The Rio Grande Foundation regularly points out New Mexico’s lack of business-friendliness of New Mexico public policies over many years. One specific way this is manifested is in the lack of publicly-traded companies. So, we took data on the number of publicly-traded companies by state from “InvestSnips” and divided by population (adding decimals so the numbers are not so small).
Yes, New Mexico’s small population means fewer big companies headquartered here, but when adjusted for inflation we have fewer publicly-traded companies headquartered in New Mexico than any other state.
The data are presented in both table and chart format below:
One of the first things I noticed when I moved to New Mexico is the lack of a full-grown private economy. In Chicago most of my neighbors worked for some sort of business; Most of my neighbors here work in government-related or healthcare jobs. The businesses we have tend to be small firms, mostly in the service sector.
New Mexico has a limited talent pool of executives who understand corporate strategy, capital formation, productivity and large-scale competition. One result is that few of the legislators who decide issues like merit pay for teachers have ever worked in the pay-for-performance environment that’s standard for corporate managers.
Another result is widespread economic illiteracy. Voters who have never worked in a competitive enterprise are vulnerable to progressive claims that corporations are evil, profits are immoral and competition is bad… and that all businesses can absorb a minimum wage hike without cutting jobs.
Simply another result of having had nearly 88 years of single party, generally anti private business, Dem rule. There really is not much reason for a major private business to come to NM unless it is bribed to do so with massive amounts of taxpayer “incentives.” The only Fortune 500 company that began in NM was Microsoft which left the state 40 years ago for no state income tax Washington State.
Out of curiosity, I compared the stats for the 7 states with no state income tax: AK,.27;WY,.35;FL,.62;SD,.79;WA,.91;NV,1.03 and TX,1.43 for a total of 5.4. Dividing that figure by 7 equals .77 – 5.5 times the NM rate of .14. Ouch. Not to worry, 21% of K-12 students in NM are grade level proficient in math and 31% in reading.