|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
 Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:21 am Post subject: A Tale of Two States: Texas vs. California |
 |
|
http://reason.org/blog/show/1007176.html
| Quote: |
A Tale of Two States: Texas vs. California
Having had the pleasure of living several years in Houston earlier this decade, I was constantly amazed at the many things that Texas gets right that other states routinely bungle (see here, for starters). Friends' eyes have been known to glaze over as I tell them that cities like Houston and Dallas are poised to be the powerhouse cities of the 21st century, and in tandem, that Texas is going to blow away most, if not all, other states in economic performance in the next few decades.
There's no one thing you can point to to explain Texas' competitive advantage. In my estimation, the late Ric Williamson summed it quite well in this 2007 Reason interview:
We are a very low tax state, we're a very low regulation state, and we have a very limited welfare system in our state. What that means is, individual entrepreneurs want to live in Texas because they don't pay any income tax. Businesses want to locate in Texas because they're not overly regulated. And people don't come to Texas for welfare because none exists. So people who show up in Texas show up to work, generate wealth, and contribute to the overall economy.
One cannot say the same thing about California, in many ways Texas' polar opposite. You couldn't have two states moving in more opposite directions. One is unabashedly pro-growth and aggressive in courting industry, while the other seems content to spin an ever denser spider web of laws, regulations and red tape that is driving business out of the state. One state accounts for a whopping 70 percent of all jobs created in the United States last year, while the other seems bent on increasing taxes on business and individuals to pay for an unsustainable, out of control government that wants to be everything to everyone despite the fact that it simply cannot.
This doesn't mean that Texas doesn't face very real problems in the current recession: they do, as Brendan Case at the Dallas Morning News blogs here. But even so, the silver lining for Texas is that the recession will nick the Lone Star State while it gouges the Golden State. California's addiction to funding ongoing programs through debt financing, its permanent structural deficits on the horizon, its fondness for taxation, and other governance weak suits will really hamper the economic recovery in the state, ensuring it will occur long after Texas is off to the races.
Hence, it's good to see a direct Texas vs. California comparison drawn out in the American Legislative Exchange Council's updated Rich States, Poor States report. The full report is worth a read, but I found the comparative analysis of tax and regulatory climate between the two states to be particularly illuminating. Here's the takeaway:
Matched up in a head-to-head competition, Texas�s economic environment beats California�s � in fact, it is a knockout. [...] California continues to increase regulations, raise taxes and spend profligately. These anti-growth policies will continue to sap the economic vitality of California. Texas, on the other hand, has a pro-growth economic environment with a competitive tax system, sound regulations and spending discipline that will help Texas maintain its superior economic performance well into the future.
And even though one might think it would be intuitive by now, it's still helpful for policymakers to hear this one more time:
In the long run, there is no trade-off between healthy government finances and a competitive business environment. After all, punitive tax rates don�t bring in much money when businesses relocate to other states. |
A shift in economic power from California to Texas?? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 11:02 am Post subject: |
|
|
Maybe in the short- and mid- term. Texas' tax and regulatory regime is to be admired.
Take a look at education and race relations in Texas, however. Texas doesn't tax much, and thus it also provides far less services to its constituents. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 6:57 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I've been to both states one time each. They each have some nice points, but overall, they're over-rated. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
T-J
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Location: Seoul EunpyungGu Yeonsinnae
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 7:33 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Kuros wrote: |
Maybe in the short- and mid- term. Texas' tax and regulatory regime is to be admired.
Take a look at education and race relations in Texas, however. Texas doesn't tax much, and thus it also provides far less services to its constituents. |
I'm from N.Y. Keep your 'services' and let me keep my money. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
Is California Going Bust?
There has been many a time in California's history when it seemed to outsiders to be barreling toward a cliff and to insiders as a place for unbounded optimism. A favorite Silicon Valley bumper sticker says, "Dear God, one more bubble before I die."
That optimism is being sorely tested. Statewide unemployment, at 10.1%, is well above the national average of 8%. Per capita income growth, which used to be above average, is now lagging. In the last year home prices fell 35% in San Francisco, 30% in San Jose and 27% in San Diego, according to Radar Logic, a New York real estate derivatives firm. Half of the home sales in Los Angeles are from banks dumping foreclosed properties at steep discounts.
