-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.
Roco-
Reading your claims here leads me to conclude that you are in your early twenties, if that. There’s nothing wrong with that and you seem to be quite intelligent, though possibly somewhat naive as to conditions in the real world of working people. Much of your knowledge seems to come from right wing sources, some of which are outdated. Many of your ideas are familiar to me as a former follower of Ayn Rand and familiar with National Review, Human Events, Reason, etc. Fortunately, there was no right wing talk radio then and television was ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. Period. (No cable.) If I recall correctly network news consisted of one half-hour news show on each of the 3 commercial networks Monday through Friday.
I attended a Milton Friedman lecture at a synagogue in Milwaukee sometime in 1966-68 when I was a graduate student (economics) at Marquette University. Milton was just as slick then as on the clip from the Donohue Show. A short man, always in a beautiful suit, very quick and sharp as a tack. But the truth was, and is, that the black kids’ problems getting hired at McDonalds had nothing to do with the minimum wage. Problem #1 was quite simple: there were no McDonalds restaurants in the inner city. Problem #2- segregation was the law (written or unwritten) everywhere in America. I attended excellent public schools in Shorewood, WI, just north of Milwaukee. During the time I was in High School, there was only one Black student at S.H.S., and he was an African exchange student. It wasn’t illegal for a Black family to move to Shorewood. It was more insidious than that. There was a “gentlemans’ agreement” that no realtor would sell a house to a Black person. They would become outcasts with the other realtors. And quite frankly, it was supported by the (White) general public, though no one talked about it. The only Black people I saw in Shorewood in the 60’s and 70’s were cleaning ladies getting off the bus and heading to the large homes near the lake. There were no Black teachers, store clerks, village employees, or any other occupation.
Although customs, attitudes, and laws have changed greatly since then, Milwaukee is still one of the most segregated cities in America as far as housing and schools go. Fortunately, Shorewood today is heavily Democratic and racially and ethnically diverse. I saw the S.H.S. academic honor roll a couple of years ago and it looked like the United Nations phone book. Russians, Southeast Asians, Chinese, Japanese along with the old line Yankees, Irish, Germans, Jews, Poles, and Italians.
My one-fingered typing precludes me from refuting all of your points, but I’ll comment on a few.
8:09 pm “3rd world labor has its drawbacks, low skills, bad transportation, uncertain political situations, etc.”
Yes, Roco, and those damned skinny children keep dying as soon as you teach them to run a machine.
7:35 pm (Referring to taxes in the Eisenhower years- 1952-60) “People in the middle class paid little or nothing.”
This is nonsense- I think you will find considerably higher tax rates in those years.
7:35 pm “And there were all kinds of loopholes back then.”
Again, nonsense. You would have to prove that one to me. My first tax form, a 1040A was printed on an IBM card, which I assume you have never seen. An IBM card was approximately 3 1/2″ x 8″ and had holes punched in it to be read in an early form of computer.
7:35 pm “The 90% rate was on paper only.”
Probably true for all but a very few. The point was that ALL the rates were considerably higher than they are today.
Roco,
I am not Buddha and in court, the prosecution has to prove their case.
OK. im more middle of the fence here.. but I have one question… Its more for Roco… When you say taxing the rich or the video says “soaking” the rich.. I thought what we were talking about was changing the tax rate on the richest individuals from 36% to 39%.. thats just 3% more.. that’s not SOAKING… am I right on these numbers? I am up for doing this (if these are the numbers)
Im also for getting rid of tax exempt status for churches . I dont see any downside to this. people can still worship anywhere they want. there will probably be less churches (but in their place will be someone who pays taxes)
I also believe in getting rid of loophole where people are tax exempt because the say there property is a farm and it isnt… OK if you are a farm.. but not the loopholes I see all over TN.
Roco, I have no idea who owns the controlling stock in those companies. It sure as hell is not me! I blame the obscenely rich CEOs and members of the directors who have a monetary incentive in the form of obscene bonuses. Cut them off at the knees. There is no reason for the CEO or other executive of a company to make seven figure bonuses. No one is worth that much per hour. I am aware that some businesses are wholly owned or have a family ownership of controlling stock shares.
No amount of mental gymnastics can excuse our local industries fleeing to a third world country so they can exploit the indigenous people at near slave wages rather than pay an honest wage for an honest day’s work here. The fallout is high local unemployment, more people applying for charity or welfare benefits. Bills do not get paid, which has a ripple effect on the local economy. All because the biggest employers in the county left the country so they could make more money.
Need tax cuts? Local government (meaning taxpayers like me) gave them sweetheart tax deals, but it was not enough. They packed up, almost in the middle of the night, and left. What happened to those lower tax benefits being passed along in the form of more and better jobs? That is what Republicans have been telling me would be the way it worked.
A vivid example of “How to Lie with Statistics!”
