Monday, October 18, 2010

The Texas model of economic recovery

Rich Lowry reaffirms what I've been writing about recently: Texas is leading the nation in economic recovery.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we’d have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe “stimulus” wouldn’t be such a dirty word.
What does Austin know that Washington doesn’t? At its simplest: Don’t overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers run riot, and display an enormous neon sign saying, “Open for Business.”
There are a few out there, however, that think Texas is more prosperous because of oil, "evil big oil." Period. Not so fast, Kimosobe:
It is true that Texas enjoys bountiful oil and natural-gas reserves, but its attitude toward those resources is what’s most important — “if you got ’em, use ’em.” If only the Obama administration’s Department of the Interior agreed. The state long ago defied the stereotype of an economy entirely dependent on bumptious oilmen. In Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, it has four diverse, thriving metropolitan areas featuring robust high-tech and manufacturing sectors.
The two largest state economies are California and Texas. Yet California is losing the battle. While Texas added 119,000 jobs, California lost 112,000.
In Texas in recent decades, the watchwords have been prudence and stability in the course of nurturing a pro-business environment, while California has undergone a self-immolation that Pres. Barack Obama wants to replay nationally. Joel Kotkin writes of California in City Journal, “During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city — as something to be sacked and plundered.”
Think what you want about Texas, but the rest of the country could learn a thing or two.

2 comments:

Fam Guy said...

In a way, I hate to admit it, but Texas does have a good thing going on, with the, Business Open, sign. Bottom line, I am a capitalist, and that's the way it shoud be, in America. Texas is a big, beautiful part of the country, even though it is overrun with televangelists and Repubs. Can't argue with reality, though.

Steve said...

While I wouldn't say we're overrun by televangelists, we do have our fair share. What I don't get about these guys is that while they are supposedly spreading the word of God, the are soaking their flock out of millions. Here's one guy:

Copeland's ministry is based on a 1,500-acre campus behind an iron gate on Eagle Mountain Lake, about 40 miles northwest of Dallas. It includes a church, airstrip, hangar for its aircraft and a $6 million lakefront mansion.

Maybe I'm in the wrong business.