Working for a living

I have been harping on Texas a lot but Texans are enjoying the high quality of life that a small conservative government awards. From The Washington Examiner:

What Texas can teach us
If you want to see a place where the private sector in America has been booming and generating jobs, you should look at Texas. That�s my take from these absolutely fascinating numbers compiled from Bureau of Labor Statistics figures by The Business Journals, tracking the increase or decrease in private sector jobs in the ten years between April 2001 and April 2011. Any precise ten-year period is somewhat arbitrary, of course, since the two endpoints can fall at different points in the business cycle, and so picking different starting and end points will produce different pictures. But the numbers here look pretty unambiguous.

In those 10 years, Texas gained 732,800 private sector jobs, far ahead of the number two and three states, Arizona (90,200) and Nevada (90,000). The nation overall lost more than 2 million private sector jobs, with the biggest losses coming in California (623,700), Michigan (619,200) and Ohio (460,900).

A lot more at the article including this nugget:

I�ve explored previously this contrast between our two largest states. Here�s another set of numbers about our second and third largest states that tells a story about what has happened over a longer period of time. In 1970 New York had 18 million people. In 2010 New York had 19 million people. In 1970 Texas had 11 million people. In 2010 Texas had 25 million people.

That is a pretty amazing number -- in ten years, Texas gained 732,800 jobs in the public sector and the closest runner up -- Arizona -- gained 90,200 private sector jobs. That is a jump of over 800% (812.41 to be exact). It is the private sector jobs that are the engine of the economy -- they create wealth. The public sector jobs create welfare.