Regarding Texas

[Eail]

While I'm sure quite a few people already have their own opinions regarding Texas and our ilk, I've become very interested lately in the topic of Texas secession, as it's really started to pick up speed around here (No, it's not the gay marriage thing, much more going on from that.)

Regarding the actual topic itself though, how would you lot feel about the idea of Texas leaving the Union and going it's own way as an autonomous nation? All things considered, from the sources I've observed, Texas could pull it off, with a few bumps along the way.

Would Texas be missed by you personally for what it brings to the table? Would you be happy to see us pack our bags and get out? What might the long term ramifications be of this move? Would others follow in the footsteps of Texas, if it started a 'trend' for like minded states?

[spoiler= Texas Advantages] —Resources. Texas currently sits on one-quarter of the nation’s oil reserves and one-third of the nation’s natural gas reserves. Even more, fully 95% of the country receives its oil and gas courtesy of pipelines that originate within Texas. This is what one might call leverage.

—The Texas Economy. In the last decade, even with the Great Recession, Texas has expanded by one million jobs. One million. That’s more than every other state … combined. Because of its friendly business climate, Texas is home to more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere else. If Texas were its own country, it would have the thirteenth-highest GDP in the world, just behind Canada and Russia. Or think about it this way: For every dollar Texas taxpayers send to Washington, they currently get only about 80 cents back. Theoretically, they could transfer those funds to the state’s coffers and still give every Texan a 20 percent tax cut.

—Utilities. Texas is the only state with its own power grid. Developed over the course of the last 100 years, the Texas grid covers the majority of the state and is fully state controlled. Translation: Texans could rest assured that the federal government doesn’t have the power — literally — to turn off their lights.

—Defense. While no match for Uncle Sam’s firepower, Texas does have a significant defense presence, namely in the Texas State Guard (which answers only to the governor), the Texas National Guard, the Air Guard and the legendary Texas Rangers. Texas is also home to two of the nation’s largest military bases — Fort Hood and Fort Bliss — and being able to control those two installations is nothing to sniff at. But let’s not forget the firepower of the citizenry itself. There’s a reason burglars don’t waste their time in Texas. One third of the United States Military is from Texas, whose to say that they wouldn't end up coming back home?

[Snowy_One]

Well, here is a bigger, probably more important, question.

Can you provide a bit more info on the subject? Like, why DOES Texas desire to seceded and why has it picked up steam of late?

[I.M. Gei]

i'll just paste some excerpts from this article last year, which predated the fall in oil prices

Unless you’ve been to Texas lately, you might have missed just how gigantic its latest oil and gas boom has become. Thanks to fracking and other new drilling techniques, plus historically high world oil prices, Texas oil production increased by 126 percent just between 2010 and 2013.

Only a few years ago, Texas’s oil production had dwindled to just 15 percent of U.S. output; by May of last year it had jumped to 34.5 percent,

as new drilling methods opened up vast new plays in once-forgotten corners of south and west Texas with names like Eagle Ford, Spraberry Trend, and Wolfcamp. Thanks to the bonanza of drilling, Texas already produces more oil than Venezuela, and is headed to become the ninth-largest producer of oil in the world, ahead of Kuwait, Mexico, and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Texas accounts for 27 percent of U.S. natural gas production, which is more than the production of any nation except Russia. NASA satellites now record an arc of white light at night stretching from San Antonio to the Mexican border produced by gas flares. As a recent issue of Texas Monthly notes, in once-sleeping towns like Cotulla, where a young Lyndon Johnson taught migrant Mexican children in the 1920s, the population has more than tripled in the past two years, and no fewer than thirteen new hotels have opened, along with numerous “man camps,” to accommodate the influx of oil rig workers.

Though Texas boosters point to the growth of the high-tech industry in Austin, the so-called “telecom corridor” in Dallas, and the growth of health care jobs in Houston, this can’t hide the fact that oil and gas are by far the fastest-growing sources of the state’s economic growth. Between 1998 and 2011, for example, the percent of Texas GDP produced directly by oil and gas extraction more than doubled, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. This doesn’t even count the growth of related industries, like oil refining and a petrochemical sector now thriving on the state’s abundant supplies of natural gas. Meanwhile, the share of the Texas economy produced by the information, communications, and technology sectors is 27 percent smaller than it was in 1998.

