Liberals are always looking for anything they can dress up as “facts” to fit the left-wing social-engineering schemes they’ve been promoting for decades. No different is a “study” released by two leftist activist groups that claims Texas has one of the worst “income gaps” in the nation… And their solution to close the gap is to kill the economy. Are there poor in Texas? Someone once said there will always be poor among us. But in Texas, the poor have great opportunities to be poor no more.
The study is typical partisan drivel dressed up as economic research. You can read about it in the Dallas Morning News.
Their policy prescription is worse than the alleged problem. States that actually do what the authors propose have higher unemployment and high job loss than Texas.
In Texas, we see job expansion and wealth creation. Is it better to be low-income but with prospects to move up, or low-income and no jobs to be found? The authors would prefer, apparently, everyone to be generationally poor and dependent on government.
Typically such studies as this always fail to include cash and non-cash subsidies — like free food stamps, health care, education, etc.
For example, a poor family has access to health services paid for with taxes generated by others. You and I pay for our health care and theirs, but their government benefit doesn’t count as income.
Meanwhile, a middle-class small business owner’s income is counted against her despite the fact she uses that after-tax income to buy her family’s insurance — and that is not reflected in the study, nor is the tax burden she bears to pay for the services for the poor.
Likewise, the higher up the economic ladder, the more likely one is to use private schools, so the wealthy pay the property taxes and the tuition, but only benefit directly from the tuition. The poor pay far less in property taxes, but get the $10,000 per year benefit of a public education — higher than most private school tuitions.
Texas has far greater wealth mobility than many others, and the U.S. is more mobile than almost any nation. But anti-liberty policies that they propose ensare people and prevent wealth mobility. The poor and the rich today very often are flipped tomorrow.
But the left prefers the statist status quo.
