And yes, I think about one third of our exports go to Mexico.
Texas is a "tax donor" state. For every dollar we send in to the feds, we get back 94 cents.
Last night on the local news, they were showing the new jobs south of San Antonio to do with shale oil production. Aside from the actual oil field jobs, there are tons of support businesses sprouting up, whether it's retail, housing, or support as far as equipment, logistics, etc.
The former mayor of San Antonio was interviewed. He said that companies are hiring. Not for 40,000 to 60,000, but that a truck driver could make one hundred thousand dollars a year.
So, here we have an economic boom, expected to last fifty years. Then we have the EPA saying the sand lizard might be at risk, and all this new domestic oil production is a threat to it.
I'm not sure who is trying to push the economy and jobs out of the way in this primary season, but on jobs,the economy and overburdening regulation, Perry and Texas "gets it".
"Conservatives hail it and liberals dispute the story, but one thing is certain about the Lone Star State's employment success: The number is real":
LA Times - Texas - The Job Engine [LA Times OpEd - July 3, 2011] "....At the same time — and this, of course, is the tough part for those on the left to swallow — it is clear that the state's limits on taxes, regulations and lawsuits are contributing to the job machine. "The most important thing I think that's happened to us is tort reform," Fisher, the Dallas Fed president, has said. He added that when John Deere and other companies have decided to hire in Texas, they've been largely driven by steps the state has taken to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits and to make it harder to bring product liability and class-action cases..."
For each of the past seven years, CEOs polled by “Chief Executive” magazine have rated Texas first in the nation for economic development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas’s success? Rick Perry isn’t shy about his answer. “It’s all about four points,” he told me. “First, don’t spend all the money. Keep the taxes low and under control. Have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. And reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth.”
If there is on issue which Perry has made a personal crusade, it is lawsuit reform. Working with the legislature, he has helped pass curbs on frivolous lawsuits, implemented a first-in-the-nation system under which loser pays all court costs in many lawsuits, and reformed medical malpractice law.
Dick Weekley, the co-founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, says Perry showed genuine political courage in resisting calls for watered-down reforms that wouldn’t have addressed the core problem. He recalls that in 2002 Perry vetoed a bill strongly supported by doctors that would have required them to prompt payment from health maintenance organizations. In the eyes of the tort reform advocates, the bill was a Trojan Horse compromise negotiated between doctors and trial lawyers. “There was a huge response from physicians [against the veto],” Kim Ross, the former top lobbyist for the Texas Medical Association, said. TMA went so far as to endorse Tony Sanchez, Perry’s millionaire Democratic opponent in the 2002 election. “Perry sent a signal that he wanted real reform and would stand his ground,” Weekley told me. “Soon the medical lobbyists playing footsie with the trial lawyers were gone and the obstacles to real reform started falling.” [end excerpt]
Perry gets minimum wage jobs and his state succeeds because of the oil and gas revenues...and the foreing companies and investors he cow-tows to along with cheap labor.
The stats on Texas education, welfare, and various others are not favorable for this nation...that's Texas not the US.
I have zero desire to see the nations look like Texas....it's appauling to consider.....so stop trying to state it's success on jobs. Take a look at who is working those jobs and where they are.
The vast majority of both groups, legal and illegal, were not American citizens......Native-born Americans filled just 20 percent of the new jobs in Texas, the report says, even though "the native born accounted for 69 percent of the growth in Texas' working-age population."
"Thus, even though natives made up most of the growth in potential workers, most of the job growth went to immigrants,"
Gov. Perry supports in-state tuition for illegal immigrants as well as a guest-worker program.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/study-most-new-texas-jobs-went-immigrants