The post of Keep Texas Red, is a post very interesting since
the point of view of how related we are as humans with a party identification.
This post talks about Texas as an example of success in administration and
economy making a comparison with California.
In my first participation topic for the class I mentioned
that exceptionalism “should be copied in many other cities or countries: The
positivism and the pride about the place where you are from and what you have
where you live”, but on the other hand “It blocks the ability of respect
differences of points of view, different customs, different kind of living and
different beliefs. It creates the confusion between “exceptional” and
“perfect,” which is not true. And, finally makes it hard to value other
exceptional places and learn from them”.
The comments before in this post mine explain very well the
points of comparison with California´s corruption, expenses and cost of life. And, I agree with Echo Noelani that “taking
personal responsibility” in helping poor people is not enough. Taking personal responsibility
for your environment and the people who share it with you is a good step. But,
a government should have social responsibility on helping to mitigate the
differences and creating more opportunities for the people, that´s why they`re
public employees. What would be a good motivation for leaving the comfort zone
of the elite class to change their community?
It´s very easy to talk about the Texas success when it is based
on natural resources and a free market that puts high value on them. What would
be the exemplary success of Texas if the oil price in the international market
plums more? Right now, we are seeing
that the price of oil went down to $45/barrel, this situation made that companies
like Shell, Exxon, Schlumberger, and others laid off more than 10,000 employees
the past 2 years. But, the executives of these companies generally didn´t
reduce their salary. What would be the economic history in Texas without the
energy resources?
My final point is that the discussion shouldn´t go focused
on parties, because history showed us that they change too, according to what
they need. We should focus on improving the life style for the community not
only individual success. The individual success creates differences and
segregate people, where rich communities don´t even mix or realize that there
are poor or middle class around them, living in a different way. I think that
it doesn´t matter if someone is blue or red or purple or green, it´s necessary
to pop our bubbles of comfort zone and take responsibility for others, but also
demand that government takes responsibility for us as citizens. That´s why we
pay taxes, to improve the life of the community, not just to close ourselves in
a car and ask for roads that only we will use.
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