Washington Post: Texas Governer Rick Perry running for President in 2012

[Tulane Skins Fan]

In the real world, most things aren't controlled by one thing, but combinations of things.

The combination of lax lending laws and the belief that housing was essentially ALWAYS a good investment (and other things (e.g. low interest) rates affected the housing bubble in other areas.

That sound byte is way too long. It will never play.

[twa]

i would add people using inflated equity as income

just curious since I don't recall housing dropping that much back then,and it certainly has appreciated over the yrs

I would put the focus on how we have weathered the downturn more on the bloodletting we did in govt and entitlements back then in response to the bust

think there is anything to this?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903392904576509992605316426.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[PeterMP]

i would add people using inflated equity as income

just curious since I don't recall housing dropping that much back then,and it certainly has appreciated over the yrs

I would put the focus on how we have weathered the downturn more on the bloodletting we did in govt and entitlements back then in response to the bust

think there is anything to this?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903392904576509992605316426.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96260663

"Twenty years ago, Texas was in an economic cataclysm brought on by a surprisingly familiar set of precursors: deregulation, then haphazard regulation, followed by imprudent loans, financial collapse and, finally, bailout.

Between 1980 and 1994, more than 1,000 savings and loan associations — and 1,600 banks — closed or needed government assistance. The largest number of them was in Texas.

At the time, it was the largest failure of financial institutions since the Great Depression.

The rest of the country will recall that Texas and the surrounding oil states were thrown into a depression by a perfect storm of plunging oil prices, inflated real estate, high interest rates, tax reforms, a vacuum of oversight, and lots and lots of bad loans.

The spectacular collapse of the S&L industry ended up costing the U.S. government more than $150 billion."

http://www.erisk.com/learning/casestudies/ussavingsloancrisis.asp

"After a short respite in 1983 to 1984, as a more favourable interest rate environment helped ease the original cause of the S&L malaise, the mid to late 1980s saw S&Ls lurch back into crisis once more. This time round, a series of US regional crises, triggered by collapses in the oil, property and farming sectors, acted to realise the credit and investment risks now embedded in S&L portfolios. By 1984, for example, the oil-price inspired boom of the early 1980s in Texas was faltering, and by 1987 that state's oil and real estate sectors were in deep recession. A similar process of increasing rates of default and falling collateral values remorselessly undermined S&L asset around the US, right through until 1992 (though Texan S&Ls remained among the worst hit).9"

(A probably even better link:

http://aleksandreia.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/texas-banking-crisis/

"The effect on the Texas economy was devastating. The state’s GDP growth rate—which exceeded the U.S. rate until mid-1982—trailed the U.S. for the next decade with the greatest difference in 1986 when the U.S. rate was plus 3% while Texas’s rate was minus 3%. The two rates did not mirror each other again until 1992.4 Median home resale prices in Texas fell below the US from 1985 to 1990 by as much as 33%.5")

http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_Magazine/2010/April/How_Missing_the_Bubble_Hurt_Dallas_Real_Estate.aspx

"But the numbers may be more instructive. Let’s consider the Case-Shiller Index of home prices, which is brought to us by the fine folks over at Standard & Poor’s. During the boom, Miami, overall, saw prices for pre-owned homes appreciate more than 180 percent over where they were in 2000. Dallas, during the peak of the national housing boom—in June 2007—posted about a 26 percent price gain for pre-owned homes over its year 2000 prices. Miami has since sunk. Dallas, too. But Miami’s prices are still 49 percent higher than they were in 2000, whereas Dallas has seen only a 19 percent price appreciation in the same time."

"If you ask Jim Gaines, a research economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, he’ll tell you that the race isn’t quite over. He notes that Miami’s prices, as measured on the Case-Shiller Index, are still falling. They dropped 12 percent from the latter part of 2008 to near the end of 2009, while Dallas posted a slight 1.4 percent gain. “I think the whole state of Texas was still probably better off not going through the boom,” Gaines says. “Most of the areas in the country that have been hardest hit by the current recession are the areas that did go through the boom.”"

