(H/t Muncie Free Press) The Indiana Department of Workforce Development has highlights of various county data.

Each county highlight includes population, education, commuting, labor force, industry, income and firm size data, available by clicking on any county on the map.

All right, on to important matters: pizza. A previous discussion led to the subject, so I thought I’d elevate it to it’s own topic. Indiana is, what, the 9th fattest state? So, I assume many Hoosiers have strong opinions about their pies.

For my part, I favor the thin, crispy crust variety. I grew up in Richmond, and my favorite there was Pizza King. They have the thin crusts, cut into party squares and grind up the sausage and pepperoni. They also have a pretty outstanding Royal Feast. It is my understanding that the Pizza King franchises are divided among those in the eastern part of the state — notably Muncie and Richmond; and those in the rest of the State. Just looking online, it seems that those in East Central Indiana have some centralized affiliation. In the rest of the state, it seems more haphazard. In my experience, the east-central Pizza Kings are excellent, the rest are just so-so.

While I’ve been in Lafayette and Monticello, I have fallen in love with two franchises: Arni’s and Monical’s. Between the two, I prefer Monical’s crusts but prefer Arni’s ingredients. Both are, again, of the thin crust variety.

While I was in Bloomington, as a student, I especially liked Pizza Express. Their pizza was pretty much just adequate, but I loved their breadsticks with their garlic butter. Those things were a tremendous way to cap off a night of drinking.

I never really found a favorite pizza place while I lived in Indianapolis; and mostly made due with more national varieties of pizza, primarily Papa John’s I suppose.

Any other recommendations out there?

Greater Lafayette Ranks #2 for jobs available – or, at least so says a CareerBuilder.com report cited by Max Showalter for the Lafayette Journal and Courier.

Based on jobs per 100,000 residents, the survey shows only Jackson, Tenn., was identified as having more job openings than Greater Lafayette.

So why is my collection business doing fairly well? I guess the trick is to keep them employed, but not so employed that they can pay all of their bills. And, who knows what sort of jobs CareerBuilder.com is focused on. It may be that the lower tiers of laborers aren’t counted very well. Thanks to Purdue and some local initiatives, the Lafayette area has some pretty unique opportunities for well-educated job hunters; particularly given the size of the population.

Ron Shawgo, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article entitled Household income off 10% in state.

Unable to keep up with inflation, Indiana’s median household income has slipped an estimated 10 percent since 2000, with only three other states posting worse declines.
. . .
Indiana’s median household income was an estimated $45,394 last year, lower than the $50,298 earned in 1999, when adjusted for inflation. Only Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina had greater percentage declines. Only eight states showed incomes that outpaced inflation.

How is this happening when American productivity is up (or so I’ve been told?) Is it just that fewer people are pocketing more of the value produced? Or is something else going on? I’m no economist, so this is a real question.

Update
ManFromMiddletown has a diary entry over at Blue Indiana noting some pretty startling information. Indiana apparently has 3 of the 10 poorest communities: Bloomington, Gary, and Muncie. I wonder if student populations figure into the calculations somehow. (I don’t really feel the same concern for a college student living in a hole, eating Ramen as I do a high school dropout trying to raise children living in the same squalor.)

Update #2 Plate o’ shrimp — as I was writing update #1, I noticed that ManFromMiddletown had graced this fair blog with a comment. He points out a report from the Economic Mobility Project (pdf) (put together by folks working for the Brookings Institution and the Pew Charitable Trusts). Page 6 of the report, reveals that for the first 30 years following World War II, productivity increases and median household income growth went up pretty much in lockstep. Since the late 70s, and most dramatically since 2000, productivity has continued gone up much faster than median household income. “[T]he benefits of productivity growth have not been broadly shared in recent years.”

