Delay Claims Poorer-than-Average Texas is “Wealthy” Because Texans “Work Hard”
One problem here is that Texas isn’t a wealthy state. Its median household income of $47,548 made it 28th in the country. Below average, in other words. New Jersey is second, California is eighth, and New York is nineteenth. Indeed, of the top ten states in per capita income nine are “blue” states.
The exception is Alaska, whose wealthy is due not to “hard work” on the part of the population or a business-friendly policy environment but to the combination of substantial natural resource wealth and a small population. Texas is like a poor man’s Alaska, with the substantial natural resource wealth but with the wealth spread across a much greater population. Absent oil, Texas would probably look more like its even poorer neighbors Louisiana (46), Oklahoma (44), Arkansas (49), and New Mexico (45). To some extent, I think the relative poverty of the South can really be attributable to the harmful consequences of Dixie-style conservative policies. But beyond that, it’s generally the case that state wealth is highly path-dependent—economic vibrancy attracts high-skilled workers which in turn leads to more economic vibrancy. But however you weigh that balance, the idea that Texas points us forward to a wealth-generating policy environment is absurd.
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