This is a miscellaneous post:
1. From my previous blog in this series on the State Coincident Index, there were only 4 states that broke the 200 index value by December 2007. They are: Arizona (219.47), Idaho (230.80), Nevada (247.61) and New Hampshire (200.22). While New Hampshire is the lowest of the group, that is pretty good company in terms of economic development.
2. Upon further examination of 2007 state government tax collections from the Census Bureau, I noticed a stark difference in the growth of state government tax collections between Maine and New Hampshire. Between FY 2002 and FY 2007, Maine’s state government tax collections grew $954,850,000 (36 percent) to $3,581,680,000 from $2,626,830,000. In stark contrast, New Hampshire’s state government tax collections between FY 2002 and FY 2007 grew $183,552,000 (10 percent) to $2,080,573,000 from $1,897,021,000.
I will translate these figures into “percent of income” when the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases their 2007 estimate of personal income at the end of March. Stay tuned . . .