In 2002, Texas exports topped California’s by $3 billion. Last year, Texas exports were nearly $300 billion more than its top rival, No. 2 ranked California.
Texas leaders have managed to keep a lid on regulations that make it harder to do business or limit growth and development, Orrenius said. When government piles on more rules and limitations, economic growth starts to decline – “slowly and surely,” she said.As a young economist, Orrenius was invited to Austin to testify on the economic recovery in the early 2000s, and was offered a flight on Ross Perot Jr.’s private jet.
“Where else does that happen?” Orrenius said. “People here are open to new ideas, and they want to make things better. That’s pretty cool.”, which may not be surprising – until one considers that experts have been warning about “peak oil” since before I arrived here. Indeed, it took 33 years for Texas producers to surpass the average daily crude output reached in 1981.
In the Texas oil patch, innovation seems to find a way. In the 2000s, producers refined a process called “fracking” to unlock huge stores of natural gas and crude oil, ushering in the shale revolution. Last year, Texas firms produced a record volume of natural gas and over 5 million barrels of crude oil a day, up from less than 2 million in 2012. That 2022 output was generated by 24% fewer workers than a decade earlier, and the state had