Lone Star Rising

[banking214]

Next year’s national census is expected to show that flourishing Houston has replaced struggling Chicago as America’s third city. Of the ten largest cities in America, three are in Texas.

He is certainly right about the last point: not too many other cities could have absorbed 100,000 refugees, bigheartedly and fairly painlessly, as Houston did after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. With vibrant Asian communities alongside its balanced Hispanic, white and black mix, with no discernible racial tensions, and with more foreign consulates than any American city except New York and Los Angeles, Houston is arguably America’s most enthusiastically cosmopolitan city, a place where the future has already arrived.

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13938917

[citizen4rmptown]

Next year’s national census is expected to show that flourishing Houston has replaced struggling Chicago as America’s third city.

I dont think Houston will overtake Chicago in the near future....

Chicago is too big....

Although it is a possibility as both are in the 2mill+ range for population..

BUT it would be great...

[Houston19514]

I dont think Houston will overtake Chicago in the near future....

Chicago is too big....

Although it is a possibility as both are in the 2mill+ range for population..

BUT it would be great...

Yeah, I wonder where the author came up with that little factoid. Sounds nice (and it's nice to see fabrications about Houston that are positive for a change), but Houston is not likely to overtake Chicago's population for a few more years.

[citizen4rmptown]

Does anybody have any reasonable estimates to when Houston might overtake Chicago?if at all?

Chicago's population is declining, and Houston's isnt....so when could it happen?

[ricco67]

I disagree.

While I don't have the numbers at the moment to support it, I think we're rather close, particularly if you take into account the people from up north coming down.

[Houston19514]

I disagree.

While I don't have the numbers at the moment to support it, I think we're rather close, particularly if you take into account the people from up north coming down.

No, we're actually not very close. Chicago's estimated population as of July 1, 2008 is 2,853,114. Houston's is 2,242,193. The best-case one can spin from the numbers is to use the 2000-2008 growth of the two cities and extrapolate from there. That would mean Houston would gain approximately 38,000 per year on Chicago. That would require approximately 16 more years (2024) before Houston would match Chicago's population.

But Chicago in recent years has started to add population. The last two census estimates show small increases. Houston's growth has accelerated, but the net annual gain over Chicago has been reduced to approximately 23,000. At that rate of gain, it will take more than 26 years (2034) to match Chicago.

[citizen4rmptown]

No, we're actually not very close. Chicago's estimated population as of July 1, 2008 is 2,853,114. Houston's is 2,242,193. The best-case one can spin from the numbers is to use the 2000-2008 growth of the two cities and extrapolate from there. That would mean Houston would gain approximately 38,000 per year on Chicago. That would require approximately 16 more years (2024) before Houston would match Chicago's population.

But Chicago in recent years has started to add population. The last two census estimates show small increases. Houston's growth has accelerated, but the net annual gain over Chicago has been reduced to approximately 23,000. At that rate of gain, it will take more than 26 years (2034) to match Chicago.

this seems reasonable... and i agree

[RedScare]

(and it's nice to see fabrications about Houston that are positive for a change)

You must have stopped reading the article after the first couple of paragraphs.

[lockmat]

A lot of the article commenters are questioning Texas' economic future because we don't have "great" education. Maybe it's slighty over rated?

After all, Texas is growing, not simply because we have more babies than everyone else, but because people from other places move here for the jobs. So the educated don't necessarily have to have been born here for the state to be successfull, although I'm sure it helps. But even if we raise the smartest kids, that doesn't mean they'll stay for jobs if opportunity is somewhere else.

thoughts?

[RedScare]

Education is overrated? I'm flabbergasted. I really don't know what to say in response to this.

[Urbannizer]

Maybe it's slighty over rated?

LoL

[TheNiche]

A lot of the article commenters are questioning Texas' economic future because we don't have "great" education. Maybe it's slighty over rated?

After all, Texas is growing, not simply because we have more babies than everyone else, but because people from other places move here for the jobs. So the educated don't necessarily have to have been born here for the state to be successfull, although I'm sure it helps. But even if we raise the smartest kids, that doesn't mean they'll stay for jobs if opportunity is somewhere else.

thoughts?

Spot on. Labor is mobile.

Also, Texas tends to absorb less-educated labor because our tax and labor laws do not put industrial businesses in as severe a global competitive disadvantage as they would be in other states. That does not mean that our economy is endangered or threatened, it means that our economy is specialized. And our demographics and social issues reflect that in comparisons of averages among various states. But averages for single variables do not effectively convey individuals' experiences or quality of life as compared to their alternatives. Perhaps Michigan spends twice as much per student, has a much lower cost of living because housing is so inexpensive (because no one wants to live there), averages higher wages because it is a union state, and has numerous small business incentives...but its tax rates are too high and there isn't any work. Texas clearly has the better future, but that is not necessarily reflected in cherry-picked data.

