Where do these ideas come from?

Like this one:

How can Scotland ever be rich with just 160000 people contributing to it's (sic) economy?

Get real.

That was a comment from reader Jeremy Jacobs on a previous post of mine.

This is from the BBC:

The number of unemployed in Scotland has fallen and is close to an all-time low, according to official figures.

Employment statistics equalled a previous high set in 1992 showing 2.53 million people in work, an increase of 60,000 since last year.

All in the public sector I suppose? OK, OK, except for those admirable 160,000 "contributors" of whom I am one.

Not quite:

There were 580,500 working in the public sector in the first quarter of 2007 - down 4,900 or 0.8% - compared to the same period last year.

... It compares with almost two million workers who were employed in the private sector in Scotland in the first quarter of 2007.

None of that's surprising. As I wrote here:

Mr Smith finds that the Scottish GVA per capita comes in at 96.2 against a UK index of 100. That puts us economically below London, the Southeast and the East of England, but above the other eight UK regions. Not too bad, I'd say. Smith then does something rather clever. He adjusts the regional per capita output figures to take account of the differing costs of living. Scotland's "real" GVA per capita now comes out at 101.8 against the UK's 100. So we produce a bit less than the UK average but it goes further

And none of that includes any North Sea oil.

Of course Scotland should be performing much better - as should the rest of the UK. I still hanker after a fully federal United Kingdom, ideally with defence at the UK level and all other government functions (preferably hardly any at all) dealt with by Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London. But part of me is tempted to go for independence - just to show that we can do it. I'll certainly be voting SNP at the next general election unless David Cameron starts quoting Adam Smith and Ludwig von Mises on Wednesday.