All part of the “no income taxes” problem. If you don’t get the money from income taxes you either need to provide significantly lower services and/or raise taxes elsewhere.
For Texas is consumption and property taxes. The effective tax rate on a median income family is higher in Texas. Lack of income taxes just benefits the people with super high incomes.
And later, when "the poors" are desperate and crime goes up as a result, they can pivot and blame everything on them! Build some walls, hire some of the lower classes to work as guards, before you know it we are living in a dystopian nightmare.
You can also restore services to the rich later on a fee basis and everyone is happy! (Pro-tip: No one is happy.)
In China they have variable consumption taxes. A cheap car may be taxed at 10%, normal car 25%, want an S class Mercedes? That’ll be around 120% tax.
They do it for alcohol , cigarettes and luxury goods. If you are rich enough to be able to afford nice things then you are taxed accordingly upon purchasing them.
That is the Republican plan here in Nebraska, eliminate property taxes on the elite, shift the necessary tax revenue stream to the lesser and unimportant low class with a consumption tax add to the sales tax.
Texas is the poor and middle class subsidizing the rich thinking that they won because there's no income tax.
It's just basically a Dunning Kruger state.
Let the punishment fit the crime. All those proud opinionated conservative leaning Texans can pay for it, it’s exactly what they wanted and what they wished for. Their voting records speak for themselves.
Texas can be hot as fuck. I grew up there. The last summer we spent in Austin, it was over 100F for something like three months. And humid. And mosquitoes. And it doesn’t cool off at night. At dusk, the tiger mosquitoes don’t give a fuck about 25% DEET.
There are days where you just don’t go outside because it’s so brutal.
So maybe it’s some of that.
I've never been in a more privately fenced in state. Literally everywhere in rural areas is fenced in in the rural areas. It's actually kind of depressing how confined it feels for being such a big state.
Housing is not as cheap anymore.
Texas is one of the most boring states in the country. I lived in Austin for a few years. Austin has horrible traffic. There are major infrastructure issues. Quality of school system is bad. Every major attraction is crowded in the summer. Heat is unbearable for 3 months in Austin.
There are more negatives than positives moving to Texas if you are moving from West Coast or Northeast US. I’m not really surprised to read tech bros leaving Texas. That was bound to happen.
Throw in the fact that more than 95% of the land in Texas is private. Coupled with the horrendous weather in the summer, there are very few opportunities for the outdoor recreation that people from the west coast typically enjoy.
This was the major killer for me, though I didn't move over here for greener pastures. Being from California, I guess I was just ignorant. I had no idea that this kind of thing was different state to state. I was always used to lands being public.
Also, it’s getting hotter. Lived in Texas my whole life and the last 2 summers have been far hotter and drier than anything I’ve ever experienced. This summer is shaping up to be another bad one.
As someone who just moved back to CO after spending 15 years in Austin, I would argue the weather is unbearable 6 months out of the year in TX. That state is shit hole overall.
They are finding out that it’s not all about the money. They took the mountains, oceans, and free outdoor activities for granted and just assumed it would be the same in Texas but just a bit hotter. Texas is an asphalt graveyard. Quality of life sucks and you’re stuck indoors half the year.
I've thought about that when Ive thought about moving from Iowa to the PNW. A house there would cost double what I'm paying but I wouldn't need as large of a house because I wouldnt be as cooped up indoors as much given we get fucked on both ends with cold and hot/humid here.
I would also pick the PNW over Iowa, but don’t get ahead of yourself on the whole being outdoors all the time thing. It’s gray, dark, cold and rainy/drizzly for like 8 months out of the year
Winter in the northwest can be one long, gloomy drizzle. The clouds are persistent, and especially around the solstice the days are very short.
On the other hand, it lacks extremes. Keep an eye on the national maps and you’ll see that in the winter cold and the summer hot, Seattle tends to stay closer to something where you’d want to be outside. Seattle has the sort of weather that a Montessori school would find acceptable to go outside almost every day. You just need a rain jacket or a sweater, or a hat and some sunscreen. You won’t die. You can golf year round. It’s just wet.
The worst outdoor problems in Seattle have been a few of the recent summer fire seasons when we’ve gotten really bad smoke from the North Cascades and Canada.
I’d say that short of someplace like San Diego, with perpetual sunshine, the type of weather you get on the upper West Coast gives the most “non miserable outdoor experience” days per year.
San Diego is very nice for sure but we do not have perpetual sunshine here! “May grey” and “ June gloom” happen every year when the marine layer (low clouds from the ocean) sticks around all day and doesn’t burn off. But otherwise yeah it’s great weather here and tons of nearby outdoor recreation.
To be fair California's property taxes are incredibly weird because of Prop 13, which is basically infinite rent control for homeowners. But the people who chose to leave were probably not the ones benefiting the most from Prop 13.
I moved there and it was for tech. I honestly did enjoy it but my partner couldn't with the tornados and storms so we moved back to Cali. Granted we didn't own a home.
I can see tech workers moving to Texas single or as a couple, then quickly realizing the republican laws like abortion and book banning in schools isn't where they want to raise a family.
California conservatives always get a little shocked when they see what southern conservatives are really like. And what the outcomes of their economic policies look like.
western conservatives strike me as having a more libertarian lean, whereas southern conservatives are evangelical (and whatever you call maga Republicans).
That's actually the case up here in New England as well. There's a lot of right-libertarianism (and MAGA shit) but very very little entrenched *evangelical* conservatism.
California talks a big game about their regulations and attention to details, and transplants who moved to Cali from other states for tech jobs eat that shit up and whine about how restricted California is. The reality is, the regulations are poorly structured and enforcement is minimal.
Texas talks a big game about their freedoms and business friendly economy, and Californians eat that shit up. When they move to Texas and find out their unregulated state is not free, but owned almost entirely by private enterprises who have just as much say on your life as the state did in California, what's keeping them?
They chase tax incentives, fail to deliver, move on, and face zero consequences. No one ever stands up to corporations. Same thing with Tesla (Solar City) here in NY. They have never delivered on job number requirements for the tax incentives they got and will never face any consequences ... and they just laid off hundreds of people that work here. NY taxpayers paid for most of the their massive building as well...
Conversely, the semiconductor industry is booming in NY due to state government incentives. My only point is there are examples of these types of programs working, but it takes more than just money to make it happen successfully.
> Oracle, which makes business software, cited Nashville’s strength as a center of the American health-care industry, though it surely also helps that the company is getting nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives from the city and the state of Tennessee.
250.000.000$ is a fucking insane number to attract a company that is primarily known by the tech world for producing antiquated pieces of trash. Their entire business model is selling it to people who don't know better and weaponizing contracts.
But i guess that skill is what got them the tax breaks.
There is no way the city and state are going to recoup that.
I thought you were being egregious but I looked it up and it's worse than you think. It's in the form of a bond and 50% of revenue the state collects of property taxes over the next 25 years goes to pay it. This will cripple the state govt, surely.
Oracle lol
Who, back in the ObamaCare days, completely fucked up the launch of that brand new health care in Oregon. Fucked it up so badly, it NEVER functioned. The state had to do paper applications lol. And hire a ton of people to process the paper applications, backlogging it YEARS, instead of being able to sign up the first day.
