The Washington Post:

In recent years, Maryland’s economy has slowed relative to other places. It is still holding up, however, experiencing only a slight decrease compared with other states.

So:

1. Relative to other places, the Maryland economy has slowed. But
2. Compared with other states Maryland has experienced only a ’slight decrease’.

If they mean by #2 that the decline has been slight when compared to the declines seen in other states, #1 is false. If they mean by #1 that the Maryland economy has slowed when compared to other places, #2 is false. Professional journalism, ladies and gentlemen! Step right up and see the journalism! Ladies and children not admitted, because of the gruesome horrors of the professional journalism all over the place.

This wonderful professional journalism is found in a curiously short article headlined ‘Housing Costs Driving Away Marylanders’, on page T1 of today’s Post. Because of the way the Post organizes their website, it’s hard to tell what the heck page T1 is; but I think it’s the weekly zoned tabloid section that varies according to where you buy the paper. If I bought it here, it would be ‘Virginia’; in Maryland, this would be titled ‘Maryland’.

In any case, it’s in the Washington Post, and they ought to be ashamed. The biggest problem isn’t even the terrible editing. The big problem is that it doesn’t connect this with a story that ran on page A1 yesterday, headlined ‘Stricter Policy On Growth Approved in Montgomery‘.

That story is about Maryland’s most populous county raising school ‘impact taxes’ on new residential construction by 125%, and transportation impact taxes 70%. The example the Post gives has the taxes rising from $15,375 for a given new single-family home to $31,105.

$10 million a year from the tax is to be used to provide rental subsidies for ‘moderate’-income residents, and new development is now banned all together in the catchment areas of three high schools.

Surely that’s unrelated, though.

Its reasonable for local governments to impose some restrictions on construction; the development depends on the roads and other services which are run by the local government. In the absence of road pricing, this means jerky command-economy tactics like occasionally banning development.

Command economies are easy to get wrong, though, because they such systems are inherently brittle. Bad decisions are hard to reverse, and the worst ones are often the hardest. When the local government persistently gets it wrong, to the point of driving people away, shouldn’t that at least merit a mention?