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Denver and Seattle seem overrun with transplants lately. But any city that's grown extremely fast is going to be chock-full of transplants, because usually that's the only way cities really grow fast (people don't tend to have way more babies depending on the region, and immigration isn't usually the culprit these days like it was around the turn of the 20th century).
To be quite honest, I never found wages in Texas to be that low relative to COL compared to, say, South Florida, where I lived for years. However, if you have a different context, which I'm sure you do, then I can understand why you feel that way.
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Originally Posted by italianuser
14. tons of poverty and rednecks, whitetrash, uneducated people (even though I found Florida worse)
Rural Texas, IMO, is much poorer, more backwater, and more discomforting than rural Florida. Rural East Texas is reminiscent of Arkansas, rural North Texas of Oklahoma, and rural South Texas of Mexico. Rural Florida, OTOH, has a fairly strong transplant element--believe it or not--which, IMO, makes it a little less discomforting. YMMV.
- People know of Arizona's great variety of outdoor recreation. They are all at least an hour drive away, depending on where you are, in Phoenix anyway. This doesn't include traffic. People get stuck in Phoenix because well, that's where they chose to live and that's where most of the jobs are, and find that there's really about NOTHING in the actual city itself. Except some random mountains which are too hot to hike except maybe four/five months of the year, unless you go at about 3 am when it's 100 degrees. Tucson and Flagstaff are similar in regards, except slightly better because the weather is more tolerable in these two places.
- Our COL isn't as low as people think anymore. I wish I could remember where I saw the table (it was on a thread on this forum) but Arizona was slightly higher than Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania! Many transplants that come to Arizona are from this region of the country. I think by the way it was ranked though, higher numbers were better, but it wasn't even that much (like some three or two points). So really if you're from Pennsylvania, you aren't saving much moving here.
- Websites suggest we have a lot of jobs with a good amount of growth. Truth is, Phoenix has an awfully small economy. Jobs are pretty much limited to the financial sector (and not even by much) and some random corporations like Best Western and Petsmart. We also have some tech jobs but we aren't known for that either.
- Arizona is friendly to families, really, but we don't have a good education system. I feel that most schools are TERRIBLY underfunded and are under bad management. We have some of the worst funding for schools in the US. Our universities are also more like capitalists so they accept everything that breathes so they can get more money, rather than being selective and shooting for a better reputation. Arizona really needs a university that shines, shines by a lot, and a better funded public school system.
- Monsoon season. I think people believe it's 0% humidity all year long. It almost is. But for about a month, we experience around 100+ degree temps and around 70% humidity. Unless you're from Florida or other states in the deep South, this is relatively extreme. It also doesn't rain very much in this time, either, unlike the southern states, except super late at night when you're asleep.
- Dangerous creatures. Arizona has more dangerous things, such as scorpions, brown recluse spiders, tarantulas, black widows, snakes, gila monsters (you better hope you don't run into those, I used to often), lizards... Less mosquitoes than the East, yes, but I'd rather deal with mosquitoes than scorpions, which are everywhere. So really, we may have less bugs, but remember you're trading that for things like scorpions and black widows, which are fairly common.
- Real estate. Do I even need to talk about that one? It's not stable here.
- Oh, but it's a dry heat! <-- Worst thing I hear... ever. It doesn't matter if you're extremely sweaty or extremely dry it's still very hot. Sweat is a natural way of our bodies to cool us off. It's hard to sweat in the Arizona heat when it evaporates off your skin in not even a minute. Your choice: a sauna or an oven?
- Our politics. Arizonans are relatively apolitical. The ones who aren't are well... fairly nutty. At least in this state. This is how things like the Freedom Bill even get heard of. I swear we aren't lunatics... but with a voter turnout rate that barely goes over 50% for national elections (averaging from a few sources... I got 53%, 56%, 57%, 52%) it's hard to prove it because clearly my fellow Arizonans don't care enough...and we are in the top ten for lowest voter turnout rate. A few sources ranked Arizona at around 7th.
Sorry for the paper, and I didn't even go into sprawl and electric/water bills, or how costly it is to have a pool here.
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