Since at least 1994 I’ve always been intrigued to know how my home state (Texas) ranks in Quality of Living tables compared to the other 50 U.S. states. Why? Very simple: affluent Texans, many of which are only first, second, third, or perhaps fourth generation Texans, arrogantly boast that Texas (at least politically) is hands-down THE best state in the Union. Yes, I hear this from fellow Texans quite often, mostly in the rural areas. I have heard these claims most all of my six decades of life while living here. It seems to be a personal source of deep-seeded pride whether justified or not.
But I have always been greatly puzzled by their expressed, audacious claim. Aside from one’s own biased personal opinion, by what metrics, by what standards could these white Texans possibly be referencing? I regularly check these quality of life criteria, every 1-2 years minimum, not just for the required oversight and civic duty/privilege by a concerned, caring citizen, but also to monitor how our Lone Star State is progressing: Is it thriving, stagnate, or declining?
According to US News & World Report, the data points collected in ranking the U.S. states overall are many. The two primary categories most all Americans most care about are healthcare and education for its residents. Secondary points are public safety, social and occupational opportunities, economy, roads, bridges, environment, internet access and other infrastructure.
Well, sorry (again) Texas, the 2023 facts and data are not good at all for Texans and their “proud friendly” state. The overall quality of life in Texas is below average: ranked 35th out of 50 states. In fact, Texas doesn’t rank #1 in any of the eight primary categories, much less the lower priority categories. In 2021 Texas ranked 31st overall, today down four places after two years. It ranked 36th in 2018 and 38th in 2017. There is however, one particular category Texas has always excelled in: its economy. There has always existed in Texas-economics very plush advantages for past and present wealth-accumulators to make much more excessive wealth; tax-codes and opportunities abound for Texas’ upper-class. This is exactly why Elon Musk, originally of South Africa, the founder/CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, present owner of Twitter, and a number of other mega-businesses, moved here and now calls Texas his home. He is just one of many of America’s wealthiest persons living in Texas.
Ironically, the one category Texas has never excelled in since these stats and data-points were first collected is its Individual Median Income—it is $38,059 for 2023 single-earner Texans. Sadly, according to SmartAsset’s study, individual Texans need to earn a minimum $44,865 per year and closer to $133,926 to be considered “middle-class,” or to only have a decent standard of living while working and alive, barring any unforeseen emergencies or catastrophes.
It becomes quite obvious why there is such a large disparity in the Lone Star States’ Quality of Life categories, like the economy versus all other categories. What is it? What drives this lopsided metric? It’s income and economic inequality. Severe? Probably. Improved? Not at all. Digressing, expanding? Most definitely.
So one must ask these (typically rural and far-suburban) Texans, What verifiable facts and data are you quoting to conclude that Texas is THE best state in the Union to live? My next two questions to them are 1) What zip code do you live, and 2) Where exactly have you and your family been experiencing Texas the last at least 30–40 years?
Care to guess what bewildering answers I usually get?
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Addendum Aug. 22, 2023 — In conjunction with this post I am connecting or linking my next blog-post to this one as a follow-up. It is entitled “Rating Democracy in All 50 U.S. States.”
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Hey! I was born in Texas! That makes it… something!
I sure as hell would not choose to live there now. Although I am still in Tn. which can’t be much, if ANY, better than Texas. They both seem to be in a race towards the bottom.
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I didn’t know that Shell! 😮 Where in Texas, if you’re not too embarrassed to admit? 😉
To the bottom it does seem so. I keep track of most all stats/rankings of the important categories to a Quality of Living… and over the last 20+-yrs Texas has been trending down in well over 70%–75% of all QoL categories with the exception of two: 1) millionaires or GDP per capita in TX and 2) our “Rainy Day Fund,” otherwise known as the Economic Stabilization Fund will cap-out at $188.2 billion in the black for the 2024-25 biennium.
I didn’t look at Tennessee Shell, but I trust you to pretty well know, at least on a weekly/monthly basis and however long you’ve lived there.
Sources —
(1) https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/richest-states-in-usa/
(2) https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/09/texas-budget-revenue-estimate/
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I’ve never visited the US, so I don’t have a dog in this fight, as it were. However I’m assuming the people who think Texas is awesome might have a comfortable lifestyle, and/or plenty of wealth. It’s the same for my city (Auckland, NZ). I moved here for a job, which I like. However, Auckland has a lot of problems which would be less frequent if I moved elsewhere. If you’re rich though? Auckland is awesome.
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Ahh Liberated, as Abraham Lincoln once exclaimed long ago to Seward’s unsavory vote-getters, “What a joy to be comprehended.” 😉 Yes, that is precisely what I was implying by zip codes and daily residential living among fellow opulents. 😋
It seems then I will NEVER live in Auckland or New Zealand. Not that it troubles me much because I wouldn’t care for the daily/weekly earthquake trimmers either! 😄
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Now now, don’t let me put you off coming to NZ, you are more than welcome here 🙂 . Outside of Auckland there are much nicer places. You won’t have to worry about earthquakes in Auckland though – the top part of NZ doesn’t get them very often. Although we may have a volcanic eruption at some point, hopefully not in the too distant future 😉 .
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Oh MY! Well then, there IS some hope after all, isn’t there? 😁
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Well, I hopped on over to the U.S. News article and found that my own state ranks only one better than Texas! THAT surprised me! It also shocked me to see that Idaho and Florida rank in the top ten! And Florida — the state where it’s now illegal to teach history, illegal to acknowledge the LGBTQ community, illegal to teach anything that is based on facts … ranks #1 in education??? NO WAY!!! Who put this ranking together, anyway??? Interesting stuff, but I’m not believing some of it and now my curiosity is piqued, so I’ll be delving a bit deeper. I do agree, though … I wouldn’t live in Texas or Florida, or anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon for that matter. Ohio is not great by any means, and if I had choices, I wouldn’t live here, but … it doesn’t have DeSantis or Abbott, for which I must be grateful!