Friedman was an EVIL man! Listen to his condesending tone…eliminate the minimum wage so that teenagers ( excuse me…BLACK teenagers) can get a low paying job and work at low wage jobs forever while they aquire “Skills”. Skills for what, what skills???Flipping hamburgers? Then promoted to flipping burgers for a CEO at a Fortune 500 company? And bring that money home to Mom because she isn’t paid any better and everyone in the household has to work to feed themselves and pay the rent. Did Uncle Miltie invent the “welfare queen” too? Donohue, what a wuss! Polite when he should have went for this guys throat…of course he knew where the money was! Interesting that the great Uncle Miltie said the schools were underfunded…run that one past your Tea Party and Republican friends and pundits: “MILTON FRIEDMAN SAID THE SCHOOLS ARE UNDERFUNDED”, way back then, WOW! And now most of the states are tripping over each other to see who can defund the schools more! Of course if there’s no minimum wage, the whole household will have to work to even survive and there won’t be any kids over 11 in school because they also want to eliminate the child labor laws. Have you ever seen the picture of the 11 year-old boys in the coal mine? The little girl next to the cones of thread in the textile mill? People fought hard for minimum wage laws, the child labor laws, 40 hour weeks, vacation time, health and safety laws. NOW we have a whole bunch of misguided people who want to help the New Robber Barons destroy the laws that have made our lives so much better than those of the people in the third world countries, that all our former jobs have been offshored to!!!! Roco, Milton Friedman is a creep! And a miserable excuse for human being! A POX on humanity! SHAME!
Otteray Scribe:
and who owns stock in those companies which left to make more money to satisfy stockholders?
rafflaw:
I dont wish to be rude but Buddha is Laughing used to tell me to do my own homework. I am just following the commonly acccepted method of discourse on this blog.
There is an abundance of information on this subject. I say you are wrong, I am pretty sure the facts are on my side. Please prove me wrong.
Roco,
with all due respect, you are the one making the claim, so let’s see the evidence that you say is so freely available.
Roco, those companies were not coming close to losing money. They were making out like bandits because of low local labor costs, low overhead, low energy costs, low property taxes and all kinds of tax incentives. They left, not because they were losing money or only breaking even; they left because they wanted MORE. More profits than they would make by keeping their businesses in the USA. The railroad was a small local operation, but with no freight to haul, they had to shut down and abandon quite a lot of trackage. Right after they had upgraded the right-of-way and installed new crossties, so they lost a bundle. No train will ever run on those tracks again, and as I write this, the tracks are being torn up and sold for scrap.
No, Roco, they were not losing money, they just wanted more money. They can make more by moving to a third world country where they can get away with using sweatshop and child labor.
Otteray Scribe:
it is not a straw man. How much wealth do you want to take from them? What do you think people like that do with their money? Dont you think that the 9.6 billion dollars of additional taxes [assuming a 4% rise] would be put to better use in the private sector?
That is a hell of a lot of capital that could be used to actually create jobs.
So the point is what is enough? How much more do these people need to give? It doesnt matter if you only want 1% or 100% of their money, the principle is still the same. It is their money and they will make better use of it than our elected officials.
rafflaw:
you can look that info up yourself. It is all over the internet. I have found some good sources.
Otteray Scribe:
So they should not make a profit and employ people at a loss or break even? Why would they do that? They can park their money in a CD and make a few percent in interest.
Just because the money is overseas doesnt mean it doesnt have an impact here at home.
We need less government intervention in the market.
Milton Friedman on why soaking the rich wont work:
oops…is it ‘bad’ thing?….
“and HenMan, I now dubb thee; Sir HenMan the Intelligent!” (Woosty’s still a Cat)
Oh no … Woosty, do you know what you’ve done??!!
Roco,
Please show us your evidence that the middle class had many loopholes in their taxes in the 1950’s.
Woosty,
Buffett has a good idea!
OS
I agree whole heartedly that the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax should be lifted. I pay social security taxes on 100% of my income, why shouldn’t the wealthy?
“3rd world labor has its drawbacks, low skills, bad transportation, uncertain political situations, etc.”
**************************************
That may be true, but the fact remains that the aluminum plant down the road from here closed. The cardboard box factory closed. The big plastics and synthetic fiber factory shut down. That had been the largest single employer in the area. Those closures caused the little spur line railroad to shut down. Additionally, a large mail order house closed, along with the telemarketing center that it supported.
Those jobs went out of the country, either overseas or south of the border. It was about profits, not people.
Otteray Scribe1, August 7, 2011 at 6:16 pm
———-
YES!!!!
and HenMan, I now dubb thee; Sir HenMan the Intelligent!
Roco, that is a combination of false equivalence and strawman. I know you are very bright, so that line of argument is disappointing. No one has suggested, even in their most fevered imagination, confiscating the wealth of people making over $10M. The taxes are on money in circulation, untaxed excess corporate profits, and folks making more than just a comfortable living–I keep hearing the sum of a quarter million a year being bandied about.
And if the annual cap on contributions to the Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid fund was to be removed, it would instantly solve the concern over that program running out of money in the foreseeable future. If you make more than $106,800.00 per year, you stop contributing. Some people make that much the first few days in January. There are a small handful who make more than $107K the first few hours of January 1. They can certainly do more to help solve the problem because that amount of money is chump change for them.
the robots wont buy anything but the people who produce them will.