Real States

Brockman Map
One way we define a “state” here in the USA is as a unit of regional government. But states are also ways that we define ourselves as local communities and from which we take shared identities. And overlapping between the formal governmental states and the units of identification are regions of economic activity. The map above sets out one way of looking at regional activity by mapping login registries from “wheresgeorge.com“, a site where people track their currency by serial number. (I found it at NPR.) I think there is some important information to be gleaned here.

Particularly given that the bulk of the bills tracked in the source data are small bills — ones, fives, twenties — we get a sense of where currency circulates on an atomized level. It’s no surprise, of course, that there is a lot of overlap between California and Nevada, but a little more surprising to me that there is a lot of currency circulation between California and Arizona.

One thing this may reveal is that differences between states with varying taxation schemes, or which impose significantly different levels of taxes on different things like gasoline or food, can create a lot of economic activity across formal state borders. Compare the taxation schemes regarding sales tax and income tax that prevail in Oregon and Washington, and it’s not hard to imagine people finding ways to game that system.

Another thing that stands out to me is the sharp border between New York and the New England states. Not a lot of currency crossing that state line. The sharpest lines appear to be out west — the “Cascadia/Columbia” region of most of Washington and Oregon, and the Cal-Nev-Az region. Texans and Lousianans do business with each other a lot, fairly frequently, but not Texans and Oklahomans. Which seems odd because I’d have thought agriculture-and-petroleum-driven Oklahoma would have a lot in common economically with Texas.

Also challenging my own assumptions is Indiana as sort of an economic region unto itself — in my own experience, Indiana is something of a ground travel hub, a place where a lot of freeways taking people and commerce congregate around Indianapolis and therefore a likely place for gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and other services to accumulate currency from other regions and then re-distribute it locally, so it would seem to me that Indianapolis would be a force drawing money in from a lot of other places and making its region seemingly larger. But this seems not to be the case — or is it; am I reading the map incorrectly?

It’s useful to note that for whatever reasons, money circulates in these patterns. Juxtapose this information with channels of infrastructure and we might get an idea of how much currency moves along the interstate highways or flies on our aircraft; compare things like gas and income and sales taxes and we may see if states competing with each other in those arenas are actually able to attract money from their neighbors that way.

For instance, we don’t have to think real hard to imagine why a lot of currency from California might make its way to the Las Vegas region (it’s America’s playground for adults, a handy four-hour ride on I-15 from the second-largest metropolitan area in the nation), but what are Californians buying, at the small-bill level in Arizona — and then, does that money making its way back in to California, and if so how?

And it may help flesh out an understanding of not just economic activity but cultural affinities. Sports rivalries aside, my own experience is that there is a lot of identification and friendship and personal mobility between the Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago areas — but much less with Minnesota. Chicago and Madison are closer to one another than Madison and Minneapolis, true, but given that the Twin Cities are smaller than Chicago and the economics and culture driving Wisconsin and Minnesota are so similar, you’d think there would be a lot more affinity and personal contacts than there really are. Identifying so strongly with Wisconsin as I do, I’ve felt a sense of Minnesota being somewhere “other than home” when I’ve been out to visit in the Midwest — a sense that I don’t really have when in Illinois.

Similarly, Las Vegas feels connected to California somehow in a way I can’t quite articulate. And when I lived in Knoxville, I felt a reasonable attachment to and familiarity with Nashville that I did not with Memphis. Even when I was in Nashville, I seemed to bump in to other Knoxvillians, or Chattanoogans, or Johnson City or even Martin folks, but the people from the greater Memphis area didn’t seem to come to Nashville all that much. This seems reflected in West Tennessee’s depiction on the map as sort of a parochial unit unto itself, looking more to Mississippi than the rest of Tennessee.

If nothing else, how our money circulates gives us a good look at how we actually behave, how we define our own regional realities. State lines were drawn for reasons that might not have had much to do with actual human behavior, and the confluence of relatively affordable and fast travel technology and freedom to easily move about within the country reveals our true regional identities.

I’d be interested in seeing a similar map of Europe.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

48 Comments

  1. One of the boldest lines is the one that runs straight through the middle of PA. Them’s the Appalachians, and I’m not surprised at all to see the economic boundaries there.

    The weird one is the one going straight down the Mississippi. What the hell is up with a major waterway being not a source, a divot, a place of economic activity, but instead a separator? That’s /weird/, man. Mountains divide. Rivers don’t, in my experience.

    Also wondering where the mints are, right now.

    • The weird one is the one going straight down the Mississippi. What the hell is up with a major waterway being not a source, a divot, a place of economic activity, but instead a separator? That’s /weird/, man.

      By the time you get as far south as Davenport, Iowa the Mississippi is definitely a divider. Too wide for there to be bridges very often, so long stretches where there’s little contact across the river.

