This travesty that some claim to be happening has just been voted by a bunch of media and academia lib's that Texas is the # 1 state. CNBC
Number one in the availability low-paying service and retail jobs, perhaps. That, however, is useless should you posses even a molecule of self respect. We are probably number one for most regressive tax system...which naturally appeals to businesses.
I love Texas, but to be honest - it's a socioeconomic wasteland. The wealthy come to Texas to take advantage of its regressive economic culture. The working people only stay because they love their state on a quasi patriotic level.
So long as we empower people like Rick Perry to thumb his nose at federal legislation that benefits the poor, Texas will never change.
Let's be fair, Perdie. Someone who's poor and fat in Texas is going to be poor and fat anywhere else too. Poor people everywhere are less mobile than rich people because they tend to work in service jobs that aren't portable and that are basically the same everywhere. If they weren't working at Wal-Mart here, they'd be working at Wal-Mart in some other state that isn't Vermont, so why move at all? They also don't have the luxury of abandoning their social capital by moving away from friends and family and leaving themselves with no social/financial safety net.
The poor have less economic mobility than the rich, true. However, there is more than the factors of economic mobility at work in Texas.
Most Texans believe that they are residing in some sort of economic promised land because there is no income tax and, in no small part, thanks to the constant media sunshine swindle proclaiming a "Texas miracle". In short, Texas isn't Michigan -- a majority of our people approve of Texas' economic regressivism and will vote in its defense whenever presented with an opportunity.
Also, I disagree that low-wage workers in Texas would automatically be thrust into low-wage positions if they moved their labor to another state. Texas has a distinct lack of professional entry-level job availability that forces qualified workers down the ladder and, therefore, everyone beneath them down the ladder as well. A CVS cashier in Texas could easily be a data entry clerk or a receptionist in another state.
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