Red States vs. Blue States, Part V: Florida vs. California
I’ve written lots of columns comparing Texas and California (see here, here, here, here, here, here, hereand here), and also several columns comparing Florida and New York (see here, here, here, here, and here).
We’ll break from that pattern today because we’re going to compare Florida and California, motivated by tonight’s Fox TV debate between Gov. Ron DeSantis and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
We’ll start with this table put together by Peter Coy of the New York Times. If Florida won, I awarded a red star and if California won, I awarded a blue star (and no stars if there was a tie or the category was irrelevant).
Florida won the most categories, though California has higher income (but also a much-higher cost of living).
Here’s a table prepared by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. No need to add any stars since Florida wins every category.
I’ll close with a few excerpts from an editorial by the Wall Street Journal.
Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis are set to square off…in a Fox News debate… Besides offering voters a look of the alternatives to Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the showdown between the California and Florida governors could provide a revealing policy contrast. Sacramento has rushed to the left in recent decades while Tallahassee has moved to the right.
Since winning election in 2018, Messrs. Newsom and DeSantis have advanced sharply different policies on Covid lockdowns, taxes, school choice and climate regulation, among other things. …here is a scorecard of policy results. …Since January 2019, employment has increased by 1,031,030 in Florida while declining by 85,438 in California. …California’s 4.8% jobless rate is the second highest in the country and nearly twice as high as Florida’s (2.8%). …State and local taxes in California add up to $10,167 per capita versus $5,406 in Florida. …Despite its higher taxes, California boasted a $31.5 billion budget shortfall in May while Florida ran a $17.7 billion surplus.
Based on the data, DeSantis has already won the debate.
Though messaging and style matter in politics, so we’ll see what happens in tonight’s debate.
P.S. We’ll make this column Part V of our series on red states vs blue states (previous editions available here, here, here, and here).
We should lower federal taxes because jobs are going to states like Texas that have low taxes. (We should lower state taxes too!!)
What Can We Learn by Comparing the Employment Situation in Texas vs. California?
April 3, 2013 by Dan Mitchell
One of the great things about federalism, above and beyond the fact that it both constrains the power of governments and is faithful to the Constitution, is that is turns every state into an experiment.
We can learn what works best (though the President seems incapable of learning the right lesson).
We know, for instance, that people are leaving high-tax states and migrating to low-tax states.
We also know that low-tax states grow faster and create more jobs.
I particularly enjoy comparisons between Texas and California. Michael Barone, for instance, documented how the Lone Star State is kicking the you-know-what out of the Golden State in terms of overall economic performance.
I also shared a specific example of high-quality jobs moving from San Francisco to Houston. And I was also greatly amused by this story (and accompanying cartoons) about Texas “poaching” jobs from California.
In this discussion with Stuart Varney of Fox News, we discuss how Texas is leading the nation in job creation.
But there’s another part of this discussion that is very much worth highlighting.
As illustrated by the chart, we are enduring the worst overall job performance in any business cycle since the end of World War II.
I note in the interview that Obama inherited a bad economy and that Bush got us in the ditch in the first place with all his wasteful spending and misguided intervention.
But Obama also deserves criticism for doubling down on those failed policies.
His so-called stimulus was a flop. Dodd-Frank is a regulatory nightmare. Obamacare is looking worse and worse every day.
No wonder job creation is so anemic.
The real moral of the story, though, is that the poor are the biggest victims of Obama’s statism. They’re the ones who have been most likely to lose jobs. They’ve been the ones to suffer because of stagnant incomes.
Sort of brings to mind the old joke that leftists must really like poor people because they create more of them whenever they’re in charge.
P.S. Speaking of jokes, here’s an amusing comparison of Texas and California. If you want some California-specific humor, this Chuck Asay cartoon is great. And to maintain balance, here’s a Texas-specific joke on how to respond to an attacker.
P.P.S. To close on a serious point, California would be deteriorating even faster if it wasn’t for the fact that the state and local tax deduction basically means that the rest of the country is subsidizing the high tax rates in the not-so-Golden State. Another good argument for the flat tax.
P.P.P.S. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find a great Kevin Williamson column dismantling some sloppy anti-Texas analysis by Paul Krugman.
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Even though Chuck Asay is one of my favorite cartoonists (see here, here, here, here, and here), I was not a big fan of one of his recent two-frame cartoons.
But he has more than made up for that slight transgression with this new gem.
I’m biased, of course, since I’ve already written about California being the Greece of America, but there’s plenty of evidence to justify Asay’s cartoon.
The Daily Hatch 