Poor Texas
Matthew Yglesias notes that Tom DeLay is under the strange misapprehension that Texas is rich thanks to its low taxes and lack of regulation.
Just one minor issue: you really shouldn’t use median income, which can be distorted to the extent that inequality differs across states. You should instead use income per capita. As it happens, the comparison is even more striking. Texas, with its glorious free market regime and deeply incentive-creating 25 percent rate of health uninsurance, has a per capita income of $37,187; nanny-state New Jersey, with its oppressive taxes and regulation of everything (what it takes to get permission to cut down a dying tree … ), has a per capita income of $49,194.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Krugman Blows a Raspberry at Tom Delay
This is funny. It's a blog entry on Krugman's NY Times blog site:
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2 comments:
It would be interesting to carry this on to all of the states. I think Idaho has to be somewhere behind Texas. Still, with all the wealth in Texas you would assume that there would be a better standard of living there. Its good to know that the system is not working there and I would think it doesn't work anywhere, except in bizzaro world.
Thomas: You might find this site interesting. It allows you to select a variety of statistics and show the US states either in alphabetic order or ordered by any one of the many statistics available.
The sad fact is that Tom Delay is blinded by his ideology. He thinks of "his state" as doing better than it does because his party has managed to convince a lot of Texans that they are virtuous, hard working, and consequently must be "doing well". His belief blinds him to the fact that help is not provided to those in need so bright, hard-working kids from poor families never get a chance to get ahead. His ideology of "bootstrap yourself" condemns the poor to a cycle of poverty and underachievement.
His conservative ideology of "individual responsibility" has some merits, but he takes it to extremes. He forgets the other great moral of community, i.e. the obligation to present the next generation with an "even playing field" which allows merit to advance you, not wealth, power, or social connections.
I'm not foolish enough to believe that all the poor can rise if you wave a wand of "social justice" over them (or throw money at the problem). But to condemn the children to unequal schools and under-funded opportunities (no libraries, youth clubs, or other self-help social institutions) because of an ideology that lets the rich wipe their hands of any communal responsibility toward the next generation is cruel and evil.
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