(Previously published, 2017) The graph on this page is the same as the one shown in our earlier Member Analysis titled “Let’s turn this State around”, except that the employment growth created by the oil and gas industry has been removed from New Mexico’s figures on this Member Analysis graph. Thus, one is able to see the state’s combined employment growth which took place in other industries. There was no combined, net growth in job-creation among other industries.[i] The 5% job-growth which New Mexico experienced from 2008 through 2014 occurred because the oil and gas industry experienced a 35% growth in job-creation.[ii] What happened in New Mexico’s other industries? One reason New Mexico has a low rate of job creation is that businesses here often live in an adverse regulatory climate. The experience of the oil industry is instructive. When the present administration came into office there were drilling applications piled-up which had not been processed by the Oil … [Read more...]

by Harvey E. Yates, Jr. A version of this was printed in the Espanola Rio Grande Sun, the Las Cruces Sun News, the Santa Fe New Mexican and was published on the Searchlite website. The number of people living in extreme poverty in the world has been markedly reduced in the last couple of decades. This wonderful result has arisen, in large part, from unleashing the entrepreneurial drive and the work ethic of millions of individuals by beefing-up their property rights, by lessening regulatory restraints, and by diminishing the legal insecurity which arises from political and regulatory capriciousness. As poverty declined in much of the world,  the well-being of millions of children improved. Though New Mexico has not known the depths of poverty suffered in much of the world, still, recently, when on the average poverty diminished and child well-being improved worldwide, the same did not happen in New Mexico.  Here poverty increased and child well-being seems to have declined. … [Read more...]