Texas Economy, Environment & kitties
 

I love how the Texan candidates preach about their zero income tax...yeah...well not every state houses 95% of the US oil and gas industry. Obviously Texas politics can't be a typical model on how to run every state in the union.

then why are all the businesses from CA leaving the state; lots for TX? They have no stakes in oil.

What about your state? you cant even afford to bury your dead.



how's this:

We also make Toyota trucks...

That's my point. The model doesn't work for CA or other states because neither their people nor the industry can be the crutch like oil and gas is to Texas. I do agree with you. Businesses move to TX because there's a lot to offer there. Not every state can match their policies and not go bankrupt.

I'm sure if Chicago was built on an oil and gas reserve we wouldn't have an income tax either. This city runs better with corruption than it ever will with the local/state gov.

Take Pat Quinn for example. Teachers unions across the sate sent letters to support him. What's the first thing he does once elected? Cuts the education budget and passes a bill to give state funding to illegals for college education. What a fucking moron. No wonder the state is broke.

yes they could. Revenue is rerely the problem, even in CA; the problem is almost always spending.

All you need to learn from this, is that states with lower corporate taxes attract businesses.


But here's a bigger example:

not big enough?

I may begin to see the light. Ill research more on this. It is enlightening.

The wasteful spending couldn't be more true.

Resist being a Keynesian! Money doesn't dissappear if not spent by gov't. The best thing for the economy is more income; government is capable of redistributing how income is spent, but it isn’t a vehicle for increasing income. Government doesn’t care if it’s “losing” money, as long as it’s spending something.

I'm sorry but this woman is either an idiot or (most likely) pandering to idiots. As an environmental biologist this frustrates me to no end. She either has done no research at all or (again, most likely) is lying through her teeth.

EDIT: This is not a smear. This is legitamate political discussion. I agree that smearing does nothing but weaken your own cause because it is immature to make fun of physical or other flaws when real issues should be addressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ph...on_Dioxide.png


Orly?

All it proves is that politicians don't know shit. as you can see, she knows as much as her wikipedia search provided.

I do know that george soros and al gore stand to make a shit ton of money on cap and trade, while businesses whom cannot afford carbon credits will be hurt, as well as the coal industry which provides 75% of our energy.

I've always thought it was odd how cap and trade would affect the energy industry.

While oil and coal are not direct* competitors for most forms of energy, the advent of electric and hybrid vehicles will pit them against each other in the transportation sector.

Electric producers will suffer as they are immediately penalized under this system, while oil will remain (comparatively) cheap as a transportation fuel source since the penalty is transferred to the end user.


I may be wrong as I haven't done much research on this (despite my aversion to the policy)...so feel free to jump in.

I was referring to Blumenauer

how to be rich like Soros:

Invest heavily in competition (ie, GR$$N)
lobby gov't
pass laws that benefit you & remove competition
??????
profit.

Yeah. Earths atmosphere used to be dominated by CO2. It was also uninhabitable by aerobes (almost all animals, including humans). Bachman tries to reason that because CO2 "only" makes up 3% of the atmosphere and that humans only contribute 3% of that, that it can't possibly be bad. Well, ricin is a natural product of the castor oil plant (Ricinus communis). It only takes 22 micrograms per kilogram of body weight to kill a human. That means that if you body has .000000022% ricin by mass, you'll die. "But that can't be righ can it? That seems like such a small number."

Edit: I also wanted to add that rate of change makes all the difference. If you notice, the graph on wikipedia was on the order of millions of years. If you zoomed WAY in to the last 150 years the slopes of CO2 increase would be WAY steeper than what you see when you are looking at a magnitude of millions of years.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/relea...2_carbon.shtml

cool, so what did you prove by exposing her?

Its not in this thread since it was moved but someone posted the pic of her eating and someone came to her defense. I just wanted to put some legitamate criticism out there instead of "ha ha she looks funny".

it just proves that politicans arent subject matter experts. while it's great that she combats cap and tax, trying to say that co2 isn't a greenhouse gas - the product of combustion, is streching things.

this can be said for almost everyone is washington on all sides. just wait till the "super congress" starts hearing lobbyists.

