CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:
TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D.
ELIAS
"THE
TRUTH ON CALIFORNIA'S HEALTHY ECONOMY"
For
many years, Californians have heard "experts" (read: folks who
figure to profit by touting the theory) claim their state suffers from a lousy
business climate and is steadily losing middle class population and jobs
to other states, especially arch-rival Texas.
The current national secretary of
Energy, Rick Perry, even made radio and television commercials while governor
of Texas touting the advantages of moving there. And there have been moves: a
major one is the ongoing shift of Toyota’s U.S. headquarters from Torrance to
Plano, Tex., outside Dallas.
Through all the rhetoric, some of it
orchestrated by corporate move specialists plainly out to fatten their own
wallets, California continues growing, with population now above 39 million,
more than the entire country of Canada and 12 million more than fast-growing
Texas.
Yes, plenty of youthful, educated
Californians feel compelled to move away by the high prices of real estate in
the state’s largest urban areas. And some corporations try to accommodate those
moves by establishing satellite facilities in places like Boise and Tucson,
where homes can be bought for less than one-third the price of comparable real
estate in coastal California counties.
But there’s a reason California keeps
growing despite it all: the state’s economy is fundamentally healthy. A new,
comprehensive study from the business-oriented personal finance WalletHub
website (https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-economies/21697/)
finds this state’s economy is not only strong, but is the second-strongest in
America, trailing only Washington state.
WalletHub ranks California in the top
five among states in startup activity, percentage of jobs in high-tech
industries and patents granted to individuals. Texas, meanwhile, ranks 20th
overall and is not among the top five states in any significant category.
This comes despite the fact that Texas
and other states not in the top five overall often offer businesses discounted
land, plus years of tax benefits, in exchange for moving.
What gives California its top-flight
rating? The state is 7th in the U.S. in growth of gross domestic
production, 15th in exports per capita despite its humongous
population, tenth in median household income despite its host of low-income
undocumented immigrants, eighth in upswing of nonfarm payrolls and last year
had the seventh-largest state budget surplus per capita.
None of this shuts up the critics. And
no one can seem to stop Texans from trying to denigrate California. While he’s
no Rick Perry in the department of foot-in-mouth rhetoric, current Texas Gov.
Greg Abbott recently disparaged his own state capital of Austin by saying “I
will not allow Austin, Texas, to California-ize the Lone Star State.” Of
course, Austin has been trying to do that to itself for years, creating a mini
version of Silicon Valley, but with lower real estate prices.
The oil and natural gas price bust,
fueled in part by a fracking-induced surplus and also by California’s
pioneering and widely-emulated emphasis on renewable energy, has had plenty of
deleterious effects on Texas.
For example, average wages in
California – higher than those in Texas for decades – grew much faster the last
two years here than there. The California economy overall outgrew Texas’ last
year by 2.9 percent to 0.4 percent, reported the Houston Chronicle.
This doesn’t make California perfect.
For example, the state’s real poverty rate (based on average income compared to
basic expenses) is the nation’s highest, chiefly because of high rents and home
prices. But that statistic also is flawed: When four-bedroom coastal homes
routinely sell for $2 million and up, they tend to skew the average real estate
price that’s part of the “real poverty” calculation. The same for rents when
three-bedroom houses in coastal cities often go for $6,000 per month or more.
The upshot is that the folks Gov.
Jerry Brown likes to call “declinists” have been exaggerating California’s
impending demise for many years. Reality is the same as it’s been for most of
the last century and a half: California outstrips the rest of America in almost
every economic area.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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