Topic: Rick Perry

[V00D00BR3W]

Does this guy merit his own thread? If he turns into as formidable an opponent as many are predicting/fearing (depending on your orientation), perhaps.

At any rate, here's a good article by Paul Krugman that seeks to dismantle the logic behind Rick Perry's jobs-based campaign positioning.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-texas-unmiracle.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.

Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.

So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.

It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.

Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.

In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.

So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.

For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.

And just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there’s a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and that this is one area where Texas does in fact do something right.

But what does population growth have to do with job growth? Well, the high rate of population growth translates into above-average job growth through a couple of channels. Many of the people moving to Texas — retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life — bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low — almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average — and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State.

So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed.

If this picture doesn’t look very much like the glowing portrait Texas boosters like to paint, there’s a reason: the glowing portrait is false.

Still, does Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole? No.

What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.

In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs — because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem.

So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas’s crippling drought.

[PG]

Does this guy merit his own thread?

As the paug's resident Texan, I'm gonna go ahead and say "no."

[kellerb]

Does this guy merit his own thread?

As the paug's resident Texan, I'm gonna go ahead and say "no."

I agree.  But I think his hair merits it's own thread.  Have you seen that head of hair!?  Mitt's finally got a serious opponent.

[mattstick]

Four more wars! Four more wars!

[goodabouthood]

Does this guy merit his own thread?

As the paug's resident Texan, I'm gonna go ahead and say "no."

I agree.  But I think his hair merits it's own thread.  Have you seen that head of hair!?  Mitt's finally got a serious opponent.

HA! Only if Trump had time to make it a 3 way race!

[goodabouthood]

Also, here's a good article on how he "balanced" the budget

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/rick-perrys-budget-sleight-of-hand/2011/08/15/gIQAuiGCHJ_blog.html

[rowjimmy]

Put the secessionist in charge. That should be good for the country.

[kellerb]

Put the secessionist in charge. That should be good for the country.

That means we can secede, right?

[slslbs]

yes we can
'Paug Nation

[V00D00BR3W]

Put the secessionist in charge. That should be good for the country.

Could play well here in South Carolina.

[runawayjimbo]

I don't see how he doesn't win the nomination:  he'll win or finish close in Iowa, stay close to Romney in NH, win SC and Florida and at that point it's over. Unless Palin gets in and shakes things up (which would totally be worth it for the entertainment value), I think he's the nominee and, unless the economy turns around, the next president. Then he'll use to power of the office to compel the country to pray for the economy to turn around and lo, thou shall be saved.

[V00D00BR3W]

For whatever it's worth, here's one writer's reasonably compelling treatise on why Perry won't win (the nomination or the general):

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/why-rick-perry-wont-win#disqus_thread

[runawayjimbo]

For whatever it's worth, here's one writer's reasonably compelling treatise on why Perry won't win (the nomination or the general):

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/why-rick-perry-wont-win#disqus_thread

I agree with everything in that article and still I think Perry will win the nomination. It's definitely a compelling case for Romney, but I don't believe GOP primary voters will be able to get past that pesky Mormonism. And if Bachmann or Palin makes a serious run I'll eat my own children. That makes Perry the nominee by default.

[goodabouthood]

For whatever it's worth, here's one writer's reasonably compelling treatise on why Perry won't win (the nomination or the general):

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/why-rick-perry-wont-win#disqus_thread

I agree with everything in that article and still I think Perry will win the nomination. It's definitely a compelling case for Romney, but I don't believe GOP primary voters will be able to get past that pesky Mormonism. And if Bachmann or Palin makes a serious run I'll eat my own children. That makes Perry the nominee by default.

Be careful with what you say. We hold people accountable for their posts here at the paug. 




(except when we don't) 

ETA: From the comments section of that article (which are quite amusing actually)

Nothing is stopping liberals from voluntarily paying more in taxes each year or deciding to forego any eligible IRS tax deductions.  If you think people should pay more step up to the plate and voluntarily pay 10% more in taxes come April.  Raising taxes for government redistribution of wealth during these economic times would cause the wealthy and the job-creators to spend less money on goods and services.  The result would be the United States (and the world) plunging into a depression.  To be fair, tax cuts on the wealthy may, for example, permit someone to build an extra $25 million yacht (for example).  But imagine how many jobs are created with the design, building and selling of the yacht?  That transaction creates jobs.  Taking the $25 million and giving it to some administrative agency does not create anything.

 

[mattstick]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/rick-perry-climate-change-is-a-hoax-drummed-up-by-scientists-looking-to-make-money.php?ref=fpa