To be sure, only about 8 percent of the new jobs in Texas are directly involved in oil and gas extraction, but the multiplier effects of the energy boom create a compounding supply of jobs for accountants, lawyers, doctors, home builders, gardeners, nannies, you name it. Saying that Texas doesn’t depend very much on oil and gas just because most Texans are not formally employed in drilling wells is like saying that the New York area doesn’t depend very much on Wall Street because only a handful of New Yorkers work on the floor of the stock exchange.

The next big question is how much Texas’s growth in jobs just reflects its growth in population. For many decades, Texas has grown much faster in population than the U.S. as a whole, indeed about twice as fast since the 1990s. On its face, there is nothing particularly impressive about a rate of job formation that is just keeping pace with increases in population.

But in the conservative narrative, this population growth is largely driven by individual Americans and businesses fleeing the high taxes and excessive regulation of less-free states. In other words, Texas’s rate of job creation is supposedly more a cause than a consequence of its population growth. If that were true, the Texas boosters would be right to brag. But among the many problems with this story is the reality that, even with an oil boom on, nearly as many native-born Americans are moving out of Texas as are moving in.

For example, according to Census Bureau data, 441,682 native-born Americans moved to Texas from other states between 2010 and 2011. Sounds like a lot. But moving (fleeing?) in the opposite direction were 358,048 other native-born Americans leaving Texas behind. That means that the net domestic migration of native-born Americans to Texas came to just 83,634, which in a nation of 315 million isn’t even background noise. It’s the demographic equivalent of, say, the town of Lawrence, Kansas, or Germantown, Maryland, “voting with its feet” and moving to Texas while the rest of America stays put.

And despite all the gloating by Texas boosters about how the state attracts huge numbers of Americans fleeing California socialism, the numbers don’t bear out this narrative either. In 2012, 62,702 people moved from California to Texas, but 43,005 moved from Texas to California, for a net migration of just 19,697. That’s a population flow amounting to the movement of one village in a continental nation. Far from proving the merits of the so-called Texas model, it shows just how few Californians have seen fit to set out for the Lone Star State, despite California’s high cost of housing and other very real problems. The same is true for all but a handful of Americans living in other states. Net domestic migration to Texas peaked after Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and Mississippi, and has been falling off ever since.

Texas has sales and property taxes that make its overall burden of taxation on low-wage families much heavier than the national average, while the state also taxes the middle class at rates as high or higher than in California. For instance, non-elderly Californians with family income in the middle 20 percent of the income distribution pay combined state and local taxes amounting to 8.2 percent of their income, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy; by contrast, their counterparts in Texas pay 8.6 percent.

And unlike in California, middle-class families in Texas don’t get the advantage of having rich people share equally in the cost of providing government services. The top 1 percent in Texas have an effective tax rate of just 3.2 percent. That’s roughly two-fifths the rate that’s borne by the middle class, and just a quarter the rate paid by all those low-wage “takers” at the bottom 20 percent of the family income distribution. This Robin-Hood-in-reverse system gives Texas the fifth-most-regressive tax structure in the nation.

Middle- and lower-income Texans in effect make up for the taxes the rich don’t pay in Texas by making do with fewer government services, such as by accepting a K-12 public school system that ranks behind forty-one other states, including Alabama, in spending per student.

Moving a business to Texas also turns out to have tax consequences that are inconsistent with the conservative narrative of the Texas Miracle. Yes, some businesses manage to strike lucrative tax breaks in Texas. As part of an industrial policy that dares not speak its name, the state government, for example, maintains the Texas Enterprise Fund (known to some as a slush fund and to others as a “deal-closing” fund), which the governor uses to lure favored businesses with special subsidies and incentives.

But most Texas businesses, especially small ones, don’t get such treatment. Instead, they face total effective tax rates that are, by bottom-line measures, greater than those in even the People’s Republic of California. For example, according to a joint study by the accounting firm Ernst & Young and the Council on State

Taxation, in fiscal year 2012 state and local business taxes in California came to 4.5 percent of private-sector gross state product. This compares with a 4.8 percent average for all fifty states—and a rate of 5.2 percent in Texas. With the exception of New York, every major state in the country, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, has a lower total effective business tax rate than Texas.