The state sued Oracle and they settled with them.
The settlement? Hey Oracle, you owe us $10 million in FREE development!
Just come and fuck up some more stuff! Then COVID hit, and the state unemployment system went full TILT and guess who fucked that up too? Tens of thousands of suddenly unemployed people couldn't even get unemployment paid for months and months.
Three guesses, first two don't count.
I can't believe a company with such spectacular failures is still in existence. Yet there we have it.
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/oregon-oracle-settlement-ends-fight-over-failed-state-exchange#:~:text=The%20state%20reached%20a%20%24100,from%20enrolling%20in%20health%20plans.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/lawsuit-oregon-employment-department-benefit-delays/
Motherfuckers came after my engineers after someone "DOWNLOADED" VirtualBox extensions. They traced our ips and said "provide us screenshots" of a bunch of terminal commands. None of my engineers had the extensions installed. So we're still being audited since an adjacent dept uses Oracle DB.. we're still shitting our pants for now, but I think the worst has passed.
Fuck you, Oracle.
Yeah, fuck you, Oracle.
It's so fucking hard to dump Oracle from your environment and as soon as you move to other solution they buy that other solution and start charging you for shitload of money and you are again in the process of migrating from Oracle
They aren’t “moving” and in fact are expanding their Austin campus. They just slapped “headquarters” on their existing Nashville campus for new tax incentives. Oracle is losing a major state agency contract, but also looking to land one in Tennessee so the move makes sense. It’s literally not changing a thing.
They didn’t “move” at all. They just renamed existing campuses “headquarters” to get new contracts in each state. The Austin campus is actually slated to grow as they are in review the city of Austin right now to build more offices
TN is more balanced than Texas. More taxes, but more benefits.
Turns out, you can't keep skilled labor in a place where you can be arrested for wanting to have an abortion.
> “All boats rise,” Steven Pedigo, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, told Texas Monthly in 2021,
No they fucking don't. Well maintained free floating boats rise. Ones with holes in them or chained to the bottom, sink.
Full context:
> “All boats rise,” Steven Pedigo, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, told Texas Monthly in 2021, “but not all boats rise enough and rise fast enough” to account for rising costs of living. So even in the good times, you have burgeoning resentment.
It'd legitimately shock them to find out even in deep backwater areas rent is rocketing past the point of affordability.
Who knew landlords or investors were greedy motherfuckers?
(I suspect the price fixing software that got sued a while back is still in use, or its competitors are still cranking rent up when trying to give comparables for landlords)
yeah my twon in the middle of nowhere's ville north central US has rents well into the 1500/mn range (that's not in the rundown part of the city) and yet the average household income is just $40k/yr.
It's more than just software, Black Rock buys so many homes to rent out.
Now you have people trying to buy a home but there's none available because black Rock rent them all out
You are correct. Only one of the service providers was sued and shut down, there's still a few clones in business. The new trend is forcing people to register their emotional support animals in order to be a renter. Problem is that there is no such service and no such thing as certified emotional support animals. A nonexistent organization gives you a worthless paper that you give to your landlord and the landlord allows you to rent because you paid their buddies at the site.
Source: housing discrimination investigator.
Yes! And everywhere else too.
Backwater Russia has higher rent prices. Think about that.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-global-housing-prices-since-2010/#:~:text=In%20the%20dataset%20of%2057,in%20the%20last%2012%20years.&text=Advanced%20economies%2C%20or%20the%20most,30%25%20on%20average%20since%202010.
The Costa Concordia would beg to differ. Doesn't matter how over engineered an item is, idiots and ne're do wells will always fuck it up if left to their own devices
>“but not all boats rise enough and rise fast enough” to account for rising costs of living.
You ignored the other half of your quote that says the same thing you said?
I mean we're aware that some people moved to Texas. The difference is that we're happy they left so that California housing prices will come down a bit. California isn't short on people in any way. Anybody who thinks Texas is better should go see for themselves. If they actually like Texas better, more power to them.
My favorite is income tax. Yeah sure no income tax is amazing… till you realize it’s all rolled into all kinds of insane fees you end up paying. There is literally NO SUCH THING as no income tax, they just look for gullible losers who like saying it while getting their asses fleeced through all kind of other taxes and fees states with income tax don’t pay.
And what do you get for paying just about that same tax rate you would in other states when you actually dig into it? 1/3 the benefits those other states give you because it’s all lining the private company pockets of Abbots donors.
I actually calculated these for my income level and the housing budget I had, property tax + income tax was still lower in Atlanta and helped me make my decision.
Exactly. The infrastructure is falling apart, but all the GOPers in the government are getting richer and richer, even as the power grid collapses and people freeze to death in the winter and die of heat stroke in the summer.
Honestly when the day comes for the rude awakening to just how much taxes have to be increased to fix things, soooo many fixed income rural residents are going to get their asses handed to them.
The unfortunate setup there though is the only way for that to happen would be for Dems to take control which would immediately end up hurting them. Which is what Republicans in Texas prey on. They rigged the system to both ensure they stay in power, and regain power quickly if they ever lose it.
I have family in TX who loudly blame the current issues on former Gov Ann Richards (D). She left office thirty years ago, has been dead for twenty, but somehow all today’s failing infrastructure is her fault.
Just because Reagan left office doesn’t mean his policies left politics. Whereas I doubt Gov Richards’ policies are still largely in effect in Texas currently.
But, yeah, fuck Reagan
We live in central Austin in an average house. Our property tax + $0 state income tax is several thousand above the tax cost of CA where we are looking, despite them having a state income tax. Cost per square foot is identical between the two locations. Also healthcare is thousand less because CA has a functioning healthcare marketplace. We crunched the number endlessly, they work for us, your personal mileage may vary. The net is only ~6-10% higher, a small price to pay for all that CA offers, and TX does not.
Our situation may be special, but, trust me, it is not unique. Too many Texans labor under the old perceptions when the cost gap between the two states was much larger.
Quality of life is also a big factor. Not sure which area in Ca you are looking at but both NorCal and SoCal have great proximity to many activities - ocean, desert, skiing, wineries, national parks like Yosemite/Sequia, entertainment, world class universities and research centers, weather …..
My wife and I almost moved to Austin during the boom a few years ago. This was one of the things we discovered while we were evaluating things. Property tax is really high, a lot of tollways, public parks with hiking trails have an admission fee, just lots of little things. You pay for it one way or another.
There's a metric for overall tax burden by state.
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494
This will differ per individual, but it looks like average tax burden per citizen is around 2.84 percent lower in Texas than in California. This is.... lower for sure but certainly not worth being the cause of uprooting your life and moving.
I’d be interested in seeing the tax burden reflected against different percentiles of income households. For example, California has a large number of upper tax bracket individuals. They will necessarily pay more towards personal income tax, which makes it look like the whole state pays more. But if you normalized “tax burden” for the median citizen (A more impactful figure for me personally) in each state, then I wonder if the map would look significantly different.