What killed Detroit at least was a lack of diversification. As I get older, I more firmly believe that the key to almost anything is diversification. They weren't diversified in their economic "engine", or in the view points of the people running the companies driving that engine (i.e. all of the big auto makers essentially made the same sort of cars).

I think the problem was amplified by the original hesitance of Americans to buy Japanese goods that was still a hang over from WWII and that Japan had developed the industrial base to challenge the US automakers. If say, the cars that were challenging US automakers were from Indonesia, I think the adjustment would have been more gradual and more subtle, and Detroit and the US automakers would have come out better off.

(I think TX seems to have learned that post-1980s with the oil boom. Certainly, one good thing they are doing there is seemingly build a more diverse economy then they had before.)

[twa]

There was definitely a shift towards diversifying the economy that is still going on

From my memory the S&L crisis rocked the commercial real estate market more than the home one,but maybe that was just my perception

the restrictions on how much you could refinance or take out of equity to me were the major reasons the housing bubble never was much of a issue here,and of course the abundance of cheap land and homes

[Wrong Direction]

The economy in TX is doing well because they didn't have a housing bubble. They didn't have a housing bubble because there was a drop in real estate prices in the mid to early 1980s after the drop in oil prices and the S&L crisis (which hit TX particularly hard) and because it has strict lending laws.

States that are doing really bad had large housing bubbles. You even see this w/ countries. Germany didn't have a housing bubble because housing prices plummeted after reunification. The German economy has been doing pretty well (well until this last quarter or so I guess).

This thread is sooooo telling to me.

You liberals don't want to give Perry any benefit of the doubt. He's a Republican, running for President and he held a prayer rally, so you all immediately run out there with a million talking points about oil jobs (Texas still #1 in job creation even if these removed), attracting jobs to his state from other states (not sure how it's bad, and I haven't seen anyone measure this), wages (6th best in the nation since the start of the recession) and now taking credit away because of old lending laws.

There's no mention of the fact that he ran the economy for 10 years and didn't sell out to some lobby to make those laws more lax, demographic issues in Texas (huge hispanic population, large influx of poor from La after Katrina, large rural population) that distort certain measurables around education, etc.

Texas is a good economic news story, as evidenced by the article I cited. I don't know whether I will personally support Perry, but the reflexive anti-Perry behavior in this thread is both hilarious and disconcerting for America. Too many minds are closed.

Why can't people just admit that the man did a lot of good things for the Texas economy?

[Edit: by the way, this should also be in the overt media distortion thread.]

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Perry ran the economy for ten years? So he cost it all those jobs that its trying to get back now?

[Wrong Direction]

Perry ran the economy for ten years? So he cost it all those jobs that its trying to get back now?

Look at the article I posted and tell me he's an economic failure.

So many in this thread want to say yeah, but...

But they fail to consider what didn't happen to Texas in that time. Jobs didn't leave en masse like they did from states like California and Michigan. All of those policies that "protect" people didn't actually protect them at all. They just increased the incentive to move those jobs to more friendly states or offshore. Perry did the opposite, something I think this country needs.

I'm personally undecided on him right now. If he's the candidate against Obama, I'll vote for him. However, in the primary, my #1 choice would be Paul Ryan (who hasn't declared) and I'm undecided after that (between Romney and Perry, right now). So, this isn't exactly coming from a gushing supporter of his.

[mistertim]

Look at the article I posted and tell me he's an economic failure.

So many in this thread want to say yeah, but...

But they fail to consider what didn't happen to Texas in that time. Jobs didn't leave en masse like they did from states like California and Michigan. All of those policies that "protect" people didn't actually protect them at all. They just increased the incentive to move those jobs to more friendly states or offshore. Perry did the opposite, something I think this country needs.

When you say the "policies that 'protect' people" what exactly are you talking about?

One of the things you have to think about is how Texas is a "friendly" (not talking about the personalities of the people there :pfft:) state and why jobs moved there. Things like large population growth (for various reasons) leading to more demand for jobs leading to lower wage jobs (Texas is way up there in the percent of people who earn minimum wage or less). Combine that incentive with low corporate taxes, things like the Texas Enterprise Fund, and some pretty low regulation in a various arenas and obviously you're going to attract corporations to your state to set up shop and use that labor.

