As my colleague Phil Kein noted this morning, liberals are falling overthemselves to offer the lamest reasons we should ignore Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s strong jobs record. Matt Yglesias, not mentioned by Phil, arguably makes the most laughable claim. He actually argues that “robust job growth is a consequence of robust population growth.” Matt’s reasoning:
But then how do we explain California? From the time of the Gold Rush through 2000, the number of California residents not born in California grew every census. But, for some reason, that stopped in the 2000s. The number of Californians born in a different state actually fell by almost 1 million over the last decade. Why?
Thanks to native births and immigration, California’s population did grow. But Texas’ native birth rate and immigration flows were about the same. Yet over the same decade the number of Texans born out-of-state grew by almost a million. Why?
Matt is desperate to have you believe that Americans suddenly stopped wanting to live in California and started wanting to live in Texas. But why did this happen? Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact they were offered jobs in Texas, could it?
