Those looking for a public-spirited resolution in the New Year might consider this: Let’s be more positive about our state.

I have written before about the propensity of many Mainers to instantly believe bad news and discount positive reports, but the phenomenon has lately had large consequences.

The November election offered evidence that a majority of the electorate believes Maine has serious economic problems, with low growth and high taxes, and that major changes in government are essential.

The facts do not always support this view.

The 2010 U.S. Census, predicted to show a stagnant Maine population, instead showed that Maine grew more rapidly than any other New England state except New Hampshire. And, contrary to earlier Census estimates, Maine still has more people than New Hampshire. Our population of 1,328,361 is 12,000 more than theirs.

True, the 4.2 percent gain for the decade was less than half the national average of 9.6 percent, but this is hardly a bad thing. Moderate population growth is, on the whole, the most fortunate condition. The kind of runaway growth experienced in parts of the South and Southwest hardly contributes to an increase in happiness. Over-strained public services, traffic jams, environmental destruction, and – after the crash  empty housing developments – is hardly the future we wish for Maine.

The related story we keep hearing – that Maine might lose one of its two congressional seats due to slow population growth – is also nowhere near occurring. The only state in danger of losing a seat, Rhode Island (with just over a million people) escaped rather easily. Apportionment formulas provide significant protection against any state losing one of its last two House seats.

Our allegedly abominable business climate was also a key election issue. Exhibit A was a late-breaking story in Fortune magazine putting Maine 50th – last – in its business index for 2011. The story got big play and eager credence because it seemed to confirm what so many already want to believe, yet its evidence was remarkably flimsy.

The Census has been doing its job for 220 years, and has a tremendous store of reliable facts to draw on, yet it underestimated Maine’s population in its recent annual estimates before the actual count. Fortune, by contrast, was practically making it up. Maine has never ranked high in its survey, but has never been 50th before. The change was not in any demonstrated fact about business conditions, but simply a guess about how much business will expand next year. It’s really no more meaningful that a dozen other attempts to predict the business future, all with varying results.

Then there’s the dread topic of taxes. The Democrats’ unpopular tax reform law, repealed in 2009, was read by voters as a shift from the wealthy, who pay more income taxes, to working families, who notice the sales tax more. This was the basis of GOP Chairman Charlie Webster’s overwhelmingly successful appeal to elect Republican legislators.

But are our taxes, particularly our income taxes, really more onerous than most other states?

The bible on this topic, though flawed, is the Tax Foundation’s annual ranking. The foundation is unabashedly anti-tax, and one of the frustrations for tax professionals is that it refuses to release its full methodology – meaning that it’s not possible to check its conclusions.

Maine’s No. 1 ranking in tax burden at the turn of the millennium – the proportion of state and local taxes compared to income, not tax levels overall – was clearly what drove Gov. John Baldacci to insist that taxes not be increased throughout his eight years as governor.

Yet Maine was never “the highest-taxed state,” that favored phrase of countless letters to the editor. As the Tax Foundation finally acknowledged, Maine’s high ranking was due in large part to property taxes paid by nonresidents, which it has now excluded from its calculations. This only makes sense. The burden on Mainers is what we’re concerned about; anyone from away who can afford a second home here is, almost by definition, better off than most year-rounders.

With the proper calculation, Maine never ranked higher than 5th and, thanks to the hold-the-line stance of Baldacci, has now declined to 15th. In the Tax Foundation’s less-publicized Business Climate index, Maine improved from 43rd to 31st over the past five years.

Do we feel better? Well, we should. There are many wonderful things about Maine that will never be captured in any economic or demographic survey. And even the bad news we think we knew turns out not to be so bad, after all.