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uomo_senza_nome
@
2011 Oct 19, 5:08am
Yet, Nevada still has:
1) highest unemployment rate
2) highest foreclosure rate
3) highest personal bankruptcy rate
4) biggest drop in median income
5) one of the biggest drop in property values of any state, if not the biggest (maybe Florida beats it?)
All of the above can be majorly attributed to the housing bubble and Nevada was the darling of Wall Street during the pre-bubble and the bubble phases.
Guess what was one of the most important points in history where this bubble could have been regulated? It was under Clinton era.
Read about Brooksley Born.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/11/the-king-report-brooksley-born-vs-summers-greenspan-rubin/
So it's not all black and white as you posit -- there are grey areas where the Dems are culpable as well.
While I am most definitely a liberal I don't think the above story is really saying that much. Look at a lot of the Southeastern states: They're booming. They also have low taxes. But they also have affordable housing. Is it the housing or the taxes? There's certainly a lot of manufacturing ( lots of car factories) that have located or relocated there and a lot of it probably had to do with costs and incentives. I'm not trying to take sides here but every state is going to be different and have different results from whatever style of governance they use.
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This op-ed is brilliant and exactly what I've been telling people on occasion:
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/nevada-the-republican-promised-land-132035853.html
They were also discussing this on NPR this morning: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141493959/ask-nevada-do-low-taxes-less-regs-create-jobs
Summary: Nevada has very low taxes and very low regulation. There is no corporate tax and no state income tax. There is even a constitutional limit on mining taxes, which means that tax receipts don't go up even if commodities skyrocket, as they have in recent years on occasion. Nevada is 49th in taxation, with the lowest burden of any state except Alaska (which gets massive federal subsidies of more than $20K per person per year from you and me, and oil money). In fact, much of its "regulation" is directly written by businesses and their lobbyists, and their legislature rarely meets. Nevada also has the fewest public employees per capita of any state.
Yet, Nevada still has:
1) highest unemployment rate
2) highest foreclosure rate
3) highest personal bankruptcy rate
4) biggest drop in median income
5) one of the biggest drop in property values of any state, if not the biggest (maybe Florida beats it?)
My own editorial portion:
If the GOP Paradise didn't work in Nevada, why would it work elsewhere? Why is "lower taxes" and "get rid of regulation" always the solution? It's not!
Nevada has lots of mining, but its job market is not particularly skilled or deep, which is why companies are staying away. It also has lots of gambling, but its other industries are pretty thin. Companies don't have a great job pool -- Reno and Las Vegas, the main population centers, just don't have deep job pools with skilled workers.
Low taxes and low regulation are not the only concern for businesses -- being able to get skilled workers in a diversified economy matters a lot too. Nevada is failing because it went too far to one side of the political spectrum in thinking the market would save it. There are plenty of other factors besides simply taxes and regulation that matter.
#housing