So aruges The Economist. So let's ask: Is Texas ready to be the future of America?
The reason, I suppose, that Texas is so friendly to businesses is that it has long been the national incubator of America's low-taxes/low-services model. That's great for firms and it's undeniable that social services are an anchor around the neck of many state budgets. But before we crown Texas, let's look at the Americans on the other end of the taxes-services dearth. The state's education ranking and health insurance are in the dumps, as it's nearly last in SAT scores, last in percentage of low-income children with health insurance, and so on. In fact in 2005, Texas Monthly did this (registration required) really useful rundown of where Texas ranks in dozens of categories. Texas is last or second to last in the country in:
Percentage of population with health insurance Source 50-1And to go at it from the opposite direction, Texas is listed as first, second or third in:
Percentage of high school graduates age 25 and over Source 50-2
[Percentage] of insured low-income children Source 50-3
Average consumer credit score Source 50-4
Per capita spending on government employee wages and salaries Source 50-5
Per capita spending on government administration Source 50-6
Affordability of homeowners' insurance Source 50-7
Affordability of residential electric bill Source 50-8
Tax revenue raised per capita Source 49-1
Per capita spending on state arts agencies Source 49-2
Total general expenditures per capita Source 49-3
Per capita spending on water quality Source 49-4
Amount of monthly Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits paid Source 49-5
Percentage of uninsured children Source 1-2
Percentage of home refinance loans that are sub-prime mortgage loans (generally three to four percentage points or more higher than a comparable prime market loan) Source 1-3
Per capita consumption of electricity Source 1-7
Sales tax dependence Source 2-1
Percentage of population that goes hungry Source 2-2
Amount of exposure to ozone pollution Source 2-5
Number of inmates per 100,000 people Source 2-7Percentage of population that is malnourished Source 3
Update: Well, I fought the comments and the comments won. I originally copied and pasted the lists above in their entirety from Texas Monthly to give a sense of comprehensiveness, but as many commenters pointed out, since many of the categories in which Texas places unfavorably are overall numbers rather than per capita figures, that basically just means I was implicitly bashing Texas for having a bunch of people. Which is pretty unfair. So I've updated the list to include only per capita and percentage figures. Future readers have John Thacker and MSully to thank for the context, which I think is valuable.
The thing that blows me away is the fact that this is actually something behind closed doors that corporations will brag about. The companies are still profitable and who cares about the people in the state.
We can all be more like Texas soon, and likely will be.
While I'm not going to defend Texas, some of those stats seem added to make Texas seem worse than it is, even though they prove nothing:
Per capita spending on government employee wages and salaries Source 50-5
Per capita spending on government administration Source 50-6
Do you mean they spend more or less than everyone else on these? If more, then yes, I'd agree it's a problem, But since they supposedly rank last in that - I see that as a good thing.
Number of hazardous-chemical spills Source 2-6
Number of highway fatalities Source 2-8
Number of adults diagnosed with diabetes Source 2-8
Texas is the second most populous state in the country. Without putting these in context of per-n or something, they seem to be about right.
In addition:
While I wouldn't be surprised if Texas did have a greater 'per-n' occurence of the following than other states, that is not what is stated here:
Number of clean-water permit violations Source 1-5
Number of environmental civil rights complaints Source 1-6
Number of job discrimination lawsuits filed Source 1-8
Number of deaths attributed to floods Source 1-9
Number of executions Source 1-10
As for the latter, how many states even have the death penalty any more? The comparison seems more that Texas even has the death penalty than the number of executions they perform.
Sales tax dependence Source 2-1
I live in Mass - our dependence on Property and Income tax hasn't been helping a lot in this recession - and our legislature is solving it by increasing our dependence on the Sales Tax. What is the 'correct' tax to be dependent on?
To be clear, I'm just copying and pasting that list to demonstrate that Texas is nationally quite bad when it comes to social services. This isn't to say that every item listed is irrefutable proof of Texas' failure to do ANYthing right. It's just a list that I've acquired from Texas Monthly that is helpful in proving my first, simple point.
Except that when half the "bad" things are total numbers, not per capita, you've only proven that Texas is quite large, not quite bad. Or that you don't understand statistics.
I'm also confused as to why having a high overall birth rate or increase in child population is a bad thing.
A great deal of these numbers are also related to Texas having a high immigrant population. Those immigrants are also much better off in Texas than where they come from, or they wouldn't keep coming. But perhaps you're one of those that would prefer that Texas build a giant wall to keep immigrants out so it could improve its social services statistics. Nothing like making the global poor worse off so that you can make your own numbers look better.
You win! You're right. The overall figures were unfair. I've updated the list to include only per capita and percentage figures. And I've thanked you in the Update.
