December 29, 2011
There’s good news, BP
wants us to know, about America’s
third coast. In a
television commercial that aired ubiquitously during the holiday season,
the company extolled “the Gulf’s best tourism season in years.”
The region certainly deserves glad tidings. In April 2010, the Deepwater
Horizon disaster killed 11
crewman. The oil flowed for nearly three months, live on webcam. And while the
gusher didn’t prove to be the environmental apocalypse eco-loons predicted --
peak-oil nitwit Matt Simmons claimed that the slick would reach Ireland -- wildlife was harmed
and water quality degraded.
Twenty months after the Deepwater
Horizon exploded, beaches
are clean and offshore
drillers are returning to work. But if you want to help the Gulf Coast
thrive, you can do more than vacation there. Go all in, and make your trip
one-way.
Residents of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida
enjoy enviously cheap prices. The Council for Community
and Economic Research publishes an index of “regional differences in the
cost of consumer goods and services.” The average for the 309 urban zones
analyzed is set at a value of 100. California
and the Northeast, as one would suspect, fare poorly. Too-damn-expensive spots
include Manhattan (223.9), San
Francisco (161.3), Stamford, Connecticut (148.4), Washington,
D.C. (147.5), and Orange County, California
(143.5).
The story is quite different in the communities that line the
Gulf. Tampa, Pensacola,
Mobile, New Orleans,
Houston, etc. consistently
fall well below 100. So wages may be less generous, but purchasing power is
greater.
A prime cause of the Gulf
states’ cushy cost of living? Restrained government. “Freedom in the 50 States: An
Index of Personal and Economic Freedom,” a June study by George Mason
University’s Mercatus Center, examined “policies that affect individual
freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.” Four of the five Gulf states ranked in the top half, with Florida, at #11, boasting
the highest placement. The bottom ten included Big Government-addicted Illinois, Massachusetts,
California, New Jersey
and (dead-last) New York.
Fewer bureaucrats, NIMBYists, and Nanny Staters
make the Gulf states
stellar, tax-wise. Texas has the sixth-lowest local-state burden in the
nation, according to
the Tax Foundation, with Louisiana #9, Alabama #11, Mississippi
#15, and Florida
#20. (It drives revenucrats and class warriors batty, but Texas
and Florida refuse
to adopt income taxes.)
As for future tax hikes, there is cause for concern, but not
alarm. “The
Financial State of the States,” issued in July by the Institute for Truth
in Accounting (ITA), computed the burden each taxpayer bears for “financial
commitments, including all unfunded retirement liabilities,” versus “the assets
available to pay these.” At $2,500, Florida
was the best performer among the five, with Texas ($5,700) second. The remaining three
averaged $14,667. Imposing sums, until you consider the ITA’s worst “sinkhole
state.” Connecticut
taxpayers each owe $41,200 for the
unrealistic commitments made by politicians.
The “Small
Business Survival Index,” published annually by the Small Business and
Entrepreneurship Council, offers compelling data for start-ups looking for locations.
Texas, Florida,
and Alabama
rank in the top ten. (Mississippi just missed,
at #12, while Louisiana
landed at #26). All five states, it’s worth noting, have right-to-work statutes
that liberate workers from forced union dues.
Big business is coming to the Gulf, too. And it’s not domestic
capital alone. A year ago, German
conglomerate ThyssenKrupp AG opened a $5 billion steel mill in Mobile County
that employs 1,800. (Question for protectionists: Are those “German” jobs or
“American” jobs?)
Writing
in Forbes earlier this year, Joel
Kotkin noted that the widening of the Panama Canal
is a “potential game-changer” for what is “destined to emerge as the most
economically vibrant of our three coasts.” The expansion project “will open the
Gulf to megaships from Pacific Basin ports such as Singapore,
Shanghai, Pusan
and Kaohsiung, which have mostly sent their
cargos to West Coast ports such as Los Angeles
and Long Beach.
Some analysts predict that more than 25 percent of this traffic could shift to
Gulf and South Atlantic ports.” With America’s energy exports (coal, natural gas, and
petroleum products) on the rise, ports in Houston, Port Arthur, Lake Charles, New Orleans, Pascagoula, and Tampa
will be busier than ever.
As Kotkin put it, “Texas, Louisiana and other Gulf Cities
seek to reorder the nation’s economic balance of power. Unless California and the
Northeast awaken to the challenge, they will be increasingly supplanted by a
region that seems more determined to expand their economic dominion.”
Why not join the fun, and help accelerate the decline of the
nation’s stuck-on-stupid
blue states?
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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