Gosh, it isn't really that hard to test Mr. Lind's hypothesis.  You go to the BEA website and get the county personal income data.  Then you subtract out unearned income (rents, interest, and dividends) and transfers.  Of course, this is a very strange definition, as others have pointed out, since it assumes that all unearned income is parasitical.  It is, however, the definition that Mr. Lind gave us.

By that definition, New York City, L.A., San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New Haven, Denver, Boulder, Honolulu, Baltimore, Detroit, Jersey City, Milwaukee, and Providence earn about 15% of the earned personal income in this country.  They also possess about 14% of the jobs. 

That's a just a near-random selection of Blue cities, of course, and it doesn't include the Blue suburban counties, including suburbs of places like Boston and San Francisco that are anything but suburban.  Anyway, I don't see the unsustainability.  Perhaps I am missing something.

Of course, there is that demographic issue, but I am lost as to the significance of the fact that Blue cities attract people from elsewhere in the United States and overseas.  In addition, many Blue cities, such as New York, do, in fact, have positive population growth from natural increase.


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Posted at August 12, 2005 4:04 PM in response to reply to nathan newman