Economy

Posts Tagged ‘Economy’

The origins of Texas’s $27 billion budget deficit

March 4, 2011
News, Politics
5994Leave a Comment2011-03-04+16%3A51%3A48jason

If it seems like just a few years ago that the Texas economy was booming, you’d be right. In fact, in 2006 Texas had a budget surplus of over $8 billion. So how is it that just five years later, we’re facing down the barrel of a $27 billion deficit?

Fort Worth Weekly explains that there are a few reasons. First came major changes to the state’s franchise tax in 2006 along with other taxes that were supposed to save local school districts about $7 billion in maintenance and operations taxes. However, the franchise tax didn’t bring in the revenue legislators expected it to.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Economy, Rick Perry, Texas

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

March 1, 2011
News, Politics
5978Leave a Comment2011-03-01+17%3A01%3A44jason

A couple of years ago, I quoted an article from The Economist comparing California, with its high unemployment and oppressive government regulation, to Texas, which has a lower-than-average unemployment rate and business-friendlier environment. While Texas naturally came out ahead, the article did praise California’s “inventive” nature, to which I replied, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

I may have to rethink that.

Economy, Education, Health Care, Rick Perry, Texas

Married fathers the key to ending poverty

June 19, 2010
News
4985Leave a Comment2010-06-19+13%3A50%3A59jason

Father’s Day may just be another holiday manufactured by the greeting card companies (and sponsored by Home Depot), but it could just be the key to ending poverty as we know it.

According to a new study by the Heritage Foundation, having a married father in the household “has the same effect in reducing poverty as adding five to six years to a parent’s education level”:

Economy, Fatherhood, Manhood, Marriage, Parenthood

A stunning visual guide to the census of 1870

March 16, 2010
History
3666Leave a Comment2010-03-16+20%3A08%3A24jason

Just in time for this year’s census, Radical Cartography has published a bunch of amazingly detailed (and beautiful) maps and charts from the census of 1870.

The data essentially reinforce what you would expect to find in the first census since the end of the Civil War: The North had a higher population overall, more foreign-born residents, much fewer African-Americans, and was much wealthier than the South. The percentage of men in the West (California, Nevada, Idaho, etc.) far exceeded the percentage of women. And the federal government, whose expenditures were almost completely limited to the military, saw the national debt explode in order to pay for the Civil War.

American History, Catholocism, Christianity, Civil War, Economy, Mormonism, Slavery, U.S.-Mexican War

Texas gains jobs, Texas loses jobs (Part 2)

November 20, 2009
News
3177Leave a Comment2009-11-20+18%3A07%3A26jason

Last month I pointed out how The Dallas Morning News told us that Texas had simultaneously both gained and lost jobs.

Now we get the sequel.

First, we find out that Texas employers hired 41,700 new employees in October (a number almost identical to the jobs lost a month before). But then in another article (also from the DMN), we find out that Dallas-Fort Worth “lost about 60,000 jobs in October compared to a year earlier.” Both stats, conveniently, come from the Texas Workforce Commission.

Dallas, Economy, Federal Reserve, Media, Texas