Whither Thou Texas Pride?

We stumbled today upon a blog and were struck by its inclination to throw Texas under the bus in favor of a British media organization’s words. We wish our fellow Texans would endeavor to learn more about the Texas situation itself and not accept in unquestioning fashion the opinions that look to other places and infer how bad things are here. That’s unproductive to the debate in our great state, where the public employee pension system is in relatively good shape.

Specifically, we stumbled upon the Texas Conservative Review (TCR) blog that cited an Economist editor’s views of “the public pension crisis facing our states and local governments, including Texas.” Without so much as a glance into the situation in Texas, the TCR writer declares that,

“The bird's nest on the ground for public employee unions are increasingly being discovered. In many wealthy countries wages are on average higher in the state sector, pensions better and job security paramount. Regardless of the jobs workers do, their unions have blocked reform at every opportunity.”

It’s disappointing when blogs of various political stripes resort to creating “guilt by association” without looking into the facts in Texas. As a right-to-work state, public employee unions have played only a minor role in city-pension discussions over the years, especially compared to those in other states. And Texas pensions are in pretty good shape compared to other pensions around the world. Look into the facts about Texas pensions before painting with such a broad brush. – Max Patterson