    • I just checked, and found that all printed money comes from one of two facilities of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth, Texas.

  2. I wonder how much of that is trucking… Arizona gets its stuff from truckers who came from the West Coast, maybe, New Mexico gets its stuff from truckers who came from the Gulf?

    • There is almost certainly substantial weight to this. To the extent currency finds its way back to the branches of the Fed as part of circulation patterns this chains the map to those areas.

      But there are some significant differences: The Tenth and Twelfth Fed districts especially are fragmented and the Eastern Seaboard is more unified than the district boundaries. This must reflect something other than the influence of the Fed.

      • That’s true, though sheer geography may have something to do with that. The 12th district is massive and the 10th has its bank in the NE corner, far from the other big cities in the district. Whereas on the Eastern Seaboard, the Fed districts are close together. You have 3 banks (Philly, NY and Boston) about a 5 hour drive apart and a 4th (Richmond) within 9. I’m sure some of that has to do with visiting family as well as DC/NY trips to meet with government types.

        I actually think the Iowa-Nebraska mini region is interesting because it is not a subset of a Fed district and there is no border (not even a weak one) where the Fed district boundary would be. This almost assuredly has something to do with trucking.

        • also note that wv has managed to move nearly into pittsburgh’s radius, which I find interesting, as I note Pittsburgh’s influence mostly ending by the time you get to mid WV (sam, please pipe up if I’m wrong!).

        • Another point that probably is obvious to everybody but seems important to me is that this tracks the cash version of commerce which probably works on different streams than, say, electronic currency.

          If there were a way to mark a “virtual dollar”, I’d reckon that the map would look like an electron probability cloud centered around, oh, Amazon or Warshington DC.

        • I actually think the Iowa-Nebraska mini region is interesting…. This almost assuredly has something to do with trucking.

          Can’t be entirely, or the I-80 pattern across Nebraska would extend on into Wyoming. The N-S line that cuts off the Nebraska panhandle and lumps it in with a good chunk of Wyoming, Colorado, and some bits of New Mexico is the Front Range I-25 corridor in action. The N-S flow along the I-25 corridor is much heavier than the E-W flow across I-80. I-80 across Wyoming and western Nebraska is functionally more of a badly-designed freight railroad than a highway for passenger traffic; I-25 moves a huge daily volume of people traffic.

    • Why would this matter? It’s not the Federal government stamping “wheresgeorge.com” on the bills.

  3. The comparison with telephone network map is interesting, both for the similarities and differences. I guess the one real take away, at least for this Hoosier, is that no much likes Indiana.

    • Indeed. There’s lots of people commuting from CT into NYC. Surely substantial numbers of them use currency for at least small transactions, which I would have expected would add up and produce a softer border between NY and CT.

      Maybe, as Jaybird suggests above, the bulk of the money flowing back and forth between NY and CT is electronic (direct deposits of paychecks, for instance). And Nutmeggers would probably do most of their shopping near home — if I lived in Greenwich, for instance, I’d be hard pressed to think of why I would want to go to White Plains for groceries. Does NY or CT have higher sales taxes? Even if CT has higher taxes, would I save money by driving the extra twenty minutes each way to buy stuff in NY?

      • As a Nutmegger that works in NY, I would say that almost all of my transactions are electronic (primarily credit). Speaking from experience someone in Greenwich would go to White Plains because the Whole Foods in WP is bigger and better. Also, the closest Costco is in Port Chester, which is literally right across the border. However, NY has higher taxes than CT. Not to mention, until recently, CT blue laws did not allow alcohol purchases on Sunday, so you had to go to NY if you ran out of beer and wanted a couple of cold ones to accompany the game.

  4. May have something to do with large airports. I know the International airports line up pretty well.
    Especially if you think about how far someone is likely to travel in the region for each particular airport. It could be a combo deal, the Federal Reserve map plus the International Airport map.

  5. Texans and Lousianans do business with each other a lot, fairly frequently, but not Texans and Oklahomans. Which seems odd because I’d have thought agriculture-and-petroleum-driven Oklahoma would have a lot in common economically with Texas.

    Diversity is an important driver of trade, two states with near-identical production have little reason to do business with each other.

    • Know why Oklahoma had the dust bowl?

      Cause Texas sucks and Kansas Blows 🙂

      • That is such an old joke where I come from. Although I heard it as Nebraska sucks and Oklahoma blows. (I’m in Kansas.)

    • There are no population centers in the southern half of Oklahoma. That’s got to have an effect. Also, there aren’t really any important roads connecting OK and TX. Or, more accurately, the interstates that go through both states east-west reach more important cities than the ones that go north-south.

      • I don’t know about that. I-35 is a major corridor that’s actually designated as a kind of NAFTA corridor from Mexico to Canada.

