California, with 39.5 million people, and Texas, with 28.3 million, are two of America’s four majority-minority states, the other two being Hawaii and New Mexico. As such, the education systems’ effectiveness in the two most diverse states that 1-in-5 Americans calls home is of vital interest to the rest of the nation. Because of the...
Continuing a series of California and Texas comparisons, this piece examines the two most-populous states’ oil and natural gas policies and outcomes. Policy matters. Even if a nation or state is endowed with significant natural resources, history shows that tax rates, regulatory burdens and rule of law largely determine whether those resources are harnessed or...
The two most-populous states, California and Texas, are home to one in five Americans. More alike than different in many aspects—diverse population and economy, abundant natural resources—the two states differ in one important respect: policy. With some exceptions, California is progressively liberal while Texas is free market conservative. These states’ similarities and differences invite comparisons...
The two most-populous states, California and Texas, are home to 67.8 million of America’s 325.7 million residents, some 20.8% of the population. These two big states are alike in many key respects, even while being very different in others. Both states are large in land area and population, blessed with abundant natural resources, and diverse....
States with a lower tax burden, such as Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Texas, created private sector jobs at almost double the rate of their high tax peers in the first nine months of the year, according to new government data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published its monthly state-level jobs report last Friday, detailing...
The San Francisco Business Times featured a series of articles in mid-October chronicling the “Bay Area exodus” as California’s high housing costs, congestion, the nation’s highest marginal income tax rate, and heavy regulatory burden act to push out all but high-end tech companies. The business journal assembled a handy list of 31 San Francisco-region companies...
The Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, six months into former President Obama’s first term. The economy continued to shed jobs until the following March. Manufacturing was particularly hard hit, with almost 2.3 million manufacturing jobs—some 1 in 6—lost between January 2008 and March 2010. As is the case during recoveries, jobs bounced back,...
On June 1, 2016 at a town hall sponsored by PBS, Eric Cottonham, a steel workers’ union member from Indiana, asked President Barack Obama about manufacturing jobs creation, saying, “All of our jobs have left, or are in the process of leaving.”01:07 In response, Obama noted that some jobs have gone overseas and that “I’ve been trying...
In his first debate with Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from El Paso, Sen. Ted Cruz promoted Texas’ low taxes and light regulations as essential to job creation, citing as evidence, “The cost of a one-way U-Haul from California to Texas is more than 300 percent the cost the other way around.” Why mention U-Haul at...
The term “lobbyist” was first used in 1842 to describe people seeking to influence members of Congress. The name was descriptive because they’d hang out in the lobbies of the hotels where senators and representatives would stay when they were in session in Washington, D.C., which 176 years ago was far shorter than today. Americans...
On September 24, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released its annual national crime statistics for 2017. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics show that major crime rates are down nationwide with both violent crime and property crime rates in decline. The national crime rate peaked in 1991 and has generally trended downward with crime last year...
Once again, California has the highest poverty rate in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent report, the Golden State’s Supplemental Poverty Measure averaged 19 percent between 2015 and 2017. Nationwide, poverty dropped in 2017 from 14.7 percent to 14.1 percent, but California’s rate was proportionately 35 percent higher than the national average. In...