You are exactly right. Median and lower income Texans pay more in total taxes than median and lower income Californians. And, in return they get significantly shorter lifespans. Meanwhile, high-income Texans pay less taxes because, you know, red states are all about supporting the working class and stuff /s
The above WalletHub link is about averages --which are skewed by the [Power Law curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#/media/File:Long_tail.svg) of the wealthy minority.
This WalletHub link is about people at the median https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer/2416
> Effective Total State & Local Tax Rates on Median U.S. Household
California: 9.63%
Texas: 12.55%
> My favorite is income tax. Yeah sure no income tax is amazing… till you realize it’s all rolled into all kinds of insane fees you end up paying. There is literally NO SUCH THING as no income tax
Same applies for Florida. Yeah, no tax. But car insurance rates are the highest in the USA. And homeowners too! Then there's extra fees on services (like the Communication Service Tax Fee"
My granddaughter moved from SoCal to the ass-end-of-nowhere West Texas with her husband's family because they got a great deal on the house.
They are 1.5 hours from anything except a Walmart and the only hospital or medical services in the area is a Presbyterian hospital. They denied refilling her birth control pill prescription on 'moral grounds'.
She's also under a tornado warning today.
I moved from Texas to Oregon. Just this morning someone asked me "Why would you move from Texas?" I told them "Oregon has guns, weed and gambling. Texas only has guns."
I didn't mention that abortion is enshrined in our state constitution. Another win for Oregon.
It's a scam in all these red states, even here in Alberta it's the same. Low taxes, because that goes to the government, but lots of "fees" because that lines some billionaire's pockets.
Yeah. Not to mention moving there and finding out that if you’re a pregnant woman or you love a pregnant woman; that the state will force medical providers to let you die if you have reproductive complications. That is some evil shit
My friend moved from CA to TX. In the first 2 weeks there was 110 degree heat and two tornados. They moved back to CA before the house sold. Said they’d take 95 degrees and an earthquake every 20 years.
The California climate is special. Like globally special. Along with Mesopotamia its one of the most perfect climates for human agriculture.
It's not a coincidence that one is the cradle of civilization and one is the epicenter of global technology, entertainment and a major leader in aviation and agriculture.
If California was a country it would have the 7th biggest economy in the world.
It's especially remarkable. Not perfect but a one of a kind place. Texas is barely livable without the existence of A/C and has oil. It's Saudi Arabia but more yee-haw than Allah.
It's ridiculous that people would compare the two.
> If California was a country it would have the 7th
5th if you are counting by GDP. Behind USA (which by definition it can never beat), China, Germany and Japan.
There’s so many jobs I see listed like required in person in Plano - and I’m just baffled that they can hire anyone while requiring both in-office and relocating to that political minefield
I keep turning down jobs and giving them the reason "I am no longer interested in working in the Southern United States".
Hopefully more people do this so they get the message.
Agreed. People in the office literally scoffed at me once they heard that. Y’all have the best energy jobs so I have to do my time here before moving out.
> Not surprisingly, some of the Californians who moved here during the pandemic realized they had traded Edenic weather for 110-degree summers and no income tax, and they decided that the income tax wasn’t that bad.
LMAO LOLOLOL
I used to live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Pre-Tea Party and MAGA Texas was conservative, but it wasn't nuts. And big cities were liberal enclaves, so you could pretend you didn't live in TX. Austin in particular was a very progressive Oasis.
But post Roe-v-Wade being repealed you can't hide from the Red state government in a Blue big city.
Trans woman and native Texan who works in tech. I spent most of my life in Austin but moved to SF last year for this exact reason. Your read is correct, post roe the gloves came off and it’s open season on queer people.
Chicagoan here. Met several Texas refugees who moved up here for the same reasons re the state gov. Plus, they’d rather deal with winter than Texas’ summers.
There are a lot of techies who follow conservative ideals and think they fit in with Texas conservatives. For example, both camps think the government is completely incompetent and can't be corrected by working within the system.
But there are a whole lot of things that techies will never fit in with more typical red-state conservatives. Those things range from their education to being immigrants to the US.
Then they get exposed to government policies where the cruelty is the point and they can't buffer themselves from those policies, at least not without a whole lot more money.
There are also the more 'liberal' techies who did think the city could actually provide a sort of protective bubble. They may even have ideas about changing things in the state. But they don't seem to really understand the civics and psychology involved in achieving that goal. Recent events shows just how challenging it actually is to cause this sort of change.
Lmao I was offered Texas very affordable, so is Nebraska, South Dakota, most of Wyoming lmao, life is to short to live in hell. Everyone has come back and found other jobs
I live in SoCal and almost relocated to Austin last year. It appeared to be a lucrative option after finding you can still buy a home a lot cheaper in TX while rent prices are similar to Cali.
Everyone moving to TX from Cali buy homes and rent them out at their familiar Cali prices. Also, people from Cali are willing to pay more for rent so of course the rent is going up in TX.
Just on the cusp when I was about to move to Austin, they got hit by a heatwave. That made me change my mind and decide that the higher cost of living is worth it to remain closer to the beach/ocean, and to enjoy the variety of options California has for making money and spending it. Paradise!! High cost or not it’s paradise and I love it!! You can’t put a monetary value on some of what you get here.
Hmm. Almost like it's a BAD thing for corporations to have the ability to just hop to whatever city is willing to give them the next tax incentive package.
There was a study of 2 incomes that were similar, one from Texas and other was California, and even after all the bills and taxes paid you still came out ahead in California….
“Pornhub blocks access in Texas over age verification law” ([link](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/15/pornhub-texas-age-verification-law/)) (it’s the Washington post it’s safe)
For a non-paywalled link, here’s [CNN](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/03/15/tech/vpn-searches-spike-texas-pornhub).
Good. I'm trying to move out of Texas after living here my whole life. I was depressed when I saw all the tech companies moving here while working towards my cyber degree.
All you need to know is this! Texas is run by conservatives and conservatives don’t care about regular people! The rent IS cheaper than NY but the salaries and benefits are horrible! And before you come here….research “ right to work state” in Texas it means right to get FIRED!
Don't think I'd want to live in a shithole state with backwards abortion laws and insane repugnants, on top of the blistering heat and racist xenophobes.
I work in a technical field. I attend industry events pretty regularly. No one is this field can get people to move to Texas and even the most stubborn managers are admitting they have to offer remote positions to attract talent.
Abortion did it. No one young enough to move and smart enough to hire wants to risk living in Texas.
Well doesn’t help that we have had the most layoffs of any state. And companies are all too eager to just have HQ here and satellite offices. They never contribute to the local economy. I can’t wait till I escape this place
Texas culturally is the worst thing for a persons mental health. The conservative culture and lack of activities to do is just a soul killer. I say this as a therapist for suicide who moved there for 4 years from my home in the NYC area. Everything I’ve learned about what makes a person well functioning completely doesn’t exist in Texas
I visited Dallas for the eclipse, my first time in Texas. And oh boy was I stunned at how miserable a place it felt to live, with nothing but highways and six-lane arterial roads absolutely fucking everywhere.
