Ezra does all the work one needs do to put to rest the arguments in today's Ross Douthat offering, which is dedicated to the strange proposition that the U.S. economy should be more like that of Texas. The impossibility of conjuring up huge new oil reserves throughout the continental U.S. notwithstanding, as Ezra explains, Texas' economy is not all that amazing. When you look at economic indicators state, there's no compelling reason to make local political preference your organizing principle. In fact, though Douthat holds up California as the "ideal" state in the view of liberals, that's far from true: California has an insanely dysfunctional budget process, tax code and system of referendums inherited from conservatives in the seventies, and these failings are frequently criticized from the left.But despite the problems with the column, it did provide a useful symbol: Texas' economy is a good metaphor for conservative economic strategy, which seems to focus exclusively on a few small indicators ("size of government," "is there a deficit," "are taxes going down," etc.) at the expense of public policies that actually achieve citizens' goals. That's how you find a state with a balanced budget and much higher poverty rates than the national average, including over one in four children living in poverty, and wind up calling it the ideal model.-- Tim Fernholz
Flickr photo of the Texas State House courtesy user Stuck in Customs.