Cool Derek - now, in the interest of discussion rather than editing - what are your thoughts on Sales Tax dependence, and per capita spending on government as markers of state . . . I don't know ... success?
I already mentioned my take above - of course, the details matter, but in general, I'd rather see a state pay less per capita on government than more.
As for Sales tax - well, all the states are dependent on taxes (though is Alaska's revenue from oil production structured as a tax?). I'd suggest New Hampshire might be in worse straights, depending so much on property taxes. Though there lack of sales tax probably helps their businesses near the border - especially merchants selling cigarettes.
Full disclosure: I'm from Texas. I don't currently live there, but plan to move back in a year or two. I'm politically quite conservative, and I'm also something of a fanboy for Texas.
As an aside, while the rankings probably haven't changed all that much, do be aware that the most oft cited source (Texans for Public Justice, State of the Lone Star State: How Life in Texas Measures Up (September 2000)) is a decade old, and the most recent cited source is from 2004.
First, you're double-dipping on several fronts that lengthen the list: percentage of uninsured children and percentage of uninsured low-income children is essentially the same thing. So is rate of hunger/rate of malnourishment. Criticizing the state for low credit scores and a high percentage of subprime refinancing is pretty redundant, as is per capita spending on gov't salaries and per capita spending on gov't administration. If you want to be general and make it a comment on general size of government, Tax revenue raised, state spending on arts, and total general expenditures are also very much related.
On substance, I'll start with the low hanging fruit: criticizing Texas for high electricity use and affordability of electricity bills is a) double dipping again and b) a little bit disingenuous. There is a big reason Texas has high electricity use: it's hot and humid, and electricity is the only real source for powering air conditioners. The actual price of electricity is middle-of-the-road if you rank all states, and on the cheaper side of the populous ones (http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html). Criticizing TX for unaffordable electricity bills is kind of like criticizing MA for unaffordable home heating bills. If it's simply a quality-of-life criticism, it sticks. As a criticism of culture, politics, or policy, it falls flat because there's not much that can be done about it. You can tinker with it at the margin, but energy efficiency is not going to change the fact that keeping indoor spaces livable when it's mid-90s and humid for 5 months of the year takes lots of electricity.
But the biggest thing you/Texas Monthly is criticizing Texas for is having huge numbers of illegal immigrants (and to a lesser extent, having lots of legal ones as well). Any measure relating to poverty (hunger/malnourishment), low educational attainment of adults living in the state, or health benefit coverage (or crime, although it's not politically correct to say so) is going to be highly influenced by the fact that there are an estimated 1.4 million illegal immigrants (http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/107.pdf), constituting 5.7% of the population (California does have a higher percentage, 7.3%, 2.7m of 36.8m). It's a big enough issue that any social-justice critiques/comparisons of states ought to consider how states deal with illegal immigration as an issue unto itself rather than lump it into general measures of inequality, poverty etc (i.e. compare how TX and CA address illegal immigrants rather than compare overall measures of poverty between states with high and low proportion of immigrants). It's not as though states have all that much power or choice in controlling the number of illegal immigrants living there. I'm guessing you wouldn't exactly find it laudable if a state tried to aggressively find illegal immigrants and refer them to INS (or whatever it's called now) for deportation.
Though there is much to admire about California, I agree with Plucky and The Economist.
Americans are voting with their feet. While a foreign immigrant might find life in either state better than the alternative, U.S. citizens are moving to Texas but leaving California. And for reasons beyond employment. Home values in Texas remain stable and affordable.
Texas does have its shortcomings, but if the University of California and the University of Michigan is training your workforce because graduates from those states can't find jobs, the weakness of your own educational system become less of a disadvantage.
Another aspect of this comparison is to insist that 'a problem be solved my way or it isn't solved.' For instance in the manner of maternal and infant health Dallas County does very well. For unfunded care, Texas has tended to move the people to the health care rather than private practice to people.
Some of the supposedly BAD things look pretty GOOD to me.
Per capita spending on government employee wages and salaries Source 50-5
Per capita spending on government administration Source 50-6
Affordability of residential electric bill Source 50-8
Tax revenue raised per capita Source 49-1
Per capita spending on state arts agencies Source 49-2
Total general expenditures per capita Source 49-3
Coming from NY where the greedy lazy union pig government workers basically run the state, that low TX spending on them makes me jump for joy. Look at every state with severe financial problems and they all have the same thing in common - paying the greedy lazy union pig government workers obscene salaries and benefits.
