There’s a lot of talk about how El Paso could be the next Oklahoma City, developing downtown through sports infrastructure. El Paso and El Pasoans have bet a lot of money on that proposition.
But now lookie here: According to Wikipedia, the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of 1,083,346 with a per capita income of $19,366. That multiplies out to almost $21 billion.
The El Paso MSA has a population of 679,622 with a per capita income of $13,421. Las Cruces has a population of 174,682 with a per capita income of $13,999. That means El Paso’s collective buying power is $9,121,206,862, and Las Cruces is $2,445,373,318, for a combined $11,566,580,180.
$21 billion versus $11.5 billion.
That’s a big $9.5 billion difference.
Subtract a fairly comparable Cost of Living and the percentage difference is greater. Like, say it costs $10,000 just to live in both (or all three) places (I’m just spitballing here), and the difference in discretionary income is $10,146,618,636 for the Okalahoma MSA versus $3,023,540,180 for the El Paso and Las Cruces MSAs combined.
Throw in Juarez and Northern Mexico and it gets more complicated, but not by enough to make a big difference, I reckon.
Now if some jerk with a public education sitting in a a drafty spare bedroom on the fringe of downtown can figure that out, you have to wonder if the people running El Paso are clueless or if they’re selling us a bag of hooey.
Ask the OK Thunder or any NBA team why they would choose OK City vs Chuco even when we’re so much cooler. Ask the Trader Joe bigs when they’re coming to EP. Oh yeah. We have Whole Foods now (on the Westside no less), but coincidentally that’s after WF de used to branch to lower income areas in an effort to increase its declining market share. Look it up. It’s true.