ASSIGN A VETERAN REPORTER to look into the persistent rumor that Texas has a better economy than all or most other states. The analysis should answer these questions:
Is this true? What's the evidence?
If it's true, why? Luck, or something more? What do we do differently that may account for the strong economy?
What is the downside, if there is one, to having a strong economy and the policies that promote a strong economy?
For fun, here are snips from a recent column on the issue by one of them there Yankees.
Texas already looms large in its own imagination. Its elevated self-image didn't need this: More than half of the net new jobs in the U.S. [read United States] during the past 12 months were created in the Lone Star State.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we'd have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe "stimulus" wouldn't be a dirty word.
What does Austin know that Washington doesn't? At its simplest: Don't overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers run riot, and display an enormous neon sign saying, "Open for Business."
At bottom, the struggle between Republicans and Democrats is over whether the country will adopt a version of the Texas model, or of the Michigan, New York, or California model.
. . . .
In Texas . . . the watchwords have been prudence and stability in the course of nurturing a pro-business environment, while California has undergone a self-immolation that Pres. Barack Obama wants to replay nationally. Joel Krotkin writes of California . . . "During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the same way the Huns viewed a city -- as something to be sacked and plundered."
(Rich Lowery, "The Texas Model," nationalreview.com, October 15, 2010)
The editorial board of our local newspaper, by the way, regularly speaks for making Texas more like New York and California.
Maybe that's why the news side ignores this important and interesting story.
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