According to this article it's also supposed to be BAD that TX has the lowest taxes per person. Yeah! Cause everybody, everywhere complains about their taxes being too low? Ditto for gov't. spending per person. That translates to TX pissing away less taxpayer's money than 48 other states.
Spending on "arts agencies" - who gives a sh-t. Consumers of "art" should pay for it themselves. About 95% of the population could care less about it. If there was a market for it, it would not need any gov't. (taxpayer) money.
Lastly we have electricity. As a proud resident of Long Island, NY I get to pay among the highest electricity rates (which includes a 20% hidden "gross receipts tax"). PLUS among the highest rates for gas an/or oil. In fact, they just added an additional 1.5% tax to gas and oil - to pay the public employee pigs.
So, all in all Texas looks might darn good compared to NY.
So move there.
Texas also has one of the nation's highest per capita rates of teen pregnancy and teen STDs (http://jamillerrampant.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-is-what-happens-when-right-wing.html). This is because of Texas's idiotic "abstinence-only" approach to sex education, an approach which has been a wretched, miserable failure, like much of the rest of Texas's school system.
Texas also has a shockingly high number of "patriots" that would like to secede from the Union because a black, mildly liberal man is president. Further, Texas has produced a glut of god-awful crooks and grifters in the political sphere as well (Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, Phil Gramm, and George W. Bush come to mind immediately). And Texas had had more than its share of vicious right-wing oil/money men who assume it is their right to run America and who pour money into far-right causes, beginning with the Hunt family and continuing to this very day.
Texas continues to be a major center of creationist idiocy and ugly "End Times" faith. Demented "Christian" John Hagee, who wants to start a nuclear war with Iran to bring on the Apocalypse, is a Texas megachurch leader.
If you're poor, the majority of Texas's conservative white population despises you and could not conceivably care less about you.
For every $1.00 California sends to Washington DC we get back 78 cents.
GET THIS:
Alabama $1.66 Alaska $ 1.84 (Palin is a welfare queen) Arizona $ 1.19 Arkansas $ 1.41 California $ 0.78 (-$8000 per capita net) Colorado $ 0.81 Connecticut $ 0.69 Delaware $0.77 Florida $ 0.97 Georgia $ 1.01 Hawaii $ 1.44 Idaho $ 1.21 Illinois $ 0.75 Indiana $ 1.05 Iowa $ 1.10 Kansas $ 1.12 Kentucky $ 1.51 (McConnell is a welfare queen) Louisiana $ 1.78 (Jindal is a welfare queen) Maine $ 1.41 Maryland $ 1.30 Massachusetts $ 0.82 Michigan $ 0.92 Minnesota $ 0.72 Mississippi $2.02 (Barbour is a welfare queen) Missouri $ 1.32 Montana $ 1.47 Nebraska $ 1.10 Nevada $ 0.65 New Hampshire $ 0.71 New Jersey $ 0.61 New Mexico $ 2.03 (Richardson is a welfare queen) New York $ 0.79 North Carolina $ 1.08 North Dakota $ 1.68 Ohio $1.05 Oklahoma $ 1.36 Oregon $ 0.93 Pennsylvania $ 1.07 Rhode Island $ 1.00 South Carolina $ 1.35 (Sanford is a welfare queen) South Dakota $ 1.53 Tennessee $ 1.27 (Corker should lose the smirk) Texas $ 0.94 Utah $ 1.07 Vermont $ 1.08 Virginia $ 1.51 Washington $ 0.88 West Virginia $ 1.76 Wisconsin $ 0.86 Wyoming $ 1.11
Here is the link: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
Welfare queens all....The Southern boys should hope California stays in the Union because Texas is just not that friendly. They all talk a good "small government" game but California pays for it. They only upgrade infrastructure when FEMA comes in to clean up after hurricanes. If we keep our own money California will be just fine. We grow our own food, bottle our own wine, pump our own oil. We still make things the rest of the world buys. Loca-vore? The only things we need to trade for are coffee and bananas.
Great anti-federalist, states-rights argument there CAMP. You and the conservatives should get together sometime.
Would be great to see South Carolina, Virginia and Mississippi hoisted on their own petard. This is, after all, the first year in probably fifty that the Dixiecrats, in one form or another, are not calling the shots in Washington DC. They love states rights except when California legislates clean air standards or environmental protects for itself. But, hey the Gov just began issuing our own currency. Nothing will solve this economic downturn in California faster than a currency adjustment. The economics says either wages and real estate prices fall or the currency devalues to bring an open economy back into line. We now have a currency adjustment mechanism. Genius. There is no way California should want a more progressive tax regime at the federal level. We are already carrying the cost of national social programs while producing half of net exports. I suggest that Arnold just call state and local taxes a "charitable contribution." Then AMT not longer applies and we can spend our money at home. Let Obama figure out where to make up the difference.
