Move to Texas and Get a Free BMW

Horace Greeley , the nineteenth century editor of the New York Tribune, famously said, “Go west, young man!” I wish to update that maxim to, “Go to Texas, young man!”

Why? Texas likes entrepreneurs, Goddamnit. It welcomes them. It smoothes the way. It wants them. It loves them. You may say, “Doesn’t every state want our wonderful, productive, job-creating, creative business class?” No. Every state apparently does not.

I was in Dallas last month on business for my company, Corporate Rain. And I was pleasantly surprised by the palpable warmth extended to me in many ways as a non-resident small businessman looking to expand into this peculiar and unique state. I came home to New York feeling that Texas offers a paradigm and guidepost of what can surely make all our struggling states more internationally competitive.

Case in point, the March 14th edition of The Dallas Morning News printed a revealing, succinct article by staff writer Cheryl Hall about this phenomenon. Ms. Hall cites Michael Cox former chief economist for the Federal Reserve of Dallas (presently head of The O’Neil Center for Global Markets at SMU).

Mr. Cox apparently has a slogan for companies seeking to recruit elite workers from New York and California: “Move to Texas and get a free BMW!” Ms. Hall confirms this is no exaggeration; that professionals living in the Northeast and California “pay the equivalent of a year’s worth of expensive car payments in annual personal income tax”, which Texas doesn’t have.

Professor Cox states, “Every six years Dallas adds a million people.” Since taking over as Director of the SMU O’Neil Center, Cox has created compelling statistics that point to Dallas/Ft. Worth as the new “it” economy for common sense American businessmen.

I live in Westchester County, New York. I personally love living here. I love the opera, the theatre, the art, the Yankees, the Mets, and the Jets, the wooded beauty, the distinctive seasons, the intellectual ferment, the buzzing frisson of sweaty go-go New York energy. But Westchester County bears the heaviest tax burden of any county in the United States. The State of New York is effectively bankrupt and controlled by featherbedding unions, selfishly interested only in maintaining staggeringly excessive benefits at any cost–mostly on the back of energetic productive small business.

Why would any entrepreneur in his right mind come here?

Furthermore, even with New York’s incomparable cultural footprint, Dallas, particularly, is quietly growing its competitive cultural presence including a startling new world class opera house, the architecturally notable AT&T Performing Arts Center and the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Hall (home to the Dallas Symphony, led by charismatic young conductor, Jaap van Zweden), and strong civic support of museums, theatres, parks, wildlife, environment, and education. Dallas is not New York, but it is stealthily becoming a quality of life, as well as an entrepreneurial oasis.

On February 18 Forbes released its list of America’s most miserable cities. It’s not just Detroit and Newark on this list anymore. It’s also New York City, Chicago and Cleveland. I assure you, my friends, we entrepreneurs will leave the New Yorks, the Californias, the Massachusetts, the Michigans, the Illinois, the New Jerseys, in droves. Eventually, entrepreneurs will shake the dust of these mad states from our sandals.

I won’t leave New York, though. I am willing to continue to pay the uncompetitive price of living in New York because I love it and it’s worth it to me. But for a young entrepreneur in New York or California, it makes no sense to stay in these states when Texas and other sensible states beckon them with lower taxes, reasonable government cost and efficiency, and rational labor costs.

The actor Fess Parker died while I was in Texas. Fess Parker was famous for portraying Davey Crockett in the Walt Disney television series during the mid-fifties. (I still remember my Davey Crockett coonskin cap, which I wore religiously for a while.) Crockett, in a speech he made when he resigned his Tennessee legislative seat, memorably concluded his parting Jeremiad with the immortal words, “You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.”

Well put, Davey. Good advice. Thank you.