Texas Got It Right!. Sam Wyly
I finally broke out on my own in 1963,
selling Fortran software services to petroleum engi-
neers, my role models weren’t computer geniuses.
They were oil wildcatters, guys who were willing to
drill fifty dry holes in the West Texas desert before
they got a producing well. They never said die. And
Texas bankers had faith and loaned them the money
to do it! I knew that if I was going to hit it big—or
TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!
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at least make enough for a mortgage, a car, and a
house to put my family in—I was going to do it right
here in Texas.
Hundreds of thousands of people from every race and
walk of life are fleeing states like California, Illinois,
and New York to start a new life in Texas. We’ve got
some of the fastest-growing, and fastest-diversifying,
metro areas in the country. That old abbreviation GTT,
“gone to Texas” (coined back in the 19th century when
hard-up farmers in Tennessee were heading to Texas in
droves), has new currency today.
And we are welcoming our new neighbors with
open arms. Because that’s how Texans were brought
up, sure, but also because we know that diversity and
population growth are good for our state. Today Fort
Worth, Dallas, Austin, and Houston are magnets for
the “reverse migration” of African-Americans who
are leaving behind the old urban enclaves of the Rust
Belt, the Northeast, and the Left Coast. And most
Texans know that the idea of a border fence along the
Two paintings by the artist David Wright, from left to right: Sam
Wyly’s great-great-great-granddad Hezekiah Balch; James
Wyly, who fought the French and the Indians on the 1760s fron-
tier and left land in North Carolina and Virgina to his children.
Rio Grande—aka the Rio Bravo, if you live on the
Mexico side—is ludicrous. Why cut off all those good
businesses and friendships that have driven life in
our bustling border towns for years? And anyhow, we
are all immigrants here if you go back a few genera-
tions—that is, unless you’re a Cherokee or Choctaw
or Comanche. And heck, the Cherokee were new-
comers here, too, when they pushed aside the Waco
Indians around 1830.
I’ll be the first to say, and proudly, that Texas is
cowboy country. Ranching is still a big deal here, and
rodeos, too. But we’ve got a lot more than bronc
riders down here. We’ve got the fastest-growing tech
capital in the country; we’re home to the best inde-
pendent live-music showcase in the world; and out
west in the little town of Marfa, where Giant was
filmed all those years ago, we’ve got a contemporar-
yart scene like no other on earth.
Contrary to what some outsiders think, Texans are
not obsessed with money. We’re just good at earning,
investing, and spending it. And we’ve got legislators
and other public officials who know that the best thing
they can do for the well-being of their state is to
remove obstacles to building good companies that can
generate wealth to go around. Our state lawmakers
hold down full-time jobs outside the statehouse—as
shop owners, ranchers, veterinarians, you name it.
They know the true meaning of “business-friendly.”
And anyhow, lots of well-off Texans I know got into
business for the thrill of the game. Dollars are just a
way of keeping score. Most of us go to church on Sun-
days and read the high school football scores in the
Dallas Morning News on Saturdays, and we go to dance
halls like Billy Bob’s on Saturday night.
Texas is the most American of all the big states. Liberty
and freedom are rooted deep in our souls. We’ve got a
strong independent, secessionist streak, and we’ve
spilled blood to achieve self-determination. We’re a
melting pot in the truest sense of the term: We come
here from all over, from all cultures, and we become
Texans. We have an egalitarian sense of justice, and
our spirit is infused with the romance of the frontier.
We like wide-open spaces, and we’re not afraid to
speak our minds. And we get things done. In
California, if somebody sees a rattlesnake, he calls a
committee meeting to discuss what to do about the
rattlesnake problem. A Texan just kills the rattlesnake.
My son, Andrew, and I decided to write this book
because we saw America being pulled in two very dif-
ferent directions. On one side was California, where
taxation and regulation were squeezing the blood
right out of entrepreneurs and sending that once-
proud state to the very bottom of almost every major
entrepreneurial ranking—right down there with Cali-
fornia’s overtaxed partners in misery, Illinois and
New York. Leading America in the other direction is
Texas, where smart regulation, low taxes, right-to-
work laws, and tort reform are freeing entrepreneurs
to invest, take risks, and grow—placing Texas at the
very top of those same business and job-growth rank-
ings, year after year.
The best and the brightest people and greatest
companies are voting with their feet, abandoning the
Rust Belt and the now-dysfunctional Golden State in
unprecedented numbers to set up shop in Texas.
What they find when they get here is lots of afford-
able