Obviously, having and adding jobs is not a BAD thing. I don't believe any reasonable person here would say that at all. Its just that there are things to weigh. Creating jobs is good, but is it good that one of the possible results of the policies that helped that is a lot of them are very low wage and have no benefits of any type of health insurance? Thats one of the things that happens when you use the types of incentives they did to get businesses to set up in your state.

That is what I was talking about before when I mentioned the "race to the bottom". twa took exception to that (surprise), but I wasn't talking about Texas being a crappy place to live or what have you (as he seemed to infer) but rather that when you essentially appeal to corporations by showing off that you have lots of people who will (even if out of necessity) work for low money, they won't have many regulations, they will have very low taxes, etc then you're likely to eventually see things like high poverty rate, a ton of people without insurance or benefits, etc. It is the nature of the beast and you see it in many countries that use the same model.

Then weigh in what you might have to do to offset lots of tax breaks when you still want to balance your budget (or have to). A lot of times that means cutting gov't costs. Which, again, is NOT necessarily a bad thing depending on the situation and what you are cutting. However, when you already have a high level of minimum wage workers with no benefits or insurance and you cut programs that could assist them and cut things like education (more of a long term issue), it makes the situation for the people with those jobs even tougher as one of the reasons that people who earn minimum wage or lower can still get by is with gov't assistance programs and health care.

Nothing exists in a vacuum, which I think is what Peter and some other posters have been trying to point out when talking purely about some of the reasons WHY Texas was able to create a lot of jobs and how there were multiple factors involved over time. It is also complete garbage to respond to one of Peter's posts and go off about how this thread is telling and all of the "liberals" are going nuts over Perry. From my experience Peter is pretty middle of the road, his posts are logical and not "liberal" or "conservative" ideological rants, and he provides sources and links for the data he talks about. There are certainly some posters on both sides who are drive-by reactionary mud slingers but he isn't one of them.

[twa]

Perry ran the economy for ten years? So he cost it all those jobs that its trying to get back now?

Now insert W or O .......none of them run the economy,all of them effect it.

btw ...cost jobs?

from this chart it looks like Obama's election costs jobs here....yet still we persevere in our own little ignorant,poverty stricken,GED embracing,cowboy, secessionist ways and still manage with our pitiful Mcjobs to to have one of the worlds largest economies(if we were a country) ....and even fund some of ya'll parasites.

add

mister tim

the jobs Perry is attempting (and doing) to draw are not minimum wage.

there are perhaps a few dollars a hr lwr wages here on the top end of labor rates,but that is more than made up for with the low cost of living.

I run a business and most people would laugh if offered minimum wages even at entry level jobs

[Prosperity]

Look at the article I posted and tell me he's an economic failure.

So many in this thread want to say yeah, but...

But they fail to consider what didn't happen to Texas in that time. Jobs didn't leave en masse like they did from states like California and Michigan. All of those policies that "protect" people didn't actually protect them at all. They just increased the incentive to move those jobs to more friendly states or offshore. Perry did the opposite, something I think this country needs.

I'm personally undecided on him right now. If he's the candidate against Obama, I'll vote for him. However, in the primary, my #1 choice would be Paul Ryan (who hasn't declared) and I'm undecided after that (between Romney and Perry, right now). So, this isn't exactly coming from a gushing supporter of his.

"policies that protect people"

could you be any more vague?