The report itself focuses mainly on intergenerational mobility — the extent to which children move up or down the income spectrum relative to their parents’ generation. (Seems like the “nothing is wrong” crowd will often try to show mobility by pointing out that an individual can expect to increase his or her earnings as he or she gets older.) The report notes the importance of intergenerational mobility to the American Dream. By and large, Americans like to view our society as one where diligence and skill get rewarded. Large differentials in economic outcome are acceptable because, after all, your fate is in your own hands. If you get rich, it’s because you deserve it. If you stay (or get) poor, it’s your own fault. The report suggests three hypothetical types of society – 1) The meritocratic society where you rise or fall according to how hard you work and how talented you are; 2) The “fortune cookie” society where it’s all luck; and 3) The class-stratified society – you’re born into it.

Obviously, we’ve always had a little of all of these going on. But, for the past generation or so, it looks like we’re starting to favor #2 and #3 more than in the past. And, in fact, the study finds that Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and France have more relative mobility than does the United States. In other words, your parents’ status is a better predictor of what your status will be when you grow up than it is in those other countries. In our peer group, only the United Kingdom has similar levels of mobility. Viva la revolucion!

Lots of other sobering information in the report. Thanks ManFromMiddletown.

There is plenty to be concerned about with Indiana’s current property tax system — but here’s one that comes pretty far down on the list to me: The General Assembly’s tax preference for owner-occupied properties. Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, has an article entitled Indiana landlords to make plea for tax relief.

In addition to the concerns pretty much everybody else has about property taxes, the landlords add a complaint for the preferences given for owner-occupied properties. The General Assembly provides a homestead credit for properties occupied by their owners, resulting in a lower tax obligation for such properties. This, the landlords say, is unfair. In particular, I like the analogy offered by Morton Marcus, director emeritus of the Kelly School of Business:

My concern is that property should all be taxed on the same basis,” Marcus said. “We don’t say when you buy a box of cereal: ‘Do you have false teeth? And if you do, we will charge you a different sales tax.’ “

I’d say it’s more like giving a tax break to people who are going to eat the cereal than those who are going to use the cereal as, say, an art supply. Both are perfectly legitimate uses of the product, but the General Assembly might reasonably provide a preference for the more basic necessity.

I recognize there is a debate to be had as to whether tax policy ought to be a tool for social engineering. For example, you might argue that the General Assembly contributed to the subprime mortgage debacle by encouraging everybody to own a home. That example’s a little tenuous, I suppose, but the debate is legitimate. However, if one accepts the legitimacy of using taxation to advance policy preferences, I think a preference for owning one’s own residence is generally sound. In my own neighborhood, the owner-occupied properties seem to be better maintained than the rentals. I’m generally happier when my neighbors are owners rather than renters because, generally, there is going to be more pride in ownership.

At the end of the day, the landlords’ pleas for “fairness” seem to be nothing more (and nothing less) than a complaint that they have to pay more on their capital investment than folks with like property who choose to live in their investment.

Scott at Hoosier Pundit posted a cartoon about Iran taking provocative action with respect to Iraq. The cartoon reminded me of a Daily Show bit I saw a couple of days ago reminding us that we built up Iraq because we were opposed to Iran; we assisted bin Laden because he was fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan; we are providing military aid to the Saudis (“20% of the 9/11 suicide attackers were not Saudis”) because they are upset at the increase in Iranian/Shiite power resulting from our invasion of Iraq; and, just for good measure, we’re providing Israel with additional military aid because they’re nervous about all that Muslim military power.

There are plenty of other factors contributing to making that region of the world a pit, but I don’t think we’ve been doing ourselves any favors.

I uploaded a bunch of hiking pictures to my Flickr account for those who are interested. There are just three I want to post here:

Tom and I on the summit of La Plata Peak.

Hoosier Pass – 2007.

Hoosier Pass – 1995

As you might expect, I’ve been out of touch for the past 3 weeks and haven’t paid much attention to the goings on in Indiana. Anything I need to know about to get my finger on the pulse of the Hoosier state?