transforming the state.

[...]

[T]o its credit, the state is trying to find a way to feed some of its revenue into programs that will help even out the shock when the boom busts — or simply tapers off. It is putting large sums into its Permanent Mineral Trust Fund, which collects a portion of the severance tax paid for Wyoming minerals, and it is adding to what it calls its Legislative Stabilization Reserve, a temporary savings account. The state has at last created a wildlife trust fund first proposed in 1982 but regularly defeated in the State Legislature, and it has endowed scholarship programs and the building of new schools.

It’s hard to argue with prosperity, but a lot of people in Wyoming are worrying about its ultimate costs.

– "Boom Times in Wyoming, and Worrying Times as Well," Verlyn Klinkenborg, NYT

Good for them. At least with mining and gas production, Wyoming's citizens can see the scars created by the temporary prosperity machine and are building up a little insurance.

With our Minnesota economy based on knowledge — instead of mineral extraction and $25-an-hour water truck drivers — the investments we make today determine how educated, healthy and productive our workforce will be two decades from now. It's harder to see that future through the fog thrown up by anti-tax advocates and the politicians who love them.

But public infrastructure is also vital to a productive economy and it's tangible. So how are we doing there?

The American Society of Civil Engineers — not yet branded as a notorious left-wing think tank — publishes a state-by-state report card on the condition of America's infrastructure. You can read it here.

Not a strip mine filled with noxious chemicals, but not a pretty picture, either.

[Note: A version of this was cross-posted at Across the Great Divide.]

# posted by Charlie Quimby @ 7/20/2006 12:45:00 PM