Yeah. Honestly all politicians (and for that matter all people) say things that you either don't agree with or don't believe. You just pick the person you disagree with the least and vote for them. I usually keep my political views to myself, but sometimes when science is involved I can't help myself.

Texas also has a strong tech and telecom industry. Other states also have significant exposure to natural resources - some are more open to utilizing it than others.

Perry could emphasize that the primary source of success is not the existence of those resources, but the willingness to utilize those in a pro-growth manner. An example could be the Marcellus shale structure (PA vs NY). Tort reform, corporate tax structures (not just marginal rates), etc all play their part.

Another thing TX seems to have had going for it was lessons learned from the S&L crisis. In many of the states hit the hardest by the housing boom and bust, it was fueled by the leverage extended via speculative cash-out refinancing. To the best of my understanding, those loan programs were not available in Texas.

Thus, their housing market never over-heated and the drops in prices have been much less severe.

Chicago model:


gotta go to 20:00

Braineack - you do your screen name a disservice. In what way is an incidence of police brutality in any way connected to the Chicago economic (or political) model?

Or, said another way, do you believe police abuse of authority does not occur in Texas?

No, I can't spell Brainiac. I'm doing just fine.


I was going to post in my police has militarized thread, but oh well. Chicago pretty much invented crooked cops.

Is this a better example for you?

Remember, IL cant afford to bury its dead.



lol, Bruce, video is great.

Yes; that seems more relevant to this topic. However, it would be better if you could find an example of a Texas state fair that made a net profit or was cash flow positive or somehow superior to the Chicago model.

this is all i got for you:

In Utah, the state fair received $675,200 from the pockets of state taxpayers to keep afloat this year.

The 2011 Indiana State Fair, which was marred by the tragic August 13 collapse of a concert stage and resulted in the deaths of five fairgoers, cost state taxpayers $600,000. That’s on top of the $1.6 million Hoosier State lawmakers frittered on the fair in 2010.

North Dakota’s fair is schedule to receive $365,000 in tax dollars each of the next two years.

But this year, Wyoming is the grand champion of state fair subsidies. Since 2005, taxpayers in the nation’s least populated state paid out an astounding $10.6 million – a cost of $50.99 to each family in Wyoming – just to keep the state’s failing fair from going belly up.

Fortunately, some states are wising up. In 2009, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, in one of the few good moves she made as governor, took the state’s fair off the dole. The decision to shutter the Michigan State Fair now saves Michiganders an estimated half-million dollars per year.

For Wyoming taxpayers, however, state “wel-fair” will only get worse before it gets better. The state legislature has promised up to $250,000 in taxpayer-funded grants to finance a celebration honoring the Wyoming State Fair’s 100th anniversary next year. That quarter-million dollar giveaway is on top of another $1.4 million already earmarked for the fair in the state’s 2012 budget.

Maryland state fair subsidy - $603,500 plus $95,000 to the fair board for an ag education subisdy.




Now....

The State Fair of Texas is run by







wait for it...














State Fair of Texas, Inc. - A business.

State Fair of Texas, Inc. is a private, non-profit corporation. It receives NO funds from state, federal or local government and is entirely self-supporting.

So Alaska and the rest of the lower 48 only account for 5% of the US oil and gas industry?

There are 7 states with zero state income tax, and another 2 that only tax dividends and interest. How do they do it without the benefit of oil and gas production? (hint: tax other shit really high)

Texas State fair also has fried beer. mmmm, fried beer.

to be fair, wyoming is one of those states... they are the worst.

I already posted how TX does a state fair - it's privatized.

That's how it's done in Florida. No income tax because no income.

But lots of tourists.

Can you expound on this? Take Florida, for example. There is no state income tax and no state death tax. Most counties I am familiar with have sales taxes around the 6-7% range.

