So how’s that faith based supply-side ‘trickle down’ economics working out for you, Arizona?

Arizona has lived under faith based supply-side “trickle down” GOP economics and austerity measures since the Bush Great Recession began in December of 2007. If this disproved and discredited economic theory actually worked as advertised, Arizona would have recovered from the Bush Great Recession and been at full employment long ago, with a booming economy that attracts new  employers and talented employees to move to Arizona.

Of course, faith based supply-side “trickle down” GOP economics and austerity measures are pure fantasy, like unicorns, that only the self-deluded and those who get paid big bucks to propagandise for this fraudulent economic theory cling to. Arizonans are unfortunately saddled with a governor who is a “true believer” in this utter fantasy of an economic “religion.”

The proof is in the economic data. Arizona lags behind rest of nation in recession recovery:

Arizona’s major cities are among the least recovered from the recession among major communities across the nation according to a new report.

An analysis of key factors by the financial advice firm WalletHub finds no Arizona cities in the top half of the 150 they studied for recovery. Scottsdale managed to come in at 114, the best of any Arizona community studied.

At the other extreme, Tucson managed to escape being at the very bottom (149) only because the problems in San Bernadino, Calif., are even worse.

Tucson’s rankings were driven down by having the highest poverty rate of Arizona communities reviewed. And WalletHub also marked down Tucson because the number of businesses shrank by more than 8 percent between 2007 and when the recession ended last year, a figure exceeded by only four other cities nationwide.

It also has a great deal to do with the fact that our Tea-Publican legislature has been stealing tax dollars from Tucson and Pima County since 2007, and has been transferring state obligations to Pima County that the county has to pay for by raising taxes. Pima County residents to pay ‘Tea-Publican Transfer Tax. All of this has taken money out of the Tucson and Pima County economies during the worst recession since the Great Depression — this is the exact opposite prescription to deal with an economic recession. The Arizona legislature made the situation worse. This is why Pima County is presently suing the state legislature for its theft of our tax dollars. Pima County goes to war with the state legislature over transfer taxes.

Tucson and Pima County were not alone:

Mesa, Tempe and Glendale also were in the Bottom 10 of the WalletHub analysis. And Phoenix barely escaped that designation at No. 139.

“You clearly see a trend in these data,’ said economist Dennis Hoffman of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

“It’s really pretty clear that the geographies here that got hit the hardest by the real estate collapse have been the slowest to recover,’ he continued.

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One item of note is that several of the communities studied had a net outflow of the number of college-educated workers since the beginning of the recession, even as the overall population of those cities has increased. And among the Arizona communities, Tucson had the largest percentage loss.

“They’re just having trouble attracting and retaining employers in Tucson that are looking to hire college grads,’ Hoffman said. He said much of this is driven by cutbacks in the defense industry which has meant that firms with military contracts, like Raytheon, just are not adding to staff at the rate they once were.

This is due to the GOP Budget Sequester (since 2013) enacted in the Budget Control Act of 2011, i.e., GOP austerity economics that has been taking money out of the economy instead of pumping money into the economy to stimulate economic growth, including defense spending. Sequestration’s Impact on Military Spending, 2013 – 2014.

[T]he situation may actually be more dire than the data show.

Dan Anderson, economist for the Arizona Board of Regents, said this city-level data is probably at least a year old, if not more. And that predates the latest round of cuts in state support for the university system, a move that has resulted in layoffs at University of Arizona.

But this isn’t just a Tucson problem. Gilbert, Glendale, Peoria, Phoenix and Tempe also registered a net outflow of college-educated workers. Anderson said it’s a simple math problem: The supply of college graduates available exceeds the demand by Arizona employers for them.

“What we need to do is boost the demand side for the labor market, attracting businesses that are going to hire those high-wage people,’ Anderson said. He said the state has done that before.

“But right now, we’re just not seeing the level of movement that’s nearly as great as had been before,’ he said.

* * *

Hoffman, looking at the national rankings, noted many in the top half are in the Midwest, especially Texas which escaped the housing boom and bust that ravaged the economy in Arizona and Nevada and parts of California and Florida. He said they managed to rely on the demand for oil.

But Hoffman said their day may be coming, with the price of crude reaching lows it hasn’t seen in years.

Dude, the energy industry has been laying off workers in the oil fields for over a year now, more than 176,000 jobs worldwide with more to come. The U.S. has seen at least 91,000 job cuts across the energy industry since prices collapsed last summer, according to Continental Resources, an Oklahoma oil company that tracks layoffs. As oil industry reels from plummeting prices, layoffs stun, worry.