I keep promoting this Texanomics blog, and I've had people ask if it's me doing it. It's not, but so far so good:

Go check out the Texanomics blog to see a larger version (just click the graph). The green line is Texas. The orange line is other states without a state personal income tax. The blue line is the United States, and the red line is states with personal income taxes.

I've written about this plenty in the past. States without income taxes perform better economically than states with income taxes.

One of the arguments in favor of income taxes is that they help smooth things out and prevent budget crises when the economy turns downward. This is simply incorrect. States with income taxes have plenty of budget woes. Indeed, states with personal income taxes have more budget crises than states without personal income taxes. Far from smoothing things out and providing a "third leg of the stool" of stable revenue, states with income taxes have more volatility in their revenue collection than states without income taxes:

Just say no to an income tax in Texas.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama's Dropping Popularity.

Rasmussen:

The number of voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance held steady at 43% in August. At the same time, the number who Strongly Approve inched up a point to 27%.

Those figures generate a full month Presidential Approval Index rating of -16, a slight improvement from last month. From December 2009 to March 2010, the president’s approval index bounced back-and-forth between -14 and -15. In April, the index jumped four points to -11, the highest level of optimism measured since October 2009. That number, however, has steadily declined in the following months.

It's bad, but it has sort of stabilized.

How much will Obama's unpopularity harm the chances of Democrats in November?

How much will Democrats turn on Obama after the devastation?

Does Obama secretly want Democrats to fail in 2010, so he will have a better chance to succeed when he is on the ballot again in 2012?

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama's Jobs Deficit.

The stimulus has failed:

Time for America to cut its losses on this disastrous regime.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: The Emerging Pension Crisis.

One day, some of us will be saying "we told you so." Pensions, just like federal entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are just not solvent. They overpromise, and one day, the reckoning will be very, very ugly:

Much bigger increases in employee costs are on the horizon. Thanks to huge unfunded pension and retirement health-care promises granted by past governments, and also to deceptive pension-fund accounting that understated liabilities and overstated future investment returns, California is now saddled with $550 billion of retirement debt.

The cost of servicing that debt has grown at a rate of more than 15% annually over the last decade. This year, retirement benefits—more than $6 billion—will exceed what the state is spending on higher education. Next year, retirement costs will rise another 15%. In fact, they are destined to grow so much faster than state revenues that they threaten to suck up the money for every other program in the state budget.

Nearly every governmental entity faces something similar, from local school districts and governments up through the federal government. It's not pretty.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Has America's Recovery Blueprint.

A WILLisms.com reader Neville, from Oregon, writes in with a link to this David Brooks column which evaluates the divergent German and American responses to the economic/financial crisis:

According to Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, the Americans borrowed an amount equal to 6 percent of G.D.P. in an attempt to stimulate growth. The Germans spent about 1.5 percent of G.D.P. on their stimulus.

This divergence created a natural experiment. Who was right?

The early returns suggest the Germans were. The American stimulus package was supposed to create a “summer of recovery,” according to Obama administration officials. Job growth was supposed to be surging at up to 500,000 a month. Instead, the U.S. economy is scuffling along.

The German economy, on the other hand, is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.

Neville also echoes the point Glenn Reynolds made this morning, which is that this is a "surprising indictment of everything the Obama administration has done since Inauguration Day."

As Professor Reynolds would say, "indeed."

In his email, Neville also brought up the point that Texas is in many ways America's "Germany" in this divergent set of examples.

Texas rejected huge portions of the federal stimulus-- the hundreds of millions of unemployment insurance dollars with strings attached. Texas has received the second lowest number of stimulus dollars per capita. Texas has one of the freest economies in the country, with one of the lowest debt loads per capita in the entire nation. Texas necessarily limits government by virtue of the legislature meeting for only 140 days every two years. Texas has relatively low taxes, keeps state government spending growth basically in line with population and inflation growth, and Texas has enacted among the most sweeping tort reform packages in the nation.

The result is that Texas' foreclosure rate is far below the national average and its bankruptcy rate is near the bottom. Texas has added far more jobs than all other states combined over the past few years, and income growth in Texas is far ahead of all other states.

Indeed, individual Texas cities (Austin, for example) have outpaced every other state in private-sector job growth over the past few years:

That green bar is the Austin metro area. The other bars are Utah, Delaware, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Nebraska, and Montana.

You could do the same graph for Houston and Dallas, and San Antonio would rank second if it were its own state.

