I find all the Texas bashing purely jealousy. All economics stats shows TX is the best. I've lived in Dallas for 12 years and hands down one of the best cities in the nation. You want the hottest women around, you got it. Top sports...got it. Tons of money and a big arena of Hedge Funds (include Fort Worth as well)....got it. No income tax.....got it. Very affordable housing....got it (we never had any crazy boom/bust). All I know is that places like Cali ,Illinois and New York that have been liberalized by tax and spend politicians are DOOMED....I want to cut off Cali and send it to China. Yes, everything in Texas is bigger and better than the rest of the nation!!
Here is the thing about Texas and why you can't look at the statistics either way. Texas, like most states, is split in half with the haves and have nots. The poor immigrant population, which is huge, is really the source for most of the welfare and federal aid that goes into that state. Not to mention that a large majority of the Katrina evacuees still live there. This is going to skew all the stats downward. As for the public schools, they have some of the best schools in the country and at the same time, some of the worst. This is why where you live is very important. This is also true in IL. In fact, it's true just about everywhere. The nice parts of Houston and Dallas are very very nice. But the bad parts are hell. Practically no one speaks English in many of those areas. So you can't just throw out studies and stats blindly without understanding the big picture.
Sure. I'm just getting at that liberals hate TX just because it's conservative, such as that guy who posted the Maddow link. They hate TX even though Houston, Dallas have impressive downtowns and TX has the best housing stock in the country, maybe with the exception of Los Angeles. I have no problem saying Seattle is nice. You got the mountains and the ocean. Downtown Seattle not only has great architecture and buildings, but it's lively and lots to do. It just feels prosperous. You can go to the other side of the lake and see downtown Bellevue, which is booming and has a downtown that's better than the downtowns of many cities in the country. But here's the dirty little secret. WA doesn't have an income tax and has very low property taxes. They even voted down a partial income tax last year. In many ways, WA has a Red State fiscal policy.
Yeah I've always been very curious about Seattle. Obviously the no state income tax and the moderate weather there are very attractive. I'm just curious what the people are like there. Probably the best asset TX has is not the taxes, but the people there. I love Texans. Chicago on the other hand, not so much. LOL. Seattle obviously has a great downtown and like you mentioned, Bellevue is nice as well. How is the cost of living out there?
Every state in the union is now full of Mexicans, or soon will be. I've noted that "diversity" consists of more and more and more of exactly the same kind of people.
I don't live in WA; I live in MN actually. Traveled there for work and one of the places where I might move in the future. It seems culturally they are very similar, cold and polite. People will be decent to you, but it's not even close to the warmth you get in the South. Housing is very expensive for houses that are not as nice as Texas. If it weren't for the cloud cover, it'd be even more crowded.