You know how the national health care law is modelled after Romneycare in Massachusetts? So if such laws kill jobs, as conservatives claim, then Massachusetts should be in dire straits, correct? If nothing else, "miraculous" Texas with no regulations or pesky things such as "insurance" or "fair wages" should be kicking its ass, right?
Reality:
Unemployment Rates for States
Monthly Rankings
Seasonally Adjusted
June 2011
18. Massachusetts: 7.6%
26. Texas: 8.2%
That's Perry's "Texas miracle" for you, outpaced on employment by the state conservatives mockingly call "Taxachusetts." And remember, Texas' numbers would be a lot worse had it not led the nation in the
growth of government jobs. In fact, by conservative metrics, Texas is a socialist cesspool!
15.2% of the Texas workforce is employed by the government compared to the national average of 14.4%.
And when Texas leads the nation in minimum wage jobs, well, that's not a record I'd call "miraculous."
But jobs isn't the only place that Massachusetts kicks Texas ass.
As Krugman points out, Texas has a significantly higher unemployment rate than Massachusetts (8.2% vs. 7.6% in June 2011) and the percentage of people without health insurance in Texas is the country's highest (26% of the total population) while Massachusetts has the lowest uninsured rate at 5%.
We can further note that Texas suffered worse unemployment from the recession than Massachusetts did: in 2008 it had a lower unemployment rate than Massachusetts, while today it is higher. Its full-year unemployment rate for 2008 was 4.9%, while that of Massachusetts was 5.3%.
In 2008, only 10.0% of Massachusetts residents lived in poverty, whereas for Texas the rate was 15.8% [...]
Click through to see the rest of the list. It's a long one.
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