North Dakota #1 in Growth in 2011 Among All US States

Link to CarpeDiem.com.

...the "economic miracle state" of North Dakota led the country last year with a whopping growth rate in real GDP of 7.6%, more than five times the national average of 1.5%, and almost three percentage points higher than No. 2 Oregon's growth of 4.7%. On a per-capita basis, North Dakota also ranked No. 1 in the country with a 6.17% increase in its 2011 per-capita real GDP, compared to a 0.73% national average, and a 4.47% increase in No. 2 West Virginia.

Oregon in the #2 place is very, very interesting. I would not have expected that, to say the least. It would be interesting to compare Oregon's port revenue and growth with that of Washington State. [See first comment which sheds light on Oregon's source for GDP. Click here for the link in the comment.]

Also from the same site: Can we finally put "peak oil" to rest?

... higher prices for oil will increase the incentives to: a) find more oil, b) conserve on the use of oil, and c) find more substitutes.  And that's exactly what's happened recently in response to higher oil prices - domestic crude oil production reached a 14-year high in March, and the share of rigs drilling for oil (vs. natural gas) set a new record high of 70% last week.  

And then Mark Perry lists a number of astounding examples of how American businesses are replacing ever expensive fossil fuel with alternate and renewable sources. Very, very interesting.

Added later: I love the subject at this link: remember the North Dakota to Texas energy renaissance. With the Mississippi Lime in Kansas it pretty much completes the span from border to gulf (South Dakota needs a bit more action).

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A Note for the Granddaughters

My worldview of the American success story was pretty much influenced by How the Scots Invented The Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It, by Arthur Herman.  It would be one of five books I would take to a deserted island.

Since reading that book, I am forever finding more examples of the Scots in the world. From The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, by David Abulafia, there is a great section on the Jewish-Muslim history in the Mediterranean at the end of the first millenium (900 - 1050).

... in the eleventh century one group of Jews rebuit the Ben Ezra synagogue, only by ladder, into which they threw and stuffed their discarded papers and manuscripts. They wished to avoid destroying anything that carried the name of God; by extension they did not destroy anything written in Hebrew characters. It has been well said that the Genizah collection is 'the very opposite of an archive,' because the aim was to throw away documents without destroying them, in effect burying them above ground ...

These manuscripts came to the attention of scholars in 1896 when a pair of Scottish women brought to Cambridge what appeared to be the Hebrew text of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus, previously known only from the Greek version preserved in the Septuagint, and consigned by the Jews ... to the non-canonical Apocrypha. 

A Cambridge, the Reader in Talmudic, arranged for the sale of the contents, bringing back about 75% of the entire "waste-basket." It took one hundred years to sort out the waste paper.

Later in the same chapter (nothing to do with the Scots):

There were many references to Muslim merchants, who were often entrusted with goods being sent overland (there was heavy land traffic along the North African coast); this was because many Jews had scruples about travelling by land on the Sabbath, which was difficult to avoid when accompanying a caravan. Travelling by sea on the Sabbath was less complicated, so long as one did not set out on the Sabbath itself. Perhaps it was this simple fact, their religious preference for sea travel, that made the Genizah Jews into such enterprising merchants willing to traverse the Mediterranean.

Finally, there is a long section later in the chapter on the business practices of the Muslim and Jewish merchants, constrained by religious laws, that should impress Harvard MBAs, and perhaps even help modern-day entrepreneurs get around bureaucratic nonsense.

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If I taught middle school social sciences or high school history, I would, of course, assign the entire class the required textbook, but I would divide the classes into four or five groups and assign each group to read an additional book such as the two referenced above, and others such as TR's Winning of the West. It would be their responsibility (with guidance) to find short sections in the reference material to expand on the required text. I have immense joy sharing such trivia as the above stories with my granddaughters at breakfast (as we work on the crossword puzzle together) or on our walks home from school. It is quite amazing what they can bring to the conversation. The five-year-old asks very, very perceptive questions. Last night she asked me what "catheters" were when overhearing one of those "old-person" commercials while watching reruns of The Rifleman.