Texas Got It Right!. Sam Wyly

I finally broke out on my own in 1963,

      selling Fortran software services to petroleum engi-

      neers, my role models weren’t computer geniuses.

      They were oil wildcatters, guys who were willing to

      drill fifty dry holes in the West Texas desert before

      they got a producing well. They never said die. And

      Texas bankers had faith and loaned them the money

      to do it! I knew that if I was going to hit it big—or

      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

      16

      at least make enough for a mortgage, a car, and a

      house to put my family in—I was going to do it right

      here in Texas.

      Hundreds of thousands of people from every race and

      walk of life are fleeing states like California, Illinois,

      and New York to start a new life in Texas. We’ve got

      some of the fastest-growing, and fastest-diversifying,

      metro areas in the country. That old abbreviation GTT,

      “gone to Texas” (coined back in the 19th century when

      hard-up farmers in Tennessee were heading to Texas in

      droves), has new currency today.

      And we are welcoming our new neighbors with

      open arms. Because that’s how Texans were brought

      up, sure, but also because we know that diversity and

      population growth are good for our state. Today Fort

      Worth, Dallas, Austin, and Houston are magnets for

      the “reverse migration” of African-Americans who

      are leaving behind the old urban enclaves of the Rust

      Belt, the Northeast, and the Left Coast. And most

      Texans know that the idea of a border fence along the

      Two paintings by the artist David Wright, from left to right: Sam

      Wyly’s great-great-great-granddad Hezekiah Balch; James

      Wyly, who fought the French and the Indians on the 1760s fron-

      tier and left land in North Carolina and Virgina to his children.

      Rio Grande—aka the Rio Bravo, if you live on the

      Mexico side—is ludicrous. Why cut off all those good

      businesses and friendships that have driven life in

      our bustling border towns for years? And anyhow, we

      are all immigrants here if you go back a few genera-

      tions—that is, unless you’re a Cherokee or Choctaw

      or Comanche. And heck, the Cherokee were new-

      comers here, too, when they pushed aside the Waco

      Indians around 1830.

      I’ll be the first to say, and proudly, that Texas is

      cowboy country. Ranching is still a big deal here, and

      rodeos, too. But we’ve got a lot more than bronc

      riders down here. We’ve got the fastest-growing tech

      capital in the country; we’re home to the best inde-

      pendent live-music showcase in the world; and out

      west in the little town of Marfa, where Giant was

      filmed all those years ago, we’ve got a contemporar-

      yart scene like no other on earth.

      Contrary to what some outsiders think, Texans are

      not obsessed with money. We’re just good at earning,

      investing, and spending it. And we’ve got legislators

      and other public officials who know that the best thing

      they can do for the well-being of their state is to

      remove obstacles to building good companies that can

      generate wealth to go around. Our state lawmakers

      hold down full-time jobs outside the statehouse—as

      shop owners, ranchers, veterinarians, you name it.

      They know the true meaning of “business-friendly.”

      And anyhow, lots of well-off Texans I know got into

      business for the thrill of the game. Dollars are just a

      way of keeping score. Most of us go to church on Sun-

      days and read the high school football scores in the

      Dallas Morning News on Saturdays, and we go to dance

      halls like Billy Bob’s on Saturday night.

      Texas is the most American of all the big states. Liberty

      and freedom are rooted deep in our souls. We’ve got a

      strong independent, secessionist streak, and we’ve

      spilled blood to achieve self-determination. We’re a

      melting pot in the truest sense of the term: We come

      here from all over, from all cultures, and we become

      Texans. We have an egalitarian sense of justice, and

      our spirit is infused with the romance of the frontier.

      We like wide-open spaces, and we’re not afraid to

      speak our minds. And we get things done. In

      California, if somebody sees a rattlesnake, he calls a

      committee meeting to discuss what to do about the

      rattlesnake problem. A Texan just kills the rattlesnake.

      My son, Andrew, and I decided to write this book

      because we saw America being pulled in two very dif-

      ferent directions. On one side was California, where

      taxation and regulation were squeezing the blood

      right out of entrepreneurs and sending that once-

      proud state to the very bottom of almost every major

      entrepreneurial ranking—right down there with Cali-

      fornia’s overtaxed partners in misery, Illinois and

      New York. Leading America in the other direction is

      Texas, where smart regulation, low taxes, right-to-

      work laws, and tort reform are freeing entrepreneurs

      to invest, take risks, and grow—placing Texas at the

      very top of those same business and job-growth rank-

      ings, year after year.

      The best and the brightest people and greatest

      companies are voting with their feet, abandoning the

      Rust Belt and the now-dysfunctional Golden State in

      unprecedented numbers to set up shop in Texas.

      What they find when they get here is lots of afford-

      able