Are you suggesting that property taxes are higher than states with high income taxes? I am trying to think of what other taxes might be included. Vehicle registrations?

I have a feeling you have a super dry delivery in real life which comes across in text - either way, leaving some people wondering if you are serious.

I pay state, property, and sales tax, doubled sales tax in city.

For my own interest, a quick search found the following: using a five year time span (2005-2009 which is recent but probably aberrant) to compare property taxes using medians as a percentage of home value and income:

Orange County, FL (i.e. Orlando) ~ 0.9%; 3.1%
San Diego County, CA (i.e. San Diego) ~ 0.5%; 3.3%
Mercer County, NJ (i.e. Trenton) ~ 1.9%; 6.5%
Dallas County, TX (i.e. Dallas) ~ 2.1%; 4.1%
Knox County, TN (i.e. Knoxville) ~ 0.7%; 1.7%
Fairfax County, VA (i.e. Fairfax) ~ 0.8%; 3.5%

It would then be interesting to add sales tax, state income tax for median income level, etc, to get a comparison. I am sure some group has already done that.

Note: I understand most MSAs are comprised of multiple counties (Orlando is best represented by Orange, Seminole and parts of Osceola, for example). Please feel free to note better substitutes.

Source = Tax Foundation

This is slightly misleading.

The base tax rate in San Diego County is 1% of assessed value, plus Mello-Roos and other fees.

HOWEVER, there is a caveat. Because of the astronomical appreciation in property values over the past several decades, people were finding themselves priced out of their own homes due to re-appraisals. Thus, we have Proposition 13.

What Prop 13 does is to limit the amount by which anybody's property tax bill can increase to 2% per year, regardless of any change in the value of the property.

So let's say that you bought your house in 2001 for $200,000. At that time, your property tax was $2,000 per year (we'll just use the base 1% rate.)

The very next year, your home was re-appraised, and found to have a value of $600,000 (this does actually happen here.) Without Prop 13, your 2002 property tax would have jumped to $6,000 overnight. Because of Prop 13, however, they can only raise your property tax to $2,040. Then in 2003 it goes up to $2,080, in 2004 it increases to $2,122, and so on.

Unfortunately, this only applies to the house that you already own. If you were to sell your house and then move across the street into a completely identical house, your property tax would immediately jump to $6,000 per year, and the person who bought your old house would also pay $6,000 per year.

It's unfair to those of us who moved to California in the past decade as compared to those who have lived here since the 80s.


So, from a practical standpoint, that data is skewed because it includes all of the people who have been living here for a while and are thus sheltered by Prop 13, who are paying far less in actual property tax than the "proper" amount relative to the actual value of their house.

That's a great point; I did not look through the methodology in enough detail to be able to determine if that would be accounted for or not.

Assuming that data under-reports the actual property tax burden, it could mean that San Diego has a higher county sales tax (~7.75 - 8.75% vs 6 - 7%), higher state income tax (call it ~4% - 6% marginal for median income of ~$50k vs 0%), comparable or higher property taxes as a percentage of income and percentage of home value and a death tax?

Oh, and housing is probably on the order of 30% - 50% more expensive. And we have no vehicle inspections or CARB.

You do have us beat with the weather, though. Damn rain and humidity... :D

I'm sure that similar issues in the methodology exist in other areas as well.

In Florida, you guys have the Homestead Exemption, which in my opinion is much fairer than Prop 13, as it applies to everyone, regardless of how long you have lived there. Last I checked, the first $50,000 of your primary home's value was exempt from taxation, and given that in some parts of FL you can actually buy a decent home for not much more than $50,000, it's possible to live there nearly tax-free.


You know, I honestly have no idea what our local sales tax rate is.

(checks some receipts.)

7.75% in CA, plus 1% in Carlsbad. I assume the rest of SDC is similar.

We don't have any city or county income taxes, but CA income tax is pretty steep. Most folks fall into the 5-8% range.