---------- Post added August-18th-2011 at 02:47 PM ----------

Now insert W or O .......none of them run the economy,all of them effect it.

btw ...cost jobs?

from this chart it looks like Obama's election costs jobs here....yet still we persevere in our own little ignorant,poverty stricken,GED embracing,cowboy, secessionist ways and still manage with our pitiful Mcjobs to to have one of the worlds largest economies(if we were a country) ....and even fund some of ya'll parasites.

that's a crap chart and you know it

1) for some inexplicable reason it only includes January dates... probably because of all the McJob boosts during the holiday season

2) it doesn't take into account population growth

Unemployment in Texas on 01/01/01 4.2%

Unemployment in Texas on 01/01/11 8.3%

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=state:ST480000&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=texas+unemployment#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&idim=state:ST480000&ifdim=state&hl=en&dl=en

Still don't understand all the ****ing hubub over Texas' employment, they are above average nationally, with below average job quality all around... BFD

NY has an unemployment rate lower than Texas, but from what people keep saying it would appear that Texas is the only thing holding our country together. What hog wash, even after the collapse of the finance industry (NY's mainstay) and the rise in oil prices (TX's mainstay) NY still does better. NY has actually lowered unemployment by a % point over the past year (steadily too), and yet TX has remained stagnant. If there are all these new jobs in TX, how come unemployment is stagnant? Are y'all going to blame the Mexicans again?

In January 2010 NY had an unemployment rate of 8.9%... In June 2011 it is 8%

In January 2010 TX had an unemployment rate of 8.2%.... in June 2011 it is.... wait for it... 8.2%

OMG look at all those jerbs!!!!11!!

color me unimpressed

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=state:ST480000&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=texas+unemployment#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&idim=state:ST480000:ST360000&ifdim=state&hl=en&dl=en

[btfoom]

Here is a definitive, well researched article that points out all of the flaws in many of your arguments about the Texas economy.

Rick Perry and Texas Job Numbers: http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1590

Read the whole thing and get back to me.

Here's the bottom line from all of his research:

"My advice to anti-Perry advocates is this: Give up talking about Texas jobs. Texas is an incredible outlier among the states when it comes to jobs. Not only are they creating them, they're creating ones with higher wages."

[Wrong Direction]

When you say the "policies that 'protect' people" what exactly are you talking about?

[Edit: Deleted full quote to save space.]

Good post.

Nobody's claiming that there isn't more to the story in Texas, but there's more to the story in every state and Texas has done better than those states in job creation, and the new jobs have the 6th highest wages in the country.

One of the better answers in the last Republican debate came from Rick Santorum and it was about outsourcing jobs. In a nutshell, he said we need to do more from an incentives perspective to keep companies from leaving America. I know it's complicated, but in a nutshell, that's what Perry has done in Texas and what he says he'll do as the President. I'd argue that Obama has accomplished just the opposite.

Literally the only place I haven't yet heard a response from the Perry group yet is with health insurance. Again, he has different demographics, so I'd like to see numbers adjusted for that, taking into account historical Texas rates and comparing to the nation, over time. That might help provide a full picture. As it stands, it's just another discrete datapoint without any context used by politicians and their paid supporters to create a perception of failure.

Additionally, this is a national problem that we're all aware of, and my problems with ObamaCare notwithstanding, I still think we need a serviceable national response.

By the way, a pet peeve of mine is when people draw inferences from things that may not have any real correlation. One recently used (not by you) is the idea that middle class wages haven't gone up, so we should tax the rich more. I don't see how you get from A to B, because nobody spells it out. It's certainly not as simple as 1) Tax employers more so 2) They pay people more. There are arguments around taxes which are worthy of debate, for sure, but I hate how politicians draw these connections seemingly out of thin air. Bachman did it with $2 gas. (Good luck with that, Michele)

The one you used is in reference to his cuts in the education budget, and Texas' education system. I'd like to see the correlation between those cuts and results. I have seen the correlation between spending and results over decades (nationally), and more spending /= better results. At least, not in the aggregate. I'd also like to see those education results for Texas normalized for population composition. Just because it's a talking point doesn't mean there's any substance behind it.

---------- Post added August-18th-2011 at 11:36 AM ----------

NY has an unemployment rate lower than Texas, but from what people keep saying it would appear that Texas is the only thing holding our country together. What hog wash, even after the collapse of the finance industry (NY's mainstay) and the rise in oil prices (TX's mainstay) NY still does better. NY has actually lowered unemployment by a % point over the past year (steadily too), and yet TX has remained stagnant. If there are all these new jobs in TX, how come unemployment is stagnant? Are y'all going to blame the Mexicans again?

