Monday, September 23, 2013

It's Easy To Confuse North Dakota With New Mexico Geographically: They Are Both Huge States (But That's About Where The Similarity Ends)

It will be interesting to see if they correct this bit of lunacy before the day is over. I captured a screenshot of it just in case it is corrected.

Here's the screen shot:

The story was reported here: the ten most threatened state pensions. [Note: the first paragraph in that screen shot was also misplaced. That paragraph belongs in the body of the story before the list begins. This whole story was a "cut-and-paste" debacle.]

The population of North Dakota is about 630,000 folks, most of whom do not live in Williston.

The population of New Mexico is 1.8 million.

If one cross-checks the above story with "official" government data, it appears that the story above (#10 - North Dakota) should have been #10: New Mexico.

It's easy to confuse North Dakota with New Mexico when you are writing from a cubicle in New York City. LOL. [See first comment: the writer may have confused "Nebraska" with "North Dakota." That may be but the "official" government data suggests New Mexico is in much worse trouble than Nebraska. Also, it's been my impression that Nebraska is much more financially responsible than New Mexico.]

But here are some hints:

North Dakota borders Canada.

New Mexico borders Mexico.

Canada is north of the United States.

Mexico is south of the United States.

By the way, North Dakota has $1.3 billion in its Legacy Fund alone.

By the way, the article was so incredulous, I looked up the background of the individual who wrote the article.  Before moving into journalism and working for Yahoo!Finance/MarketWatch, he was an ICBM missile launch officer for the USAF. His career was no doubt undistinguished. Thank goodness.  By the way, this guy also tabulates the weekly initial unemployment claims data.



I'm Going Slightly Mad, Queen
 
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 23, 2013 at 5:18 PM

    Actually the author of the article is only partially incorrect. Look at the original report the article is lifted from. http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/promises-made-promises-broken-the-betrayal-of-pensioners-and-taxpayers

    In terms of funded ratio percentage, North Dakota actually is 10th lowest (32%) on the list from the report. The assets, liabilities, and unfunded liability stated in the article also match, albeit with poor rounding, what is shown in the report for North Dakota. However, the author of the article erred when reporting the population and per capita figures. Apparently for these numbers he used data for Nebraska instead of North Dakota.

    So the author partially confused Nebraska with North Dakota, not New Mexico with North Dakota.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bruce OksolSeptember 23, 2013 at 6:59 PM

      That would make more sense: it's easy to confuse North Dakota with Nebraska: they both start with the letter "N." And they're both about the same size.

      Delete

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