  6. Note how El Paso gets cut off from the rest of Texas. At least a couple of reasons for that. El Paso is a main hub for a couple of the Spanish-language passenger bus outfits. Daily routes are north-south to Denver, and east-west to the SoCal/Phoenix/Las Vegas triangle. Another thing that demonstrates the focus is El Paso Electric: the majority of its service area extends north into New Mexico — eg, Las Cruces and White Sands. El Paso Electric is part of the Western Interconnect, and owns 16% of the Palo Verde nuclear power station in Arizona. Dollar-bill traffic is going to be north and west, rather than back into the rest of Texas.

    • Yeah, say that in Norman. If ever there was a radical religious sect that takes over a town.

      • Here’s the thing, I don’t follow football, but I lived in Norman for several years. I built up anti-bodies against that mania in my youth, juniour and varsity at the same time both ways. Its a hell of a thing not having enough kids to fill a team.
        In my day the girls suited up to, full pads, full contact right along side us.

    • That sounds like something a jealous shorthorn would say.

  7. A lot of people have mentioned trucking, so as the resident trucker let me weigh in here.

    First, I tend to hit the ATM on Tuesday when I get paid and spend that money the rest of the week. I think this exercise would be at least as interesting if they would track twenties since those are the bills that I’ll carry for a while before spending.

    Second, there are definite freight corridors that I’ll end up spending a lot of time on. While all the interstates are important, East-west you have I-10, 40, and 80 coast to coast, 70 Denver to Pennsylvania. North-south you have I-5 up the coast, 15 from LA to SLC, 35 from Laredo to Minneapolis, 65, 81, 85, and 95.

    My travels are at least as dependent on the layout of the planning areas internal to our company which is also dependent on the location of our major terminals. Other drivers have different patterns as I had when I worked for different companies in the past. I have 1 1/2 years of data similar to this from my paycheck stubs if I had the time and any idea how to go about it.

      • 1) 95 separates the drivers from the steerers.

        2) The meaning of the numbers on the map isn’t clear.

        • 1) I won’t argue with that. You can keep your I-95 aggression, and the high auto insurance rates that go with it.

          2) RTFA, especially the fifth paragraph.

          • 1) I can easily afford my auto insurance.

            2a) It is your post, it is your job to explain what the numbers mean.

            2b) The article doesn’t explain what the numbers mean.

  8. The NPR article notes that a line appears between Kansas City and St. Louis, and that’s because each city acts as an attractor. I suspect the area including most of California, Nevada, and Arizona isn’t a result of those areas being particularly well-linked as much as Salt Lake City being a stronger attractor for its commerce than L.A., S.F., Las Vegas, or Phoenix are. That is to say, the dollars spent by Utahns (Mormons, maybe, since Utah is attached to Southern Idaho?) don’t flow west very often.

    One way to think of the model is to assign a negative pressure to each center of commerce and see where the bubbles form, in a similar way to how shapes of soap bubble clusters are established (pdf link).

    • And that’s happy and dandy, except where it doesn’t work. I’ve yet to see an explanation as to why the southern mississippi gets a line straight down it — that’s a prime trade route!

      • But the commerce isn’t local. Corn from Iowa is delivered to a port on the Iowa side of the river and loaded on a barge. Corn from Illinois is delivered to a port on the Illinois side and loaded on a barge. Next real top for those barges is the Port of New Orleans to be loaded on an ocean-going ship. Much the same situation for coal, petroleum, chemicals… it’s a major trade route for bulk commodities, which involves very few people except at the ports. At least at the dollar-bill level, transportation corridors are important if they move lots of people. So river barges and railroads aren’t going to have much effect, with the possible exception of passenger rail in the Northeast.

    • That map’s at least a little bit wrong. The guy that owns the trucking company I used to work for is a Mormon and lives in my hometown with his family, but our county is listed at 0%.

      Now to be fair, we have no Temple in our county and he is a member of a Temple in a Nebraska county just north of us, so that’s probably where he’s being counted. The thing is that the adjacent county to the east is listed at 4.13% but I’m not aware of a Temple there either, so… whatever. I imagine the pattern overall is close enough to the truth.

      • Well, it’s a county map from Slate based on 2000 data, so I wouldn’t expect perfection. But even so, you can really see the borders of the modern State of Deseret.

        • That’s a great map, thanks for sharing. My county is 11% Mormon (22% of adherents) and it’s in the correct category. I wish it had more tiers, though, because we’re in the same category as places that are significantly less Mormon.

  9. I have neither the technical skills nor the time to make a map but wikipedia lists a whole bunch of currency bill tracking sites around the world so I’m sure someone could do a similar exercise with euro’s.

    Predictions – Benlux will show up as one unit
    -France and Germany are both big enough most currency will stay within the borders

    Not sure about the rest.

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