Texas, just like Germany, is not completely out of the woods yet. Nor are Texas or Germany without their own shortfalls. Texas' economy was as turbulent as any in the 1980s, with bank booms and busts, oil booms and busts, and real estate booms and busts. While Brooks notes that "Germans have recently reduced labor market regulation, increased wage flexibility and taken strong measures to balance budgets," some serious long term structural issues remain in that country, in terms of over-promising on pensions and entitlements.

Still, the recent relative success of Texas and Germany, compared to the backsliding United States economic picture, offers strong evidence that Keynesian stimulus is a failed policy prescription, and market forces can best provide the kind of economic growth that political leaders covet.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Republicans Lead On Every Single Issue.

New numbers from Rasmussen:

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 of the important issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports.

The GOP has consistently been trusted on most issues for months now, but in July they held the lead on only nine of the key issues.

Republicans lead Democrats 47% to 39% on the economy, which remains the most important issue to voters. Those numbers are nearly identical to those found in June. Republicans have held the advantage on the economy since May of last year.

But for the first time in months, Republicans now hold a slight edge on the issues of government ethics and corruption, 40% to 38%. Voters have been mostly undecided for the past several months on which party to trust more on this issue, but Democrats have held small leads since February. Still, more than one-in-five voters (22%) are still not sure which party to trust more on ethics issues.

Government ethics and corruption have been second only to the economy in terms of importance to voters over the past year.

It is imperative that Democrats be sent a profound message this November that Americans will not tolerate the breathtakingly abuse of power and accelerated expansion of government we have seen over the past couple of years.

Americans voted Republicans out because they got too big government on us all. Then Democrats went and did the big government thing strung out on meth. Obama likes analogies about car keys and driving off cliffs-- and D and R standing for drive and reverse.

When Republicans turned the keys over to Democrats in late 2006, unemployment was 4.5%, GDP growth was robust, federal budget deficits were on track to become surpluses, and things were cranking along just fine, economically. It is Democrats who created market uncertainty. It is top-down Democrat housing micromanagement that created the foreclosure crisis. It is Democrats who canceled pending free trade agreements which were expanding markets for American goods and services and providing higher quality products to American consumers and lower prices. It is Democrats who twisted the throttle on the insolvency of entitlement programs like Social Security. It is Democrats who drove this country off a cliff, economically.

It certainly will not be Democrats to get us out of this mess.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Only State Among Largest Twenty To Gain Jobs Since 2006.

Compared to 2006, nearly every state in America has fewer jobs. Texas is one of the few (and the only large state) that has added jobs over that time:

Why is it that Texas has been more resilient in the face of the economic challenges our nation faces?

Could be the economic freedom.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Economic Freedom, And Why It Matters.

The Fraser Institute released new rankings of economic freedom for all 50 state in the U.S., as well as provinces in Canada, and Texas is again among the best:

Reinforcing the notion that economic freedom leads to greater prosperity, this year's report shows that Delaware, Texas, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Utah, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Tennessee—the top 10 most economically free states—had an average per-capita GDP of $40,183 in 2007, compared to $37,397 for the 40 lowest-ranked states.

Among states with the lowest levels of economic freedom, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, New Mexico, Montana, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia had an average per-capita GDP of $32,170 in 2007, compared to $39,791 for the rest of the US.

Indeed, American states generally are freer than Canadian provinces, but there are a couple of exceptions:

Economic freedom is a good value on its own, but it also has serious social implications that liberals, conservatives, and everyone else should agree on. Over time, freer states produce more jobs, more prosperity, and higher standards of living:

Higher standards of living ultimately mean longer, healthier lives, and if you're one of those who glorifies the state, it ultimately means more tax revenue.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Income Growth.

In his stump speeches and television ads, liberal trial lawyer turned career politician Bill White has now essentially acknowledged that Texas is the best state for economic and job growth in the country, but he has turned his attacks on our state toward the erroneous notion that the jobs being created aren't good enough.

The facts, from Texanomics (one of my favorite new blogs), don't lie:

It's kind of small and hard to read, but click on the graph for a bigger version over at Texanomics. That green bar is Texas private-sector wage growth from 2006-2009. Those blue bars are other states.

Another example of Texas domination.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Bankruptcy.

Bankruptcies are way up in the United States this year, at a 5-year high, but Texas ranks 48th:

Of the ten states with the largest populations, Texas has the lowest bankruptcy rate by far.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: WNBA.

