Will California Learn From Texas?

I was born in Illinois, and have spent most of my life in California. Both states are in serious distress, with California about to drop over the bankruptcy precipice. Unemployment continues to rise and the social democrats in charge of the state refuse to reach a budget and cut billions in frivolous state spending. Both states could learn a lot from Texas.

Back in the 80s, my office manager was a displaced Texan. I used to tease him about the great Houston skyline. It had those very airy skyscrapers that didn't spoil the view because you could see right through them. The windows were unfettered by any humans actually working in the buildings. Texas had depended too much on oil, and had very little else going for it. Meanwhile, California was booming. What a difference a couple of decades can make.

California boomed in more ways than one. State spending doubled, tripled and quadrupled, without attendant increases in productivity. But the Democrats controlled the legislature, and Republican governors after Reagan kept misplacing their veto pens. Government burgeoned, while yuppie punks and politicians like Jerry Moonbeam Brown taxed what production there was at an ever-increasing rate. By the late 90s, the San Francisco skyline was beginning to resemble the one in Houston that I had made so much fun of. Bye-bye, Levi Strauss. Bye-bye Southern Pacific Railroad. Bye-bye Standard Oil. Bye-bye Bank of America. Yes, and even bye-bye Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat. Some companies moved to more rural, lower-taxing cities, but many simply closed their doors or moved out of California completely.

As the decades wore on, California adopted every silly, mega-expensive fad imaginable, while killing off its businesses. Public employees bred like rabbits, and government went berserk in its efforts to control every facet of California's society. The greatest agricultural state in the union has watched its Central Valley go from a farming wonderland to a desert as ecofreaks cut off the water in order to save a fish that nobody ever heard of and which serves no known purpose on God's now-brown earth.

The citizens got fed up with Jerry Brown clone Grey Davis, and elected a movie star who claimed to be a conservative. That lasted about two weeks before Sacramento and Hollywood merged and became the two poles of airy-fairy land. That selfsame governor now thinks that if Californians would just give up their carbon-fueled automobiles and turn to green hydrogen-powered cars that haven't been invented yet, all of California's problems would be solved. And as he prepares to leave office, he still hasn't learned how to pronounce the name of the state he allegedly governs.

While California went from middle of the road Republican government to left wing Democratic control, Texas went from racist-dominated oil monopoly Democratic control to moderate, then conservative Republican government. California led the nation in nearly everything for nearly half a century. Now it's Texas's turn. As California sinks slowly into the west, Texas is a vital, independent, proud and growingly-prosperous state.

Nothing could be more demonstrative of this fact than the employment figures coming out of DC's own Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the height of the Great Recession, from August 2009 through August 2010, 214,000 new jobs were created nationwide (not the b.s. "created or saved" figure) in private business, and Texas alone created 119,000 of them. While California and Illinois bleed jobs and productive workers, and each has an unemployment rate officially at about 11% (which means that counting those who have simply given up trying to get a job the number is close to 18%), Texas is building, growing and hiring.

I don't want to paint too rosy a picture. Texas is part of the United States, and can't avoid being somewhat affected by the spendthrift, tax and spend, profligate central government's attempts to destroy all private businesses. It has suffered along with the rest of the states. But it's feisty defiance of Washington and its bad habits have led to a firm belief that we can yet get out of the woods if we just follow the Texas example.

Texas unemployment jumped after the big crash, just as it did everywhere. But while California experienced an 8.7 percent decrease in peak employment in the past year, and the nation experienced a 5.7 percent decrease, Texas held it to 2.3 percent. Government expenditures in California comprise 25.5 percent of the state's GDP, nationwide it's 22.8 percent, but in Texas it's 17.3 percent. Texas has no income tax, while California has one of the highest in the nation, with the most repressive tax rates of all at the higher levels. California the dog is wagged by the union tail, while Texas is a right-to-work state that doesn't force unions on unwilling employees.

While Texas encouraged private employment and business development, California taxed, regulated and interfered with both. So while Texas was creating 119,000 net new jobs, California was losing 112,000. I may be mistaken, but I think I see a pattern developing here.

California led the nation in just about everything since the 50's. Unfortunately, it continued to lead the nation in destroying jobs and businesses by the turn of the century. The nation now has two choices. Follow the old leader off the cliff, as the central government in DC has been doing for decades, or follow a new leader, Texas, to a brighter and stronger future. As a Californian, I say "lead on, Texas."