Another issue is that the long border with Mexico is so saturated with first- and second-generation school-age children raised from an early age in an effectively monocultural society and that there are linguistic and cultural barriers that hold back the general population of students as well as special populations (like I was when I was growing up there). It's a sensitive issue, and school districts in these regions have made laudable efforts to overcome the barriers, but the barriers still exist and there really is no effective solution that will allow that population to excel in a way that can be objectively compared to the way that students from places like The Woodlands or Cypress. If you take the border counties out of the mix, Texas probably moves up quite a bit in the rankings as they're calculated...but there wouldn't be any difference to the lifestyle of the average Texan in a major metropolitan area.

[TheNiche]

Education is overrated? I'm flabbergasted. I really don't know what to say in response to this.

I think he meant to say that putting stock in the issue as it is presented in the article is overrated.

Seriously, though, he's on to something. I'm typically not very much in favor of the Federal government funding local issues like urban highways or mass transit, but labor is mobile, and the education of students in source states for domestic immigrants ought to be viewed as just as important an issue to Texas as are the education of its own students. It's an issue for which federal leadership and allocations of resources ought to be paramount, with limited state or local involvement outside of perhaps having elected administrative leadership.

[lockmat]

Please don't take what I said to mean education is not important at all.

First, let's remember we're in a global economy.

Look at Dubai for instance. How many people who have the good jobs there actually are from Dubai or even the UAE? Like Niche said, labor is mobile.

However, I'm not saying we should aim to be like them. I don't think anyone wants to live in a city where it's just the really rich and the really poor.

But Texas ranks about in the middle in terms of education. As long as we stay somewhere in the middle, and produce people who can support the middle wage jobs, the people with the high educations can and will come to fulfill those needs, even if the rest of the country or world has produced them. Obviously, not all of the people the schools on the west/east coast and everywhere else are producing are staying there.

Also, who's to say that if Texas starts producing world class education that the people we produce won't go somewhere else?

I don't think it's totally out of this world, as we're a real-time example of it.

edit: also, maybe what i'm trying to say is that good education is necessary but great or tier 1 type not necessarily is.

[TheNiche]

edit: also, maybe what i'm trying to say is that good education is necessary but great or tier 1 type not necessarily is.

You're going to get nailed on that one if you can't define it better...bearing in mind that "Tier One" has a particular meaning in Texas.

[RedScare]

Not according to the article, we are not.

His statistics are a lot less rosy. Texas has the highest proportion of people lacking health insurance of all 50 states; the third-highest poverty rate; the second-highest imprisonment rate; the highest teenage-birth rate; the lowest voter turnout; and the lowest proportion of high-school graduates. Mr Shapleigh is not surprised that these figures are so terrible: Texas spends less on each of its citizens than does any other state. Being a low-tax, low-spend state has not made Texans rich, though they are not dirt-poor either; their median income ranks 37th among the 50 states.

And not according to our own state government either.

http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/wwstand/wws0512ed/

The facts are simple. A society that does not educate its youth will fail. It is not a secret what the educational level of our prison population is. And when corporations and research groups cannot find enough educated people in an area, they will move to where the educated people are. And, I am curious. All the NIMBY threads protesting the building of low income apartments, are they protesting because they fear an influx of doctors and engineers?

[lockmat]

You're going to get nailed on that one if you can't define it better...bearing in mind that "Tier One" has a particular meaning in Texas.

Maybe the Ivy League's galore type schools like the northeast are not necessary. Just one (rice) and other good colleges (UH, UT, AM UTEP etc) is sufficient?

I'm not saying we shouldn't reach to have the best schools, we should. We should not totally neglect the system either, and we won't.

But our society is not just Texas, it's the USA and even he world. Our society has plenty of educated people.

Maybe it's just important to have adequate education, but more important to have a good business climate like we do.

Let's also look at the fastest growing areas in the country. The south (also AZ and NV), no? Well, they all have good schools, but they're not oozing of the top tiers like Cali or the northeast.

[TheNiche]

And when corporations and research groups cannot find enough educated people in an area, they will move to where the educated people are.

The part about corporations not being able to find enough educated people in an area strikes me as being valid for very large companies in parts of Texas outside of commuting distance from Houston or Dallas (including San Antonio and to some extent Austin), but the fact that Texas has so many corporate headquarters would indicate to me that they are mostly just able to import the labor they need that isn't already here. And Texas' success with job creation and net domestic in-migration would seem to indicate that many people are very willing to move here; perhaps it's harder for us to appreciate why northerners might like it down here in the month of July, but it should be very apparent in any given January.

