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I am not attacking Texas. A poster asked what I saw as a genuine question about why someone would say that Texas has a low QOL and I thought to give an answer to that question.
I also, offered a rebut to the Texas and California are just like one another posts which means Texas shouldn't be compared to the rest of America only California.
But i have nothing against Texas. I hope the statistics about Texas citizens improves. I hope poverty in Texas declines. I hope incomes in Texas rise. I hope the wealth of the average Texan increases. I hope more Texans graduate from high school to approach the US norm. I hope more Texans graduate from college to approach the US norm. I hope the life expectancy of Texans increases to approach the US norm.
But if we are going to talk about Texas as a state, I can't ignore the stats on the citizens of Texas.
Again when you compare Texans to the rest of the nation on average Texans are poorer, less educated, and die earlier than the average American.
This. We all hope they do better in the future but you can't ignore the many glaring ways in which Texas simply lags behind the rest of the country.
Again, I am not forgetting anything, but this idea that Texas was this wealthy, highly educated state with low poverty until immigration is fiction.
These problems of low graduation rates, higher levels of poverty, and shorter life expectancy are long term problems in the state. As such, I don't see the point in pretending these problems are the fault of immigrants they aren't.
I never said the problems were tied to immigrants, but illegal immigrants pose unique problems so it doesn't seem realistic to compare a state that has to spend resoucres dealing with illegals to a state that does not.
HS graduation rates are identical in CA and TX.
Poverty/earnings are driven by educational achievement and CA has more people with a degree than TX does. TX is about 2 points lower than the national average, but most of the country doesn't have the amount of illegal immigrants that TX does.
Life expectancy is tied to lifestyle choices and socioeconomic background.
The poverty rate in the US is 16%, 16.4% in TX, and 23.8% in CA. So Texas is doing worse compared to the USA, but TX has to deal with illegal immigrants more directly.
Under the traditional calculation the poverty rate is 15.1% in the USA, 17.7% in TX, and 16.5% in CA.
Explain the much higher rates of murder and armed violence in states with more guns. There are a few exceptions (Montana comes to mind as a place with a lot of guns but low violence mostly due to low population density) but check out most of the south and you'll find higher gun ownership goes hand in hand with higher murder rates, higher domestic violence rates, and just plain higher violent crime rates.
That just doesn't sound very polite to me.
Hey, the science is settled. The study was conducted by Dr. Eric Fleegler of Boston and published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
"[A]n average rate of 4.0 gun homicides per 100,000 in the ten most anti-gun jurisdictions, and a gun homicide rate of 3.5 per 100,000 in the ten jurisdictions with the fewest gun regulations."
Based on those and other numbers in the study, one could argue that strict gun laws cause more gun violence.
I am not attacking Texas. A poster asked what I saw as a genuine question about why someone would say that Texas has a low QOL and I thought to give an answer to that question.
I also, offered a rebut to the Texas and California are just like one another posts which means Texas shouldn't be compared to the rest of America only California.
But i have nothing against Texas. I hope the statistics about Texas citizens improves. I hope poverty in Texas declines. I hope incomes in Texas rise. I hope the wealth of the average Texan increases. I hope more Texans graduate from high school to approach the US norm. I hope more Texans graduate from college to approach the US norm. I hope the life expectancy of Texans increases to approach the US norm.
But if we are going to talk about Texas as a state, I can't ignore the stats on the citizens of Texas.
Again when you compare Texans to the rest of the nation on average Texans are poorer, less educated, and die earlier than the average American.
The life expectancy of Texas is tied with Pennsylvania and Montana for 28th place in the US. Very much in the middle.
As for high school graduation rates, perhaps you don't look at data. For 2010-2011, Texas' graduation rate was 86%, in the top 9 in the US.
I live in TN, a state whose politics are fairly similar to Texas. We have low taxes, low wages, low regulation, and are a very business friendly state, yet Texas continues to progess economically, while other states like TN that should be booming, frankly, are hurting. Why?
Is the Texas boom primarily based on oil and other national resources that other states aren't blessed with?
Does the Texas boom exist outside the major cities? Like here, I've always read that TX has issues with poverty outside the major cities.
Are there other factors specific to TX causing it to boom while other states that attempt to mimic the TX miracle like TN falter?
East Tenn is thriving if you are a neurosurgeon or med student. Other than that, not so much.
A façade economy of strip malls and retail doesn't prop up the economy , in the long run.
Corrupt local politics aside, TX and TN are two completely different animals. Tenn was a pretty state when I lived there (you cant swim in the polluted lakes though).
Economic myopia and corrupt local politics, bad city planning, etc., is the problem in Tenn. I cant speak for Texas. My brother loved Houston, but he was at Baylor for his surgical residency.
I am not attacking Texas. A poster asked what I saw as a genuine question about why someone would say that Texas has a low QOL and I thought to give an answer to that question.
I also, offered a rebut to the Texas and California are just like one another posts which means Texas shouldn't be compared to the rest of America only California.
But i have nothing against Texas. I hope the statistics about Texas citizens improves. I hope poverty in Texas declines. I hope incomes in Texas rise. I hope the wealth of the average Texan increases. I hope more Texans graduate from high school to approach the US norm. I hope more Texans graduate from college to approach the US norm. I hope the life expectancy of Texans increases to approach the US norm.
But if we are going to talk about Texas as a state, I can't ignore the stats on the citizens of Texas.
Again when you compare Texans to the rest of the nation on average Texans are poorer, less educated, and die earlier than the average American.
If there is a rough median or average of social metrics, that means about half are above and below the average. While TX may not be doing great with regard to these metrics, neither do states with similar state politics, like TN and FL. The difference between TX and TN/FL/NC and other hard right states is that TX actually has a viable economy, where the other states are severely hurting for those looking for decent paying work.
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