Despite anxiety over Texas’ growth and billboards in California trying to persuade residents to stay put, many still chose to switch states, often picking Austin and the larger Central Texas region as their next home.
People selecting Texas over the Golden State cited affordability as a key factor. But for some, it’s come with different costs: dense traffic, a lack of dependable public transportation and scorching heat that transplants say is lowering their quality of life. An August report from Insider found that tech workers in particular are getting fed up with Texas, frustrated that career opportunities just aren’t as plentiful as they are in Silicon Valley.
As a result, people are moving out of the Lone Star State, or at the very least are considering it. Using U.S. Postal Service data, Insider found that from January to May this year, Austin saw the fifth-largest net outward migration among major U.S. cities, trailing New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, which actually ranked No. 1 among cities that saw the most people leave during that stretch.
How so? Isn’t the average tech worker’s salary sufficient to pay for personal remedies to most statewide conservative laws? For example, someone earning six figures would have no trouble quickly and quietly traveling to another state for an abortion.
I don’t know anyone in Austin but I do have liberal tech worker friends in DeSantis’s Florida and while they’re opposed to his policies, they aren’t personally affected by those policies in any serious way.
I make decent money and live in Texas. My wife is currently pregnant and the state’s policies on maternal care during pregnancy scares the shit out of me. In the case of a medical emergency money doesn’t buy time.
The education policies being pushed by the state government are also terrible and private schools are not really any better in that regard. We could homeschool but I am not interested in that for my child.
The general rhetoric demonizing and taking the basic human rights of immigrants, LGBT, and other marginalized communities is also really hard to hear.
Several mass shootings as schools and public places with no interest in taking any kind of preventative actions is disgusting.
The property taxes have become a significant burden on our housing price with no sign of that changing anytime soon.
The state government is opernly corrupt and hostile to anyone who is not a Republican and quietly hostile to the Republicans who aren’t high income, powerful, or political donors. Look at our power grid and the states actions after the freeze.
Money can’t buy your way out if any of these. We stay because our families live nearby and we want our kids to grow up around them. If I could convince them to move with us, I would leave in a second despite living here for the last 30 years.
We had considered moving from our high cost of living area to a cheaper state but ultimately didn’t because of our young kids. We’re squeezed pretty hard here and we could all live very comfortably on my salary in another state. But I couldn’t find a place with remotely acceptable schools. And who would our kids friends be? Very worried about the influence of their peers, raised by racist homophonic garbage.
And beyond maternal care, healthcare in most “affordable” states is just bad. We have the best healthcare system in the country where we’re at. What if we move to a state in the bottom third of the country and one of us got sick? The healthcare stories from rural America are very chilling.
And then once the kids grow up, what do they do then? No jobs, no decent higher education, lots of heroin, etc. Their options will likely be leave or fail unless something dramatically changes in the next decade. This might not really apply to Texas or the southwest but I’m on the east coast.
I’ve spent a total of 45 years in Midwest suburbs and 5 years in NoVa. I did not like healthcare in the big city. You have to go in and pretty well know what is wrong and what you want them to do about it. If you’re just feeling off with a bunch of random symptoms, they don’t have time to listen to all of that bullshit in the city.
I’m honestly much happier with healthcare here. I’ve never felt my doctor rushing me out the door the way I did on the East Coast. I had to go into the hospital in Orlando with the worst headache and sweating I’ve ever had (and that’s saying something because I suffer from constant migraines) and I sat in the waiting room for about 8 hours before I left to go suffer and/or die in peace and quiet.
All I’m really saying is healthcare is a lot more nuanced than rural vs. urban.
Jobs? I don’t know. The pay is less here but so is the standard of living. Other than being a tech worker in silicon valley, I’m not really sure what is missing here. I guess maybe the jobs skew more toward blue collar than banking and legal and stuff, but I’ve been a white collar working almost my whole life here in the Midwest (as a programmer working with banks and courts as well as industry and retail) - there is certainly no shortage of such jobs I can see. I suppose there are fewer employers, so it’s harder here to tell your employer to get fucked and you’ll go work for someone else, but just look for the job first and then tell them to get fucked and you’re fine.
MSU and UofM are both pretty good schools, though I’ll concede they aren’t ivy league.
I can’t speak to heroin here because I’m pretty far removed from the drug scene - that seemed a much bigger problem in NoVA than here, but I’m sure there is plenty of meth in the rural areas, but from what I can tell the suburbs are mostly legal pot and probably cocaine (just judging from the billboards I see).
I’m not trying to argue with you, just offer a different perspective. I couldn’t handle the crush of people and ultimately that’s why I left, but I also learned how much I missed from where I grew up.
Those are good points. I suppose issues involving children are the biggest concerns. I tend not to think about them much because I don’t have children, but my friends in Florida do. They seem content with the quality of their local schools but I can see how school quality could vary wildly.
A couple years back, an old undergrad buddy was bragging about how he and his wife were moving to Florida because their teachers paid well. Obviously we had a lot of “what the fuck?” conversations behind their back, and a buddy’s wife put it best:
Anyone living in one of the hellhole states (mostly Texas and Florida) and saying “oh, its fine, this doesn’t affect me” is a republican or actively does not give a shit about their partner and family.
