AP: States Having Budget Problems, Therefore They’re In Recession
Many in the press seem to have difficulty distinguishing between the economy as a whole and individual governments’ fiscal situations. Because of that, they seem to be believe that if a state government is having difficulty balancing its budget, there must be a recession in the whole state’s economy.
That’s what you would think if you read Andrew Welsh-Huggins’s Associated Press report on Friday morning:
Many states appear to be in recession
The finances of many states have deteriorated so badly that they appear to be in a recession, regardless of whether that’s true for the nation as a whole, a survey of all 50 state fiscal directors concludes.
…Mr. Huggins needs to learn that economies have recessions; individual state governments don’t.