The comparatively low levels of entrepreneurship in Texas in turn help to explain its comparatively low rates of upward mobility over the last generation. Here the evidence comes from a recent study, led by Raj Chetty and colleagues at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, which tracked children born into families of modest means in different parts of the country and determined how many of them managed to move up the economic ladder when they became adults. The findings are illuminating.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, children who grew up in families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution had only a 12.2 percent chance of rising to the top fifth as adults. Those who grew up in or near San Diego or Los Angeles had even lesser odds—only 10.4 and 9.6 percent, respectively. It’s depressing that for so many Californian children, the chances of realizing the American Dream are so slim. But California looks like the land of opportunity compared to Texas.

In the greater Austin area, children who grew up in families of modest means had only a 6.9 percent chance of joining the top fifth of earners when they became adults; in Dallas, only 7.1 percent; in San Antonio, just 6.4 percent. Yes, Texas offers more chances for upward mobility than places like Detroit and some Deep South cities like Atlanta. Yet the claim that Texas triumphs over the rest of America as the land of opportunity is all hat and no cattle. Children raised in the postindustrial wasteland of Newark, New Jersey, during the 1980s, it turns out, had a better chance of going from rags to riches than did children born in Houston, which was the best city in Texas for upward mobility during that time.

This is not an isolated example. Since the early 1980s, Texas has also been falling behind many other states in its income per person. In 1981, per capita income in Texas came to within 92 percent of that of Maryland; now Texans earn only 79 percent as much as Marylanders. In 1981, per capita income in Texas almost equaled that of Massachusetts; now Texans on average earn only about three-quarters of what residents of Massachusetts do. Relative to Connecticut, Texans have seen their per capita income slip from 82 percent to 71 percent.

[Garnef]

I would be pretty angry if that happened actually.

I live in Texas, and I would rather not be separated from a country that I've been associated with for all these years.

Plus, being real here, if Texas became its own country, the chances of them abolishing Gay marriage again would be high, based on quite a few people here being quite bigoted.

[Solkia]

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess the recent wave of liberals is a threat to how Texas does things or something?

I really don't know anything about Texas, but if they secede and make it work then w/e

[Eail]

I can't exactly provide an answer to that question that'll hit every point Snowy but I'll do my best to describe what I've personally heard and discussed about the topic during the past few months when this started rearing it's head again. Texans as a whole are a very peculiar bunch compared to most, for example, many I've met describe themselves as Texans first, Americans second, if asked at any point.

There's a strong sense of "Texas is Texas first" rather than completely being a part of the rest of the union.

For why some may want to leave though, it's also going off of that same ideal, dissatisfaction with the way American handles itself and some foreign policies, changes in legislature, and quite frankly the general distaste that they view Texas (and the rest of the south) receives from the North, "If people don't want us, well, fuck 'em."

[I.M. Gei]

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess the recent wave of liberals is a threat to how Texas does things or something?

I really don't know anything about Texas, but if they secede and make it work then w/e

literally every corner of this country is inexorably tied to each other due to how we've developed infrastructure and whatnot over the years, and any one state seceding would throw a real wrench into all of it

related, but this is also why that six californias proposal last year from tim draper, your stereotypical head-in-the-clouds silicon valley VC, was so dumb

[Blaze The Great]

I would personally be very disappointed if Texas left the Union. Maybe it is because we haven't experienced secession outside of the American Civil War, but just the idea of a state seceding from the Union leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Personal feelings aside, I don't see a particularly compelling reason for Texas to leave besides being able to say "look at us, we're autonomous". Yes, they do have a huge amount of resources and the like compared to other states, but they get plenty of benefit from other states as well (wheat from Kansas, dairy from Wisconsin, etc.) and relations like that would simply be much more complicated if Texas seceded. Even if Washington and Austin (?, presumably would still be the capital) remained on excellent terms, it would be much easier to keep the system running smoothly if Texas didn't leave. Not to mention that I can't imagine the folks in D.C. taking it too well if Texas decided to get up and go.

