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Comment by _pius | Hacker News Reader

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government ...

You do realize you live in Texas, right?

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Have you been to Austin? Or Dallas? (I'd personally stay away from Houston and San Antonio). It sounds like you're passing judgement without really experiencing the area.

Texas is a fairly reasonable state when it comes to most of their laws. There has been some controversy around the human-origin that will be taught in schools, but this issue isn't isolated to just Texas. And beyond that, if you really dislike the public schools, you can always go for private or charter schools, or even homeschooling.

Texas government tends to stay out of the way of their people for the most part (at least compared to NY or CA). No state income tax, though, property taxes are fairly high in the cities and suburbs. Gun laws are very lax. It's overall a pretty good state.

Don't forget the Anti-Dildo laws:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute http://daxlegal.com/dildos-sexually-obscene-toys-illegal-in-...

This is so fantastically nutty I could hardly believe it (when I first read about a woman that had been arrested in Texas for smuggling Dildos).

Well, they definitely sell 'em in stores in every decent-sized city I've been to in the state...

>It sounds like you're passing judgement without really experiencing the area.

It sounds like you did the same to California. The parts of the government being reacted to are probably the laws about when you can kill people (e.g. if they rob your neighbor), express lane to the death penalty, etc., etc.

Yeah, the state with the surplus. The weather in Texas isn't anything to write home about, but in every way that matters it's a more competently run state.

They probably have a surplus because they underfund health care system, among other things... (I remember being surprised at the full-time firefighting budget cuts not long before the huge fires two years ago)

EDIT: Oh and apparently there is no surplus

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-deficits-st...

the article cited was from last year.

from last week: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-pr...

"A boom in revenues from sales taxes as well as taxes from oil and natural gas production have given Texas a budget surplus that the state comptroller has estimated at $8.8 billion."

Of course this will start a new debate about how it's only a surplus because of previous budget cuts, but that's for another time and place. Still others will crunch the numbers differently and say there was actually a deficit. Politics is fun.

Texas has really crappy Medicaid coverage, but is anyone here really going to base their decision on which state to live in based on that?

2011? Try to keep up.

Meh, original comment about shitty services holds

http://www.texasobserver.org/how-the-budget-got-cut/

I don't see anything in that article that isn't sensible. There's no reason government expenditures have to keep going up in good times and bad.

Quite the contrary, when times are bad, social services are needed more, not less.

In broad strokes states have essentially two functions - education and social services. Of course when you make substantive cuts that's where they're going. There's no "right" amount of social services - as a state you pay for what's reasonable at the time given budgetary constraints.

It's no coincidence the Economy in Texas has recovered while the economy in California hasn't. This is particularly galling given the number of tech companies in Northern California with highly compensated employees.

In any event, California didn't slip into a budgetary black hole by coincidence. State employees are grossly overcompensated, and much of that compensation takes the form of generous retirement benefits. The state will be raising taxes and using budgetary gimmicks for decades because the real problem is unfunded pension liabilities, not delivery of current services.

> Yeah, the state with the surplus.

You mean California?

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-california-budget-surplus...

There's a big difference between an actual surplus and a "surplus" based on accounting gimmicks. You can only pretend California is in surplus by pretending to believe the state retirement systems really will return 8% on average.

Nobody believes that.

Please explain which gimmicks you think are currently active. Your knowledge of California budgets seems to be a few years dated. We've reformed a lot about the budget process in the last few years. Up to and including how many votes are needed.

There's a lot wrong in California, but a lot of people are barking up the trees from years ago instead of the ones that are real problems today.

I put the biggest gimmick right there in my post. What does "how many votes are needed" have to do with returns on state retirement funds?

This is not barking up trees from years ago. They have done nothing to address the structural problems in the state budget.

As a non-Texan, I'd be interested if could you share some of the dysfunctions of their government? I haven't heard many people claim that before, so I'm curious as to what I'm missing.

TX has had massive shortfalls in the last two biennial budgets. As big as CA's annual one:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-deficits-st...

So imagine an already very low service state having to cut budgets even more. Am sure that will work out well for the kids long-term. The State is tossing welfare/health/service issues down to the counties now, so expect your property taxes to skyrocket in the next decade. Some counties will be rich, and most will be poor.

Not happy to with keeping MLK or Jefferson out of K-12 history textbooks, the governor and his lackies are going after those pointy-head elitists at UT.

Expect the next short-fall to be ~$30B. You're going to pay one way or another.

Does texas even have property taxes? They didn't use to.

Counties set valuations and property taxes

except Texas has a lot more money from oil taxes to give to things like schools, no sales taxes etc.

There is a 6.25% sales tax in all of Texas with counties having the option to raise it an additional 2%.

You do realize that there are people outside of your little world that aren't leftists/socialists/fascists, right?

You do realize that, objectively, Martin Luther King was more instrumental in the Civil Rights movement than Lyndon Johnson was, right?

Oh, wait, you might not, because the Texas Board of Education took it upon themselves to re-write history.

Low taxes are cool and all, but I don't see how anyone could live in peace with that public school system.

Let's face it: American governmental bodies are dysfunctional at almost every level. Most people live in California, Texas, Florida, and New York. All are poorly managed. And then there's the federal government sitting on top.

The key to thriving in the US is to have a high net worth so you can feel independent of this dysfunctional government. And then ignore all the stressful noise in the crisis-obsessed news cycle.

Anonymous wrote the Declaration of Independence too, apparently.

Honest question: do you actually know what fascist means? If so, do you not understand that it is vastly different than "leftist" or "socialist"?

Yeah, I know that leftist groupthink doesn't comprehend that fascism is a leftist political ideology.

Hint, you know what NAZI means?

You should educate yourself to avoid further embarrassment.

From wikipedia:

"Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views.[11][12] Fascists have commonly opposed having a firm association with any section of the left-right spectrum, considering it inadequate to describe their beliefs,[13][14] though fascism's goal to promote the rule of people deemed innately superior while seeking to purge society of people deemed innately inferior is identified as a prominent far-right theme.[15] Fascism opposes multiple ideologies, such as communism, conservatism, liberalism, and social democracy.[16]"

More or less, fascism is the supremacy of the nation/state & creation of a civil religion around it. It merges the idea of the nation, the government, and links proper behavior to operating accord with the principles set forth by the leaders. At least that's what I got out of Mussolini's writings on the matter.

It's the people in service of the State, as opposed as the State being the People(communism).

Do you know what "Go back to /r/politics" means?

Wow, you're shockingly ignorant for this site. Go education yourself a bit: http://politicalcompass.org/

One of these things is not like the others.

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