You don't want to read the article, so I'll post the section on this:

See... that's what I thought when I started looking at the data. I knew that Utah had a lower unemployment rate than Texas and I kept hearing that Texas was go great at jobs, blah, blah, blah, so I looked up the unemployment rate.

Nothing special.

So I was going to drive my point home that Texas was nothing special by looking at their raw employment numbers and reporting on those. That's when I saw this:

This may not look like anything special, but I've been looking closely at employment data for a couple years now and I've become very accustomed to seeing data that looks like this.

In a "normal" employment data set, we can easily look at it and say "Yep, that's where the recession happened. Sucks to be us." But not with Texas. With Texas, we say "Damn. Looks like they've recovered already."

(To get to this data, go to this link http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?la then select the state or states you want, the select "Statewide", then select the states again, then select the metrics you want to see.)

But if Texas has so many jobs, why do they have such a high unemployment rate? Let's take a closer look at that data.

As a percentage of the number of pre-recession jobs, here is a chart of the growth of a selection of states. (For clarity, in this chart I selected a number of the largest states and tried to focus on states that have relatively good economic reputations. I did not chart all 50 states b/c it would have taken me too long.)

We can see that Texas has grown the fastest, having increased jobs by 2.2% since the recession started. I want to take a moment and point out that second place is held by North Dakota. I added North Dakota to my list of states to show something very important. North Dakota currently has the lowest unemployment rate of any state at 3.2%. And yet Texas is adding jobs at a faster rate than North Dakota. How can this be?

The reason is that people are flocking to Texas in massive numbers. Starting at the beginning of the recession (December 2007), let's look at how this set of states have grown in their labor force.

As you can see, Texas isn't just the fastest growing... it's growing over twice as fast as the second fastest state and three times as fast as the third. Given that Texas is (to borrow a technical term) f***ing huge, this growth is incredible.

People are flocking to Texas in massive numbers. This is speculative, but it *seems* that people are moving to Texas looking for jobs rather than moving to Texas for a job they already have lined up. This would explain why Texas is adding jobs faster than any other state but still has a relatively high unemployment rate.

[twa]

Prosperity if you ignore the migration to here from other states and and the major increase in population you could come to the conclusion you did comparing base unemployment....of course then you would be ignoring fact.....labor markets ain't static,nor do jobs grow much simply as a result of people moving here

[The Evil Genius]

How many times can people post the same link from politicalmathblog and how many times can other people point out that the often repeated SAME ****ING link has holes in it?

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Now insert W or O .......none of them run the economy,all of them effect it.

btw ...cost jobs?

from this chart it looks like Obama's election costs jobs here....yet still we persevere in our own little ignorant,poverty stricken,GED embracing,cowboy, secessionist ways and still manage with our pitiful Mcjobs to to have one of the worlds largest economies(if we were a country) ....and even fund some of ya'll parasites.

add

mister tim

the jobs Perry is attempting (and doing) to draw are not minimum wage.

there are perhaps a few dollars a hr lwr wages here on the top end of labor rates,but that is more than made up for with the low cost of living.

I run a business and most people would laugh if offered minimum wages even at entry level jobs

That was my point. Its pretty dubious to say Perry is responsible for any jobs created or lost.

[The Evil Genius]

So Perry was able to keep jobs in Texas and attract more from other places. That would be bad for the country, how exactly?

For the country, really? If Texas, under Perry, is pilfering jobs from other states (you, know, the other 56 in the US) , well I guess that's good for the country right?

[Wrong Direction]

For the country, really? If Texas, under Perry, is pilfering jobs from other states (you, know, the other 56 in the US) , well I guess that's good for the country right?

What he did was good for his state and potentially good for the country. We know that some firms moved from other states. Why would a firm do that? The answer is everything from making a few bucks, to keeping them from outsourcing their operations to staying open. To the extent the latter two are true (unknowable in a measurable sense), yes it did help the country.

However, Perry was hired as Governor of Texas, not as President. His job was to act in the best interests of Texas. That's what he did. We call that federalism.

