(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Renaissance or a Bubble in Buffalo?

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bubbles, Buffalo, Buffalo shooting, cities, Commerce Department, economic growth, income, per capita income, Rustbelt, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I’ve only visited Buffalo, New York once in my adult life, to speak at a conference in 2009, but between meeting lots of interesting folks, downing a humongous portion of buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar that claims to have invented them, and seeing Niagara Falls for the first time since childhood, I’ve got great memories of the place.

So I was initially thrilled to see The New York Times run a lengthy piece July 3 reporting that this grand old city is enjoying a strong comeback from decades of Rustbelt-type industrial and therefore economic decline. The article, moreover, seemed especially encouraging given the appalling massacre of ten residents in May in the city’s heavily African American East Side neighborhood.

When I finished reading, though, I wasn’t so sure how on target the piece was. That’s both because it was almost entirely data free, and because I’m not convinced that the kinds of economic activity that are emerging as new growth engines for Buffalo – like “city-wide initiatives to pour billions into parks, public art projects and apartment complexes,” “office and educational complexes,” and food halls, gyms, and craft breweries – can enable it to regain the kind of prosperity created by its now-shiveled industrial base.

So I looked at the data – from the U.S. Commerce Department – and the relatively few of the findings sure don’t scream “Renaissance!” to me, or even close. And this observation holds whether the comparison is between Buffalo and the rest of the country, or between Buffalo during the last decade and Buffalo during roughly the previous decade.

I focus on these timeframes because the only hard statistic presented by the Times reporters to show progress in Buffalo was the finding that “Its population of 278,000 in the 2020 census was up 7 percent from 261,000 in 2010.”

The following statistics don’t cover just Buffalo. The closest approximation permitted by the Commerce Department numbers is what the U.S. Census Bureau (a part of Commerce) calls the Buffalo Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which includes smaller neighboring cities like Cheektowaga and (yes!) Niagara Falls. But let’s call it “close enough.”

First I looked at how the Buffalo metro area economy overall, and some major portions of it (including some emphasized in the Times article), have grown (or not) in inflation-adjusted terms versus how their counterparts in U.S. metropolitan areas have fared. The individual sectors are construction, manufacturing, retail, real estate, professional and scientific services, and the arts-recreation-accommodation- and-food-services cluster.

Unfortunately, this analysis shows that Buffalo continues to be a serious laggard. Between 2010 and 2020, its MSA increased its output of goods and services by just 4.13 percent after adjusting for inflation – versus 17.69 percent for urban America as a whole. Buffalo also trailed its national metro area counterparts in real growth during this period in every one of the six individual economic sectors examined. Indeed, in three (construction, manufacturing, and the arts etc cluster), real output shrank during that decade, whereas for all metro areas, such decline took place only in the arts cluster. Moreover, in all cases (including that arts cluster) Buffalo not only lagged – it lagged badly.

The Buffalo MSA fared much better in terms of its residents’ income. In pre-inflation dollars (the only data tracked at this level of national detail), its total personal income rose by 43.55 percent between 2010 and 2020, versus 55.78 percent for U.S. metro areas as a whole. On a per capita basis, the results were almost equal: 44.82 percent current dollar growth for the Buffalo MSA versus 45.39 percent for its all U.S. MSAs.

The big takeaway so far: The Buffalo region’s growth has been sluggish at best over the last decade, but area residents made awfully good money.

Comparing Buffalo area growth and income between 2010 and 2020, and during the previous decade, yields even stranger (at least to me) results. In all the categories I examined except one, its growth performance was worse during the latter decade than during the former (even taking into account that data for the Buffalo MSA only goes back to 2001).

Overall, it was much worse, with real gross product improving by 13.94 percent during that earlier decade – more than three times faster than from 2010 to 2020. In addition, in the six individual sectors examined, decade-to-decade improvement was registered only in construction – which contracted much more slowly in price-adjusted terms than in 2000-2010. That decade, remember, featured the great national housing bubble and its bursting.

In terms of income, though, Buffalo’s between 2000 and 2010 grew more slowly than during the ten years after according to both the aggregate (32.43 percent) and per capita (35.86 percent) figures.

Curiously, on a national level, metro area economic growth in toto between 2001 and 2010 and in 2010-2020 were about the same (17.12 percent in the former and 17.69 percent in the latter).  Further, on the whole, expansion in the six specific sectors examined (except for the contractionary arts cluster) was less dramatically different than in Buffalo and environs, too. Yet both income indicators increased significantly more slowly for all U.S. metro areas during that latter period, too, despite the slightly better economic growth.