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Sounds like whoever is rating education is a MAGAt! Or worse, The Sanitizer’s brother!
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It definitely makes you wonder!
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Ah, I was a bit shocked by Florida’s #1 ranking too given exactly what you list, DeSantis, and how obviously Florida and Texas are literally twin-sister (brother?) states in their recent socioeconomic methodology of maintaining the socioeconomic status quo despite that their specific ethnic affluent “group” is like Texas becoming a minority group in governing policies. IOW, change the rules, move the goal-posts in order to stay in power and control, e.g. increasingly using shady methods of suppressing votes by non-white or leftist groups—in essence, Neo-Jim Crow Laws, gerrymandering, etc, et al.
I digress. Back to the #1 ranking in Education. These sorts of factual data collections take quite a bit of time to amass for all 50 states. So in effect this could be stats/data from late 2022 to spring of 2023? A lot has changed in Florida since then. I’d suspect that next year Florida will NOT be #1. But this is my own (semi-?) educated guess Jill. 🙂
Thank you so much for coming by! It’s been so long. Don’t be a stranger Ma’am. 😉 ❤️
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I’m sure you’re right about the timing … it will be interesting to see the rankings a year from now! Sorry I haven’t been around much, Prof … I’m not intentionally ignoring you, but I’ve been having some health issues and my energy just isn’t what it once was, so I rarely get around to reading other people’s blogs. I’ll try to do better, though … I’ve missed you! 💖
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Sitting up here in Alberta, the spitting image of Texas in Canada, I have no idea where we rate even in our country. And we also have a rainy day fund worth billions while the province burns in 200 areas, and suffers droughts in 20 others, while part of us is flooding — and healthcare is suffering from a shortage of doctors, especially anesthesiologists, which means surgeries are backing up. Meanwhile they are sponsoring building a new arena for the Calgary Flames. Where the hell are their priorities!
Truly, if I could afford to move, I would. Probably to New Zealand, if I won a lottery I can’t afford to buy tickets for.
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It would seem rawgod that most everywhere a lot of the world’s suffering by the middle-classes and the oft silenced impoverished-classes are perpetuated by one type or class of people, yes? My first description of that designated “type/class”?
• Lacking or severely lacking of a moral compass, compassion, empathy, and basic human decency.
I think just those four qualities solve many MANY problems of the world, nations, and transgenerational suffering. Otherwise, the long long list of what traits/behavior they DO possess and embody while alive… are the far too many vices and ego-centric actions they manifest (publicly or privately) which are too many to list. Yes? No? Maybe?
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Three I will go along with, compassion, empathy, and human decency. When I hear the word “moral” it sends me in two directions — people who like to judge others, and religious authoritaruanism. I am not down with either.
Of course, you might have a different definiton of moral than I, so it may just be semantics. For me, I need a more general free-flowing word.
Maybe life-oriented.
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Yes, semantics will sometimes jumble-up or hinder cross-cultural communication, not that there’s a massive difference between you and Alberta, Canada, and the southwest fringe of the American former Confederate South and myself. By our past comments on WordPress together, I can’t even remember the last time we staunchly disagreed or went at each other. 😉
But with the latter, the fringe Confed-South, myself and much of my family and our ancestors were always sympathetic to “the Union” and the abolition of slavery—which also made the bulk of us race-neutral, or color-blind. This also tends to categorize us as Leftists or Liberals, with a splattering of Moderates in my families. Much of us are also egalitarian in a community sense, but NOT extreme socialists, if that makes sense. For my ancestors’ anti-Confederate, anti-Texan 19th-century viewpoints, many of them suffered, were harassed, and a handful were captured and executed or tortured then imprisoned by Confederate Texans (racists).
By moral-compass I mean a widely general consensus—even foreign if necessary—of what would be considered ‘closest to the Greater Good for All’ by that diverse consensus. I guess also I mean a purer democracy? Does that help rawgod?
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It’s more or less what I expected, but it is not the meaning behind the word, I just very much dielike the word “moral,” though I am okay with morale, but that’s a totally different direction.
I have no idea if my family is even politically active, or aware. I myself lean hard to the socialist view, but I hate government of any kind, period. I take a lot of flak, because almost everyone believes you have to have government to keep control of the negative forces and people.
I say BULLSHIT! Govrnment hinders personal growth. People are so busy trying to abide by conflicting laws that they don’t take time to examine how they really feel were they allowed to go where their natures would take them. Negative people would actions and non-actions, meaning my life, that grows to a responsibility to ALL LIVING BEINGS. It is the natural way.
I accept that for now we csnnot survive without taking life — Life lives on Life. But the corallary to that is to let living beings live to the end of their natural lives before esting their physical bodies.
This is a major leap away from any society that has ever existed on this planet at least. I cannot speak for the rest of the universe. If I lived alone I would survive on nothing but nuts, berries, eggs, and naturally dead flesh. But all that is someehere in my rawgodsspiritualjatheism blog which I no longer give as mucn attention to ss I feel I should.
Shutting up now.
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“Moral” can also mean “ethical, honorable, honest, true, nice, credible” via Merriam-Webster’s list of synonyms. Yes, it’s frequently associated with religion and religious belief (virtuous, upright, decent, righteous), but I tend to think it all boils down to the context in which it is used.
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And to the users, plural. My mind goes dire
?ctly to the reigioue, and the to sll the one jwho love to sit in mudgmdnt of everyonf i’ve been living with it my wholre life. I am never going to like it, no matter what a dick-tionary says…
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