Рост доходов в Тусоне ставит под сомнение данные о лидерстве города по темпам экономического развития

A story in AZ Big Media out of Phoenix claims that Tucson saw the biggest increase in median household income in Arizona over the last year and ranks 23rd nationally out of 94 cities in income growth. If true, that’s good and bad news. It’s good news to those of us in a small minority who have lamented that Tucson is not as prosperous as it could be. It’s bad news, however, for the political monopoly that has run the place for decades. The monopolists have stayed in power by keeping the proletariat poor and dependent on them. As such, they’ve done everything in their power to nip prosperity in the bud. It’s also bad news for all of the NGOs whose grant money and donations depend on incomes not rising. And it’s bad news for many of the NIMBYs, retirees, aging flower children and hippies, and government and university employees with sinecure. They abhor what widespread prosperity for the masses will do to their desert paradise. Gasp! It might even turn Tucson into a version of Phoenix. Radical socialists will be disappointed, too, for prosperity is an antidote to collectivism. According to the story, median household income in Tucson increased 5.5% to $60,483 over the last year, in inflation-adjusted dollars. And 5.6% of households earned more than $200,000 per year. The anti-wealth cadres can relax, however. That finding might be a false alarm, because it is based on a questionable study. First, it’s unclear if the study compared cities or metro areas. It says that it compared the “largest population centers” in the nation, which suggests metro areas, not cities. But at the same time, Henderson, NV and Enterprise, NV are treated as separate population centers, although both cities are part of metro Las Vegas. At the same time, it appears that the study cited income numbers for the entire metro area of Tucson and not just the city of Tucson. If so, the cited income for metro Tucson is higher than it would be for just the city of Tucson, because it includes such wealthier suburbs as Marana. In any event, the inconsistency calls into question the validity of the study. Second, math alone can sometimes account for a lower-income metropolis like Tucson showing a larger percentage gain in income than higher-income metros. That’s because the percentage is calculated from a smaller denominator. For example, a $6,000 increase in income in a metropolis that has a median household income of $60,000 yields a gain of 10%. By contrast, a $6,000 increase in income in a metropolis that has a median household income of $120,000 yields a gain of 5%. Maybe that explains why Phoenix has a median household income of $85,246 but saw a gain of only 4%. Or maybe the explanation is that the numbers for Phoenix are just for the city of Phoenix. Numbers for Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert are cited separately, in another example of the aforementioned inconsistency. In spite of how the math works, some wealthier metropolises had a much higher percentage of income growth than Tucson. Examples: Third, with respect to the percent of households earning $200,000 or more, the study points out in a footnote that the statistic is presented as a supplemental point estimate and should be interpreted with caution because the margin of error was not evaluated. Still, it’s interesting that the study says that 5.6% of Tucson households earned $200,000 or more. In Gilbert, AZ, 21.7% of households are in that category; and in the imperial city of Washington, DC, 26.6% are. The study doesn’t mention this, but a big driver of household income is how many family members work. Naturally, a family with two working parents will have more income than a single-parent family, all else being equal. And a city with a higher proportion of families with two working parents will have a higher median income than a city with a higher proportion of single-parent families. In closing, it’s good news that median household income in metro Tucson seems to be increasing in real terms instead of decreasing. My condolences to those Tucsonans who see it as bad news. Mr. Cantoni is an author, activist and retired business executive. Contact: [email protected].