Posted on 01/22/2013 7:53:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Texas is in much better shape than California. Taxes are lower, in part because Texas has no state income tax.
No wonder the Lone Star State is growing faster and creating more jobs.
And the gap will soon get even wider since California voters recently decided to drive away more productive people by raising top tax rates.
But a key challenge for all governments is controlling the size and cost of bureaucracies.
Government employees are probably overpaid in both states, but the situation is worse in California, as I discuss in a recent interview with John Stossel.
But being better than California is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Texas fiscal policy.
A column in today’s Wall Street Journal, written by the state’s Comptroller of Public Accounts, points out some worrisome signs.
As the chief financial officer of the nation’s second-largest state, even I have found it hard to get a handle on how much governments are spending, and how much debt they’re taking on. Every level of government is piling up incredible bills. And they’re coming due, whether we like it or not. Even in low-tax Texas, property taxes have risen three times faster than the inflation rate and four times faster than our population growth since 1992. Our local governments, meanwhile, more than doubled their debt load in the last decade, to more than $7,500 in debt for every man, woman and child in the state. In Houston alone, city-employee pension plans are facing an unfunded liability of $2.4 billion. But too many taxpayers aren’t given the information they need to make informed decisions when they vote debt issues. Recently I spent several months holding about 40 town-hall meetings with Texans across our state. Each time, I asked the attendees if they could tell me how much debt their local governments are carrying. Not a single person in a single town had this information.
In other words, taxpayers need to be eternally vigilant, regardless of where they live. Otherwise the corrupt rectangle of politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and interest groups will figure out hidden ways of using the political process to obtain unearned wealth.
Dan Mitchell Comparing Excessive Bureaucrat Compensation in Texas and California
I think many of those liberals heads would explode if forced to live near America's Energy Capital. Too many of us oil/gas folks for their liking.
Part of why I’m bailing from CA and moving back to Texas. I’ll make my last (political) stand and try to help out my fellow conservatives there, where we still have a chance. That is just not the case in CA...
“I think Texans should be careful what they wish for. One of the reasons my state has headed to the right is because the liberals are fleeing to greener pastures and Texans are advertizing the greenest grass around.”
Yeah, like the ones that came here from the Northeast after WWII and crapped in our nest here in California. We also “took in” the “poor Blacks” from the South who came here to build ships and airplanes during that same war and decided to set up shop here, make babies and vote themselves a check.
Very true. Sadly, LA and SF totally dominate Sacramento. Austin dominates, well, Austin. That’s about it. Now, urban Dallas and Houston are also leftist swamps of entitlement, but they are fairly powerless for now. That may be changing. If it does, TX just becomes a smaller CA.
Don’t think we’re going to let that happen, though...
That’s almost exactly the same thing that happened to Michigan right down to the industry. Fortunately we’re turning things around.
At the State level, yes. Things are indeed looking up.
However, at the Local level, things are not so rosy, as imbecile ‘rats (I know, redundant) continue to spend money they do not have. Cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin, etc. are generally run by ‘rats, and they budget accordingly. Hence, the ever expanding debt bomb and continued increases in local taxes to pay for worthless bureaucrats and other government ticks.
Just because Texas isn’t perfect doesn’t make California tolerable.
If anything, conservatives in California are dangerous now because once the Left has milked every tax dollar for the shiftless takers they will then tell the state GOP, “OK? What can YOU do?!?!”
And if the conservatives do what they are supposed to do the majority worthless bums will riot so bad the Obama administration will have no choice but to bailout the state in order to keep “order” and he will blame the GOP and his butt smooching MSM will agree.
Bankrupt states like Kalifonia are the Cloward/Piven test cases...we all are gonna fall in the end.
Don’t wait. Change the laws now and make it very hard not just to tax, but to spend and borrow. Don’t forget the local level, etc. Make governement compete against each other for tax dollars. They’ll improve.
It is not the liberals who are fleeing the state. Why would they flee the “paradise” they worked so hard to create.
State income taxes maybe high but they are deductible on your federal taxes unlike other forms of taxes some states use.
Then we have a coming battle between state workers union greed vs environment idealism. You think they will lose part of their pensions while California is sitting on enough oil to pay for there pensions and fund useless government transportation projects built by union workers?
Contradicted by the facts in the article
Even in low-tax Texas, property taxes have risen three times faster than the inflation rate and four times faster than our population growth since 1992. Our local governments, meanwhile, more than doubled their debt load in the last decade, to more than $7,500 in debt for every man, woman and child in the state. In Houston alone, city-employee pension plans are facing an unfunded liability of $2.4 billion
Not a resounding endorsement of Texas' government
North Dallas has turned into islam-central. It’s a shocking change since 9/11 even. Halal meat shops everywhere, burkas all over. I’m not joking whatsoever either. It’s really nuts.
Texas is going to be California in 20 years, because of demographics. Hispanics will completely swamp the state, and the race for free stuff will begin. Taxes will shoot up. Crime will shoot up.
You cannot survive without a car (and the associated automobile expenses) in Texas' population centers.
If you are able to ditch out-of-state obligations, have a running automobile, and willing to trade the haut of the East for the hot of Texas, Texas is an option.
I guess that I’ll need to get some hounds then.
California and Texas have the same exact percentage of Hispanics.
“A Conservative in California is like one cool breeze in the Sahara desert...nice to have you but don’t mean a damn.”
Why don’t you run that notion by Jim Rob? Don’t you find it the least bit interesting that the premier Conservative Blog (FR) is headquartered in Fresno?
A lot of posters extol the “virtues” of Texas. And I guess if you want to live in rural Texas you can find freedom from most of the effects of Liberalism. But you can do the same thin in rural California. Do you actually think that places like Dallas and Houston are all that different than LA or SF? Well, excluding the weather.
I did just that last summer. I miss the weather, the beach and the mountains but I actually feel safer here. I lived in the bay area and though there are some fine conservative people even there they are just outnumbered by the wackos. And the labor unions are a big force.
See post 36, and you are overlooking that Texas is something that California has never been, conservative.
California has been republican, but it was never right wing and seriously Christian.
Texas continues with latino trajectory and it will be lost as well.
And that will be it.
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