LOL !
Damn, why doesn't Washington do something uselful to actually HELP their economy instead of killing whats left of it ?
Like what's WE'RE doing in Texas ?
We're incentivizing growth by making it profitable for Companies to relocate here and its working !
Ask Torrance California if you don't beleive me.
We're not targeting the discretionary income of our citizens with stupid tax increases and energy policies that guarantee higher energy cost.
We're # 45 on the list of States with the Highest Tax burden on it's Citizens and we're building a real surplus.
Any Bussiness that that even thinks of moving into Washington State knows immediately that their cost on labor is going to be double of what it is in other States.
LOL !! Good luck with that nonsense.
You people are just too stubborn to admit your short sighted inept policies kill economies and produce mors poverty and suffering.
Imagine the simple mindedness that it takes to believe the concept that arbitrarily wage amounts mandated by the Government will increase economic growth.
Its just unbelievable.
Here's the interesting thing - businesses sometimes move out of high-tax states like Washington...for instance, Boeing moved its headquarters away - not to Texas, but to Chicago. But its operations in Everett, Washington are here to stay for at least another 20, 30 years at a minimum thanks to a union deal signed just a month or so ago.
But how about you look at
this list of businesses based here in high-tax, business-unfriendly Puget Sound? The list is not short, and many of the corporations are not small. You may have heard of some of them - Microsoft, Amazon, Weyerhauser, Starbucks, the list goes on. Of course most of them can't compare to Big Oil - but we're not an oil state, and we're much smaller than Texas.
So...thanks, but no thanks, we're doing Just Fine without you.
Oh, and one more thing - it's not just Texas that has a surplus - almost all states are required to maintain one, and it was the Great Recession that made that so difficult. Not only that, but while Texas might be doing well on having low taxes, in other areas, Texas is NOT something to brag bout.
41% of the teachers there have to have second jobs just to get by (compared to 11% in 1981) - that's SHAMEFUL, and it will harm your state's people for generations to come. Not only that, but
you've got one of the nation's worst health care systems:
As it turns out, Texas is a role model only in the sense of being a horrible example to be avoided at all costs. As the numbers show, by almost every objective measure the Texas health care system ranks among the very worst in the nation.
That starts with leading the U.S. in the percentage of uninsured residents, the very crisis the Medicaid expansion was designed to help alleviate. Over six million Texans have no health insurance, leaving 24 percent of residents (and over 30 percent between the ages of 18 and 64) without coverage. As a result, The Hill noted, Texas "confronts billions of dollars' worth of uncompensated hospital care every year" which add an estimated $1,800 a year to the average private insurance premium in in the state. In its last state health care scorecard for 2009, the Commonwealth Fund rated Texas dead last in access to medical care. Across all five indicators (see table above), Rick Perry's state ranked a dismal 46th.
So...no, I would choose Washington state over Texas any day of the week - we've got a healthier, better-educated population...mainly because we realize that we have to be willing to PAY in order to have that healthier, better-educated population.