Only downside is most of the implants want to bring their left leaning policies with them, apparently completely, and blissfully, unaware that it was those same policies that ruined the states they came from. I am looking at You CA and NY.
Texas's top industry: Defense (100% government spending).
Texas's 2nd industry: Oil (government subsidized, and having oil is surprisingly not a function of income tax rates).
Texas's most exciting economic area: Liberal Austin.
I'm not going to rip on Texas but it's gotta be awfully hard for you to feel free-market-superior to the city that has Wall St in it and an entrepreneur on every single street corner.
While Austin may be an "exciting" center of research and technology, it's hardly a "job creation" engine -- at least not directly.
You can tout Wall Street all you want but not many out side of your city see them as a good thing, most of the country sees them as a parasite with too much political power and way too little oversight. SEC, Secret Service, FBI, and DOJ be damned none of them have gone after them with any rigor.
You also don't have a good grasp on your own cities history. There as a time when manufacturing and textiles was its biggest industries. Yet you managed to drive them all out. If we decide to stop sending you food and gas you city comes to a stand still. Then you can have hungry entrepreneurs on every street corner...
As far as the industrial history, yeah, service economy, information age, yadda yadda.
And I agree on Wall St, I pretty much despise them. But if you're going to preach unfettered capitalism via low taxes you should be worshipping it.
When talking about competition over housing, you have a somewhat fixed supply but high competition on the demand side. In that case, prices go up.
Ruined?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-truth-about-california-...
And which left-leaning policies are we talking about, by the way? Capping property taxes? Requiring supermajorities in the legislature to do anything?
> I am looking at You CA and NY.
Sure, there's going to be some CA & NYers moving to TX, and they may even be highly represented compared to the rest of the country given they're the most populous states in the nation with Texas.
According to the graph, though, more people are still moving to CA&NY. Guess they're just blissfully unaware.
Nice to hear there are good alternatives to the valley for startups, but personally, none of the reasons listed in the article resonate with me, and plenty of other good reasons for not moving to TX exist.
EDIT: hell, your image pictures 8 states and then says "7" right under it. Is this some clever meta-humor?
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1fb282/these_7_stat...
That's pretty in line with the American flavor of Enlightenment thinking and is hardly a conservative right wing Christian theocratic view (they would insist you were a Christian, would they not?).
The acceptance of atheism in the US is a relatively recent phenomenon, like the acceptance of homosexuality.
It's invalidated anyway (14th + 1st combo meal), so not sure why it's so off-putting to you - is it so offensive that somebody hasn't symbolically removed it for you yet?
The bluer states are trending down population-wise and the red states are where the most economic and population growth seems to be happening.
Normally when you hear talk of "1-percenters", the vitriol is directed toward Wall Street and business. I think it's counter-intuitive for those people and many in the media to consider that the huge income disparity and decrease/stagnation in effective wages for the middle class are the result of government over-regulation and over-taxation rather than any forces originating from the business/capitalist side of the equation.
"Seems" perhaps, but, not more than that when it comes to economic growth. [1] Its closer to (but still very far from) true in population terms, in that many of the most rapidly growing states are redder states and few are bluer states (but many of the slowest growing states are redder states, too!) [2], and to the degree it resembles truth in population terms, that underscores how far from true it is in economic terms, since the handful of redder states that are growing the fastest in GSP are also the ones growing fastest in population, which means that their GSP per capita growth rate isn't actually that good (meanwhile top-quintile GSP growth bluer states like California and Massachussetts are more in the middle of the pack in population growth.)
[1] http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsr... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...
If LA or NYC or SFC are so much better than here, move back.
One thing I have noticed in this world is that hypocritical pseudoleftists do a lot more damage, than real leftists or real conservatives, because they think morality is on their side when they wreak havoc.
Also, Russian oligarchs and third-world despots fucked up the real estate markets in NY and CA. They don't live here, but they buy, and that affects everything and makes it a lot more competitive.
This is not a dig against Austin; but the good news is that the foreign speculator scumbags are not going to take an interest in Austin any time soon.
I don't live in Austin, although it sounds like a really cool place. My personal belief is that it needs some kind of centralized planning to keep inefficient growth that becomes tomorrow's legacy problem. I don't like the NIMBY regulations and self-serving injected complexity that often come about; but some kind of planning that encourages environmentally sound and healthy development is always a good thing.
The speculators are here (in Austin) - houses are being sold within 24 hours of being listed, with offers $10k above the asking price. Just crazy.
#12 out of 38 states by per capita income and GSP per capita, and #10 by median household income. Not exactly a bad place to be. (And, as that would suggest, much better than the US as a whole at all those measures.)
NYC is already feeling the pinch of a housing shortage, and is so behind in building that the 2030 population projections had to be revised to account for the serious lack of housing [2].
Texas on the other hand, as bad as urban sprawl can be, keeps building. People move there, housing gets built, and supply meets demand much better than it does in NYC.
[1] http://mas.org/urbanplanning/east-midtown/ [2] http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/04/85286...
This seems to be a common perception among Texans I've talked to, but all of the folks I know who are moving there from CA tend to have more right leaning political views.
Oh right, Texas.
If the trend was really as claimed, you'd expect their to be a trail of states to point to that have been moved through over time, rather than always the same states.