Weighing in on Scales

Krugman's example on when scales matter.  Besides when you need to find out how much weight you've gained over Christmas and New Year's.  Basically, if you're looking at a tiny scale, a boom is fantastic, but on a larger (national) scale, not so much.

I dunno, I think this is intuitive, and he could have come up with an example that wouldn't confuse anybody.  If you win $500, you're pumped (I'm assuming you aren't particularly rich; if you were, I have no idea why you'd waste time with my blog).  If Bill Gates finds $500, he's meh.  The graph he provides comparing Pennsylvania and North Dakota hides a little of this; the amount of endowments increases, but the percentage increase in resources is drastically higher in North Dakota.  I don't know who would argue that the discovery of energy resources in North Dakota (only) would have a crazy impact on the US as a whole...