Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Lone Star Rising

From: The Economist
July 9, 2009

Thanks to low taxes and light regulation, Texas is booming. But demography will bring profound changes.

VISITORS to Governor Rick Perry’s vast office in the Texas capitol building in Austin (with a dome a mite taller, naturally, than the one in Washington, DC) are sometimes offered a viewing of a triumphalist video. Entitled “The Texaplex”, the seven-minute film is a hymn to the successes Texas has achieved in recent years, and they look pretty impressive.

Texas now hosts more Fortune 500 companies than any other American state. They include AT&T, Dell and Texas Instruments; oil giants such as Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Valero; American, Continental and Southwest Airlines; Fluor, a huge construction firm (recently lured from California); J.C. Penney; Halliburton; and 52 others. Texas claims to have been responsible for 70% of all the net new jobs created last year in America’s 50 states, though since only a few states created any jobs at all that is not quite as astonishing as it sounds.

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