Tuesday, November 2, 2010

God Bless Texas

Finally I got a metric I can understand - what is the % of our government spending vs GDP?

You can get these numbers for the federal spending, but we also need to know what the overall percentage is for state spending, and it seems Texas is doing reasonably well overall. Now, before you get too excited, remember one of my favorite sayings, "It's not hard to beat zero!". If you compare any state to California, they look really good.

But having said that, here's the rest of the story and the NUMBER: 17.3% Don't ever forget this as we go forward to hold politicians accountable!

excerpt
From the National review

Low-Tax Texas Creates Most New Jobs

More than half of the net new jobs created in the United States during a recent 12-month period were created in Texas — due to economic practices that are a “model of restraint” the federal government could emulate, according to National Review Online.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said 214,000 net new jobs were created from August 2009 to August 2010, and 119,000 of them were created in Texas.

“What does Austin know that Washington doesn’t?” writes National Review Editor Rich Lowry. “At its simplest: Don’t overtax and [over]-spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers run riot, and display an enormous neon sign saying, ‘Open for Business.’”

A report from the Texas Policy Foundation disclosed that Texas saw a decline of 2.3 percent from its peak employment, compared to 8.7 percent in California and 5.7 nationwide.

California nearly canceled out Texas’ jobs gain by losing 112,000 jobs, and its unemployment rate is above 12 percent, while the rate in Texas stands at 8.3 percent.

Texas has no state income tax, and is among the 10 lowest-tax states in the nation. It’s a right-to-work state that enacted serious tort reform during the last decade.

“Texas is a model of government restraint. In 2008, state and local expenditures were 25.5 percent of GDP in California, 22.8 percent in the U.S., and 17.3 percent in Texas,” Lowry observes.

He concludes: “In Texas in recent decades, the watchwords have been prudence and stability in the course of nurturing a pro-business environment, while California has undergone a self-immolation that President Barack Obama wants to replay nationally.”

Will government allow the private sector to thrive, Lowry wonders, or stifle growth with “its hyperactivity and favoritism for anti-business interests?”

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