The Outstater
The Star Explores Outstate Indiana
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR has sent a team of intrepid newswomen to the far corners of the state to learn what we are about out here, heavy on those man-on-the-street interviews of hapless “average” Hoosiers.
One dispatch from the hinterland began, “The hills of southern Indiana look different than the manufacturing industry-dotted lakeshore in northwest Indiana or the at-times crowded suburban streets of Indianapolis’ doughnut counties.”
So although a sincere and appreciated effort at outreach, don’t expect much in the way of profound insight.
Still, I wish I had run into one of them. I would have offered the foundation’s 30 years of experience collecting the opinions of outstate Hoosiers, including those in its regular column fortuitously named “The Outstater.” And I would have handed her a copy of our “Nine ‘States’ of Indiana.”
The 2012 research project identifies and describes Indiana’s distinct regions, too often lumped together as if the state were socio-economically flat. Although dated, I commend it to your attention here. Keep it in your files. It will come in handy.
The methodology was designed by Dr. John Gaski, our marketing expert, with the help of summer intern Cory Craig. It aggregates the various components of economic, political and social statistics to produce nine distinct regions based on variations within the data, including per capita income and quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) among other things.
A map from the article illustrates U.S. Census data relating the only fact our economists says is worth knowing, e.g., how many are coming and how many are going.
The mauve shading, covering virtually all of outstate Indiana, shows that Hoosiers are leaving — nay, have abandoned — the traditional hometown. Rural America, we were told at the time, had fallen to just 16 percent of the nation’s population (it’s lower now unless you count stray illegal immigrants).
Had a Star reporter run into me I would have reiterated that outstate Indiana was waning. Some say it is our arrogant and dreamy zoning laws. Others blame chicanery by the Federal Reserve Bank (which has no reserve and is not a bank). Still others point to arbitrary and self-defeating regulations, public-sector unionism, regional tax nets and a ruinous and pernicious increase in state government, not to mention disastrous agriculture policy.
It is enough to know that we outstate reprobates understand the seriousness of our situation. We are desperate for assurance that our all-American communities can be revived so we abide economic-development schemes that post for the gullible the numbers of jobs purportedly saved or created out here.
We try not to notice that as we suffer a decrease in private-sector employment, government appropriations for those illusive public-private “partnerships” increase, only eventually to come to naught or scandal.
Had I the chance I would have read to the Starreporter from the playwright David Mamet: “The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches.”
Along those lines, I would have said that we worry it’s all bushwah coming out of the Statehouse and we would appreciate more help from her newspaper sorting it out. — tcl
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