Trashing success

There’s something about a success that doesn’t fit the ideology that brings out the worst in reasoning. Bloomberg provides an example in taking after Texas job growth.

It’s easy to be charmed by Texas, but it would be a mistake to think the state might serve as a national model. Texas created almost 250,000 jobs in the past two years, nearly as many as the other 49 states combined.

They explain away this phenomena by citing “hard to duplicate factors” like immigration, demographics, and “unusually low wages.”

Favorable demographics and low wages are one way to build an economy. There are better paths to follow. Congressional ratification of pending free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea is one. … Congress should also allow companies sitting on overseas profits to bring those earnings home at a corporate-tax rate lower than the current 35 percent, in exchange for increasing worker head counts. An alternative to a profit repatriation holiday is a payroll-tax credit, which would go to employers for each worker added. … Another promising initiative is the Layoff Prevention Act, … Congress should also consider increasing spending on public works

Consider what is wrong here. One is that the comparison between “Dishwashers in Texas averaged $7.90 an hour in 2009, 10.3 percent below their peers nationwide” as a contrast to free trade treaties. Another is that the suggested list of the ‘right way’ to do it is all about governmental regulation including many things that have been tried and failed.

Texas irks the socialists and this editorial is a good example of why and how. Reason and reality go by the board in the desire for government to control the market for labor as well as manipulate business. Texas shows what can happen if government can get out of the way. “Texas created almost 250,000 jobs in the past two years, nearly as many as the other 49 states combined.” But Bloomberg things that isn’t the best way to go. The implication is that there are better ways to prosperity than gainful employment. It is the sort of implication that leads to considering just what values are behind it.