The Real Trouble with Large Rectangular Prairie States

Steven Malanga has an interesting take on Thomas Frank in his piece What's the Matter With Kansas? Not a thing, it turns out.

Some fun bits:

In purple prose, Mr. Frank paints a grim picture of the state and its towns. Kansas is "pretty much in a free fall," he informs us, and as a result of its economic devastation, it's "a civilization in the early stages of irreversible decay." The cause of all this decline, he says, is modern capitalism, especially as practiced by all those businessmen-Republicans. Kansas is "burning on a free-market pyre," he writes. Things are especially bad in his old hometown of Shawnee, where, during his visits, he no longer sees anyone in the streets. Instead, "heaps of rusting junk and snarling rottweilers" blight the landscape.

Sounds pretty grim. Unfortunately, for Frank, it all seems to be imaginary.

Yet Mr. Frank's characterization of the Jayhawk State is completely--bizarrely--at odds with the facts. Kansas's economy has actually outpaced the nation's for years. Throughout the 1990s and the first part of this new decade, Kansas had a lower unemployment rate than the U.S. as a whole. In fact, when the country's unemployment rate dipped below 5% from 1997 to 2001, Kansas's fell under 4%--a level so low that economists basically consider it full employment. Overall, the state's economy added 256,000 new jobs during the 1990s, a 24% growth rate, compared with a 20% national gain in the same period. Even when the economic slowdown set in and the recession finally hit in 2002 and 2003, Kansas lost jobs at a slower rate than the national economy did.

The article concludes:

Regardless of Kansas' economic performance, Mr. Frank's main thesis--that people who are struggling economically should be voting as liberals, not conservatives--is dubious. As an editorial in the Wichita Eagle observed: "There's nothing wrong with many Kansans wanting to hold onto a little more of their paychecks . . . or preferring that when they need help it comes from their family, their church, their community--not an intrusive federal government." But what's really astounding is that Mr. Frank, who offers little in the way of economic data, would base his argument on such blatant falsehoods. To Mr. Frank's liberal prejudices, something may be the matter with Kansas, but it sure isn't its economy.

What Frank really doesn't like is that the people of Kansas keep voting for Republicans. He seems deeply troubled that they don't think like people in New York, Washington DC, or Boston think. From his perspective the trouble with Kansas is that its full of Kansans.