Instead of going out and doing the heavy lifting myself on a Texas vs. California update, Victor Davis Hanson [[Corrected. – LP]] has done another of his California is totally screwed pieces, and it’s a cornucopia of facts on California’s decline.
A few tidbits:
Read the whole thing.
Meant to put some of these up with Tuesday’s roundup and just misplaced them:
Six California counties with their own pensions (instead of paying into the Golden State’s Public Employees’ Retirement System) would actually have to pay down $10 billion in pension deficits, versus the $4 billion they currently report bad on inflated rates of return. As a result, these counties would be expected by bondholders to pay out $1.4 billion a year just to pay down their pension deficits, more than double the $640 million they currently pay. For Contra Costa County near San Francisco, the percentage of property tax dollars devoted to pension deficit pay down would increase from 33 percent to 54 percent, crowding out funding for basic municipal activities. In short, these governments would be considered technically insolvent under Moody’s model.
Well well well, maybe David Cameron has some cobbles after all.
Cameron has generally presided over the “wettest” Tory administration the UK has seen since Neville Chamberlain, but today he delivered a veritable pipe bomb of a speech on the future of the European Union.
First, the problems in the Eurozone are driving fundamental change in Europe. Second, there is a crisis of European competitiveness, as other nations across the world soar ahead. And third, there is a gap between the EU and its citizens which has grown dramatically in recent years. And which represents a lack of democratic accountability and consent that is – yes – felt particularly acutely in Britain.
Also this:
If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world’s population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it’s obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life.
While Obama is certainly doing his best to make sure America’s portion of that last figure increases (driving down Europe’s share as a side effect), what Cameron is saying here is both obviously true and absolutely unacceptable to the Euroelite: The European cradle-to-grave welfare state is unsustainable.
And this:
People are increasingly frustrated that decisions taken further and further away from them mean their living standards are slashed through enforced austerity or their taxes are used to bail out governments on the other side of the continent.
Cameron basically stood up and pointed out that the Emperor has no clothes.
Still more:
More of the same will not secure a long-term future for the Eurozone. More of the same will not see the European Union keeping pace with the new powerhouse economies. More of the same will not bring the European Union any closer to its citizens. More of the same will just produce more of the same – less competitiveness, less growth, fewer jobs.
“Hey dumbasses: stop digging!!”
And still more:
I want us to be at the forefront of transformative trade deals with the US, Japan and India as part of the drive towards global free trade. And I want us to be pushing to exempt Europe’s smallest entrepreneurial companies from more EU Directives.
These should be the tasks that get European officials up in the morning – and keep them working late into the night. And so we urgently need to address the sclerotic, ineffective decision making that is holding us back.
That means creating a leaner, less bureaucratic Union, relentlessly focused on helping its member countries to compete.
In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions?
Can we justify a Commission that gets ever larger?
Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multi-billion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven’t worked?
And I would ask: when the competitiveness of the Single Market is so important, why is there an environment council, a transport council, an education council but not a single market council?
And here we have a Tory Prime Minister actually sounding like…a Tory! Who would have thunk it?
Thatcher or Reagan he’s not, but this is bold stuff given the Eurocentric tenor of post-Thatcher UK governments.
Oh: He also wants a referendum on EU membership by 2017.
Reactions from the Eurocratic elite has been predictable: How dare Cameron slander our magnificently robed Emperor? And naturally all of them focus on the referendum than his substantive critique of the increasing collectivist, bureaucratic and unsustainable EU.
Good show, Cameron old boy, good show. (Golf clap)
Six days to the election, and I’ve spent most of the night handing out candy. Six days until we choose to follow the successful Texas Red State path of low taxes and limited government, or the failing Blue State California path of bankruptcy and bigger government.
You may have heard that France’s new socialist President Francois Hollande wants to tax anyone earning more than a million francs a year at 75%.
One of the people that France’s high tax rates have already driven out is supermodel Laetitia Casta.
So remember liberals: When you hike taxes to the stratosphere, you’re driving out this:
Won’t someone please think of the supermodels?
And Lo, Iowahawk did step forth from the heavens, and deliver unto us the Book of Barack.
And it was good.
Spent most of the day checking things off my list and web-surfing Creepy Pasta. So here’s a quick roundup of Texas vs. California tidbits:
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Today brings news that Austin just surpassed San Francisco in population to become the 13th largest city in the country. In fact, Texas had six of the top seven fastest growing cities over the past 14 months: Round Rock, Austin, Plano, McKinney, Frisco, and Denton placed 2-7, topped only by a post-Katrina New Orleans. And at only 7,000-odd residents behind Jacksonville and Indianapolis, expect Austin to be the 11th largest city in the country the next time this list is updated.