Tent cities of displaced homeowners have sprung up in the state's Central Valley--even in the capital, Sacramento. Anthony Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at Arizona State, terms the huddles Mozilovilles, after the former Countrywide Financial chief executive. "Fresno is a nuclear wasteland. I wish there were a nicer way to say it," says Patrick Lashinsky, chief executive of ZipRealty (nasdaq: ZIPR - news - people ) in Emeryville.
The squatters living in abandoned homes are a greater threat to the economy than unemployment and crashing housing, Lashinsky says. "The damage done to the homes makes the ultimate resolution of foreclosed properties even more expensive to investors and banks." In Riverside suburb Lake Elsinore, families of bobcats have taken up residence in vacant homes. The cats miss just as many mortgage payments, but at least they don't steal copper pipes.
Not all businesses are struggling. Bank Repo Bus Tour, whose red-topped buses cruise the Central Valley's foreclosed-home cul-de-sacs, is doing a land-office business selling tickets to people looking for speculative buys. Thanks to sales of statuettes of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of home sellers, revenue from California customers is up 25% from a year ago at Catholic Supply, a firm in St. Louis, Mo.
Santa Cruz, along with larger cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, helped lead the screwball state to its worst performance ever in our annual rankings of Best Places for Business and Careers. Without Flint, Mich. competing, California would have had a stranglehold on the bottom six positions on our list. High business costs, negative job-growth projections, high unemployment and high crime make this a scary place. California has 36 million people and 480 incorporated cities and as recently as two years ago fielded four metro areas in the top 100. This year only Riverside cracked the top half.
"If I even mention California, they throw me out of the office," says Ronald Pollina, president of relocation firm Pollina Corporate Real Estate in Park Ridge, Ill. "Every company hates California."
Latest budget-balancing scheme: charging for emergency services. If you call 911 for firefighters or paramedics, you will get billed $350 when they show up, under a proposed city council ordinance in Santa Rosa. Mark McCormick, deputy chief of the fire department, expects it to pass. |
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/101-best-cities-careers-california-going-bust.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:35 am Post subject: |
|
|
| T-J wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
Maybe in the short- and mid- term. Texas' tax and regulatory regime is to be admired.
Take a look at education and race relations in Texas, however. Texas doesn't tax much, and thus it also provides far less services to its constituents. |
I'm from N.Y. Keep your 'services' and let me keep my money. |
I believe robust spending in education and reasonable socialized services in healthcare are necessary to maintain a climate of opportunity. That's why I'm an opponent of excessive regulatory regimes: the direct taxes are sometimes necessary but regulations are almost always a wasted expense. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
wesharris
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| I believe robust spending in education and reasonable socialized services in healthcare are necessary to maintain a climate of opportunity. That's why I'm an opponent of excessive regulatory regimes: the direct taxes are sometimes necessary but regulations are almost always a wasted expense. |
No it's not. Socialized services kills the local economy, keep taxes low, encourage privatized education, enforce equal opportunity at every turn, provide only basic REQUIRED services (This doesn't include education, it DOES include utilities, roads, defense, police, and postal), promote saving and smart spending, and enforce the ideal that you are responsible for yourself and your own.
THIS will provide a much more stable long term solution, because it fosters competence and confidence. Inspires self reliance and requires responsibility. All of these things your model is the antithesis to.
___+___
Wes |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:19 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| (This doesn't include education |
That's a rather unusual claim. We've 'always' had public education, at least since the Ordinance of 1785. "The ordinance was also significant for establishing a mechanism for funding public education. Section 16 in each township was reserved for the maintenance of public schools." (wiki) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:26 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Kuros wrote: |
Take a look at education and race relations in Texas, however. |
I don't know anything about race relations in Texas, though the la raza nonsense seems to be largely a California thing, no?
