Tennessee’s governors and state legislators over the last 10 years have made a deliberate decision to operate the state in a manner that encourages the growth of the economy through the expansion of business, an influx of residents whose money moves in our state and holding government expenses in check.
The state’s standards of operation have yielded an unemployment rating lower than the national average, a tax status that is deemed “business-friendly,” and a government that serves its citizenry with an eye toward limited spending and budgets.
In contrast, many state and local governments of decades past have tended to operate within a model that was supported and written about by Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith, a Keynesian economist who served in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. This model of operation theorized that a powerful government, strong unions and large corporations would exert “countervailing power” and were the essential ingredients to a successful, fair economy.
That liberal “blue model” has been accompanied by heavy taxation and a “social dividend” in which government directs benefits to its employees and spending in the community it serves that exceed the role of government: longer vacations, rich pensions and health care, civil servant protections with little responsiveness to change, subsidized entertainment and countless other government interventions. Those things offer a unique advantage for some, not all.
How have states fared that continue operating using the blue model?