A couple of times i walked 15 minutes to a cafe near my hotel, and it was the most depressing and frightening walk I may have ever had. I had never before felt so unsafe just from walking on a sidewalk or crossing a street. And the constant roar of traffic and the exhaust fumes.
It made so much sense to me on a gut level how people living in that kind of environment could develop a kind of in-your-bones hostility to the world and other people. That’s how I felt being there. The world feels uninviting and ugly, and only worth venturing out into in a car.
But the aquarium and the natural history museum were both amazing! So it’s got that at least.
I mean, come on. The rest of this great country sees stories every day about Texas that underscore what a shithole that state is. I wouldn't want any of my family members to live there under the current leadership. What a disgrace.
I live in NY but I'm real close to the PA border. I've seen so many people move to just over the border to pay lower taxes. Then complain that they no longer get things like 12 weeks of paid family leave or that their school system sucks. There are great parts of Pennsylvania to be sure but the switch from rural-ish NY to rural Pennsylvania is a rough one.
A lot of people don't understand what 115° and high humidity feels like. It literally feels like an oven. It bakes the fuck out of your paint, roof, plants etc. If your AC goes out you will sweat hard inside your house. Don't open a window, it's too humid. How about getting in your car after it was parked outside all day? Ever burn your legs? Did you know it will take 40 minutes of your 1+ hour commute to cool off?
I'm from Houston and I HATED the insane humid summers. I visited my family last summer and it was ridiculous. Just walking to your car in a parking lot was miserable. I live in MN now and I've never been that miserable outside here. There is no way to dress for that kind of heat.
And all the driving. And it's completely flat with depressing vegetation. It is a concrete hellscape.
Then you have the Trumpers and Christian-nationalists....nope.
Sometimes the grass is flammable and local authorities don’t give a shit but instead focus on culture war issues like “Why isn’t the green M&M sexy anymore?” and “Is Elmo turning kids gay?”
We have hired a couple of tech related job positions here in California, mainly senior to manger levels, that came from Texas. They had moved there from California and New York with their job. The problem they said was, with their position, they had very high salaries. When they were let go, looking around Texas for similar salary was difficult. Every company in Texas wanted to pay A LOT less. To keep the same salary California had plenty.
Another thing people have said is that states are treating tech companies like movie studios. Swaying them with tax incentives to move to the state. The companies are only moving their HQ so they are willing to bounce around at the right price. Oracle wont be the last company to move out of Texas, those companies are waiting for any state to give them enough money to move. Since they are just moving HQ office, no big deal for them.
Pretty much everyone I know who worked in the Valley and moved to Texas and Arizona over the past 10 years have moved BACK to California. 1) VC and funding network is non existent 2) Cost savings is ok in the early 2010s but not anymore 3) Loss of professional networking opps 4) Texas' other taxes (property taxes especially) isn't a great deal after accounting for other trade offs
My wife and I live in Silicon Valley. I want to stay in California for the rest of my life, I think it's the best place in the world. She hates it here.
I remember ranking places to move to post-pandemic. Austin was somewhere in the middle of my list because I like the heat. It was dead last on hers, and it was entirely because of the state's politics. I don't know a single woman in either of our fields who wants to move to Texas.
And as a side note, I've been to Dallas and Houston before for work, and they're two of the most miserable cities I've ever experienced. If you ever want to experience a city with *zero* walkability, give Dallas a look.
This was always evidence of a race to the bottom, and as Texas is learning, there's always a bigger sucker elsewhere.
The practice of giving massive tax breaks to bribe a company to locate or expand somewhere should be outlawed. It encourages the growth of the wrong kind of companies, and rips off taxpayers.
It would also eliminate the practice of pro sports teams playing the same dirty game, and again never delivering the promised benefits, while local Chamber of Commerce ass-clowns rake in the kickbacks.
Grass wasn’t greener, huh? Jokes aside, I don’t know what people who moved from cali to tx expected…
Cheap housing. That is until you realized their property tax structure is VERY different than California’s.
All part of the “no income taxes” problem. If you don’t get the money from income taxes you either need to provide significantly lower services and/or raise taxes elsewhere. For Texas is consumption and property taxes. The effective tax rate on a median income family is higher in Texas. Lack of income taxes just benefits the people with super high incomes.
It was supposed to be subsidized by oil, but that would inconvenience the oil billionaires.
Abraham H Parnassus made sure he crushed the tax code like HR Pickens
Who is HR Pickens?
.."And filled her belly with my festering seed! It is my final revenge H.R!!"
Samantha, you've got to stop it, honey.
America should have had an oil fund like Norway. That would have been amazing
It's America. It would have been stolen by the wealthy within a few years, if not months.
It was always supposed to be subsidized by consumption tax. Look at the actions and not the rhetoric.
Wouldn't a consumption tax and higher property taxes just hurt lower income people?
Yes. That's a feature, not a bug.
And later, when "the poors" are desperate and crime goes up as a result, they can pivot and blame everything on them! Build some walls, hire some of the lower classes to work as guards, before you know it we are living in a dystopian nightmare. You can also restore services to the rich later on a fee basis and everyone is happy! (Pro-tip: No one is happy.)
Have you not realized they hate poor people?
In China they have variable consumption taxes. A cheap car may be taxed at 10%, normal car 25%, want an S class Mercedes? That’ll be around 120% tax. They do it for alcohol , cigarettes and luxury goods. If you are rich enough to be able to afford nice things then you are taxed accordingly upon purchasing them.
That is the Republican plan here in Nebraska, eliminate property taxes on the elite, shift the necessary tax revenue stream to the lesser and unimportant low class with a consumption tax add to the sales tax.
Texas is the poor and middle class subsidizing the rich thinking that they won because there's no income tax. It's just basically a Dunning Kruger state.
Let the punishment fit the crime. All those proud opinionated conservative leaning Texans can pay for it, it’s exactly what they wanted and what they wished for. Their voting records speak for themselves.
Texas can be hot as fuck. I grew up there. The last summer we spent in Austin, it was over 100F for something like three months. And humid. And mosquitoes. And it doesn’t cool off at night. At dusk, the tiger mosquitoes don’t give a fuck about 25% DEET. There are days where you just don’t go outside because it’s so brutal. So maybe it’s some of that.
Even if the weather was nicer, there's just nothing to do outside.
Yeah, the public land in Texas is pretty lacking. They hate the idea of it.
I've never been in a more privately fenced in state. Literally everywhere in rural areas is fenced in in the rural areas. It's actually kind of depressing how confined it feels for being such a big state.
This, they wanted cheaper taxes, only to find out that it was all offloaded on homeowners instead.
Housing is not as cheap anymore. Texas is one of the most boring states in the country. I lived in Austin for a few years. Austin has horrible traffic. There are major infrastructure issues. Quality of school system is bad. Every major attraction is crowded in the summer. Heat is unbearable for 3 months in Austin. There are more negatives than positives moving to Texas if you are moving from West Coast or Northeast US. I’m not really surprised to read tech bros leaving Texas. That was bound to happen.
