Fans of Texas say the state’s lower taxes, lower cost of living and light-handed regulatory system have created a booming economy and thousands of new jobs. People are flocking to the Lone Star State to find employment. According to the Census Bureau, those new arrivals included 64,000 emigrants from California in 2012 alone.
Texas boosters insist that the numbers are clear proof that people -- and businesses -- are fleeing the overbearing, big-government policies of Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-dominated Legislature.
Unfortunately for proponents of that argument, the numbers also indicate that 43,000 people left Texas for California in 2012. As shares of each state’s population, 63,000 Californians and 43,000 Texans add up to the same insignificant number -- 0.0016%. And liberals could fairly ask: Were those 43,000 exiting Texans fleeing the appallingly low rates of healthcare coverage, the lack of investment in education, the wretched environmental policies and low wages in Republican-ruled Texas?
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When Texas Gov. Rick Perry was running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, he boasted about how his state’s economy was a jobs machine, leaving it to his opponents to point out that the biggest share of those jobs were in government or in businesses that supplied the government -- not exactly pure fruits of an unencumbered free market.
• California has Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Texas has oil and gas.
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• California has Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. Texas has Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert.
• In California, billionaires get taxed more to pay for programs for the poor. In Texas, billionaires get to keep their money and the poor go without healthcare.
• Brown got voters to approve a tax hike to help balance the budget and fund education. Perry balanced the budget by slashing spending on education.
• In lots of places in California, it’s tough to live on a middle-class family budget. In lots of places in Texas, it’s hard to live outside a church-going, football-loving, white, heterosexual lifestyle.
Oh, and that whole "Everybody's leaving California" false narrative? Fueled by robust growth in the San Francisco Bay Area, California's population continued its slow, steady ascent last year, adding 1,000 residents each day in 2013 to bring the number of people in the nation's largest state to 38.3 million.
The report released Wednesday by the state Department of Finance underscored broad patterns that its authors said would continue in coming years: residents trickling out of rural areas and consolidating around urban centers, and increasing numbers of people in apartments and other multi-family housing developments.
Every county in Southern California grew. Los Angeles County topped the 10-million mark following 0.8% growth, and the city of Los Angeles neared 4 million people after growing by more than 38,000 people, or a full percentage point.
Despite the repeated bleating of cynics, doomsayers and dolts like Rick Perry, it looks like plenty of people are still California dreamin'.
