Such prosperity also led to dramatic environmental improvements. Sustained economic growth enabled huge investment in technologies that have dramatically reduced pollution.
Overall, the personal income data and the action taken by the Texas Legislature show that Texans have reason to be encouraged about their future prosperity.
First and foremost, America’s pretrial justice policies and practices must do no harm.
A publication of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
America’s love affair with the car may be cooling, or at least entering into a new, more open relationship.
It’s enough, now, for Congress to express a desire for a policy outcome and leave the details to an unelected bureaucracy—even when those details involve billions of dollars in taxes and spending, strict mandates and penalties, and government control over vast swaths of the economy.
We must not allow pretrial incarceration to grow in scope like so many other government programs, which often begin with a core function and then metastasize over time.
As the twentieth century so tragically demonstrates, 'common plans' inevitably enforced through totalitarian polity lead to environmental squalor, poverty, and denial of inherent worth of the individual.
You cannot vote the bureaucrats out of office, after all, and yet their administrative edicts 'shall be obeyed, observed, and kept as though they were made by act of Parliament.'
Collectively, the Texas model of low taxes, including no individual income tax, less regulation, and a good lawsuit climate provides an essential path to greater prosperity.
On a broader level, this type of thinking from the city of Austin is emblematic of a much larger problem in Texas: liberty is frequently under threat, especially at the local level.
The cure for America’s long period of slow growth may be as simple as returning to the principles of the American Founding: government’s purpose is to secure liberty.