-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
According to a Wall Street Journal article, Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, found that since June 2009 37% of all net new jobs in America were created in Texas. Even though Texas is an energy state benefitting from high oil and natural gas prices, Fisher touts Texas’ business friendly environment, its right-to-work laws, and its “tort reform”– a $250,000 cap on punitive damages.
The WSJ article even calls Texas “fiscally responsible.” That’s the same Texas with a $27 billion budget shortfall. The WSJ article also uncritically cites Texas’ statutory limits on mortgage borrowing, a regulation of the financial industry they would decry if Obama proposed it.
While the 37% figure is accurate, the details are what’s interesting. Texas has the highest percentage of minimum wage worker in the country. As the chart below shows, the level of minimum wage jobs has increased during Perry’s reign.
The median hourly earnings for all hourly-paid wage and salary workers in Texas stood at $11.20 per hour in 2010; nationally, the median was $12.50.
Texas also ranks number one in the percentage of residents without health insurance. Texas’ percentage is almost 28%. Massachusetts, with Romneycare, has the lowest at 4.7%.
According to The Economist, the state-level Gross Domestic Product of Texas grew by 2.6% last year, equal to the national average. New York grew by 5.1% and California by 1.8%.
Here is a listing of the Perry economic portfolio touted as a model for the whole country:
- Highest percentage of minimum wage jobs.
- Highest percentage of residents with no health insurance.
- A budget deficit of $27 billion.
- Lower than average wages.
- Average growth in GDP.
So, if you want a low paying job with no health insurance, Texas is your choice.
Gene:
henry ford said that or something similar. Why did companies go offshore?
3rd world labor has its drawbacks, low skills, bad transportation, uncertain political situations, etc.
the 8000 or so people who make over 10 million dollars a year had a combined income of 240 billion dollars. About enough to run the government for 18 days.
Gene, it is kind of like the question Walter Reuther asked the General Motors executive when being shown the latest in automation: “How many Buicks are those robots going to buy?”
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes in all this drama about the debt ceiling:
“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”
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I think I like Mr. Buffet
and I think it is just MAHvellous the way Texas is willing to chew people up and spit them out for industry….I would add to the above: Anyone who rtuns for Congress or Senate has to not only serve in the Military but ALSO, intern for a year in a minimum wage job in Texas…yup
Roco,
“If a company cannot afford to hire people then they cannot afford to hire people.”
Not only do record profits and trillions in reserve belie this assertion, I think you’ve never heard of the term “vicious circle”. If people don’t have jobs to make money to buy products and services, then eventually sales will stagnate, fall off and die.
the downside of the low cost of living in texas is that you have to live in texas.
Lottakatz:
I agree with that, Bush bailed his buddies out in 2008. That was a mess and it didnt need to done. People were sold a line of bull shit about main street being hurt.
If they had let the market sort it out, it would have and we would be home free now. This is going to last another 5-10 years unless we give up the idea of government being all things to all people.
Roseanne:
Does not have a point. If a company cannot afford to hire people then they cannot afford to hire people.
And maybe if the city council or state government wasnt trying to purchase billion dollar sewer systems or build office buildings that only have half of their space available for tenants they could charge far less tax to run their governments.
While you whine about the lack of jobs you arent whining about all of the stimulus Obama has spent and the stimulus Obama wants to spend. And that money is borrowed.
Republicans and Democrats are to blame.
Roco: “we dont live in a capitalist society and havent for a very long time. what you are seeing is a failure of socialism not capitalism.”
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Right, socialism for the rich and corporations.
Frankly:
when the environment is much more stable than it is now.
and statists do not know anything about economics or we would not be in the shape we are in now. And yes I consider Bush, in fact both of them to be statists just not to Obama’s extent.
henman:
the top 90% was on wage earners over $400,000 dollars. People in the middle class paid little or nothing. And there were all kinds of loopholes back then. The 90% rate was on paper only.
we dont live in a capitalist society and havent for a very long time. what you are seeing is a failure of socialism not capitalism.
Roco-
You don’t tax people who don’t have jobs. They don’t have earnings to tax. You pay them the unemployment benefits they are entitled to by the unemployment tax that came out of their paychecks when they were employed.
There are plenty of rich people with plenty of money that should be taxed at a far higher rate than the current one. In the prosperous Eisenhower era, the top income tax rate was over 90%. I fully support a return to that top rate- we both know that won’t happen because the rich people own the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President.
The “capital wealth in America” isn’t in America anymore. It’s in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other third world shit holes where the “job-creators” can make more money by paying lower wages than they would dare to do in America. (Remember, we all have guns now.)
And, by the way, where the hell are all those jobs that the Free Market Capitalist System always produces for those who live in a capitalist society?
Oh, and Obama continued Boy Blunders tax cuts? Yeah, low revenue & no job growth. Where oh where are these mighty job producers that have been cut free from the horrid burden of taxation & when will they actually create a job here in the US?
Funny how conservatives always pretend liberals do not understand economics.
Lets take a look at what happened in the 80s when St. Rondulus told us tax cuts pay for themselves. They didn’t. Then in the 90s when Clinton raised taxes revenues actually went up! (hint: if you actually believe the Laffer curve this means taxes are too low!!) And then there was huge job growth and a balanced budget. Follow that with Boy Blunders massive tax cuts – which brought in less revenue (see hint above, re: Laffer). This was followed by an anemic economy that never produced enough jobs & eventually led to the collapse at the end of BBs tenure.
And yet somehow we are to believe conservatives understand economics.
AY,
The Tea Party regulars can stay wherever they are now. we don’t need anymore in Illinois. Joe Walsh is the Rep in my district and he is certifiable.
There is plenty of money out there to tax. The problem is that it is in the hands of too few people. Those people are the engine driving the fight against an equitable tax code. Roseanne had it right.
henman:
the loud thump you heard was me banging my head against a wall.
How are you going to tax someone who doesnt have a job? There are not enough rich people to confiscate money from to run the government for any length of time. After you have used up all the capital wealth in America how are you going to build an economy?
At least if people have a job you can tax them a little bit if they arent making much and you dont have to spend money to take care of them.
As Dame Thatcher said “Socialism is a great economic system until you run out of other peoples money” or something to that effect.
Roco-
Taxes, my boy, taxes. Did you just faint? I heard a loud thump.
Former Fed,
Well said!
FFLEO:
do you know what Obama’s grades in history and economics were?
Based on how the economy is doing I would say he didnt even attend class.