There’s been a nationwide referendum on the effectiveness of leftist government in the U.S. over the past decade and guess what? The leftists lost, but you certainly wouldn’t learn that from the mainstream media.
According to a report issued by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — which has been attacked by leftists nationwide — eight of the top 10 performing states based on GDP growth, population shifts, and changes in non-farm payroll jobs are solidly Republican, with Texas leading the pack.
As Jonathan Williams, director of ALEC’s Center for State Fiscal Reform, put it, “. . . people are voting with their feet in favor of these states.” Which proves for at least some Americans performance still trumps promises and opportunity is to be prized over “fairness.”
My own home state, California, limps in at 43rd in the nation and the low ranking is richly deserved. If it weren’t for the weather, which fortunately Democrats have not been able to ruin so far, California would no doubt be even lower.
What’s more, a recent report from the Census Bureau has five of the top 10 fastest growing cities over the past two years located in Texas. So what exactly does Texas have going for it, because it certainly isn’t the weather.
John Merline, writing for
Investor’s Business Daily, says the winning states feature policies closely related to economic growth “including various tax rates, workers compensation costs, minimum wage laws, right to work laws, government jobs as a share of the workforce, and debt service as a share of tax revenues.”
Merline concludes, “IBD analysis of the data finds that conservative, Republican states vastly outperformed liberal, Democratic states over the past decade on jobs and economic growth, and attracted more people to their states.”
In other words, Americans who want to work, want to contribute, and want a better life for themselves and their families are flocking to states that reward initiative and keep government interference to a minimum. Besides Texas, those states are Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, Alaska and Montana.
For Americans to achieve, politicians have to stop interfering, because Big Government means small people. And that’s why there may be no hope for those states at the bottom. Because the independent, motivated citizens who would vote for smaller government may have already left the premises.