As for research groups, I would suspect you're referring to the biotech industry. That's a somewhat more complicated matter, but on that one you just have to follow the money. There are so many states offering ludicrous incentives to biotech companies that it isn't really pragmatic to try and enter that market. There are less sexy industries to court that bring more jobs and capital. Moreover, the venture capitalists that support biotech firms have a strong preference for those firms to be located in the same city as the VCs so that there can be adequate oversight. To that end, Texas is screwed.

And, I am curious. All the NIMBY threads protesting the building of low income apartments, are they protesting because they fear an influx of doctors and engineers?

Huh? You're going to have to spell that one out for me, Red.

[RedScare]

Maybe the Ivy League's galore type schools like the northeast are not necessary. Just one (rice) and other good colleges (UH, UT, AM UTEP etc) is sufficient?

I'm not saying we shouldn't reach to have the best schools, we should. We should not totally neglect the system either, and we won't.

But our society is not just Texas, it's the USA and even he world. Our society has plenty of educated people.

Maybe it's just important to have adequate education, but more important to have a good business climate like we do.

Let's also look at the fastest growing areas in the country. The south (also AZ and NV), no? Well, they all have good schools, but they're not oozing of the top tiers like Cali or the northeast.

As long as you only aspire to retail sales or waiting tables, or maybe an office job looking at Excel spreadsheets and creating badass Powerpoint presentations, I think our mediocre schools and colleges are just fine. If we had any hope of actually leading the world in innovation and technology again, designing the phones and computers instead of merely buying and selling them, no, we are doomed. Unfortunately, I don't think your opinion is outrageous. I think a majority of Americans, and especially Texans, think mediocrity is just fine as long as it pays well.

What a depressing topic this has turned out to be, being in the minority for striving for excellence in education.

[TheNiche]

What a depressing topic this has turned out to be, being in the minority for striving for excellence in education.

What is "excellence in education", in your opinion? Define it. If possible, provide observable metrics from which one could draw objective comparisons between schools, school children by some category (i.e. gender, race, class, etc.), or individual children, whether their respective IQs merit the designation of 'genius' or 'mentally retarded'. Standardized test scores alone are inadequate, but so is a broad mission statement lacking any attempt at precision.

I don't think that you're in the minority for striving for "excellence in education", just that that probably means different things to each of us.

[sarahiki]

Spot on. Labor is mobile.

Also, Texas tends to absorb less-educated labor because our tax and labor laws do not put industrial businesses in as severe a global competitive disadvantage as they would be in other states. That does not mean that our economy is endangered or threatened, it means that our economy is specialized. And our demographics and social issues reflect that in comparisons of averages among various states. But averages for single variables do not effectively convey individuals' experiences or quality of life as compared to their alternatives. Perhaps Michigan spends twice as much per student, has a much lower cost of living because housing is so inexpensive (because no one wants to live there), averages higher wages because it is a union state, and has numerous small business incentives...but its tax rates are too high and there isn't any work. Texas clearly has the better future, but that is not necessarily reflected in cherry-picked data.

Another issue is that the long border with Mexico is so saturated with first- and second-generation school-age children raised from an early age in an effectively monocultural society and that there are linguistic and cultural barriers that hold back the general population of students as well as special populations (like I was when I was growing up there). It's a sensitive issue, and school districts in these regions have made laudable efforts to overcome the barriers, but the barriers still exist and there really is no effective solution that will allow that population to excel in a way that can be objectively compared to the way that students from places like The Woodlands or Cypress. If you take the border counties out of the mix, Texas probably moves up quite a bit in the rankings as they're calculated...but there wouldn't be any difference to the lifestyle of the average Texan in a major metropolitan area.

I think this is a very ignorant statement. Labor may be mobile, but uneducated or poorly educated people generally are not. They are not going anywhere. How healthy can a state be if it is saddled with undereducated, underemployed people, who as a result of those factors are also unhealthy and under- or uninsured. People can take the bootstraps position all they want, but if we're not providing children with a quality education, there's only so far they can pull themselves up.

[N Judah]

What a depressing topic this has turned out to be, being in the minority for striving for excellence in education.

Texas isn't really an education/R+D state. I think Texas prefers to incentivize targeted companies/industries in a way that is guaranteed to bring in tax dollars in the short run. The education thing is too risky because it is possible (as someone else said on the thread) that the bright students will leave after graduating.

If giving companies tax breaks, etc. happens to attract educated people, then that's more of a coincidence than anything else. That is my impression as an observer.

[N Judah]

Oh, double post. Sorry

[lockmat]

As long as you only aspire to retail sales or waiting tables, or maybe an office job looking at Excel spreadsheets and creating badass Powerpoint presentations, I think our mediocre schools and colleges are just fine. If we had any hope of actually leading the world in innovation and technology again, designing the phones and computers instead of merely buying and selling them, no, we are doomed. Unfortunately, I don't think your opinion is outrageous. I think a majority of Americans, and especially Texans, think mediocrity is just fine as long as it pays well.

