How California Bested Texas

[xchrom]

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/california-bested-texas?intcid=mod-latest



BBack in 2011, the Texas economy was doing so well, and California’s so poorly, that the Democratic lieutenant governor of California, Gavin Newsom, travelled to Austin to seek advice from an unlikely mentor: the Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry. When Newsom returned, he remarked, appreciatively, “They’re aggressive, we’re not. They know what they’re after, we don’t.”

Ten years earlier, in 2001, Texas’s G.D.P. was equal to about fifty-six per cent of California’s. By 2011, that figure had risen to sixty-seven per cent. After Newsom’s visit, the gap continued to narrow, and by 2013 it stood at seventy per cent. That year, Perry took out radio ads in California, telling business owners there, “Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible. This is Texas Governor Rick Perry, and I have a message for California businesses: Come check out Texas.”

California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, dismissed the ad as “barely a fart,” but some observers assumed that he was only feigning nonchalance. By then, a narrative had been established about the states’ differing fortunes, thanks partly to Perry’s bid for the Republican Presidential nomination the previous year, during which he made much of the “Texas Miracle.” While California was struggling to recover from the recession, Texas was thriving. Along with faster G.D.P. growth, Texas boasted a much lower unemployment rate, and from 2009 to 2012 it was responsible for the most new business establishments in the U.S.—more than a fifth of the country-wide total—while California’s number fell. In October, 2013, Time magazine published a cover article by the economist Tyler Cowen proclaiming that Texas represented “America’s future”; the accompanying illustration showed all the fifty states rearranged, like puzzle pieces, into the shape of Texas. Commentators chalked up the state’s success to factors like affordable housing, a business-friendly regulatory environment, and the lack of a state income tax. By contrast, California’s top income-tax rate and its housing costs were among the highest in the nation, and its business regulations—particularly those having to do with the environment—were seen as especially onerous and costly.

[True Blue Door]

1. And now Texas is begging for jobs created in other states

and California is the Gold Standard because of tax increases on the rich, sane fiscal policies, and a public-sector health insurance system. Who's laughing now, you cowboy-hat-wearin' mufucka, Perry?

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

2. Don't you mean...

indicted cowboy-hat-wearin' mufucka, Perry?

[True Blue Door]

4. Indeed I do.

[reddread]

3. making new arrangements for those offshore fracking sanctuary drilling interests Mr Brown?

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/14/business/la-fi-mo-occidental-petroleum-california-houston-20140214



whatever is really going on has more to do with this than anything else, I bet.

http://www.calitics.com/tag/Jerry%20Brown

http://www.alternet.org/story/147007/how_california's_oil_and_water_policies_are_bankrupting_higher_education

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2013/03/17/californias-clash-shale-oil-or-green-energy/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occidental_Petroleum

[n2doc]

5. Now that the oil money spigot has dried up, I expect Texas to flounder n/t

[Javaman]

6. something tells me that he didn't speak with cement head perry. nt