Posted on 09/13/2016 8:52:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
What makes America an economically ingenious place is the competitive federalism model set forth by our Founding Fathers. They established our nation as the world's largest ever free trade zone, in which 50 states use varying economic and fiscal policies to compete for jobs and people.
And boy, have liberals come to hate that model. Why? Because it puts their policies of tax, spend, regulate and restrict on trial every day. We can see with our own eyes the stampede flowing out of liberal blue states and into conservative red states.
These trends are more important to point out today than ever before, because Hillary Clinton wants to adopt a classic "blue state" model of economic revival -- more government spending, higher tax rates on the rich and increased regulations -- while Trump would follow the "red state" course. That would mean: lower tax rates; control of federal spending and regulations; and drilling for our bountiful and valuable energy resources.
If Clinton's vision for America makes sense, why has it failed in the states?
Two years ago, I co-authored a New York Times best-selling book with Arthur Laffer, Rex Sinquefield and Travis Brown, entitled "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States." We documented the overpowering evidence that states with low tax rates, less regulation and with right-to-work laws have substantially and statistically significant higher rates of job and income growth. Red states, on average, tend to be a magnet for people and incomes, whereas many blue states -- including, most notably, New York and California -- are losing out big-time in the internal migration game.
By the way, I mean red states not as "Republican states," but as shorthand for states that adopt free market policies. I mean "blue states" as places with costly and highly regulated state governments. Virginia once had one of the most pro-growth governors in America, Doug Wilder -- a democrat. Then it had one of the biggest tax and spend governors ever, Bob McDonnell -- a Republican. Party labels don't matter. Policies do.
Almost 1,000 people on net have been leaving high-tax states for low-tax states. This is more than 3 million people a year voting with their feet against liberalism. It isn't quite the same as the exodus after World War II from East Germany to West Germany, but the same phenomenon is in place.
As Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, loves to point out (and Census data confirm), the Lone Star state (with no income tax) created more jobs from 2007-14 than the other 49 states combined. If you think big government and high taxes are a path to prosperity, how in the world do you explain that one? Even with the oil recession, Texas is still doing fine.
No wonder Clinton is having a hard time convincing voters that her model for rebuilding the economy will work. It hasn't worked anywhere in the country. Even California lost 1 million residents due to internal migration from 2005-14.
The New York Times recently disputed all this, arguing: "Despite what you may have heard, blue states are generally doing better." They looked at life expectancy at birth, percentage of college graduates, median income, and number of patents per 1,000 people.
Not so fast. To find which states are going in the right and wrong directions, you have to look at how things are changing. Even The New York Times editorial admitted: "The gap between today's red and blue states was enormous for much of the 20th century. It then narrowed substantially." But these states made this progress by cutting taxes and regulation.
Blue states were once prosperous, and taxes and spending were less onerous than they are now. Connecticut once was very rich. One key to its success was that until 1991 Connecticut had no income tax. Its other key attribute was its proximity to high-tax, anti-business New York. But over the last 25 years, Connecticut has been in a free fall. It has raised its income tax four times, and there is no state, perhaps outside of Illinois, that has more towering deficits. The joke now in Connecticut is: "Will the last person in the state please turn out the lights?" This is prosperity?
Texas -- not Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey -- is the model for the country. Clinton wants to make all of America look more like blue state America and Donald Trump wants the country to follow the policies of Florida and Texas. It really is as simple a choice as that.
Red is Communist-Fascist. No model to emulate.
Blues give more back to feds than they get, quite a bit more than the reds. Until that changes, it’s not a great model.
They have nothing to control people with if they are self sufficient. Tocqueville predicted this a few hundred years ago. Without the power of the ability to raid the treasury, socialist ideas are impotent.
Wow, than I must live in a Communist state and so do you.
Yet more folks move to the red states because it costs LESS to live there, once either formel education is finished, or military service, or after the decision to retire.
Is that the model where you bitch about Trump while stuffing your piehole with pizza and donuts?
I wonder if that has anything to do with the percentage of Limousine Liberals, whose high net wealth makes them a significant fraction of the top 10% of taxpayers (who are in turn responsible for the lion’s share of tax revenue).
Yet Mr. Tocqueville did not predict the rise of one DJT to both ecomonic and political prominence.
BTW, I DONT consider blue state financial planning GOOD. It’s deplorable.
But they had a major head start what with financial sector starting and building mostly here.
that is changing quickly enough and red states will overcome them.
Yes, the blue states are the ones in economic trouble at the present time.
I didn’t swallow the Orwellian media newspeak color switcheroo in 2000 and I still don’t. WE, you and I, live in Tennessee. Tennessee is a BLUE Republican state, not a RED Communist-Fascist Democrat state. I live in Nashville, which is in a RED Communist-Fascist Democrat county.
Red is the Republican states, blue is the Democrat states. Dates back to the first Clinton era. Red was challenger and blue was defender.
The history of color association is not so simple.
Yes, “red” has been clearly associated with communism for many years (black with fascism); however, in American politics the association was fluid till 2000 when Tim Russert blessed the current “red state” and “blue state” arrangement.
It has been previously advanced by ABC claiming red = Reagan, because both begin with “R”.
I strongly suspect that this was really attempted, finally formalized, because folks at ABC and Russert wanted to avoid the association with the ever more openly socialistic Democrats (see note below).
During 1976 the Republicans were “blue”.
I’m guessing that in 1972 and earlier they were still used to to working with the limitations of black and white broadcasting, even if the might not still apply.
Note: during 1980 the Democrats were not YET the overt crazy loons that they are now, who are so very deranged that they can think Sanders is somehow not some ultra-left wing kook and Stalin era useful idiot holdover. So maybe the ABC explanation is somewhat plausible. As I occasionally point out: there’s almost nothing of the extreme left that the left considers extreme anymore. Which is why old-school moderates are now sometimes cast as the hard right and Clinton somehow thought “right of center” among the now entirely looney left.
Sorry, that’s not so. The switcheroo occurred on Election Night 2000. The GOP was never the “Red” party, that was the Democrats. This mislabeling is ludicrous, false and offensive and should’ve been rebuked immediately.
It’s been discussed considerably, but the current false labels began Election Night 2000. The GOP needs to stop allowing itself to be labeled the “Red” party by the actual REDS themselves.
Correct.
That is your biggest worry? HE HE
Do you let your enemies label you (and falsely) ?
You need to be prepared for constant disappointment with the Republicans.
The Democrats are dangerous.
But the Republicans are in many ways dedicated to both preserving FDR’s legacy of high handed lawlessness while somehow restraining or slowing it’s growth.
So the Republicans are useless.
Or, put another way, just as compromise with evil is still evil so is compromise with so-called “progressivism” still “progressivism”.
There is no saying “no” to the left: they always come back and try again. Maybe it’s why the left seems blind to things like creeping Sharia: they can’t see in others what they can’t see in themselves ... only see it where it doesn’t exist.
Without apology, for I do not value “getting along” so I don’t bother with “going along”, for many their only idea of “theocracy”, of respecting an establishment of religion, is not the government having police powers to set up some statement of religious truth and then do something about or to those who do not publicly profess same ... no, they think it is making laws about bad behaviors or just posting some words or bowing your head to pray. They sense no “liberty” but that it is sexually libertine even in the same breath that they desire to regulate EVERYTHING else anyone may want to do.
With the left they desire to regulate everything except sex. Now they even want to prevent people being free from the sexual madness of others in where they go to the toilet.
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