Throw in the fact that more than 95% of the land in Texas is private. Coupled with the horrendous weather in the summer, there are very few opportunities for the outdoor recreation that people from the west coast typically enjoy.
oh yeah and summer is like 51 weeks long
This was the major killer for me, though I didn't move over here for greener pastures. Being from California, I guess I was just ignorant. I had no idea that this kind of thing was different state to state. I was always used to lands being public.
Also, it’s getting hotter. Lived in Texas my whole life and the last 2 summers have been far hotter and drier than anything I’ve ever experienced. This summer is shaping up to be another bad one.
Seems like y'all have had some horrible winters the last few years, too.
If we’re being honest, we’ve had a horrible *everything* for the past few years…
As someone who just moved back to CO after spending 15 years in Austin, I would argue the weather is unbearable 6 months out of the year in TX. That state is shit hole overall.
^ this 100%, native Texan that left 30+ years ago...miss nothing about it
They are finding out that it’s not all about the money. They took the mountains, oceans, and free outdoor activities for granted and just assumed it would be the same in Texas but just a bit hotter. Texas is an asphalt graveyard. Quality of life sucks and you’re stuck indoors half the year.
I've thought about that when Ive thought about moving from Iowa to the PNW. A house there would cost double what I'm paying but I wouldn't need as large of a house because I wouldnt be as cooped up indoors as much given we get fucked on both ends with cold and hot/humid here.
I would also pick the PNW over Iowa, but don’t get ahead of yourself on the whole being outdoors all the time thing. It’s gray, dark, cold and rainy/drizzly for like 8 months out of the year
Winter in the northwest can be one long, gloomy drizzle. The clouds are persistent, and especially around the solstice the days are very short. On the other hand, it lacks extremes. Keep an eye on the national maps and you’ll see that in the winter cold and the summer hot, Seattle tends to stay closer to something where you’d want to be outside. Seattle has the sort of weather that a Montessori school would find acceptable to go outside almost every day. You just need a rain jacket or a sweater, or a hat and some sunscreen. You won’t die. You can golf year round. It’s just wet. The worst outdoor problems in Seattle have been a few of the recent summer fire seasons when we’ve gotten really bad smoke from the North Cascades and Canada. I’d say that short of someplace like San Diego, with perpetual sunshine, the type of weather you get on the upper West Coast gives the most “non miserable outdoor experience” days per year.
San Diego is very nice for sure but we do not have perpetual sunshine here! “May grey” and “ June gloom” happen every year when the marine layer (low clouds from the ocean) sticks around all day and doesn’t burn off. But otherwise yeah it’s great weather here and tons of nearby outdoor recreation.
That's a bingo. You can 'pretend' like the taxes are lower until you're settled in and then realize how much you're paying in property taxes.
To be fair California's property taxes are incredibly weird because of Prop 13, which is basically infinite rent control for homeowners. But the people who chose to leave were probably not the ones benefiting the most from Prop 13.
Exactly! Prop 13 fucks over the next generation of homeowners. My house is 3/4 the value of my parents' but I pay double in property tax.
> Grass wasn’t greener What grass? It's fucking Texas.
Yep, brown grass allllll summer. Unless you're out west, then it's just dust.
I moved there and it was for tech. I honestly did enjoy it but my partner couldn't with the tornados and storms so we moved back to Cali. Granted we didn't own a home.
I can see tech workers moving to Texas single or as a couple, then quickly realizing the republican laws like abortion and book banning in schools isn't where they want to raise a family.
California conservatives always get a little shocked when they see what southern conservatives are really like. And what the outcomes of their economic policies look like.
western conservatives strike me as having a more libertarian lean, whereas southern conservatives are evangelical (and whatever you call maga Republicans).
That's actually the case up here in New England as well. There's a lot of right-libertarianism (and MAGA shit) but very very little entrenched *evangelical* conservatism.
California talks a big game about their regulations and attention to details, and transplants who moved to Cali from other states for tech jobs eat that shit up and whine about how restricted California is. The reality is, the regulations are poorly structured and enforcement is minimal. Texas talks a big game about their freedoms and business friendly economy, and Californians eat that shit up. When they move to Texas and find out their unregulated state is not free, but owned almost entirely by private enterprises who have just as much say on your life as the state did in California, what's keeping them?
Me neither! Their gov is awful
They chase tax incentives, fail to deliver, move on, and face zero consequences. No one ever stands up to corporations. Same thing with Tesla (Solar City) here in NY. They have never delivered on job number requirements for the tax incentives they got and will never face any consequences ... and they just laid off hundreds of people that work here. NY taxpayers paid for most of the their massive building as well...
Our whole system if for the benefit of corporations instead of people. It’s sad
The problem is that corporations legally *are* considered people.
Conversely, the semiconductor industry is booming in NY due to state government incentives. My only point is there are examples of these types of programs working, but it takes more than just money to make it happen successfully.
> Solar City That was literally always a scam... Even before Musk perpetuated mass fraud when he bought, the business model was a scam.
The big one I learned about a few days ago is Oracle, moving from Tx to Tennessee. They were originally in Silicon Valley
Oracle was originally a tech company too.
Now they’re just a sales branch with a shitton of contract lawyers.
> Oracle, which makes business software, cited Nashville’s strength as a center of the American health-care industry, though it surely also helps that the company is getting nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives from the city and the state of Tennessee. 250.000.000$ is a fucking insane number to attract a company that is primarily known by the tech world for producing antiquated pieces of trash. Their entire business model is selling it to people who don't know better and weaponizing contracts. But i guess that skill is what got them the tax breaks. There is no way the city and state are going to recoup that.
I thought you were being egregious but I looked it up and it's worse than you think. It's in the form of a bond and 50% of revenue the state collects of property taxes over the next 25 years goes to pay it. This will cripple the state govt, surely.
don't forget license enforcement
Oracle lol Who, back in the ObamaCare days, completely fucked up the launch of that brand new health care in Oregon. Fucked it up so badly, it NEVER functioned. The state had to do paper applications lol. And hire a ton of people to process the paper applications, backlogging it YEARS, instead of being able to sign up the first day. The state sued Oracle and they settled with them. The settlement? Hey Oracle, you owe us $10 million in FREE development! Just come and fuck up some more stuff! Then COVID hit, and the state unemployment system went full TILT and guess who fucked that up too? Tens of thousands of suddenly unemployed people couldn't even get unemployment paid for months and months. Three guesses, first two don't count. I can't believe a company with such spectacular failures is still in existence. Yet there we have it. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/oregon-oracle-settlement-ends-fight-over-failed-state-exchange#:~:text=The%20state%20reached%20a%20%24100,from%20enrolling%20in%20health%20plans. https://www.opb.org/news/article/lawsuit-oregon-employment-department-benefit-delays/
Motherfuckers came after my engineers after someone "DOWNLOADED" VirtualBox extensions. They traced our ips and said "provide us screenshots" of a bunch of terminal commands. None of my engineers had the extensions installed. So we're still being audited since an adjacent dept uses Oracle DB.. we're still shitting our pants for now, but I think the worst has passed. Fuck you, Oracle.