---------- Post added August-18th-2011 at 12:01 PM ----------

That was my point. Its pretty dubious to say Perry is responsible for any jobs created or lost.

So, is your point that Perry isn't directly responsible for any jobs created or lost or that he has no effect on any jobs created or lost?

[mistertim]

For the country, really? If Texas, under Perry, is pilfering jobs from other states (you, know, the other 56 in the US) , well I guess that's good for the country right?

I think this is a pretty valid point and is a big question that I have as well. For the sake of simplicity let's hypothetically say that Perry's policies were most of what was responsible for the job growth in Texas. Do his policies and the way he attracted companies and jobs to his state scale to a national level? I'm inclinded to say no. Getting companies to move from one state to another via certain specific incentives (lower taxes, less regulations, large population, actual monetary incentives via the gov't) is a whole different ballgame than getting companies to move jobs in general into the US,create them here instead of overseas, or simply have less employees to do more work. Shifting jobs around isn't going to do all that much nationally. I'm honestly very curious to hear Perry's SPECIFIC plans (as WELL as Obama's, to preempt that one) as to how he would scale his Texas job and business policies to the national level. At the moment all we are getting is the usual stump blather and catch phrases (from both sides).

[Tulane Skins Fan]

So, is your point that Perry isn't directly responsible for any jobs created or lost or that he has no effect on any jobs created or lost?

More so the first, but I think its hard to say how he even effected it. You don't know if some other policies would have helped create even more jobs.

I just think its reaching to say "ah, Texas has a lot of jobs, clearly the governor did that." Just as its dubious to say "ah, the country lost more jobs, clearly Obama did that." And I'd say the same if the roles were reversed.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I do not like Perry, but I'm not sure if there is any way for the Democrats to attack the job numbers in Texas and not expose themselves to devastating counter attacks.

The issue is not the numbers but the how. Texas made out by creating an environment where jobs moved from other states. The only way for the US to do that is to lower taxes, wages, and regulations to the point that jobs move from Mexico to here. And I'm not sure that's an approach we can realistically take. Or want to take.

[Predicto]

This thread is sooooo telling to me.

You liberals don't want to give Perry any benefit of the doubt. He's a Republican, running for President and he held a prayer rally, so you all immediately run out there with a million talking points about oil jobs (Texas still #1 in job creation even if these removed), attracting jobs to his state from other states (not sure how it's bad, and I haven't seen anyone measure this), wages (6th best in the nation since the start of the recession) and now taking credit away because of old lending laws.

There's no mention of the fact that he ran the economy for 10 years and didn't sell out to some lobby to make those laws more lax, demographic issues in Texas (huge hispanic population, large influx of poor from La after Katrina, large rural population) that distort certain measurables around education, etc.

Texas is a good economic news story, as evidenced by the article I cited. I don't know whether I will personally support Perry, but the reflexive anti-Perry behavior in this thread is both hilarious and disconcerting for America. Too many minds are closed.

Why can't people just admit that the man did a lot of good things for the Texas economy?

[Edit: by the way, this should also be in the overt media distortion thread.]

Err, I asked genuine questions, and I appreciated the genuine answers that I got. You can call it talking points if you want and say we're distorting things. I was asking for more insight.

At the same time, you use "demographics" as distorting measurables on education, without acknowledging that the same demographics distort measurables on job creation (a young growing immigrant population automatically creates more jobs, as more people need to buy gas, live in houses, eat groceries, etc.)

It is a legitimate question to ask what the overall impact is, how good those jobs really are, and how much the Governor had to do with it all. Just saying "Admit Perry did a great job up front and move on - or you prove you are biased" isn't very helpful to the discussion, IMO.

---------- Post added August-18th-2011 at 10:10 AM ----------

Nothing exists in a vacuum, which I think is what Peter and some other posters have been trying to point out when talking purely about some of the reasons WHY Texas was able to create a lot of jobs and how there were multiple factors involved over time. It is also complete garbage to respond to one of Peter's posts and go off about how this thread is telling and all of the "liberals" are going nuts over Perry. From my experience Peter is pretty middle of the road, his posts are logical and not "liberal" or "conservative" ideological rants, and he provides sources and links for the data he talks about. There are certainly some posters on both sides who are drive-by reactionary mud slingers but he isn't one of them.

