May God help us Texans!
Posted on 11/23/2012 6:28:55 AM PST by VitacoreVision
The U-Haul Index, popularized by economist Mark Perry, shows how much extra people in California are willing to pay to get out of town and head for Texas.
Latest U-Haul Index Shows Californians Leaving for Texas
The New American
23 November 2012
One of the best indicators of a state’s economic health, according to John Merline, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, is the “U-Haul Index” (first publicized by economist Mark Perry) to see what people are paying to move into, or out of, the state. Renting a 20-foot truck one way from San Francisco to San Antonio, Texas, for example, costs $1,693. Going in the other direction, however, costs only $983 for the same truck.
As Perry explains:
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The American people and businesses are voting with their feet and their one-way truck rentals to escape California and its forced unionism, high taxes, and high unemployment rate for a better life in low-tax, business-friendly, right-to-work states like Texas.
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They have lots of reasons to leave. According to the Tax Foundation, “Tax Freedom Day” arrives earlier in Texas than it does in California, due to its zero individual and corporate income tax and a lower sales tax. Put together, Texas’ state and local tax burden is less than eight percent of income, well below the national average of nearly 10 percent, while California’s is almost 12 percent.
This enormous disparity puts California the 48th out of the 50 states in the foundation’s overall business tax climate index, while Texas ranks ninth.
It isn't all about taxes, however. Its regulatory environment and yawning fiscal deficits are chasing companies away to more favorable locales. Part is the state’s determined efforts to increase still further its tax burden on high income earners — now an astounding 13 percent — along with its implementation of policies favored by the Obama administration in Washington. As Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com put it,
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California will serve as the prime testing ground for President Obama’s form of post-economic liberalism. Every dream program that the Administration embraces — cap and trade, massive taxes on the rich, high-speed rail — is either in place or on the drawing boards.
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Despite the state’s efforts to redistribute the wealth from those who earned it to those who didn't, “the ranks of the poor have swollen to the point that the state, with 12% of the nation’s population, accounts for one-third of its welfare cases,” notes Kotkin.
In their study “The Great California Exodus,” Manhattan Institute’s authors Tom Gray and Robert Scardamalia looked not only at how many are leaving, but where they’re going and why. Since 1990 California has lost nearly 3½ million residents, most of them moving to southwestern states such as Texas, Nevada, and Arizona.
They blame this out-migration on California’s “chronic economic adversity” as well as its population density: Los Angeles and Orange County have nearly 7,000 people per square mile, more than either New York City or Chicago. A third factor is what they call the state’s “constant fiscal instability” and the likelihood that its continued spending beyond its means will result in even higher taxes in the future.
Put altogether, then, the authors conclude
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that many cost drivers — taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs — are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus.
The U-Haul Index has been confirmed in each of the last eight years by Chief Executive magazine in its annual survey of CEOs: "Texas easily clinched the No. 1 rank, the eighth successive time it has done so. California earns the dubious honor of being ranked dead last for the eighth consecutive year."
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The magazine notes the obvious:
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California’s enduring place of perpetual decline continues in this year’s ranking. Once the most attractive business environment, the Golden State appears to slip deeper into the ninth circle of business hell. The economy, which used to outperform the rest of the country, now substantially under performs.
And its status as the most ruinously contentious place to operate remains undisturbed in eight years. Its unemployment rate, at 10.9 percent, is higher than every other state except Nevada and Rhode Island. With 12 percent of America’s population, California has one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients.
Each year, the evidence that businesses are leaving California or avoid locating there because of the high cost of doing business due to excessive state taxes and stringent regulations, grows.
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The U-Haul index is right: More and more people think it’s worth it to pay extra to get out of California.
“The problem is these idiots bring their liberal politics with them and mess up the red states.”
The first things they say once they arrive to screw up your state is “that isn’t how we did it in California”. It should be sufficient to have them deported.
You might want to get your girls to consider that secession of the red states is a real possibility, and that Arizona will be 'blue locked' should that happen.
I sometimes miss my home state of California, but that state no longer exists. I don't even recognize what's there now. Texas is a lot more like the place I grew up in, which is why I'm here.
May God help us Texans!
Maybe. Maybe not.
The "reddest" of all states this election cycle was Utah. They went for Romney 73% to 25% for Obama. The second reddest state was Wyoming (Romney 69% to 28%). And the 4th reddest was Idaho (64.5% to 33%).
These four states (including AZ) are contiguous, and could form an alliance or grouping.
And, of course, Wyoming borders the Great Plains states, which could form an alliance or grouping with Texas.
So Arizona doesn't necessarily have to be "blue-blocked."
You've got a point there. If worse comes to worse, I hope to see the red states in secession be contiguous.
