THE PLANK AUGUST 3, 2009
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Ed Kilgore is managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a frequent contributor to a variety of political journals.
I don't know what it is about getting a New York Times column, barring deals with the devil to obtain them in the first place. But it seems to be having a corrosive effect on Ross Douthat's analytical skills, as it earlier did for his colleague David Brooks.
Douthat's column today touting Texas as an economic "model citizen" for the nation is just plain wrong. Ezra Klein peforms an efficient smackdown on the idea that Texas is booming while "blue states" are wallowing in economic despair, and just as importantly, reminds us that the Lone Star State is famed for its poor treatment of poor people, which helps it keep the state budget balanced.
But I have a more fundamental beef with Douthat's breezy assumption that state policies have made conservative Texas do well while afflicting "liberal" California. The truth is that state policies have little or no effect on short-term economic trends affecting their populations. Texas and California exist in national and global economies. Unemployment rates in Fresno or El Paso are largely controlled by forces affecting manufacturing exports and imports; prices for housing, oil and gas; and credit availability that have almost nothing to do with the policies of Arnold Schwarzenneger or Rick Perry. Republican-governed Florida is getting hammered, and Democratic-governed Iowa is doing well.
Governors and state legislators do have a big effect on how their constituents are affected by such external forces--on the distribution of wealth, if not its existence--and on that front, regressive Texas has nothing to brag about.
But Ross Douthat's identification of "low-road" economic development strategies as vindicated by the current recession is deeply flawed and dangerous. If the no-regulation regressive-tax approach really represented the keys to the kingdom, then Mississippi and Alabama would have long since become the economic dynamos and social showcases of America. That hasn't happened, and isn't happening, regardless of short-term growth and unemployment rates. With far more resources than its country cousins to the east, Texas has managed to create similar social conditions. Touting the Lone Star State as a lodestar state is a terrible mistake. And as a southerner, I'd have to say that it takes a conservative Yankee to celebrate so unreflectively the South's high ratio of private affluence to public squalor.
--Ed Kilgore
[Cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist]
8 comments
I have a more fundamental beef with Douthat's column: it's lifted straight from last week's Economist without any new insight or substance. Talk about phoning it in.
- Simon Greenwood
August 3, 2009 at 6:37pm
In addition, isn't California being undone by the undemocratic and reactionary ballot initiatives of the last thirty years? Call California "blue" if you want to, but they could elect Glenn Beck governor and their economy would still suffer the ill effects of those initiatives.
- sdcrippen
August 3, 2009 at 6:39pm
That was really a painfully poorly researched article by Ross. The data just don't back up what he's trying to say. He tries to tie UHC to California even though they don't have it, and blithely ignores the fact that Massachusetts, which does have UHC is experiencing the same level of growth as Texas. If Ross really wanted to compare red and blue states, he should have actually looked for real systematic trends rather than simply picking out the biggest and most iconic of each.
One other major flaw is that the whole premise of comparing the federal government to state governments in terms of fiscal policy when one can deficit spend and the other can't. This leads to states taking pro-cyclical actions (slashing spending, raising taxes) that it would be crazy for the federal government to make during a recession.
- AlanSP
August 3, 2009 at 6:50pm
James Fallows takes out Ross Douthat with the trivial obeservation that:
-- if you write about California's fiscal problems and don't even mention the role of "Proposition 13"* or similar revenue limits and distortions, you're not trying very hard to make an honest argument.
jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/.../a_demur_to_my_former_atlantic.php
I've always found Douthat to be a spectacularly lazy thinker and his accession to a throne at the New York Times has done little to change that opinion.
- ndmackenzie
August 3, 2009 at 7:30pm
You know you're a Texan when:
* you boast how folks who die in Heaven spend the rest of eternity in Dallas
* you boast how folks who die in Hell spend the rest of eternity in Crawford
* you show your friends your new collection of weapons of mass destruction
* your t-shirt says "we execute more prisoners than China!"
* you think Sasha Obama is the Anti-Christ
* you insist Alaska and Sarah Palin are Potemkin Villages the government created in Area 51
* you want to secede from the whole fucking universe
* you can count to zero the number of blunders the Bush administration made
* you have more streets named after Tom Delay than all cthe other states combined
gw
- iambiguous
August 3, 2009 at 8:59pm
I was shocked by that doooothat piece, writing about california's troubles w/o mentioning prop 13, the weird proposition process and the 2/3rds requirement, totally nuts.
- mmathog
August 3, 2009 at 10:13pm
Ross wants to look at a state run exclusively by conservatives and captained by the fiscal champion (putting aside 43k in biz class airline tix, etc to see his girlfiend), then write up a post on SC. Yeah, 11 percent of people without jobs, three of the four porest counties in America, the worst education system in the country, systemic corruption - you name it, we got it. And there's not a Democrat in sight.
- mpatrickhendri
August 4, 2009 at 9:30am
ross (and the economist) are right. Texas is gaining employment and population while California and, more particularly, the industrial midwest are losing same. Texas is not perfect, but the climate for business is much better there than almost anywhere in the U.S. In addition, they have done an excellent job of reaching out to latin america and mexico in particular. is it a model for the rest of the U.S.? in some ways yes, others no. new york is losing population (outside of mighty NYC) and jobs, new jersey effectively hasn't created a new private sector job since 2001. california is a different story. even though their governance and tax policies are daft, and they have created a high tax high regulation environment, california is an incredible machine, one that will continue to flourish after this current recession and real estate bust are gone. there is more posiitve there than can be destroyed by irresponsible public policies.
if the issue is pointing to a model for the future, for many in this country, the northeast and certainly the midwest is not it. that is why americans vote with their feet.
- keithmswartz
August 4, 2009 at 10:36am