WILLisms.com: Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 594 -- Texas' Unemployment Insurance Tax Rate.

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Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 594 -- Texas' Unemployment Insurance Tax Rate.

Texas' Advantage Over Other States-

Earlier this year, Texas' Governor Rick Perry rejected part of the federal stimulus dollars designed to expand the Unemployment Insurance program, which means a rejection of more than 500 million dollars in federal dollars over the next few years but also a rejection of between 75-80 million dollars annually that Texas would be on the hook for forever.

Most, if not all, Democrats criticized Governor Perry for his decision, while some unprincipled big-government Republicans (like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison) joined the chorus.

While some view it as a Scarlet Letter of shame, Texas has a relatively limited UI program and a lower UI tax rate than the national average:

Meanwhile, Texans who lose their jobs are still covered. They still receive unemployment benefits, just not the expansive benefits many big-government states offer. Meanwhile, Texas has been the nation's engine of job creation in recent years.

Not entirely a coincidence.

Job-seekers are leaving their home states and heading to Texas in droves in search of opportunity, not unemployment benefits.

Art Laffer and Stephen Moore add:

One last point: States aren't simply competing with each other. As Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently told us, "Our state is competing with Germany, France, Japan and China for business. We'd better have a pro-growth tax system or those American jobs will be out-sourced." Gov. Perry and Texas have the jobs and prosperity model exactly right. Texas created more new jobs in 2008 than all other 49 states combined. And Texas is the only state other than Georgia and North Dakota that is cutting taxes this year.
The Texas economic model makes a whole lot more sense than the New Jersey model, and we hope the politicians in California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota and New York realize this before it's too late.

I was recently conversing with a 30-year-old female Obama supporter, who couldn't quite warm to the fact that Texas is doing the right things. She kept saying that Texas is ranked so low in "education," so low in "health care," so low in x, y, and z. What do those terms even mean? Typically, spending or spending per capita. I think that's what she meant. Spending. Or maybe spending per capita.

When a state prioritizes chasing social services rankings over growth and free enterprise, it paves its way to its own demise. California is a perfect example of what happens when a state prioritizes moving up the rankings on indexes of state spending toward various big government programs above all else. The reckoning always comes. It has come to California.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: The Media Heart Obama.

Full-disclosure reminder, please read: "A WILLisms.com Candidate Endorsement: Governor Rick Perry For Texas In 2010."

Posted by Will Franklin · 19 May 2009 09:09 AM

Comments

"When a state prioritizes chasing social services rankings over growth and free enterprise, it paves its way to its own demise."

California, the most prosperous and richest state in the Union has been driven to the state of economic collapse. A liberal fiscal policy that you can vote yourself into wealth and well-being by simply continuing to tax productive people has always failed. In California, as with some other states, the geese in the productive flock are out of golden eggs.

And liberals always consider solving problems as a measure of how much money we spend on social problems. Solving the problem cuts the funding and gives to them no purpose in the political world. The problem never gets solved when attended by liberal leeches who can continue to suck and drain the life-blood out of the economy.

Posted by: Eneils Bailey at May 19, 2009 03:17 PM

Do you worry that all of these people migrating to Texas, from liberal states, will vote the state more liberal, and therefore, undo so many of the pro-growth/low-spending policies that are making Texas a go-to state?

Is big government thinking a virus?

Posted by: Ken at May 19, 2009 04:56 PM

Yes. I do worry about that.

Posted by: Will Franklin at May 20, 2009 03:19 PM