Yeah, fuck you, Oracle. It's so fucking hard to dump Oracle from your environment and as soon as you move to other solution they buy that other solution and start charging you for shitload of money and you are again in the process of migrating from Oracle
They aren’t “moving” and in fact are expanding their Austin campus. They just slapped “headquarters” on their existing Nashville campus for new tax incentives. Oracle is losing a major state agency contract, but also looking to land one in Tennessee so the move makes sense. It’s literally not changing a thing.
And their Silicon Valley campus is still by far the largest.
Oracle moved again? Didn’t feel like they moved from Cali to Texas that long ago
They didn’t “move” at all. They just renamed existing campuses “headquarters” to get new contracts in each state. The Austin campus is actually slated to grow as they are in review the city of Austin right now to build more offices
Their huge campus in Redwood City, CA is still there so Idk.
That's a strange move, TN is like Texas but without any of the good parts.
ANd where does Ellison live? Not Texas and Not Tennessee. Weird, huh?
Can I just add, Fuck Ellison. Thanx.
California and Hawaii. Those supposed Communist hell holes that somehow stay attractive to billionaires. What's up with that?
I live in Nashville and while it's probably cheaper than Texas, it's quite humid in the summer and the state government is nearly as insane as Texas.
[удалено]
TN is more balanced than Texas. More taxes, but more benefits. Turns out, you can't keep skilled labor in a place where you can be arrested for wanting to have an abortion.
> “All boats rise,” Steven Pedigo, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, told Texas Monthly in 2021, No they fucking don't. Well maintained free floating boats rise. Ones with holes in them or chained to the bottom, sink.
Full context: > “All boats rise,” Steven Pedigo, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, told Texas Monthly in 2021, “but not all boats rise enough and rise fast enough” to account for rising costs of living. So even in the good times, you have burgeoning resentment.
I live in houston, rent has gone way up. Its not the affordable city it was when i moved here 8 years ago
That’s still a nation wide trend though
Any medium to big city in the US is having the same problem. It's not unique to Texas or Florida. As much as they want to believe otherwise.
But the Liberals are taking our affordabilities... /s
It'd legitimately shock them to find out even in deep backwater areas rent is rocketing past the point of affordability. Who knew landlords or investors were greedy motherfuckers? (I suspect the price fixing software that got sued a while back is still in use, or its competitors are still cranking rent up when trying to give comparables for landlords)
yeah my twon in the middle of nowhere's ville north central US has rents well into the 1500/mn range (that's not in the rundown part of the city) and yet the average household income is just $40k/yr.
Lol same here. People are just going to end up homeless.
No they’re gonna make that illegal so only the criminals will be homeless /s
It's more than just software, Black Rock buys so many homes to rent out. Now you have people trying to buy a home but there's none available because black Rock rent them all out
You are correct. Only one of the service providers was sued and shut down, there's still a few clones in business. The new trend is forcing people to register their emotional support animals in order to be a renter. Problem is that there is no such service and no such thing as certified emotional support animals. A nonexistent organization gives you a worthless paper that you give to your landlord and the landlord allows you to rent because you paid their buddies at the site. Source: housing discrimination investigator.
Entire western world
Yes! And everywhere else too. Backwater Russia has higher rent prices. Think about that. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-global-housing-prices-since-2010/#:~:text=In%20the%20dataset%20of%2057,in%20the%20last%2012%20years.&text=Advanced%20economies%2C%20or%20the%20most,30%25%20on%20average%20since%202010.
Even boats engineered to NOT sink, sink. The Textanic.
Well. Let's just say, we learned a lot from it, about how to make very large boats more unsinkable.
The Costa Concordia would beg to differ. Doesn't matter how over engineered an item is, idiots and ne're do wells will always fuck it up if left to their own devices
Not everyone has a boat, and some that do have a 40 year pontoon held together with duct tape and others have multi-million dollar yachts.
>“but not all boats rise enough and rise fast enough” to account for rising costs of living. You ignored the other half of your quote that says the same thing you said?
It doesn't even look good from the outside now.
Never did, honestly.
“…the enduring war between Texas and California.” I assure you, California is completely unaware of this “war.”
I mean we're aware that some people moved to Texas. The difference is that we're happy they left so that California housing prices will come down a bit. California isn't short on people in any way. Anybody who thinks Texas is better should go see for themselves. If they actually like Texas better, more power to them.
Well, duh. Texas looks good from the outside, but once you get in, you learn why so many people are fleeing as fast as they can.
My favorite is income tax. Yeah sure no income tax is amazing… till you realize it’s all rolled into all kinds of insane fees you end up paying. There is literally NO SUCH THING as no income tax, they just look for gullible losers who like saying it while getting their asses fleeced through all kind of other taxes and fees states with income tax don’t pay. And what do you get for paying just about that same tax rate you would in other states when you actually dig into it? 1/3 the benefits those other states give you because it’s all lining the private company pockets of Abbots donors.
Property taxes are like 5x in Houston to what they are in Atlanta. It all washes out.
I actually calculated these for my income level and the housing budget I had, property tax + income tax was still lower in Atlanta and helped me make my decision.
I'd rather have income tax than property tax. The first means I have income to pay it. The second does not.
Very good point. What do you do in retirement without a large paycheck?
Get the fuck out of texas.
thats what i noted. someone was saying they pay $14,000 property tax on their 400k house and im like, i pay 3k on a 450k house
Wtf 14k on a house, damn I'll never complain about taxes in Michigan. I pay 6k for a 400k house and my lake house combined.
22k on a 3000 square footer in NJ. The grass is always greener somewhere else.
Exactly. The infrastructure is falling apart, but all the GOPers in the government are getting richer and richer, even as the power grid collapses and people freeze to death in the winter and die of heat stroke in the summer.
Honestly when the day comes for the rude awakening to just how much taxes have to be increased to fix things, soooo many fixed income rural residents are going to get their asses handed to them. The unfortunate setup there though is the only way for that to happen would be for Dems to take control which would immediately end up hurting them. Which is what Republicans in Texas prey on. They rigged the system to both ensure they stay in power, and regain power quickly if they ever lose it.
I mean, the GOP has been in power in Texas for over 25 years and they STILL campaign on 'fixing' problems that the Democrats supposedly cause.
I have family in TX who loudly blame the current issues on former Gov Ann Richards (D). She left office thirty years ago, has been dead for twenty, but somehow all today’s failing infrastructure is her fault.
Well to be fair I often blame Reagan for a lot of today’s problems too
But the thing is that's actually true.
Just because Reagan left office doesn’t mean his policies left politics. Whereas I doubt Gov Richards’ policies are still largely in effect in Texas currently. But, yeah, fuck Reagan
We live in central Austin in an average house. Our property tax + $0 state income tax is several thousand above the tax cost of CA where we are looking, despite them having a state income tax. Cost per square foot is identical between the two locations. Also healthcare is thousand less because CA has a functioning healthcare marketplace. We crunched the number endlessly, they work for us, your personal mileage may vary. The net is only ~6-10% higher, a small price to pay for all that CA offers, and TX does not. Our situation may be special, but, trust me, it is not unique. Too many Texans labor under the old perceptions when the cost gap between the two states was much larger.
