New Mexico’s tiny improvement in poverty is hardly an accomplishment

New data shows that New Mexico’s poverty rate has improved somewhat faster than the national average and that we have gone from 50th to 48th in poverty. Any time poverty goes down here in New Mexico and nationwide is a cause for celebration, but Gov. Lujan Grisham predictably took to social media to claim credit. Of course, she is full of it. Her policies have done nothing to address poverty. Instead, they have held back what COULD be a major shift away from New Mexico’s scarcity mentality and policies to that of abundance, but she and the Democrats who control the Legislature prefer to keep New Mexicans poor and at the bottom when it comes to education.

It’s not hard to pinpoint what has really created improvement in New Mexico’s poverty situation: the massive infusions of oil and gas revenue that we’ve been experiencing. New Mexico’s oil and gas industry generates over $13 billion annually in total state and local revenue. Between 75% growth in the general fund and a sovereign wealth fund that has at least $75 billion in it, it would take “skill” to NOT witness at least some improvement in New Mexico economically-speaking. Even wasteful government programs like pre-K, free childcare, and Hollywood subsidies do create some amount of economic activity even though they are VERY sub-optimal.

The difference is that New Mexico’s economy is more dependent NOW on oil and gas than ever before. The massive flow of oil and gas money has done nothing to improve New Mexico’s workforce participation rate (falling from depressed COVID levels), improve our failing education system which remains dead last nationally, our roads have worsened under this Gov., and despite record revenue growth New Mexico’s economy is considered “stuttering” in terms of overall growth.

The Rio Grande Foundation has called for broad based tax and economic reforms for years, but MLG and the Legislature have preferred a big-government approach with new programs controlled by them. Alas, their method has failed miserably.