Texas i stället för Kalifornien

För några månader sedan utkom Roland Poirier Martinssons och min bok ”Är Texas det nya Kalifornien ?” och det gör att jag gärna läser artikel som just använder dessa två delstater som argument i den politiska debatten inför mellanårsvalet i november. Nu senast är det en skribent i Wall Street Journal som drar en lans för Texas.

Bradley Allen skriver bl a såhär:

”As a Californian, I am pained to say that three of the nation’s five fastest-growing cities—and seven of the top 15—are in Texas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Much of this growth is spurred by the state’s booming energy industry. Innovations such as hydraulic fracturing, ”fracking,” and horizontal drilling are making the state’s gas and oil fields more productive than ever, attracting newcomers with high-paying jobs.

But the energy boom is only part of the story. In April, Toyota announced it is moving its U.S. headquarters from California to Texas. Lower energy costs were a factor, but so too were the Lone Star State’s lower taxes and far fewer regulatory burdens. If states are truly laboratories of democracy, Texas’ pro-growth policies serve as an example of the way forward in a slow recovery for my home state of California and the country as a whole.

Texas has no state income tax, while California’s top 13.3% marginal rate is the highest in the country. Electricity prices are about 50%-88% higher in California compared with Texas due to the Golden State’s renewable-energy mandate, and its gas is 70-80 cents per gallon more expensive because of taxes and blending requirements. A recent California State University study found the total loss of gross state output for California each year due to regulatory costs was $492 billion, equivalent to the loss of 3.8 million jobs each year.

Similar to California’s high income tax, the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% (plus another 4.1% average state rate) is the highest among developed nations. These high taxes discourage growth and investment, which means fewer U.S. jobs. To emulate Texas, our policy makers in Washington need to lower corporate and individual tax rates to encourage investment and make the U.S. more competitive with the rest of the World

Och han pekar också på den mardröm som det groteska amerikanska regleringsraseriet skapar:

Like California, the U.S. is a regulatory nightmare. Today there are 3,305 federal regulations in the pipeline, and the 2013 Federal Register contained 80,000 pages of new rules, regulations and notices. A recent report by George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center found that the cost of regulatory rules in 2012 under President Obama exceeded the cost of all rules in ”the entire first terms of Presidents Bush and Clinton, combined.”

Härom dagen lyssnade jag på en podcast från Political Wire där Philip K Howard intervjuades. Han formulerar sig mycket drastiskt om just regleringsraseriet. Howard kommenterade i intervjun bl a det faktum att den senaste mätningen av amerikanska folkets åsikt om kongressen var lägre än någonsin (7 % uttryckte uppskattning). Han påpekade att det inte nödvändigtvis är den politiska låsningen mellan de båda stora partierna som lett till detta – det kan vara så att det är det politiska systemet i USA som det nu fungerar leder till sådana låsningar.

Fareed Zakaria, som nyligen besökte Almedalen, har resonerat på snarlikt sätt om det illa fungerande amerikanska politiska systemet.

http://www.commongood.org/pages/philip-k.-howard