What a depressing topic this has turned out to be, being in the minority for striving for excellence in education.

I think you missed one of my previous sentences that said we should pursue to have the best colleges.

I don't think we should pursue mediocrity. At the same time, we have to remember that not everyone can be an engineer, doctor or president and also that not everyone WANTS to be an engineer, doctor or president. For many of us, we're completely satisfied with doing our best, even if it's not the highest paying job or is part of creating the next best thing.

It's just a fact of life that we'll always have the dumb, mediocore and highly intelligent, regardless of effort. Even if everyone were highly intelligent, we still need people to do the inbetwee or "mediocore" jobs.

I for one am interested in doing my best, not being the best. If someone wants to call that medicore, I'm fine with that.

[lockmat]

I think this is a very ignorant statement. Labor may be mobile, but uneducated or poorly educated people generally are not. They are not going anywhere. How healthy can a state be if it is saddled with undereducated, underemployed people, who as a result of those factors are also unhealthy and under- or uninsured. People can take the bootstraps position all they want, but if we're not providing children with a quality education, there's only so far they can pull themselves up.

good point.

[RedScare]

Texas isn't really an education/R+D state. I think Texas prefers to incentivize targeted companies/industries in a way that is guaranteed to bring in tax dollars in the short run. The education thing is too risky because it is possible (as someone else said on the thread) that the bright students will leave after graduating.

If giving companies tax breaks, etc. happens to attract educated people, then that's more of a coincidence than anything else. That is my impression as an observer.

I am so impressed by this statement that I am going to put it in my signature for all to see.

[TheNiche]

I think this is a very ignorant statement. Labor may be mobile, but uneducated or poorly educated people generally are not. They are not going anywhere.

So, those uneducated guys hanging out in front of the Home Depot...they aren't willing to migrate to where they can find jobs. In your words, "they are not going anywhere."

Are you sure?

I think that the statement has a better cause/effect relationship if it is linked to IQ levels, but educational attainment...not so much.

How healthy can a state be if it is saddled with undereducated, underemployed people, who as a result of those factors are also unhealthy and under- or uninsured.

How do you evaluate the health of a State? A State is a concept, not a conscious self-aware life form. And as I tried to explain, taking sweeping averages of all populations and lumping it together is a very poor analytical approach.

As a particularly striking example, an uneducated uninsured Mexican immigrant and the family that they're raising here are no doubt better off than in their homeland, but they place a disproportionate burden on our educational system and weigh down our social data. That doesn't even mean that these households, which are a primary cause of our poor overall rankings, are worse off than if they had migrated to an alternative location. Meanwhile, by virtue of being an attractive state for immigrant labor to locate in, the cost of living makes a compelling case for more educated people to live in Texas and for businesses to locate here. And certainly on some level, our growth figures alone are an indication of revealed preference for Texas at the individual, household, and firm level.

People can take the bootstraps position all they want, but if we're not providing children with a quality education, there's only so far they can pull themselves up.

I have in no way taken a "bootstraps position". Education is critical to the continued economic growth of the entire United States. To the extent that you or I disagree, it is regarding the method with which to skin the cat.

[citizen4rmptown]

Texas isn't really an education/R+D state. I think Texas prefers to incentivize targeted companies/industries in a way that is guaranteed to bring in tax dollars in the short run. The education thing is too risky because it is possible (as someone else said on the thread) that the bright students will leave after graduating.

If giving companies tax breaks, etc. happens to attract educated people, then that's more of a coincidence than anything else. That is my impression as an observer.

I think its been established that students leave their schools and universities, the good ones,to be specific,

and then go find a job where the opportunity is, Texas.

If we educate our students, and the opportunity is STILL in Texas,

im sure they'll REMAIN in Texas. Sure, there would be students who leave the state just to place themselves in a different environment.

But, compared to other places, there would more students staying.

and isnt that what we want? the bright students staying...

I for one, am a risk-taker.

[Deut28Thirteen]

Texas isn't really an education/R+D state. I think Texas prefers to incentivize targeted companies/industries in a way that is guaranteed to bring in tax dollars in the short run. The education thing is too risky because it is possible (as someone else said on the thread) that the bright students will leave after graduating.

If giving companies tax breaks, etc. happens to attract educated people, then that's more of a coincidence than anything else. That is my impression as an observer.

I am not sure what you are trying to say. To me it sounds like your saying because they strive to have the best schools and the most educated, the students are leaving. There leaving because they trying to find jobs in the field they have just graduated. Why can't Texas have some of the best education in the Nation? I know not every school can be a Stanford or a Princeton or every student can get into those schools, but that does not mean they should not strive to be the best they could be. I think if Texas imporves it education system on all levels it would help much more that hurt the state. Many of the bright students would have no reason to leave because Texas has jobs.