I'm not sure what you mean here. More expensive than what?

If you mean to compare CA to FL, housing here is more like 200% - 1000% more expensive. My 700 ft/sq apartment is $1,600 a month, and a house that would cost $90,000 in one of the gulf-coast towns might fetch $500-$700k here. And that's post-recession pricing. In '05, you couldn't buy a decent 3/2 detached house around here for much less then a million.

That's why Prop 13 was such a big deal. Can you even imagine paying $1,000 per month in property tax? That's more than most people's mortgages, and we're not talking about a mansion in Beverly Hills, that's just any ole' single-family home in a tightly packed cookie-cutter subdivision which happens to be east of El Camino Real. Tack on $200-$400 per month in HOA fees, and you start to see why the whole concept of interest-only mortgages was developed right here.



Yeah, I know. I grew up Charlotte County, went to school in Gainesville, and lived in Sarasota County from late '08 to early '10.



And we have jobs here, too. :D

I've lived in a lot of different places. Georgia, Miami, western FL, northern FL, Cincinnati, NYC, SD, and I've traveled to pretty much every major city in the US. Even with CARB, I honestly cannot think of any place I would rather be.

The OP is from Illinois lol. Literally the worst run state in the union.

So many percentages in this thread, I must add more.

The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet:

T. Roosevelt.................. 38%
Taft............................... 40%
Wilson.......................... 52%
Harding......................... 49%
Coolidge....................... 48%
Hoover ......................... 42%
F. Roosevelt...................50%
Truman......................... 50%
Johnson........................ 47%
Nixon............................ 53%
Ford............................. 42%
Carter........................... 32%
Reagan..........................86%
GH Bush....................... 51%
Clinton ......................... 39%
GW Bush...................... 55%
Obama......................... 08%

I don't think either of us should be too quick to brag about jobs...

California ranked #50 out of 51 at 12.0% July unemployment rate
Florida ranked 45 at 10.7%

http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

(Pre-emptive: Jason, we know about the flaws in that number)

Although, like real estate, it's all local and demographically specific. I think we have one of the largest research parks in the US, we have one of the largest universities in the US, a large aerospace contingent and a growing "medical city."

Although, like CA, we are still dealing with the effects of the job bubble that came with the housing bubble.

If this is accurate, that's pretty astounding. I don't place a lot of weight on it, but it's interesting nevertheless.

I, for one, place a lot of weight on it:2cents:

Well, two things come to mind.

The first, of course, is that California is indeed a state of extremes. There are certain areas (mostly inland and in the extreme south) where unemployment is extremely high, and there are other regions (mostly in or near the major coastal cities) where we not only have jobs, but we have good-paying jobs in stable industries. I'd rather have 20% unemployment in the state with the economy we have now vs. 0% unemployment but everyone is working for minimum wage.

The second, of course, is that unemployment is not the number of people who don't have jobs, but the number of people who want jobs and don't have them. So all of those elderly retired folks don't count as "unemployed," even though they represent a net drain on the federal budget.

Source?

I have heard that, prior to the 2010 mid-term elections, there were 7 JDs for every one MBA in Congress (between both houses). A change in the demographics of the two houses might be a benefit. I do not have a source to cite for that fun fact, unfortunately. :(

Fixed that for ya. Compare the "white collar" professional unemployment with the "blue collar" unemployment across the country (Dakotas not withstanding?) and you are likely to see the same.

Again, reference the areas of growth I mentioned. Biotech, aerospace, engineering, healthcare... Those are not exactly the minimum wage positions.

The real problem that both Florida, California and the broader USA as a whole face is the "jobs bubble" found in the housing boom. Construction workers, day laborers, spec builders, developers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, et al.

I'd be curious to know what percentage of the total US labor force are in industries related to or dependent upon the housing market, everything from loggers to construction workers to mortgage brokers.

Maybe 1%? 1.5%?