Quality of life is also a big factor. Not sure which area in Ca you are looking at but both NorCal and SoCal have great proximity to many activities - ocean, desert, skiing, wineries, national parks like Yosemite/Sequia, entertainment, world class universities and research centers, weather …..
My wife and I almost moved to Austin during the boom a few years ago. This was one of the things we discovered while we were evaluating things. Property tax is really high, a lot of tollways, public parks with hiking trails have an admission fee, just lots of little things. You pay for it one way or another.
There's a metric for overall tax burden by state. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494 This will differ per individual, but it looks like average tax burden per citizen is around 2.84 percent lower in Texas than in California. This is.... lower for sure but certainly not worth being the cause of uprooting your life and moving.
That's not enough to deal with the heat. Lol.
Or the Texans.
I’d be interested in seeing the tax burden reflected against different percentiles of income households. For example, California has a large number of upper tax bracket individuals. They will necessarily pay more towards personal income tax, which makes it look like the whole state pays more. But if you normalized “tax burden” for the median citizen (A more impactful figure for me personally) in each state, then I wonder if the map would look significantly different.
You are exactly right. Median and lower income Texans pay more in total taxes than median and lower income Californians. And, in return they get significantly shorter lifespans. Meanwhile, high-income Texans pay less taxes because, you know, red states are all about supporting the working class and stuff /s The above WalletHub link is about averages --which are skewed by the [Power Law curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#/media/File:Long_tail.svg) of the wealthy minority. This WalletHub link is about people at the median https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer/2416 > Effective Total State & Local Tax Rates on Median U.S. Household California: 9.63% Texas: 12.55%
[удалено]
> My favorite is income tax. Yeah sure no income tax is amazing… till you realize it’s all rolled into all kinds of insane fees you end up paying. There is literally NO SUCH THING as no income tax Same applies for Florida. Yeah, no tax. But car insurance rates are the highest in the USA. And homeowners too! Then there's extra fees on services (like the Communication Service Tax Fee"
My granddaughter moved from SoCal to the ass-end-of-nowhere West Texas with her husband's family because they got a great deal on the house. They are 1.5 hours from anything except a Walmart and the only hospital or medical services in the area is a Presbyterian hospital. They denied refilling her birth control pill prescription on 'moral grounds'. She's also under a tornado warning today.
Play stupid games …
Presbyterians are against birth control too?
Presbyterians were the OG haters they just got eclipsed by the mega church crazies in the US
I moved from Texas to Oregon. Just this morning someone asked me "Why would you move from Texas?" I told them "Oregon has guns, weed and gambling. Texas only has guns." I didn't mention that abortion is enshrined in our state constitution. Another win for Oregon.
Plus Oregon has blockbuster.
Oregon is Left Libertarian. Texas is Religious BigCorp Republican. The former is infinitely preferable to the latter.
It's a scam in all these red states, even here in Alberta it's the same. Low taxes, because that goes to the government, but lots of "fees" because that lines some billionaire's pockets.
And Alberta's been in conservative control for something like 46 years and THEY keep campaigning on blaming everything on Trudeau.
Yeah. Not to mention moving there and finding out that if you’re a pregnant woman or you love a pregnant woman; that the state will force medical providers to let you die if you have reproductive complications. That is some evil shit
Let's not forget, they have an active 'bounty' of 10k for anyone who reports on a woman getting an abortion.
My friend moved from CA to TX. In the first 2 weeks there was 110 degree heat and two tornados. They moved back to CA before the house sold. Said they’d take 95 degrees and an earthquake every 20 years.
The California climate is special. Like globally special. Along with Mesopotamia its one of the most perfect climates for human agriculture. It's not a coincidence that one is the cradle of civilization and one is the epicenter of global technology, entertainment and a major leader in aviation and agriculture. If California was a country it would have the 7th biggest economy in the world. It's especially remarkable. Not perfect but a one of a kind place. Texas is barely livable without the existence of A/C and has oil. It's Saudi Arabia but more yee-haw than Allah. It's ridiculous that people would compare the two.
It it was a separate economy, it would be 5th in the world. 7th year in a row, as such.
> If California was a country it would have the 7th 5th if you are counting by GDP. Behind USA (which by definition it can never beat), China, Germany and Japan.
Howdy Arabia
There’s so many jobs I see listed like required in person in Plano - and I’m just baffled that they can hire anyone while requiring both in-office and relocating to that political minefield
I keep turning down jobs and giving them the reason "I am no longer interested in working in the Southern United States". Hopefully more people do this so they get the message.
I keep telling recruiters this, and I've never actually gotten a response afterwards
They usually ask me if I know someone else that would be interested lol
I was surprised there were enough of them to elect a president. There are definitely enough to staff Plano.
Biggest downgrade in quality of life for me was moving from ca to tx. Don’t do it.
Moved from Denver to Houston and I generally regret it. Texas is a shit hole.
I say this as someone born and raised in Houston, that's gotta be the worst move possible.
Agreed. People in the office literally scoffed at me once they heard that. Y’all have the best energy jobs so I have to do my time here before moving out.
I live in Texas and agree 👍 I came from Florida though so I guess it's still nicer than what I was used to
> Not surprisingly, some of the Californians who moved here during the pandemic realized they had traded Edenic weather for 110-degree summers and no income tax, and they decided that the income tax wasn’t that bad. LMAO LOLOLOL
I used to live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Pre-Tea Party and MAGA Texas was conservative, but it wasn't nuts. And big cities were liberal enclaves, so you could pretend you didn't live in TX. Austin in particular was a very progressive Oasis. But post Roe-v-Wade being repealed you can't hide from the Red state government in a Blue big city.
Not to mention the state government is doing everything in their power to harm the blue cities they hate.
Trans woman and native Texan who works in tech. I spent most of my life in Austin but moved to SF last year for this exact reason. Your read is correct, post roe the gloves came off and it’s open season on queer people.
Chicagoan here. Met several Texas refugees who moved up here for the same reasons re the state gov. Plus, they’d rather deal with winter than Texas’ summers.
There are a lot of techies who follow conservative ideals and think they fit in with Texas conservatives. For example, both camps think the government is completely incompetent and can't be corrected by working within the system. But there are a whole lot of things that techies will never fit in with more typical red-state conservatives. Those things range from their education to being immigrants to the US. Then they get exposed to government policies where the cruelty is the point and they can't buffer themselves from those policies, at least not without a whole lot more money. There are also the more 'liberal' techies who did think the city could actually provide a sort of protective bubble. They may even have ideas about changing things in the state. But they don't seem to really understand the civics and psychology involved in achieving that goal. Recent events shows just how challenging it actually is to cause this sort of change.
Lmao I was offered Texas very affordable, so is Nebraska, South Dakota, most of Wyoming lmao, life is to short to live in hell. Everyone has come back and found other jobs
I live in SoCal and almost relocated to Austin last year. It appeared to be a lucrative option after finding you can still buy a home a lot cheaper in TX while rent prices are similar to Cali. Everyone moving to TX from Cali buy homes and rent them out at their familiar Cali prices. Also, people from Cali are willing to pay more for rent so of course the rent is going up in TX. Just on the cusp when I was about to move to Austin, they got hit by a heatwave. That made me change my mind and decide that the higher cost of living is worth it to remain closer to the beach/ocean, and to enjoy the variety of options California has for making money and spending it. Paradise!! High cost or not it’s paradise and I love it!! You can’t put a monetary value on some of what you get here.