[Snowy_One]

I can actually see why Texas would want to leave very well and... well.. I'm not going to say 'I agree with them' but I certainly understand why they'd want to. They're basically getting jerked around by a hypersensitive left while being mocked a lot, along with the south, by a nation that doesn't seem to really have their interests on the table, never-mind at heart.

As for the 'autonomous' thing, I don't think that's a big deal as a lot of nations, those MUCH smaller than Texas, are autonomous. North Korea is only the size of Mississippi for example; yet is probably the most self-contained nation in the world.

[-Cynthia-]

I can actually see why Texas would want to leave very well and... well.. I'm not going to say 'I agree with them' but I certainly understand why they'd want to. They're basically getting jerked around by a hypersensitive left while being mocked a lot, along with the south, by a nation that doesn't seem to really have their interests on the table, never-mind at heart.

As for the 'autonomous' thing, I don't think that's a big deal as a lot of nations, those MUCH smaller than Texas, are autonomous. North Korea is only the size of Mississippi for example; yet is probably the most self-contained nation in the world.

I find it interesting how 'the left' is supposedly hypersensitive, yet it's a red state that's threatening to secede. I imagine many residents of blue states didn't feel the Bush administration had their interests in mind, yet I don't recall much secession talk from them.

[EricaofRenais]

Texas was its own nation before it became a state, I am a proud Daughter of the Republic of Texas and I love my state an am proud of my heritage, but I don't think we will do anything at all and that this just talk. Funny that you talk about Democrats causing the problems, but I don't think that is the whole problem. Texas is being flooded with as we Texans call them "damn Yankees" who don't now how it works here and expect us to change when they came here of their own will and should learn how to live with us, not the other way around. My mom has the most problems with people from the east coast, and she has to be nice while they get to act like jerks, the south as a whole has more manners then Yankee land. That I feel is the big problem, because I have yet to actually meet someone from the east coast that did not treat me and my family like dirt.

[Snowy_One]

Texas was its own nation before it became a state, I am a proud Daughter of the Republic of Texas and I love my state an am proud of my heritage, but I don't think we will do anything at all and that this just talk. Funny that you talk about Democrats causing the problems, but I don't think that is the whole problem. Texas is being flooded with as we Texans call them "damn Yankees" who don't now how it works here and expect us to change when they came here of their own will and should learn how to live with us, not the other way around. My mom has the most problems with people from the east coast, and she has to be nice while they get to act like jerks, the south as a whole has more manners then Yankee land. That I feel is the big problem, because I have yet to actually meet someone from the east coast that did not treat me and my family like dirt.

Hi! East Coast person here who thinks Texas is a pretty decent state and would love to live there if it was a bit colder!

[Phoenix Wright]

texans aren't willing to secede from the union. i don't see that paradigm changing anytime soon. if they were to secede, i'd dislike that because there'd be another civil war.

[Crysta]

Pretty sure Texas the Nation is about 0% identical to Texas the current state. So is my home state California, for that matter. It was a lot more... Spanish.

But to be honest I'm a lot more concerned with the U.S. territories who don't get the rights associated with statehood when they ought to (Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Marianas, United States Virgin Islands and American Samoa) than the guys who don't like how we snobby northerners do things. (wiki's cool)

Edited June 28, 2015 by Crysta

[-Cynthia-]

Texas was its own nation before it became a state, I am a proud Daughter of the Republic of Texas and I love my state an am proud of my heritage, but I don't think we will do anything at all and that this just talk. Funny that you talk about Democrats causing the problems, but I don't think that is the whole problem. Texas is being flooded with as we Texans call them "damn Yankees" who don't now how it works here and expect us to change when they came here of their own will and should learn how to live with us, not the other way around. My mom has the most problems with people from the east coast, and she has to be nice while they get to act like jerks, the south as a whole has more manners then Yankee land. That I feel is the big problem, because I have yet to actually meet someone from the east coast that did not treat me and my family like dirt.

The prejudice of you and your family against 'Yankees' probably acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lot of this rude behavior fyi.

[blah the Prussian]

To secede from the United States is treason of the highest order. Any attempt to do so will rightfully be met with overwhelming and devastating force.

