Posted on 11/03/2009 8:23:42 AM PST by txhurl
Texas, increasingly, is the economic and intellectual leader of the U.S. During the last 18 months before the current recession took hold, while the country as a whole was still creating jobs, more than half of those jobs were created in a single state: Texas.
Texas has usurped the leadership position that, decades ago, belonged to California. Today California is in decline, likely irreversibly so. William Voegeli draws the sad but instructive comparison in the Los Angeles Times:
In America's federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a "package deal" that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right. ...
California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau's latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. ...
Confronted with a stark choice between government dominance and freedom, Americans are voting with their feet:
One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive "net internal migration," in the Census Bureau's language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.
That's not hard to understand. As Voegeli says, "All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones." So high-tax states like California have to be able to show that their taxes are somehow worth it:
Today's public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: "Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California's government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class."
These judgments are not based on drive-by sociology. According to a report issued earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Texas students "are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age," even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California. The details of the Census Bureau data show that Texas not only spends its citizens' dollars more effectively than California but emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. Per capita spending on transportation was 5.9% lower in California, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5% lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.
But those higher taxes in California must be going somewhere. Why aren't they benefiting those many thousands of citizens who are leaving the state for greener pastures?
In what respects, then, does California "excel"? California's state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California's public retirement funds. The "dues" paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.
No doubt similar studies in other high tax states, like my home state of Minnesota, would show the same thing: taxpayers aren't getting anything in particular for their money, likely less than citizens in other states, but public employees are doing very well indeed. This explains why public employees' unions have become the Democratic Party's most loyal supporters, while those who are not on the public employee gravy train increasingly are packing up their belongings and moving to lower-tax states like Texas.
The debate, really, is over. High-tax states don't deliver a better lifestyle--not for taxpayers, anyway. One of these days, voters will figure out that the same thing holds true at the national level. Higher taxes may be OK if you're a public employee; otherwise, they're a dead loss.
Thanks for the ping. I LOVE those Round Rock donuts.
Why don’t we call Joe and ask him to send somebody?
The time to strike is now - the iron is hot.
We do have outrageous property taxes..... but you have the right to protest them annually to a firm that is a private company..... not a Texas.gov entity.
Not many people know that our taxing authority is a private business.
We are voting as we speak on fixing our property tax problems.
How ‘bout WE take California?
Re-make it in our TX mold?
Investment opportunities abound.
Dispatch Liberals = prosperity.
Same thing everywhere (and here in the NW). Bankrupt Liberal states are seeing a mass-departure of their mostly ignorant population, who are moving to nearby states and corrputing them.
It is a disease.
Another opportunity for Texas.
Where libs have killed off their states, go in and take over their politics, turn it red and make money.
They bus in corrupt primary cross-voters, we U-haul prosperity at bargain-basement prices into their decrepits.
higher tax states like California subsidize lower tax states like Texas, unless you compensate for that it’s not an accurate comparison (CA could lower taxes if it got a dollar back for every dollar it sent to the feds instead of 78 cents)
Well, a good part of your property tax savings in South Carolina is offset by that 7% income tax you pay on every dollar earned over $13,151!
Well, a good part of your property tax savings in South Carolina is offset by that 7% income tax you pay on every dollar earned over $13,151!
My thoughts exactly. Cali’s, stay home. You crapped in your own house, so clean it up yourselves. Keep your stenching, creeping, toxic programs out there.
I guess you are now the self-appointed arbiters of who can and cannot move to another state?
If this is the kind of welcome a person moving into your state is to receive, screw it. I don’t need your approval or consent to do anything.
I’ll find another community that will welcome a rational conservative based on just that. Not because they moved from a state you personally dislike.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Not all Californians are native born. Most are from states just like yours and are now moving HOME. Where did their values come from? HOME. So there-in lies the rub, they were taught those values that they used to destroy the once Golden State and now you all tremble in fear because the locusts are coming HOME.
Deal with it.
From an old 1950’s Texas Post Card:
The Devil in Hell we’re told was chained
And a thousand years he there remained,
He neither complained nor did he groan
But determined to start a Hell of his own.
Where he could torment the souls of men
Without being chained in an underground pen,
So he asked the Lord if he had on hand
Anything left when he made this land.
The Lord said, “Yes, I have plenty of land,
But I left it down on the Rio Grand.”
The fact is, old boy, the stuff is real poor.
But you’re welcome to it and plenty more.
So the Devil went down to look at the truck
And said if he took it as a gift he was stuck.
For after examining it carefully and well
He determined the place was too dry for a hell.
So, in order to get it off of His hand,
The Lord promised to water the land.
For He had some water or rather some dregs
Rather cathartic and smelled like bad eggs.
Hence the trade was closed and the deed, was given
And the Lord went back to his home in Heaven.
The Devil said to himself, I’ll have all that is needed
To make a good hell,” and hence he succeeded.
He began to put thorns all over the trees
And mix up the sand with millions of fleas.
He scattered the tarantulas along the roads
Put thorns on cactus and horns on toads.
He lengthened the horns of the Texas steers
And put an addition to the rabbit’s ears.
He put a little devil in the bronco steed
And poisoned the feet of the centipede.
The rattlesnake bites you, the scorpion stings,
The mosquito delights you with his buzzing wings.
Sand-burs bite you and cause you to dance
And those who sit down will have ants in their pants.
The Devil then said that throughout the land
He’d arrange to keep up the Devil’s own brand.
And all should be Mavericks unless they bore
Mars or scratches, or bites by the score.
The heat in the summer is one hundred and ten
Too hot for the Devil, too hot for the men
Go see for yourself and you can tell
‘Tis a hell of a place he has for hell.
Hear hear.
higher tax states like California subsidize lower tax states like Texas
You know Texas has had a liberal conservative split for decades. As as example think of the Senators Smiling Ralph Yarborough and John Towers. Yarborough was liberal and Towers conservative. Texas is a unique place.
LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.