Photo by eschipul
The crisis is maybe over in Washington, but the crisis for the middle class continues. Middle-income jobs are hard to find and the cost of living gets more expensive. So, where can citizens of the United States turn for answers? It is simple – Texas. There are many reasons why you shouldn’t have a negative or even bad opinion on Texas. People are friendly and the cost of living is cheap. However, that is just the top of the ice-berg. Here are 5 reasons to support our claims.
1. Everyone is moving there
More people are moving to Texas than to any other state in the country. Texas in the fastest-growing state in the United States, with 3 of the top 5 fastest-growing cities in the country – Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Over the past twenty years, more than 4 million people from California have moved to this state, and since 2000, one million more people have moved to Texas from other states than have left.
2. Cheap land and cheap houses
Where can Americans go when their incomes are not keeping pace with their rising cost of living? The answer is simple – they are headed to Texas. People are headed there because the land is cheap, and housing, as well. An average home in Brooklyn costs more than $500,000 dollars and rising rapidly, and almost 90% of these dwellings are condos and apartments rather than stand-alone homes. They don’t usually have seamlessly operating air-conditioning fixtures and impressive sinks. The typical home in Houston costs $130,000 – and it is likely newer and stand-alone structure compared to Brooklyn.
3. Cheap living generally
This cheap cost of living in Texas is not just limited to housing, it is a pervasive fact of life, too. In addition, it has an enormous impact on people’s standards of living. A generally low cost of living, along with the lower house prices, helped along with cheap produce, cheap labor, and cheap gas, really matter when it comes to the quality of life. Compared to California, Texas has a higher per capita income, adjusted for cost of living, and almost the same with New York by the same measure. Texas pulls ahead of New York by a wide margin, once you factor in state and local taxes. Texas has the third-highest average income in the United States, after Virginia and Washington State.
4. Jobs
It is not just a cheap living that draws so many people to this state. It is also a job. Last year, Texas has added about 275,000 new jobs, which is 13% of all jobs added in the country and 50,000 more compared to California. In fact, in the first decade of the 21st century, Texas created almost 1/3 of the highest-paying jobs in the United States with 8% of the U.S. population.
5. Low taxes
There is no income tax in Texas. It collects roughly $3,500 in taxes overall every year, per resident. This includes all state and local taxes. This is low, especially if we compared it to California and New York, where the states collect $4,900 and whopping $7,400 per resident. Of course, New York and California have income taxes. Many people go to Texas because it is a low-tax, low-cost state. However, they also migrate to other Sunbelt states, like South Carolina, Arizona, and Colorado, which have similar policy profiles.