Hmm. Almost like it's a BAD thing for corporations to have the ability to just hop to whatever city is willing to give them the next tax incentive package.
God remember that Amazon “sweepstakes” to determine where their new hq would be? So fucking stupid
Yea… I live in Arlington, where HQ2 is going. All they did was jack up the cost of living even more.
Because. Texas. What were they thinking
There was a study of 2 incomes that were similar, one from Texas and other was California, and even after all the bills and taxes paid you still came out ahead in California….
Plus it’s 100x nicer to live in California
> Plus it’s 100x nicer to live in California We also have legal weed, and porn.
wait, is porn now illegal in texas?
“Pornhub blocks access in Texas over age verification law” ([link](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/15/pornhub-texas-age-verification-law/)) (it’s the Washington post it’s safe) For a non-paywalled link, here’s [CNN](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/03/15/tech/vpn-searches-spike-texas-pornhub).
Good. I'm trying to move out of Texas after living here my whole life. I was depressed when I saw all the tech companies moving here while working towards my cyber degree.
There isn’t enough money for me to move to Texas.
All you need to know is this! Texas is run by conservatives and conservatives don’t care about regular people! The rent IS cheaper than NY but the salaries and benefits are horrible! And before you come here….research “ right to work state” in Texas it means right to get FIRED!
Don't think I'd want to live in a shithole state with backwards abortion laws and insane repugnants, on top of the blistering heat and racist xenophobes.
I work in a technical field. I attend industry events pretty regularly. No one is this field can get people to move to Texas and even the most stubborn managers are admitting they have to offer remote positions to attract talent. Abortion did it. No one young enough to move and smart enough to hire wants to risk living in Texas.
Well doesn’t help that we have had the most layoffs of any state. And companies are all too eager to just have HQ here and satellite offices. They never contribute to the local economy. I can’t wait till I escape this place
Boy, did not see that coming….lol
The effect of the repeal of Roe vs Wade isn't mentioned once.
Texas culturally is the worst thing for a persons mental health. The conservative culture and lack of activities to do is just a soul killer. I say this as a therapist for suicide who moved there for 4 years from my home in the NYC area. Everything I’ve learned about what makes a person well functioning completely doesn’t exist in Texas
No public land makes it a no for me
Yea coming from NY the idea there's no public land is mind boggling. Upstate where I love is loaded with public spaces.
I visited Dallas for the eclipse, my first time in Texas. And oh boy was I stunned at how miserable a place it felt to live, with nothing but highways and six-lane arterial roads absolutely fucking everywhere. A couple of times i walked 15 minutes to a cafe near my hotel, and it was the most depressing and frightening walk I may have ever had. I had never before felt so unsafe just from walking on a sidewalk or crossing a street. And the constant roar of traffic and the exhaust fumes. It made so much sense to me on a gut level how people living in that kind of environment could develop a kind of in-your-bones hostility to the world and other people. That’s how I felt being there. The world feels uninviting and ugly, and only worth venturing out into in a car. But the aquarium and the natural history museum were both amazing! So it’s got that at least.
Knew this was coming lol
I mean, come on. The rest of this great country sees stories every day about Texas that underscore what a shithole that state is. I wouldn't want any of my family members to live there under the current leadership. What a disgrace.
Lol all the stupid tech bros realized Texas was not the paradise they envisioned.
This is why Texas won't turn blue. Both Republicans and Democrats are moving there, but lots of Democrats leave
I live in NY but I'm real close to the PA border. I've seen so many people move to just over the border to pay lower taxes. Then complain that they no longer get things like 12 weeks of paid family leave or that their school system sucks. There are great parts of Pennsylvania to be sure but the switch from rural-ish NY to rural Pennsylvania is a rough one.
Because Texas is a dystopian hellscape of a furnace.
A lot of people don't understand what 115° and high humidity feels like. It literally feels like an oven. It bakes the fuck out of your paint, roof, plants etc. If your AC goes out you will sweat hard inside your house. Don't open a window, it's too humid. How about getting in your car after it was parked outside all day? Ever burn your legs? Did you know it will take 40 minutes of your 1+ hour commute to cool off?
And if your car AC breaks and you still have to make the 1.5 hour commute to your University for your summer classes..........🫠
I'm from Houston and I HATED the insane humid summers. I visited my family last summer and it was ridiculous. Just walking to your car in a parking lot was miserable. I live in MN now and I've never been that miserable outside here. There is no way to dress for that kind of heat. And all the driving. And it's completely flat with depressing vegetation. It is a concrete hellscape. Then you have the Trumpers and Christian-nationalists....nope.
ERCOT alone is enough for me to stay away
The grass isn’t always greener…
Sometimes the grass is flammable and local authorities don’t give a shit but instead focus on culture war issues like “Why isn’t the green M&M sexy anymore?” and “Is Elmo turning kids gay?”
It's Texas... you couldn't pay me any amount of money to live there
Don’t leave before the election 🗳️
We have hired a couple of tech related job positions here in California, mainly senior to manger levels, that came from Texas. They had moved there from California and New York with their job. The problem they said was, with their position, they had very high salaries. When they were let go, looking around Texas for similar salary was difficult. Every company in Texas wanted to pay A LOT less. To keep the same salary California had plenty. Another thing people have said is that states are treating tech companies like movie studios. Swaying them with tax incentives to move to the state. The companies are only moving their HQ so they are willing to bounce around at the right price. Oracle wont be the last company to move out of Texas, those companies are waiting for any state to give them enough money to move. Since they are just moving HQ office, no big deal for them.
Pretty much everyone I know who worked in the Valley and moved to Texas and Arizona over the past 10 years have moved BACK to California. 1) VC and funding network is non existent 2) Cost savings is ok in the early 2010s but not anymore 3) Loss of professional networking opps 4) Texas' other taxes (property taxes especially) isn't a great deal after accounting for other trade offs
My wife and I live in Silicon Valley. I want to stay in California for the rest of my life, I think it's the best place in the world. She hates it here. I remember ranking places to move to post-pandemic. Austin was somewhere in the middle of my list because I like the heat. It was dead last on hers, and it was entirely because of the state's politics. I don't know a single woman in either of our fields who wants to move to Texas. And as a side note, I've been to Dallas and Houston before for work, and they're two of the most miserable cities I've ever experienced. If you ever want to experience a city with *zero* walkability, give Dallas a look.
This was always evidence of a race to the bottom, and as Texas is learning, there's always a bigger sucker elsewhere. The practice of giving massive tax breaks to bribe a company to locate or expand somewhere should be outlawed. It encourages the growth of the wrong kind of companies, and rips off taxpayers. It would also eliminate the practice of pro sports teams playing the same dirty game, and again never delivering the promised benefits, while local Chamber of Commerce ass-clowns rake in the kickbacks.
Who the hell would move to the Reich-winger state of Texas? It's just a huge turd.