Bookmark
Even if they sign an affidavit that if they move to AZ to get the ‘incentives’, I doubt they'd be held to any kind of capitalistic integrity standard to get such free goodies. (or they'd not be incentivized by free gubmint ‘incentives’ to begin with)
Unless the ‘incentive’ is to just to be left alone and lower taxes/fewer regulations.
Bingo. I wouldn't mind so much if these folks would leave their failed liberal ideas and ways at the California border. But no, they bring their failed ideas, ways and philosophies with them and soon the cancer starts in the state they move in to.
Being a native born Texan I've seen over the decades how the state has moved from the right to the failing and cancerous left. My message is go somewhere else but please stay out of Texas if you can't shed your failed ideas and ways. Better yet, stay in California and fix the situation there instead of exporting them to the rest of us.
“Maybe a move north to OK is in order.”
I’d reckon further north.
The “last outposts” for conservatives in North America are probably going to become the northern Great Plains and Mountain states, along with Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska.
These are places where the folks of color don’t seem very interested in migrating to in great numbers, probably because of the weather.
It’s also the reason that if the country ever collapses into urban chaos, even the liberal states of Vermont and Maine (and New Hampshire as well) stand a very good chance at surviving. Perhaps the most liberal state in the union, Vermont is also the least “diverse”. It’s very easy to be liberal when you don’t have to deal with the problems it creates.
Milton Friedman wisely noted that it was impossible to run a welfare state with open borders. California is “Exhibit A.”
Re: I’d reckon further north.
Just stay south of Montana!
Whatever you think of the CEOs, there will be a net gain by Arizona and a net loss of businesses of Cal by Cal’s own doing. Texas has already reaped the benefits.
All the conservatives left commiefornia in 2005. Both of them.
So long as they go all the way. We in AZ have had our fill of former CAians.
Thank you for your story. After reading the posts prior to yours I had a picture of Pelosi types moving here and it was quite depressing. I love Texas because I am not surrounded by liberals (I don’t go to Austin—we’ve got most of them segregated there)
I think we are likely to be picking up a lot of talented people and businesses and they can buy mansions for what they paid for their homes in CA. Bill Whittle of PJTV had a good story about how Midland/Odessa courted an aeronatical firm if I remember correctly and it was a win/win for the town, jobs, the business moving from CA and the state.
It is such a shame that the majority of voters in CA keep voting for more debt and less freedom. We can see where the USA is headed and the downfall to come if we don’t fight the leftist gobble-dee-gook and hold our representatives accountable for every decision made. If CA goes bankrupt in the next 4 years, they will come to Obama for money we just don’t have. The worst thing we can do is bail them out. They need to live with their poor voting habits and inability to have discernment.
My understanding is that it would be against the law to save them, but of course that miner technicality hasn’t slowed Obama from doing whatever he pleases. The White House must buy a huge number of pens for his Executive Orders
I think I could make it on a tank of gas and maybe 2 5 gal gas cans. LOL! I’m close enough thankfully. Of course along the gulf coast is pretty conservative and you can grow stuff most of the year. Just couldn’t deal with the humidity any more. But I am proud to say I know quite a few rednecks and coon-asses and would not have any trouble being with them. Poo-ya. Lasiez les bon temps roule!
It is popular here to quote the founding fathers and rely on their thought and guidance for going forward. To go back to the beginning is afterall conservative.
There were a different group of founding fathers, Americans generally, who founded a different nation. It would be prudent for many here to study them and their actions. They were Texans. They founded the Republic of Texas.
The America of the founding fathers has been transformed beyond repair. The constitution is no longer the guiding rules. It has been stretched beyond reason, almost beyond recognition.
The Red States should emulate the founders of Texas and throw off the bonds of the Euro wannabe’s and just quit. The new aggregation can be modeled on the thoughts of the founders of Texas. In world history, they stand very very tall as nation builders.
Texas is not runied by these libs coming here. There are too many of us vrs them. They will find that out and move on.
I have lived here 60 yrs now coming with parents from Pa when very little. I consider myself a Texas even tho I was not br here after all those years. Home to me is Texas not Pa.
I learned Texas history in school and how this great state was br and the men and women who fought to make it what it is today. Does anyone think that a few liberals come here are going to change it? I think not. They may form their little nooks and crannys here and there but the majority of Texans will far out number them every time.
I live outside a big town in the boonies and most of my trade is in the little towns around it. There are lots of little towns and areas in Texas that hold more people than the big towns hold when you count all of us here and there.
These people are farmers and cattle ranchers mostly with those that work the farms and ranches and run the stores and business in the little towns. Most carry a shotgun in the back window of their old beat up trucks and new big fancy ones. Its good old boy country and aims to stay that way.
We like Texas just the way it is and God help those that come here aiming to change it cause it ain’t going to happen. There are just too many of us versus them.
Texas don’t much care for Washington DC and Washington DC don’t care much about us and we like it that way.
So let them come and if they can’t assimilate with us then go somewhere else.
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