And if people somehow don’t have a single non-cisgender white male in their life? Well… what was that old jeff foxworthy joke again?
Ah yeah a extremely hostile red state that pulls back LGBT laws, passes racist laws, and cops run amuck? Watch my taxes go to build a police militia to stop some invisible enemy, while some poor families live in a van and are harassed? Walking by places that treat my family like criminals because we are brown.
Imagine being okay with an oppressive theocracy because it’s only hurting poor people right now
tell me you don’t understand, at the fundamental level, what it means to be a liberal and care for others, which makes you a liberal in the first place
I think we care for others because it is rational to do so. If you are nice to person x, they are more likely to be nice to you. By making this into a pattern, you can maintain a healthy and productive inner circle that helps you achieve your goals in life, whatever those goals are. This is how healthy communities are grown, and why certain people don’t even realize they can exist.
So, we’re not liberal because we care. We care because we’re liberal. We’re liberal because that’s actually the most beneficial way to be, for us personally. It benefits us personally, in a way that is consistent with cold, hard, logic, analyzed after we have killed the input of our feelings and emotions.
Otherwise liberalism wouldn’t even exist, because it’s difficult. Why do the difficult thing, if it’s not any better?
You’re not helping anyone in Texas by moving from Texas to California.
(Well, I suppose you’re helping Texan Republicans an infinitesimally small amount by no longer being a voter there.)
You’re helping your family by not subjecting them to Texas schools and healthcare laws.
By leaving Texas, you make sure your tax money isn’t going to their government. Leaving also prevents them from being able to prop up their image with stats about GDP per capita. Better to live somewhere that your taxes will help others rather than paying for the things Texas wants to spend money on. Operation lone star costs Texas 2 billion per year. That’s the equivalent of k-12 schooling for 200,000 students. Operation lone star uses national guard troops under state control, who legally cannot enforce immigration law, which is federal. It’s all just a colossal waste of money for a political show. I’d rather the money go to schools or healthcare
go back to bed, son, you’re hurting yourself
“Stop hurting yourself,” said the bully.
This is similar to a situation I’m in. Does it affect me personally? No. You’re right I can find ways around it easily enough, I have the money. But I hate the fact I’m seeing it happen to those around me. I’ve lived my whole life in Texas and was hoping this wave could help tip the scales to have the government start providing better for its people, but sadly things are way too rigged to make an impact.
Thinking of possible scenarios: If you have school age children and want them educated in a public school; f you were LQBTQ+; if you were POC; and/or if you wanted politicians who shared your values and policy priorities, you would be directly affected. ETA: Thought of one more. If you can possibly get pregnant, intentionally or not, you could also possibly have a miscarriage or stillbirth and be charged with an abortion. So abortion laws will affect you even if you aren’t actively seeking an abortion.
Also, tangentially related to politics, infrastructure in Texas seems precarious. There are no politicians holding the private companies that run the power grid responsible. People have died because of the cold and the heat in Texas due to infrastructure issues and no politicians and pushing for a solution. It looks like things will simple become worse. This affects everyone in Texas.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to keep female, LGBTQ+, or those with children who fall into those categories, in state. I own a tech company with headquarters in Austin and a presence in Florida, California, Virginia and Wyoming. Time and again our candidates ask if they’d have to move to Texas or Florida. They bring up their concern about the political climate, accessibility to healthcare (subtext being gender reassigning care or reproductive care). We are 100% work from home if you choose but have workspaces in certain locations accessible to our staff.
It used to be that most candidates couldn’t wait to move to Austin or Orlando, now many e concerned if they’d have to leave their blue state. Austin is an amazing city and I highly recommend it, especially if you are young and are looking to build a close network that’ll last you a lifetime. The Austin tech industry is smaller but it also maintains a small town vibe. After a while, you won’t only know people across multiple companies, you’ll actually properly know those people beyond casual acquaintance.
PS: I know a lot of tech C level execs in Austin. If you’re a young woman considering Austin but concerned about access to abortion, bring it up during the interview process. A lot of companies are offering benefits like discreet transportation and lodging with a suspiciously large per diem to cities in blue states. Some extend those benefits to “significant others” and your children. Don’t expect these benefits to be advertised, just ask.
PPS: If you live in Texas or Florida, vote Democrat regardless of whether or not you agree with all of their policies. The Republican agenda is going to destroy the economies of those states.
You do realize they want to stop people at the border now to prevent them from traveling for abortions right? We’re probably like 6 months away from sitting up some Road checkpoint on harassing people. Plus you’ve also got transgender healthcare that is becoming increasingly illegal even for adults, never trust this protect the kids bullshit it’s never true. So that means you’d have to fly out to California not just for a possibly once in a lifetime abortion but for a monthly prescription refill, and on and on and on. Also the power grid isn’t even reliable in Texas
Framework laws that would better enable that kind of “road checkpoint” are already being pushed through by activists and passed in some rural Texas counties.