Rick Perry's Free Market Paradise vs. My Socialist Hellhole of Massachusetts | Crooks and Liars

Coming from Massachusetts too. I never quite figured why if the state is so awful people keep moving here.

First, let's just consider that the unemployment rate in the free-market paradise of Texas stands at a freedom-y 8.4 percent. For contrast, the unemployment rate in my socialist hellhole of Massachusetts stands at communist-like 7.6 percent. Poverty rates are also intriguing, since 10 percent of Massachusetts residents live below the poverty line while 15.8 percent of Texas residents live below the poverty line.

But that's not all! My evil job-killing state has the lowest rate of uninsured people in the country, at 5.3 percent. Texas, on the other hand, has left a whopping 27.1 percent of its population uninsured. I'm not sure what's quite so miraculous about not having access to health care but then again I'm just a commie pinko. What the hell do I know?

And there are other things too. Like, education. In Massachusetts, 85 percent of eighth graders scored at or above basic in the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, while 52 percent scored at or above proficient. Texas' eighth graders scored 78 percent at basic, 36 percent at proficient. You see a similar trend for reading: 83 percent of Massachusetts eighth graders scored at basic in reading, with 43 percent at proficient. In Texas, 73 percent of eighth graders scored at basic in reading while 27 percent scored at proficient.

"OK, OK," you say. "So Massachusetts has a better economy, education and health care than Texas. But all those big government programs are surely sapping Massholes of their precious moral values and leading to crime running rampant in the streets and a breakdown in family values! DON'T YOU READ DAVID BROOKS!?!!?!" (He must have got it so wrong because he spends so much time in the red states for his next book: emphasis is mine)

Yeah, sure, let's go there. Violent crime rate in Massachusetts is 432 per 100,000 people. In Texas it's 511 per 100,000 people. In Massachusetts the murder rate is 2.6 per 100,000 people. In Texas it's 5.4 per 100,000 people. The Massachusetts divorce rate is 1.8 per 1,000 people. The Texas divorce rate is 5.4 per 1,000. The teen pregnancy rate in Massachusetts is 49 per 1,000 women while in Texas it's 88 per 1,000 women.

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Rick Perry's Free Market Paradise vs. My Socialist Hellhole of Massachusetts Crooks and Liars