About education, again, I don't know. Texas has a wealth of good unis at least. A&M, Southern Methodist, Rice and the UT system are noting to scoff at. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 6:56 am Post subject: |
|
|
| wesharris wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I believe robust spending in education and reasonable socialized services in healthcare are necessary to maintain a climate of opportunity. That's why I'm an opponent of excessive regulatory regimes: the direct taxes are sometimes necessary but regulations are almost always a wasted expense. |
No it's not. Socialized services kills the local economy, keep taxes low, encourage privatized education, enforce equal opportunity at every turn, provide only basic REQUIRED services (This doesn't include education, it DOES include utilities, roads, defense, police, and postal), promote saving and smart spending, and enforce the ideal that you are responsible for yourself and your own.
THIS will provide a much more stable long term solution, because it fosters competence and confidence. Inspires self reliance and requires responsibility. All of these things your model is the antithesis to.
___+___
Wes |
No, no, no. If you don't have a good education, you can't make it in modern America. Period. I can see a world in which 18-year-olds have to fend for themselves for higher education, but I can't envision minors being so self-reliant as to pay for their own education. It just doesn't work that way. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
OneWayTraffic
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:38 am Post subject: |
|
|
| wesharris wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I believe robust spending in education and reasonable socialized services in healthcare are necessary to maintain a climate of opportunity. That's why I'm an opponent of excessive regulatory regimes: the direct taxes are sometimes necessary but regulations are almost always a wasted expense. |
No it's not. Socialized services kills the local economy, keep taxes low, encourage privatized education, enforce equal opportunity at every turn, provide only basic REQUIRED services (This doesn't include education, it DOES include utilities, roads, defense, police, and postal), promote saving and smart spending, and enforce the ideal that you are responsible for yourself and your own.
THIS will provide a much more stable long term solution, because it fosters competence and confidence. Inspires self reliance and requires responsibility. All of these things your model is the antithesis to.
___+___
Wes |
SO I guess that countries like NZ,Australia, Finland, Norway and Sweden must really be suffering now eh?
I'm not sure what level of social safety net is best, and it probably depends on the country and culture, but there're plenty of counter examples to your claim. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
BS.Dos.
Joined: 29 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 9:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| enforce the ideal that you are responsible for yourself and your own. |
Enforce? What, with a gun?.
If you're talking about some kind of ideological idealism, then far better to promote the idea that we uphold at least some level of moral obligation to one other. Yours is the paradigm of isolationism. Each to his own and screw everyone else. Our social and political hemispheres have been constituted by this kind of self-serving liberal individualism for too long. We've become obsessed with this idea that autonomous choices somehow represent the origin of all that has value and that a social construct grounded in anything remotely orientated toward the collective is erroneous. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 5:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| far better to promote the idea that we uphold at least some level of moral obligation to one other |
I agree.
While it's possible to go too far in the direction of obligation to the group, it is also possible to go too far in the direction of individualism. In my view, we've definitely gone too far in the latter direction. A stronger sense of community would benefit all of us, not just at the family level but all the way up through city, country and the world. Not everything should be about taking; some part of our moral code should be about giving back to the community. One basic part of that is public education where we provide the best possible education to everyone. There's no telling where the next Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein will come from. It's self-defeating to limit ourselves as a country by providing state of the art education to only those whose parents have sufficient money to buy it. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:23 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Kuros wrote: |
| Texas doesn't tax much, and thus it also provides far less services to its constituents. |
Did you see this from my second link?:
| Quote: |
| Latest budget-balancing scheme: charging for emergency services. If you call 911 for firefighters or paramedics, you will get billed $350 when they show up, under a proposed city council ordinance in Santa Rosa. Mark McCormick, deputy chief of the fire department, expects it to pass. |
I get the impression that California is effective in pissing away vast sums of money. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 9:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| mises wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Texas doesn't tax much, and thus it also provides far less services to its constituents. |
Did you see this from my second link?:
| Quote: |
| Latest budget-balancing scheme: charging for emergency services. If you call 911 for firefighters or paramedics, you will get billed $350 when they show up, under a proposed city council ordinance in Santa Rosa. Mark McCormick, deputy chief of the fire department, expects it to pass. |
I get the impression that California is effective in pissing away vast sums of money. |
I wasn't being optimistic about Cali so much as I was being a little skeptical of Reason's portrayal of Texas as some sort of paradise. I think its easy to agree that Texas is much better off than Cali. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