Peter has been a Republican for his entire life, if I recall correctly.

[twa]

I do not like Perry' date=' but I'm not sure if there is any way for the Democrats to attack the job numbers in Texas and not expose themselves to devastating counter attacks.

The issue is not the numbers but the how. Texas made out by creating an environment where jobs moved from other states. The only way for the US to do that is to lower taxes, wages, and regulations to the point that jobs move from Mexico to here. And I'm not sure that's an approach we can realistically take. Or want to take.

Are you so sure of that?

First it is not just Mexico we can attract business from,but let's start there as a example:

By increased productivity and stable work environments you could draw some that still pay a decent wage...the problem begins when taxes and compliance costs are prohibitive(both EPA and labor regs)...if you add a union that get's greedy the problem expands.

Turn instead to Canada which seems to be taking our jobs....what do they do differently?

hint....it ain't working for minimum wages

added

one example

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/100726/top-7-us-oil-importers

is it doing what much of America wont?

[mistertim]

Are you so sure of that?

First it is not just Mexico we can attract business from,but let's start there as a example:

By increased productivity and stable work environments you could draw some that still pay a decent wage...the problem begins when taxes and compliance costs are prohibitive(both EPA and labor regs)...if you add a union that get's greedy the problem expands.

Turn instead to Canada which seems to be taking our jobs....what do they do differently?

hint....it ain't working for minimum wages

added

one example

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/100726/top-7-us-oil-importers

is it doing what much of America wont?

Canada and Mexico are two very different situations, though. In Mexico you're talking mostly about manufacturing and labor jobs. Unless we can match their pennies on the dollar wages plus their extremely loose regulations (loose being the nice term) then there is no way we're going to get those kinds of jobs back up here.

In Canada the number of goods producing labor jobs and manufacturing has been going down, but the jobs that are being added are more in the service and technical industries:

http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/econ40-eng.htm

I'm looking for some specific articles about it ATM but I would guess that part of the reason those jobs are going there is general education of the populace with lower costs to companies because of intelligent tax incentives and...possibly...*GASP*...having national health care means those companies that employ people in industries where the jobs generally come with health benefits through their employers don't have to pay a dime or worry about it.

As far as your link...what are you saying exactly? That the US should go back in time, bury a bunch of dinosaurs, and then turn ourselves into one of the biggest oil reserves in the world?

[Larry]

I do not like Perry' date=' but I'm not sure if there is any way for the Democrats to attack the job numbers in Texas and not expose themselves to devastating counter attacks.

The issue is not the numbers but the how. Texas made out by creating an environment where jobs moved from other states. The only way for the US to do that is to lower taxes, wages, and regulations to the point that jobs move from Mexico to here. And I'm not sure that's an approach we can realistically take. Or want to take.[/quote']

Just pointing out that there are other ways to "create an environment where jobs moved from other states".

For example, one way to do that is to pay businesses to move to your state.

(Did he do that? I have absolutely no idea. I have anecdotal evidence that it happens, but it's from decades ago, and involves other states. So I'm not even implying that that's what Perry did. Simply pointing out that there are ways of attracting businesses that we don't necessarily want to follow.)

---------- Post added August-18th-2011 at 02:40 PM ----------

Peter has been a Republican for his entire life, if I recall correctly.

I may be thinking of somebody else, but I do recall reading some poster saying that the way things were going, though, he might have to cast his first-ever Democrat vote, this election.

[twa]

As far as your link...what are you saying exactly? That the US should go back in time, bury a bunch of dinosaurs, and then turn ourselves into one of the biggest oil reserves in the world?

I believe in abiotic oil so no;)....we do however have vast untapped oil and gas deposits here no matter the origin.

much as I like Canadian women I still see no reason to pay them for a product we can supply(and stimulate US employment and tax base)