Gauged by total income, the Buffalo MSA fell behind U.S. metro areas overall during both decades at about the same pace. Yet measured by per capita income, the Buffalo region generated modest catch-up during the stronger growth 2000-2010 decade but fell back during the much weaker growth decade that began in 2010. Could that be partly because its population rebounded, even modestly?

To me, the big picture looks like this: During the last decade, the typical Buffalo-nian somehow figured out better than the typical U.S. metro dweller how to generate considerably more income even though his region was producing goods and services at a considerably slower rate. That could account for the optimism expressed by so many in the city to the Times reporters. I just wonder how much longer they can pull this off?

Following Up: Still No Signs That Abortion, Guns — or January 6th — Are Democratic Midterms Lifesavers

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abortion, Biden, Buffalo shooting, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Following Up, gun control, January 6 committee, mass shootings, midterms 2022, polls, RealClearPolitics.com, Republicans, Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Uvalde shooting

Since early May, American politics has been rocked by the kinds of major shocks that I can’t recall coming so fast and furiously since at least the Nixon impeachment summer of 1974, and maybe since the spring of 1968 — when the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive led to Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal from that year’s presidential race,and was followed by the assassinations of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and New York Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy (for starters).

The last two months of this year alone have been marked by the leaked draft and final release of the Supreme Court ruling that ended nearly fifty years of a national right to an abortion, two appalling mass shootings (one racially motivated in Buffalo, New York, and one of school children in Uvalde, Texas), and televised Congressional hearings that have bombarded the nation with reminders of both the disgraceful January 6^th Capitol attack and former President Donald Trump’s reckless behavior that day.

On net, these developments would seem to damage Republicans’ chances of an midterms election landslide of epic proportions this November. As I’ve noted, even though the abortion developments could motivate heavily Republican anti-choice voters, too, the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision at least gave Democrats one reason for optimism where none could plausibly be detected – because everything we know about public opinion tells us that Americans decisively favor keeping Roe. (The same arguments hold for mass shootings, IMO, as do poll results on gun control).

But at the end of May, I reported the absence of polling evidence that the guns and abortion issues were turning the tide. Now, a month later, they — along with the January 6th Committee hearings — still haven’t shown any midterms lifesaving potential for the Democrats. In fact, some survey measures suggest that the Republican position has strengthened somewhat.

As often, my sources are the averages of poll results compiled and updated on an ongoing basis by RealClearPolitics.com. Let’s start with an important indicator of midterm outcomes – presidential popularity.

The Politico.com scoop on the Supreme Court abortion draft leak appeared the evening of May 2, so May 3 seems like the baseline to use for measuring how the aforementioned news shocks have changed midterms prospects.

On May 3, according to the RealClearPolitics average, President Biden was underwater in terms of job approval ratings by 10.5 percentage points. As of today, the share of Americans admiring his performance in the White House stood at 38.4 percent and the share giving him thumbs downs was 56.9 percent. So his net negatives have nearly doubled, to 18.5 percentage points. In addition, that gap is only slightly narrower than the record 19.5 percentage points registered just yesterday.

And worse for the President, and his party: His popularity has deteriorated both because his approval ratings are as of today (38.4 percent) just off their all-time low and the disapproval numbers (56.9 percent) are just shy of their all-time high (both also set yesterday).

Pollsters also offer respondents a “generic Congressional ballot” – asking them whether they’d be likelier to cast ballots for Democratic or Republican candidates for House and Senate whoever the specific candidates on their ballots are. Although it deals with the elections that will actually determine which party winds up with majorities on both ends of Capitol Hill, its readings need to be viewed with caution because Congressional elections aren’t national but state-by-state and district-by-district. In fact, because of the Constitution’s approach to apportioning Senate and House seats, Republicans enjoy a built-in edge here, meaning that at least when it comes to the generic ballot, Democrats need to be winning by several percentage points to justify election day optimism.

According to RealClearPolitics, they’ve made some progress since May 3, but still have a ways to go.

The day after the Supreme Court leak, Republicans led the Dems by this measure by 4.1 percentage points. By May 29, that margin had shrunk all the way down to 1.5 percentage points. But as of today, though, it’s back up to 2.2 percentage points, and has remained stable overall since June 5.

Finally, and perhaps most discouraging for the Democrats given their efforts to portray most Republicans as backers of an extremist, Trump-y “ultra MAGA” agenda, the former President continues to lead Mr. Biden in polls asking about a head-to-head match-up in 2024. The website doesn’t post averages over time – just a single average figure that shows a Trump lead of 1.8 percentage points as of today.

Changes revealed in individual surveys can be interpreted as either favorable or unfavorable to President Biden depending on your baseline starting date. Specifically, in late April (just before the Politico leak), two polls showed him leading his predecessor by one and two percentage points. So since then, the President has lost ground. But a mid-May survey reported a three percentage point Trump lead. So since then, Mr. Biden has gained ground, though he’s still behind.