The WNBA is subsidized and loses money:

...the NBA owns and subsidizes 6 of the 13 WNBA franchises, and the WNBA teams lose between $1.5 million and $2 million per year.

And yet, some argue that there is anti-female gender discrimination in terms of televised coverage of the WNBA. The numbers, however, speak for themselves.

The WNBA is the butt of so many late night talk show jokes for a reason. Meanwhile, there are women's sports very much worth watching, but they are still a bit niche for general audiences in mass media markets. Maybe icons of female-friendly mass media could throw a little love toward these sports.

Christina Hoff Sommers makes just this point:

The latest USC report is silent about the near-total absence of sports in women’s media. The limited coverage consists mainly of human-interest stories about women athletes. By the logic of the USC authors, shows such as “The View” and “Oprah” should be offering sports highlights and scrolling tickers with scores. Magazines such as Vogue, Allure, Cosmopolitan, and Better Homes and Gardens should be bursting with stories about draft picks, photographs of awesome plays, and up-to-date information about fantasy teams and brackets.

Indeed.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: The Ring Of Fire.

America could end up like Greece if we're not careful:

Sadly, "The Ring of Fire" chart is highly suggestive of lackluster economic growth performance in the industrialized countries in the years ahead. Since one has to expect that, over the course of the economic cycle, high budget deficit levels will be associated with higher interest rates as industrialized country governments compete with their private sectors for a limited pool of available financing. One would also expect that high public debt levels will undermine private sector confidence as both households and companies will come to fear the prospect of future distortive taxes to deal with compromised public finances.

America needs to get back to what got us to greatness in the first place. Limited government. Limited federal intervention in the economy. Limited federal intrusion into state and local matters. Limited taxation. Pro-growth, pro-commerce laws. Freedom.

The only way to truly "drain the swamp" of corruption, mitigate the influence of lobbyists, and clean up Washington is to shrink and limit government.

It's the only way for America to succeed into the next century.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama Versus Small Business.

Small businesses are in for a world of hurt:

Thanks, Democrats.

Times are tough, but they are about to get a lot tougher, absent some kind of change of course:

America is suffering its largest drop since World War II. When the economy was at its Bush-era height, in 2007, a little over 63% of adult Americans had jobs. Friday's report shows that only about 58.4% do, a decline of nearly five percentage points. While the unemployment rate remains steady at 9.5%, the employment-population ratio continues to fall each month. In April it was 58.8%, in May 58.7%, and in June 58.5%.

Since America has about 238 million noninstitutionalized civilian adults of working age, this decrease means that we have nearly 12 million fewer jobs today than we would have if the employment-population rate were still at its 2007 level of 63%.

No other recession in the past 60 years saw such rapid job destruction in either absolute or percentage terms. In the 1979-82 recession, unemployment topped out at a higher rate, 10.8%, but the employment-population ratio declined by only three percentage points, to 57% from 60%.

Yeah. Higher taxes will help this. Not.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Economy.

Are you reading Texanomics yet?

You should be.

This graph shows private-sector employment changes in the handful of states that added jobs from 2005-2010. This is really a sad picture in so many ways.

We've really got to figure this thing out. Our country can't just not create jobs.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: America's Jobless Recovery.

The new normal:

The July jobs report reveals an economy struggling to add jobs. While private sector jobs have increased by 151,000 over the last three months, this job growth is slower than that of March and April. An average of 50,000 new private jobs a month is disappointing for this stage of a recovery and will not lower the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate remained flat at 9.5 percent in part because 181,000 workers exited the labor force. The labor force participation rate dropped to 64.6 percent, matching its low for the recession that was set in December 2009.

The labor force increased in the first half of the year but has steadily declined since its April peak of 65.2 percent. Both adult men and women have seen their participation rate drop by 0.6 percentage points since April, while teenagers’ participation rate has dropped 1.3 percentage points.

Job gains in the private sector were scattered. Manufacturing (36,000) and health care (27,800) had strong increases. Construction (–11,000), financial services (–17,000), and professional business services (–13,000) were the big losers. Government hiring fell by 202,000, with 143,000 of those losses attributable to temporary census workers. State and local workers (–48,000) had one of the sharpest job declines of this recession. Another signal indicating a weakening labor market is the drop in temporary services (–5,600), which had its first decline since the fall.

The President could learn something from his trip to Texas today.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Supreme Court Polarization.