So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.
[F]rom mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.
In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts.
So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.
[D]oes Texas job growth point the way to faster job growth in the nation as a whole?
No.
What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states.
Perrynomics amounts toÂ…a fallacy of composition: every state canÂ’t lure jobs away from every other state.
In fact, at a national level lower wages would almost certainly lead to fewer jobs — because they would leave working Americans even less able to cope with the overhang of debt left behind by the housing bubble, an overhang that is at the heart of our economic problem.
So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, donÂ’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end TexasÂ’s crippling drought.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-texas-unmiracle.html?_r=1