I've been trying to find some actual data on this, and I can't come up with anything. But just try to visualize any medium-sized city. Picture all of the people working in the hospitals, the retail stores, the restaurants, the law firms, the schools, the garages, the warehouses, the adult novelty shops, the amusement parks, the tattoo parlors, the pet stores, the office buildings, the police department, the DMV, the auto parts stores, the optometrists' offices, the broadcast stations and newspapers, the phone company, the furniture stores, the hotels, the gas stations, the hair salons, the car dealerships, and the place where you can pay $3 to have a pregnant otter lick you once directly on the surface of your left eyeball while an elderly Korean woman whispers the names of various fruit-bearing trees into you ear.

And then compare that to the total number of people cutting down trees, turning them into houses, and lending you money to buy them with.

I think a much better metric is total state expenditures as a % of GDP.
Anyone have those numbers?

Found some data, courtesy of the US Census: http://www.census.gov/compendia/stat...es/11s0619.pdf

In 2005, construction accounted for 11.2 million jobs, and real estate / housing-related finance accounted for 3.15 million. Total employment was 141.7 million, so that's about 10%, more than I would have expected. Of course, that's all construction, not just residential, and it includes the construction of apartments and other rental properties as well, which is one portion of the industry which actually benefits from recession (for each house that's foreclosed and empty, that's one more apartment that's rented.)

Turning forward to 2009, construction declined to 10.9 million and housing-related finance to 2.9 million, an overall decline of 3.9%. The overall labor force declined from 141.7 million to 139.9 million, a decline of about 2.3%.

So yeah, construction and housing finance took a larger hit than the general workforce, but the actual numbers are still pretty small.

He's making up for the fact that he was a cheerleader in college... and he's a complete douchetool who needs a pair of balls in his mouth to keep him from talking.

http://kickthemallout.com/images/Pho...heerleader.png

...and he's the current Governor of Texas, very likely will be the next president. What's your fucking gold star accomplishment? :jerkit:

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/3741/retardty6.jpg

Bullshit
http://static0.channels.com/thumbnai...Umad-Bro---jpg

Yell leader to be correct. They sling so much leg it's unreal.

politics section bitches.

perry will never be the president of my country.

Maybe, maybe not. I will bet you $20 this retard won't be again.

http://troll.me/images/obama-meh/u-mad-bro.jpg

Theres no "maybe" about it. Perry will never be President, he's on the Palin level of estúpido.

Four more years. :winner:

Fixed.

I still vote for donald.

http://c580019.r19.cf2.rackcdn.com/w...rump-roast.jpg

A whole bunch of us are sick of his sorry ass. And I highly doubt he can pull off a presidential win. He may have quite the political machine around him, but he's a fucking retard. He'll fuck it up soon enough. Seriously, have you ever heard the guy debate? Ever looked into how much he backtracks and lies about shit and wastes taxpayer money for his own benefit? The fact that this guy is STILL crapping all over my great state pisses me off on a daily basis. He gives Texas a bad name.

And that's the end of my rant. Here's a picture of some fucking kittens:

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/spaysa/...cy/kittens.jpg

I was nearly distracted by your kitten picture, but I am a dog person.

Can you cite some specific examples of how Perry "craps" all over the great state of Texas* or gives Texas a bad name?

[Full disclosure: I have previously voted for the other Presidential candidate from Texas.]





* Note that "craps" is in quotation marks because I believe that to be figurative. There is another phrase in that same sentence which I deliberately left the quotation marks off of.

i dunno where else to post this...

we need a random picture thread for politics.

http://biggovernment.com/files/2011/09/Poverty-Rate.jpg

I like this idea. Your chart on Obama's % of employees that have worked in the private sector was mind blowing but plausable.

I'm pretty sure it's accurate as well.

Hardly any of his Cabinent or Czars have worked for anything but the public sector.


http://blog.american.com/wp-content/...amacabinet.jpg

Read what Politifact has to say on it, however, I gotta run.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...et-members-ha/


The

Hasn't gotten much better, but it hasn't back to as bad as it was pre war on poverty.