Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been making the rounds in California, trying to entice businesses to escape the brutal California business climate and move to Texas. Here’s a story about how Austin is getting California businesses to move there.
What I now want to focus on are some of the comments, particularly this one:
Posted by nacinla at 1:15 a.m. Feb. 14, 2013
Anyone notice the lack of specific figures in this press release on the actual number of companies relocating? In fact, the few specific numbers given are buried deep in the story, because they aren’t very spectacular, and don’t support the PR being dictated to the AAS “reporter”: “The chamber reported last year that California was its leading source of business relocations, with 72 locations from that state between 2004 and the end of last year.” SEVENTY-TWO in 8 or 9 years. Would the “reporters” on this story care to tell us how many businesses actually started up in California during that time? (Hint: tens of thousands). All those California companies relocating to Austin have some great journalism to look forward to….
If you’re talking about the entire state of Texas, 72 businesses relocating from California during an 8-year period is not a huge number. However, this is referring to Austin. How many businesses relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston, San Antonio, or elsewhere?
Would this commenter, who requests specifics, be willing to share his/her source for “tens of thousands” of businesses started up in California? If that many businesses were started, it would stand to reason that California would have added at the very least “tens of thousands” of jobs, right?
Here are some numbers to chew on (numbers taken from here and here):
- From January 2008 to January 2012, California lost 855,200 jobs. During the same time period, Texas added 139,800 jobs. These are private sector, you know, the “tens of thousands” of businesses that this person is referring to.
- In March 2012, the unemployment rate in California was 11%. As of now it’s supposedly around 10%, of course not taking into account the number of people not looking.
- Since those numbers came out, taxes in California have increased.
Again, those “tens of thousands” of new businesses that started in California since 2004 — I’d love to see where they are!
Another commenter mentioned that California was projected to have a surplus by 2014. I hope this person realizes that nothing was done about the unfunded liabilities that this state owes, which is incredibly high.
