Ludicrous! No I am not talking about the rapper. I am talking about the eight politicians who wasted two hours of my time last night during the Republican presidential debate arguing over which one had created the most jobs. Even more ludicrous was the national press corps that seemed to think it was a reasonable dialogue.
About 25 years ago I wrote a paper called "The Bi-Coastal Economy." It pointed out that all of the economic growth that the Reagan White House was bragging about had actually taken place in just 13 states, including California and most of the Eastern Seaboard. The other 37 states which made up the nation's heartland hadn't grown for five years. It wasn't that the governors of states like New York, Massachusetts, Maryland or California were so much smarter than their brethren in the Dakotas, Ohio or Texas. It was the fact that the Federal Reserve was trying to drive down inflation by placing a strangle hold on the money supply and driving up the value of the dollar.
That was fine for the banks and the service economy, but devastating for goods producers such as farmers, manufacturers in the Rust Belt and energy producers in the oil patch. Today we have a Federal Reserve struggling to prevent deflation combined with a concentration of global economic growth overseas that has pushed energy and agricultural commodity prices through the roof.
This is where Texas Governor Rick Perry's claims about job creation become ludicrous. The dollar has plummeted against all major currencies and the price of West Texas Intermediate Crude has jumped from $29 a barrel when Perry was sworn in as governor in December of 2000 to $110 this past April. With wheat soaring from a little more than $2 a bushel to more than $7 during the same period and cattle prices up by about 70 percent one wonders why there are still more than a million Texans who are unemployed.
Governors can impact their state's economic future. They can improve their state's infrastructure with investments in transportation, water and sewage treatment. They can strengthen the skills of the workforce with better schools, community colleges and universities. But as most governors are painfully aware such investments may take the better part of a generation to show real results and almost never bear fruit during the tenure of a governor that initiates them.
What is puzzling about Texas is how little advantage it has taken of the unique opportunities it has had to make such investments. Nearly every state works at exporting their tax burden. Florida takes a hefty bite out of winter vacationers with a stiff tax on hotel rooms. Nevada does very nicely by splitting the losses of out of state gamblers with the state's casinos.
Texas, with nearly a quarter of the nation's proven oil reserves, collects a cool 7.5 percent on the market value of natural gas production and 4.6 percent on oil. That means that every time a furnace switches on in Ohio, Michigan or Minnesota, Texans are able to pay part of the annual salary for a teacher, fireman or highway patrol officer.
That is why there is little excuse for Texas to rank behind Arkansas, Alabama and 42 other states in per pupil education expenditures. According to a report released last December by the National Center for Education Statistics the probability that a high school freshman in Texas will graduate has gone down during Gov. Perry's tenure while it has gone up for the rest of the country. Texas now has the lowest percentage of citizens over age 25 with a high school degree and the Center for the Advancement of Literacy and Learning at Texas A & M reports that "19 percent of adult Texans can't read a newspaper."
For some governors it is a good thing that the results of their efforts are not likely to become apparent during their tenure in office.
Scott Lilly is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
From the NYT: "When a 2009 McKinsey study contrasted Perry’s home state to the similarly sized and situated California, it found that Texas students were “one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age, even though Texas has less income per capita and spends less per pupil than California.”
When it comes to minority achievement, Texas looks even better: On the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, black eighth graders in Texas outscored black eighth graders in every other state."
Perhaps you should be asking why CA students underperform, despite the high level of spending. Where is all that money going???
Job growth in CA and MA since '70s was due to computer, defense, medical industries.
Yes, I suppose he could have instead imposed a state income tax and "invested" the oil and gas royalties in the teachers unions. I'm glad he didn't.
Natural gas is important, because it heats houses, and impacts significantly on the retail price of electricity.
You can combat high gasoline prices by driving less, or buying a Prius, but bathing once a month and letting your pipes freeze is not an option. Heat and hot water are mandatory.
Why is natural gas so cheap? Because of horizontal fracking in shale formations.
Where did this technology develop? In Texas, while Perry was guv.
Enough said - he's got my vote.
Perry didn't let the enviro-dirt-worshippers strangle horizontal fracking in the crib, as would have been done in a blue state.
Now horizontal fracking is well established it can't be killed off with silly movies and innuendo.
A different governor would have caved to the "endless test it before using it" movement.
Now it's $83, and $25/bbl cheaper than Brent. Smart states don't make plans based on boom-time revenues, only California does that.
"Governors can impact their state's economic future. They can improve their state's infrastructure ... such investments may take the better part of a generation to show real results and almost never bear fruit during ..."
What's said here about governORS applies equally well to governMENTS.
"That is why there is little excuse for Texas to rank behind Arkansas, Alabama and 42 other states in per pupil education expenditures."
The United States spends more per pupil on education than any other nation, and gets entirely mediocre results, far behind nations that spend far less. Maybe spending more money isn't the solution. And whatever Texas decides to do, that's there business and no concern of mine. Because if I lived in Texas and I didn't like their policies, and I couldn't change them, I'd move to North Dakota. Americans spend way too much time worrying about what someone someplace else is doing. If we all paid more attention to taking care of business at home, we wouldn't be in the fix we are.
From a person I’m guessing is unaware we live in a global economy? Likewise is probably unaware that Texas beat Rice last week. Yeah we do keep score and statistics because it does matter. I will let you look up the Texas Rice score .
I lived and worked outside the United States for 40 years, I spent 300 days a year living and working with locals, in the local economy, on all continents.
According to the US Census Bureau persons of Hispanic or Latino origin comprise 37.6% of the Texas state population. So, if by newspaper you mean one printed in English this may not be surprising.
Perry fired 100,000 education workers this year.
The only Miracle in My Texas is with all Texas has going for it, Perry economics has turned it into a 3rd world nation...in his race to the bottom, where he has actually lost private sector jobs and 50% of his job creation is Government jobs, paid for with Obama stimulus money.. but I guess those jobs dont count as Jobs Created?
Regards.
http://www.willisms.com/archives/2011/08/myths_about_tex.html
http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1590