I used to wonder what happens when the majority of the people can't afford to buy what the company makes or the service it offers, or whatever. I mistakenly thought that at some point people realize that there has to be a consumer market. They couldn't possibly depend on 3rd world countries that they were shipping jobs out to because they didn't pay those people enough to buy whatever it was they sold to begin with, so they needed us to have money. (I have a relative that has been telling me for over 10 years now that America is well on it's way to becoming a third-world country, purposely in her estimation.)
Then I realized that you don't have to produce anything to make money; you actually make more money when you don't produce anything because there's less overhead to maintaining ideas than tangible products. You simply create money out of thin air with "complex" banking and accounting rules. You sale something you don't actually own or even exists to a bunch of different people, and then convince people that help for individuals and families is welfare, socialist, affirmative action gone wrong, entitlements for the lazy; but help for businesses is good for the world.
Recap:
Individual and family assistance BAD, WELFARE, ENTITLEMENT, UN-AMERICAN, UN-CHRISTIAN, SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM, AND DESTROYING THE FUTURE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN.
Business and country assistance GOOD, THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.
But when a senator can tell a constituent that they should get a job at John Deere when they have to nerve to ask why they can't have health care like him (iowa senator) or a state representative can say that "hunger is a good motivator" then maybe the world as we know it should have been given the opportunity to implode.
nyree,
So, what is your solution? I've read your rant, but what exactly do you propose Texas ought to do to increase their social nets without getting into the financial trouble that NY and CA find themselves in?
It's great if the government could provide everything to us, but to spout we should have more deficit spending in order to do it is just a generational shell game that favors today's poor and destitute over tomorrow's. You're not solving anything, just kicking the can down the road.
Rather than support the corporations draining of the American public with continued welfare payments to outsourcing firms, I propose that the government do what it's supposed to do: represent its citizens. The solution is to demand liveables be paid to all employees of businesses that do business in this country; however, I do realize that will not happen.
My issue is that deficit spending concerns are a crutch and only a concern when it involves paying for something that benefits the poor & destitute. The thing I find most telling about those who argue against it that are not in that top 10% of wealth is that many of them, my guess would be yourself included, is that they are one illness, restructure away from being in that category. I suspect that is why so many people choose to view them as a drain; it gives people a since of comfort to believe that it can't happen to them.
In case I am not clear from up here on my soap box, I believe the solution is to spend the money on the people INSTEAD of the corporations NOT in addition to. Having listened to and read about the amount of money that has been given, loaned, etc from the treasury, the FED, the FDIC at or near 0% interest, the mortgages could have been paid off in full (at those ridiculously overpriced rates), keeping people in their homes and baanks from imploding. I am NOT advocating that as I can't believe how many people (subrime, prime, alt-A) purchased homes they knew didn't match with their incomes. But at the same time I realize that many people ended up in homes, because they thought they too could become real estate moguls and "flip" a few homes. Nonetheless, bailing out the people is a more equitable & benefical solution, particularly when it's the people's money. I'd rather ride through the neighborhood and see families in homes with green lawns, than read goldman sachs is looking at giving out 18 billion or more in bonuses this year.
Eventually today's poor and destitute becomes today's problem. The number of people who can't take care of themselves and their families (that actually want to) is growing. That is something that cannot be dismissed with talking points & idealogy.
I was referring to the long term problems, not the immediate issues associated with the real estate bubble bursting.
We have structural entitlement issues that will consume our country if we don't do something about them. Increasing spending and exacerbating our current debt problems put our children and children's children in a deeper hole.
For the life of me, I can't comprehend why we're debating the addition of trillions in spending (health care "reform") above and beyond our current deficits. What does this portend for the "taxpayers" born in 2020 or 2030? The tax burden they'll inherit will be a black mark on our governance, the previous generation.
And yes, we can look at the poorest 40 million uninsured in this country and cobble together some expensive program to pay for their health care, but pretty soon the retiring Boomer population and their Medicare bills will stress the government, force huge cuts, and create mega-insovlency problems for the next generation...which is why I stated earlier that we are just handcuffing the options for future generations.
There's no such thing as a free lunch no matter how much be want to pretend.
By coincidence, Robert Samuelson has a piece today that outlines my point exactly.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/13/the_consequences_of_big_government.html
Why are low per capita expenditures in some areas considered a bad thing? Perhaps the state is just spends its tax dollars more efficiently?
These seem to be good things and should probably be taken off the "bad" list, not to mention a few of the others:
Per capita spending on government employee wages and salaries
Per capita spending on government administration
Tax revenue raised per capita