And that news gives me a great excuse to to another roundup of Texas vs. California!
Lest you think this is some kind of fluke, or that taxes are not the determining factor in this “escape from NY and California,” it isn’t just Texas that is gaining all these fleeing residents. The U.S. Census reported that all of the top 15 states for population growth during the past decade are no tax or low tax states like Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Utah, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. It seems Americans are smarter than politicians give them credit for- they are voting with their feet for lower taxes, pro business attitude, and more economic freedom.
Because no state in the union has a better economy, let’s look “up close and personal” at the Texas miracle. Texas practices what I proudly call “Wild West Cowboy Capitalism.” And it works!
Texas has zero state income tax, zero capital gains taxes, and zero death taxes. It is a “right to work” state where employees may choose to join a union, but are never forced to. It is pro business and anti-lawyer (discouraging class action lawsuits and the first state to pass a “Loser Pays” law). Texas is also tight-fisted with welfare and entitlement benefits- unlike New York and California. The result of this limited government attitude is people with high incomes, assets, and ambition are moving into Texas, while those who lack work ethic, and feel entitled to handouts are moving out. Good riddance.
But the most important attribute of Texas is that its constitution limits the time that politicians can meet. The Texas Legislature is limited to meeting only 4 months every other year. That pretty much explains everything. Texas and my state of Nevada have no state income taxes and the fastest growing populations in America…not in spite of, but because the politicians aren’t allowed to sit in their seats all year long thinking of new ways to re-distribute income, impede business, and destroy jobs.
Good evening. I’m not Chevy Chase, and you’re not either. (Unless the real Chevy Chase is reading this, in which case: 1. Loved you on the original SNL, and 2. Stop being such a total dick.)
The EuroZone crises has now reached the stage where European media is doing live updates.
Take a look at this update: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has mooted the idea that Greece should hold a referendum on the euro alongside its second round of elections next month.” Well, no use even pretending that the Greeks have a say in their own future, is there?
The Zuckermutterobergroupenführer has spoken!
In other EuroDoom news:
Over on Big Journalism, Joel Pollack makes a point I’ve been emphasizing in my EuroDoom roundups: Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it hasn’t even been tried:
The media insists on describing recent election results in Europe as a blow to “austerity,” when in fact Europe’s recent policies are anything but. Government spending has continued to rise across much of Europe, and even those countries that have made small cuts have not reduced government spending to pre-recession levels.
He in turn references this Veronique de Rugy piece at NRO (though the link is broken, so I had to go Googling) which also gives us this handy chart:
None of these “austerity” measures eliminated deficit spending, and none addressed the issue that’s driving all of Europe (and us) bankrupt, namely unwillingness to carry out structural reforms of the welfare state. The few tiny reforms that have been undertaken have been, as NRO’s Michael Tanner notes, ridiculously timid, and even those have been heavily weighted in future years. “So far, European governments haven’t even been willing to take a penknife to the welfare state, let alone an axe.” Plus a huge round of tax hikes:
It should come as no surprise that all those new taxes, combined with a lack of spending restraint, has threatened to throw Europe back into a double-dip recession. Is it any wonder that French, Greek, and British voters were anxious to “throw the bums out”?
Wait, this sounds familiar. Tax hikes on the rich accompanied by vague promises of future spending restraint, while refusing to restructure entitlement programs. That sounds a lot like . . . Barack Obama.
Actual austerity would mean (at a minimum) reducing spending to the amount of money actually taken in. As best I can tell, none of the PIIGS, or France, or the UK has undertaken such real austerity. That “severe” Greek austerity that just caused a change in government? It reduced Greece’s official deficit spending from 9.0% of GDP to 7.5% of GDP. They didn’t even want Greece to stop digging a hole, they just wanted them to dig more slowly.
I suspect that some 20-30 years hence, this mania for deficit spending will be seen as absolute madness, with future generations unable to fathom how politicians were so resolute in destroying their countries economies in order to maintain the welfare state, a folly for the ages. Hyperinflation is probably already baked into the Greek pie for its inevitable exit from the Eurozone, the only question is whether it will be Argentina 1999-2002 style hyperinflation, or Weimer Germany 1919-1923 style hyprinflation, and how much of Europe (and the rest of the world) will follow in their tracks.