HOW DALLAS RATES

TREC met last night at the delectable restaurant Tucker (tip: best pizza in Dallas) where Wick Allison served as the evening’s speaker. And although I have heard the story of Themistocles many times over, it was his talk on present-day Dallas I found especially interesting. Wick’s report was that out of 25 major metropolitan cities, Dallas falls at the very bottom of the heap in regard to citizen tax burden. “Dallas is under-taxed,” he said.

So I went digging for a bit more info and found…well, you’ll just have to go to the jump to find out.

In The Beacon Hill Institute’s 2005 State Competitiveness Index (measures nine factors including government fiscal policy, legal/regulatory system, infrastructure, labor force, technology, and finance/prices. Higher score indicates conditions likely to produce higher incomes and better standards of living), Dallas rated 28th in competitiveness out of 50 metropolitan areas. That’s behind places like Boston, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Minneapolis, etc.

Now, they did have a bit of info on “state and local taxes per capita/income per capita,” which said Dallas ranks 7th, but the overall category of “government and fiscal policy subindex” put us at 16.

Ugh. “28.” It just sounds so…so status quo.