Hands-off government according to opinion polls

This was written by New Yorker author John Bainbridge in “The Super-Americans”, a book published in 1961 about the Lone Star state after Bainbridge spent about 9 months here. Recently, Texas has been in the news for other, also super-sized reasons: 2021 saw the state’s power grid fail in one of the most catastrophic and spectacular ways possible, causing 4.5 million households to go without power, half of all Texans losing access to clean drinking water, and dozens of Texans dying from freezing temperatures. And, in the last few months, the Texas Legislature has taken to passing laws instituting more stringent voting restrictions, constitutional (permitless) carry of firearms, and banning women from obtaining an abortion after they are more than six weeks pregnant. This all comes in addition to Texas’ governmental response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the government take deliberate action to not act—whether it be in terms of providing unemployment assistance, blocking cities from passing eviction moratoriums, and taking legal action against lower government entities passing ordinances instituting face mask mandates and/or vaccine requirements.

All of these controversies have garnered national attention, and have dimmed the view of Texas as an economically successful, small government, pro-business state. Certainly, the Texas government has gone out of its way to take action to influence Texans’ lives in ways that it finds important. Texans overall, however, tend to be in favor of a more hands-off government according to opinion polls—and you, in this class, are no exception, as I demonstrated in the supplementary lecture video:

Whether you agree with the way Texas has handled the power grid crisis, the new laws, or its response to the COVID-19 pandemic or not is not the topic of this discussion post.

nstead, please read Chapter 1  Download Chapter 1, Chapter 2  Download