In her new book, “Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas,” the quality of author Erica Grieder’s narrative inverts the progress of Texas. Texas began as an unpromising territory peopled by opportunists and grew to become “one of America’s genuine powerhouses.” But Grieder’s book unfolds in the opposite manner, beginning with a compelling thesis and sharp writing, but ending up sinking into a warm bath of progressive admonition.
As a native Texan with a sharp mind, Grieder begins with promise. Her nominal aim is, of course, to defend Texas to America. And she starts by presenting a fairly balanced perspective: “The cheerleaders dismiss Texas’s inequities, its glibness, its hubris. The state’s critics minimize Texas’s entrepreneurial ethos, its openness, its confidence.” While there are sections that lean to the left, they’re matched by effusive praise of Texas. But therein lies the catch.
Recall that the premise of the book is defending Texas to America. If the author claims to be defending Texas to America, while weighing liberal perspectives against Texas’ own perspective, one starts to suspect that she equates America with liberal ideology. Her language supports that idea: “[E]ven if the nation is tired of Texas, the state shouldn’t be ignored.” Or again, “people have been wondering: ‘What on earth is the matter with Texas?’” I’m speculating, but I don’t think most conservatives want to fix Texas; I think they want to move there.
As entertaining as it is to nitpick, her lack of balance does not cripple the book. If she stated outright her real premise — a liberal Texan defending Texas to other liberals — I would have much less to complain about. In the final analysis, I can tolerate her apologies for the socially conservative aspects of Texas because they fit this real thesis. Moreover, her writing is crisp and provocative, and her positive outlook defies the pessimism that dominates political writing.
Ultimately, the real problem with the book was the penultimate chapter entitled “Tweaking the Model.” Grieder continues to defend Texas while simultaneously throwing its unique paradigm under the bus. After citing an example of a successful entrepreneur, she states: “Low taxes and predictable regulations had played a role, of course, but so too had public-sector investments in education and in infrastructure.” In other words, she implies that government has a significant role to play in spurring innovation and economic growth, something that does not mesh well the Texas Model — “low taxes, low services” — she discusses earlier
Citing Texas’ low per-student funding, Grieder then proceeds to suggest increasing spending on education reform, funded by nothing other than raising the minimum wage. This, she claimed, would help the poor because, “No matter how low your cost of living is, if you’re making $15K a year, you’re poor. ” I immediately objected. But reading on, I found she tried to pre-empt my objection with the single-most astounding sentence in her entire book: “The usual objection to such a suggestion is that raising the minimum wage has an adverse effect on employment, but the demand for minimum-wage workers is closely tied to population, and Texas has never had a shortage of population growth.” I’m not an economist, but I am fairly certain her claim amounts to saying that a minimum-wage increase won’t hurt employment because wages are going to rise anyway.
In the end, except for accidentally undermining the good parts of Texas, Grieder defends Texas well to a progressive audience. She clarifies the broad history and recent developments in Texas entertainingly enough to be worth reading even for a conservative. In short, the policy recommendations were worthless, but I liked the rest.