[eclipse]

literally every corner of this country is inexorably tied to each other due to how we've developed infrastructure and whatnot over the years, and any one state seceding would throw a real wrench into all of it

related, but this is also why that six californias proposal last year from tim draper, your stereotypical head-in-the-clouds silicon valley VC, was so dumb

Well, Hawaii's tied to the rest of the US via air or something, because we sure as hell don't get any help in terms of electricity! When the reactors go down, they take the entire island with them!

---

The only objection I'd have to Texas leaving is the fact that one of my cousins is up there, and I don't want to get a passport just to see him. Otherwise, I don't really care.

Edited June 28, 2015 by eclipse

[Excellen Browning]

Of course, if Texas were to secede, it would have to start paying import and export taxes. This much is obvious. Great Britain is in much of the same position regarding leaving the EU, and just those taxes are expected to have some devastating economical effects. Texas is even more dependent on US import/export than GB is on EU, so expect the blow to be worse.

Also, Texas has a great deal of autonomy. Why the hell would Texans insist on separation?

[EricaofRenais]

I am not prejudiced towards people from other parts of the country as a whole, I just get extremely tired of people who move here and then try to make everyone change their culture so that they will be comfortable instead of learning how things work here. My grandmother was proud of being a Yankee and this caused some problems because she would visit us and act like we had to change everything when she was the one visiting, my grandfather was also a Yankee, but he knew that you need to get a long with people and that you can't make them change just so you can be comfortable. The place my mom works keeps hiring people from the east who act like everyone here needs to change and keep trying to make my mom quit, my mom is one of the nicest people I know and I am tired of these people who do this to her, and everyone that comes is worst then the last. Those are the people who I call "damn Yankees" because they have no manners and think they can treat people like dirt and make everyone change who they are just for them to be happy.

[Chiki]

Isn't "Yankee" an offensive term?

[blah the Prussian]

Damnyankees makes me think of this alternate history I read once. In any case, I just can't see why it would benefit anyone for Texas to be independent.

@Chiki: No it really isn't.

Edited June 28, 2015 by blah2127

[ClevelandSteve]

Isn't "Yankee" an offensive term?

Not really, but use of it as an insult is usually a good of an indicator of who to avoid (unless they're referring to the New York baseball team, because fuck those Yankees. Also, I've seen British people refer to all Americans as "yanks" or "yankees", and that's OK because their criticisms of how we do things in America are usually legitimate unless they're UKIP or something).

As for Texas leaving, go on ahead. And the same goes for any other southern state that wants to leave. But the North needs advance warning so we can prepare decent housing for all the good people in the South who don't want to live in a far-right, third-world theocratic dictatorship.

[blah the Prussian]

In all honesty, maybe the best thing would be if we let the South secede again as a new Confederacy, get all the blacks and gays the fuck out of there, and then the North can join Canada. You Rebs can have your states rights, we get free healthcare.

[I.M. Gei]

As for Texas leaving, go on ahead. And the same goes for any other southern state that wants to leave. But the North needs advance warning so we can prepare decent housing for all the good people in the South who don't want to live in a far-right, third-world theocratic dictatorship.

now i don't think this is a good attitude to have; the south has a fuckton of minorities, many of whom are destitute and are not particularly mobile. texas, for instance, is a minority-majority state that has over 3.1 million african-americans and over 9.6 million latinos, whereas georgia has over 3 million african-americans and almost 900,000 latinos, and these states have rapidly-increasing minority populations. over 37% of mississippi's population is also black.

i don't find it morally conscionable to just subject a lot of these people to apartheid south africa 2: electric boogaloo

In all honesty, maybe the best thing would be if we let the South secede again as a new Confederacy, get all the blacks and gays the fuck out of there, and then the North can join Canada. You Rebs can have your states rights, we get free healthcare.

yeah it's not like white northerners rioted during the first great migration or anything, or that redlining and white flight ever happened, or that you have places today like milwaukee's suburbs which are over 90% white and far wealthier than the predominantly black and latino city of milwaukee

Edited June 28, 2015 by I.M. Gei

[blah the Prussian]

I was joking.