Texas Versus California

Texas Versus California

Neal Boortz
October 19, 2010

Rich Lowry had a column last week highlighting what is known as the "Texas model." He compares this to what you could call the "California model." What are the differences? Well the California model goes a little something like this - high taxes, extensive regulation, many government-provided social services, union-friendly laws. Sounds a lot like what the Democrats would like to see on a national scale, don't ya think? This is compared to the Texas or conservative model of low taxes, limited regulation and social services, right-to-work laws. Here's how these models are working out for their respective states ...

Between August 2009 and August 2010, the nation created a net of 214,000 jobs. Texas created more than half of them, 119,000. California lost 112,000 jobs during that same period.

As Rich Lowry points out, if every state in the country had performed as well as Texas, we'd have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year. And I love one of the last quotes in the column. Lowry quotes a City Journal article by Joel Kotkin, which could absolutely be applied to our administration in Washington: "During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city -- as something to be sacked and plundered."

Based on this knowledge, which model would you choose? You have two weeks ...