March 29, Robert Lawson, the Jerome M. Fullinwider Chair in Economic Freedom and director of the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom in the Cox School of Business at SMU Dallas, for a piece that supports a premise that domestic in-migration to Texas is most often coming from highly taxed and regulated states like California and New York. Published in the Austin American-Statesman under the heading: The herd heads for Texas; is economic freedom why? https://tinyurl.com/4hbswhcw
I just checked the U-Haul website to see how much it would cost to rent a small truck one way from Dallas to San Francisco: $1,462 was the price. Not bad. Next, I wondered what the price would be if I was going from San Francisco to Dallas. U-Haul will rent me a truck one way from San Francisco to Dallas for a whopping $2,599 — that’s 77% more expensive than in the other direction. This can’t be because of wear and tear on the truck, the distance, 1,732 miles, is the same. Other city pairs I checked show the same pattern. For instance, the rental price from Dallas to New York City is $1,130, but from New York City to Dallas is 89% higher, $2,138.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has more than once taken to Twitter to claim these truck rental price differentials show that, “The nation could stand to learn a thing or two from the way we do things in Texas!” Sen. Cruz no doubt believes California is pushing people out due to its higher taxes with more costly regulations compared to states like Texas, and these price differentials are all the evidence he needs to prove his point. Now, I have nothing against Sen. Cruz, but I’ve noticed politicians have a way of cherry-picking data to fit their political points. As an academic economist, I’m trained to get large samples of data to see if the patterns we see in the “big data” conform with our anecdotal evidence.
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