标题: Texas as a governance Test Ground [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 12-6-2014 19:05 标题: Texas as a governance Test Ground John Daniel Davidson, Lessons for Jerry Brown; Globalization and geography--not low taxes and small government--are what's driving Texas's job growth, according to the author. Wall Street Journal, Dec 5, 2014
online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/print/WSJ_-A011-20141205.pdf
online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-lone-star-nation-by-richard-parker-1417738299
(book review on Richard Parker, The Lone Star State; How Texas will transform America. Pegasus; 2014)
Quote:
" Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country
"Mr Parker takes the liberal view of his native state, and his book is meant to rebut any notion that the Texas model could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the nation.
"Mr Parker’s thesis about Texas is built on a basic misconception of how government interacts with the economy. He claims, for example, that Texas’ lack of an income tax is “balanced out by the fact that it depends heavily upon property taxes and sales taxes, among the highest in the nation, to fill government coffers.” Yet mounting evidence shows that states with no income tax grow faster and create more jobs than states that impose an income tax. Over the past decade, the nine states with no income tax have outperformed the nine highest income-tax-rate states in gross state product, employment and tax revenue (both state and local).
"The author also makes no mention of the overall size of Texas’ government, which is paltry compared with New York and California. Indeed, California extracts 42% more in total state income than Texas does. California could abolish its income tax, or its sales tax, and still collect more taxes than Texas.
My comment:
(a) "Conservatives point out that a staggering 1.1. million jobs have been created in Texas since 2007."
But that may be thanks to shale oil and gas. The reviewer himself states "fracking has flooded swaths of Texas countryside with jobs and transformed sleepy west Texas towns like Midland and Odessa into 21st-century boomtowns. * * * [Despite California's largest shale-oil reserves in America,] it is Texas that is now producing 36% of all US oil. Could it have something to do with the role of state government—not in creating jobs outright but in allowing markets to work?
(b) The reviewer (Mr Davidson; likely a Republican) praises Texas for "limited government, low taxes and light regulation * * * low cost of living."