What does seem fair to say, though, is that no polls report any burgeoning public disenchantment with Trump since recent events that can credibly be argued have placed him, his views on gun control, and the Supreme Court Justices he appointed, in more negative lights. And revealingly, the latest set of Biden-Trump election results, in this Emerson (Massachusetts) College survey, showed Trump with his biggest edge (five percentage points) since late March – even though it was conducted the day of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive anti-Trump testimony before the January 6^th Committee, and the day after.

All of these trends could easily reverse themselves in the months remaining before November – if only because more politically charged shocks could easily be in store. In addition, voters’ views on the recent shocks could grow more intense and likelier to influence their voting. (Here’s some new evidence for that proposition.)

But what seems most striking to me at this point is how stable the polls have been despite the recent string of arguably pro-Democratic bombshells – and consequently how dim their November prospects remain.

Im-Politic: Has Everyone Gotten “The Great Replacement Theory” Wrong (Except Me)?

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Buffalo shooting, Center for American Progress, conservatives, Democrats, Great Replacement Theory, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, Latinos, Payton Gendron, racism, Republicans, Steve Phillips, white supremacy

The question in today’s title has been nagging me for some time, and since the appalling Buffalo, New York massacre has brought the “Great Replacement Theory” (GRT) back into the headlines, it seems like an especially good time to explain why.

It’s not that the GRT doesn’t exist, or that it hasn’t played a part in motivating white racist violence in America. The idea that elites have sought to reduce the political influence of native-born white Americans through means ranging from promoting racial integration to supporting mass immigration not only unmistakably exists; it’s got a pretty lengthy history. And it’s been explicitly cited in recent years to justify killings of members of various minority groups (see, e.g., here and here), including (somewhat confusingly), Jews, who evidently are viewed by many adherents as non-white. (Or is their sin being non-Christian?)

Accused Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron was a GRT believer, too – at least if a lengthy statement posted on-line shortly before his assault began really was – as widely believed – written by him.

But the claim that Republicans and other conservatives are the only non-fringe U.S. political figures who have written about the immigration version of GRT is flat wrong. It’s been explicitly in the nation’s political air since the issue achieved hot-button status in the mid-2000s with the outbreak of mass demonstrations by illegal immigrants and amnesty supporters and the Congressional battle over a “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” bill. And the mentioners have prominently included Democrats and Mainstream Media journalists.

For example, as just reminded by (conservative) columnist Rich Lowry, in 2013, the Center for American Progress (CAP) – closely associated not with the Democratic party’s progressive faction but with its supposedly moderate “Clinton wing” – published a paper arguing that “Supporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future.”

Nor was the 2013 report a one-off CAP product. CAP Fellow Steve Phillips’ 2016 book Brown is the New White argued, according to his publisher, that “hope for a more progressive political future lies not with increased advertising to middle-of-the-road white voters, but with cultivating America’s growing, diverse majority.”

And in 2013, journalist Emily Schultheis wrote in that unerring guide to Inside the Beltway political conventional wisdom, Politico, that

“The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.”

Moreover, the haste with which President Biden moved to overturn many of his predecessor Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies and Congressional Democrats determination to stuff lenient immigration positions into the Build Back Better stimulus bill and the so-called China competitiveness bill strongly suggest they firmly believe these claims.

So are Republicans and conservatives and whites and anyone else worried about GRT right to fear being replaced – that is, about mass immigration’s potential to change America into something they would find odious and indeed un-American? That seems anything but clear.

This post does a good job of presenting the reasons for and against such Republican concerns (though the author is emphatically pessimistic). But these days, it suffers a major flaw: It’s five years old. And since its publication, there’s been abundant evidence not only from polls but from actual voting behavior that Republicanism – including its Trump version, has significant and growing appeal to Hispanic voters. Or is it that this group is increasingly turned off by what it’s been seeing of the Democrats lately? Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either way, that doesn’t sound very Great Replacement-y to me.

Certainly, this latter trend is too short-lived so far to warrant tossing GRT fears onto the ash heap of history. But at the least it argues for immigration restrictionists turning down the GRT volume some, and focusing on what I view as the strongest arguments against the Open Borders-friendly policies so long pushed by most on the political left, along with Big Business’ Cheap Labor Lobby, and globalist and libertarian ideologues (many of course lavishly funded by that Lobby).

These concern the wage-depressing effect of mass immigration throughout the economy, and the national security dangers created by indifference to the matter of who exactly is entering and residing in the country, And given the power and money still at the command of the opposition, they should be more than enough to keep the restrictionists’ plates full for the foreseeable future.