Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Texas, Rick Perry, and Jobs

This has been showing up at various sites around the blogsphere today. It is neither and endorsement of Rick Perry or of any politician currently seeking office. It IS a look at the numbers and a bit of theorizing as to what the heck is going on in Texas

Rick Perry And Texas Jobs Numbers at Political Math

He does one heck of a job analyzing the raw data and his post is well worth the read.

(Normally, I would give a hat tip to the blogger on whose site I found this on, but I saw it--almost literally--simultaneously on three or four different sites today. The question of, "Who's on first?" will remain unanswerable by me.)

Oh, his conclusion and advice:
My advice to anti-Perry advocates is this: Give up talking about Texas jobs. Texas is an incredible outlier among the states when it comes to jobs. Not only are they creating them, they're creating ones with higher wages.

One can argue that Perry had very little to do with the job situation in Texas, but such a person should be probably prepare themselves for the consequences of that line of reasoning. If Rick Perry had nothing to do with creating jobs in Texas, than why does Obama have something to do with creating jobs anywhere? And why would someone advocate any sort of "job creating" policies if policies don't seem to matter in when it comes to the decade long governor of Texas? In short, it seems to me that this line of reasoning, in addition to sounding desperate and partisan, hogties its adherents into a position where they are simultaneously saying that government doesn't create jobs while arguing for a set of policies where government will create jobs.


Go read the whole dang thing.

(The comments are interesting, too. I take exception to something Jim says there in the comments. He's from over near Pittsburgh it seems and says folks aren't flocking to PA for jobs. Maybe not over there they aren't, but here in the north-central regions where Marcellus shale has things rocking and rolling, jobs are available in big numbers. Housing...not so much. Seems too many folks are moving in.)

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