Freedom Line Blog

About a year ago, in the waning days of the Bush Administration, the White House staff was engaged in a massive bout of what are known as “departure photos”, where staff members bring family members to the White House for an opportunity to meet the President before departing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When President Bush learned that my parents were small business owners in California, he teasingly replied “so how long have you been thinking about moving to Texas?”

In a post on the American Enterprise Institute’s “The Enterprise Blog”, Ryan Streeter looks at the salient differences between the economic climates in California and Texas, and discovers what has been increasingly obvious in recent years — The Lone Star State is built for performance; The Golden State is built to fail.

For a detailed side-by-side comparison that shows how Texas is pulling ahead, see this recent report from the American Legislative Exchange Council and this editorial from The Economist (if you’re a subscriber). For a thorough dissection of California’s failures, see my piece from the fall issue of National Affairs.