Yep, moving from a very expensive location to the Democratic-run liberal city known as “the People’s Republic of Austin”.
It’s high-tech image sometimes conflicts with it’s reputation as “the slacker capital” and the “coolest city in America”.
“People hear the word Texas and they visualise a longhorn skull bleached by the sun, a spiny cactus and miles of sand,” observes my taxi driver, drily. “In Austin that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s as near to heaven on earth as it gets; only problem we have here in Austin is that we’re surrounded by Texas.” Quite so. Austin, famed for its nightlife, its outdoor graffiti art gallery and regularly dubbed “the drunkest city in the US” is to Texas as Berlin is to Germany, which is to say it proudly, provocatively, perversely bears little resemblance to the rest of the state.
It seems like every site I’m on, somebody is going to pull out Venice as an example of California failing. If Venice keeps failing, maybe someday I’ll be able to buy a place bigger than 500ft2 on the canals for less than $2M. ha.
It’s like hobo-chic. One day wealthy hipsters will be squatting in the corner talking about how they lived in overpriced crack houses before it was cool…
I’ve seen this thread come up a few times and not said anything.
It’s not just California. It’s most Western countries. Especially the ones that followed neoliberalism. Anyone that has read a little bit about economics knows that the value of labour has been decoupled from profits since around the 1980s.
Regan and Thatcher brought in this new era of race to the bottom economics. Trickle down rubbish. You see it in Taiwan with the obscenely low wages. The only difference is the Taiwan government still owns most of their utilities. The USA, UK, and Australia have sold theirs off.
And therein lies the problem. The selling off of infrastructure and essential utilities like gas and water transferred profits from the state to a select group of already wealthy individuals. Generally the same families that baulked at setting up those same essential utilities 100 years ago ended up buying them up for dirt cheap when they convinced their lackies in government to sell off those taxpayers assets.
Until enough people understand what happened nothing will change.
Just like treating drugs as a criminal issue instead of as a health issue. And failing to supply universal healthcare has led to the US having the most expensive healthcare pretty much in the world.
There have been plenty of studies that have shown that homeless people given somewhere stable to live and the option of treatment/rehabilitation and work tend to somewhat stabilize themselves. When those options don’t exist you end up with those examples of skidrow and Venice beach or wherever that was. The problem is people don’t want to admit that different people have different preferences for their drug of choice.
Alcohol is a drug. Tobacco is a drug. Barbiturates are drugs. Sugar creates the same brain pattern response as cocaine. People get addicted to comfort food because when they eat it their stomach’s release copious amounts of serotonin that then travel to the brain and tell the brain to release enough dopamine to balance it out.
The USA screams pretty loudly that they are a Christian Nation with Christian principles. Based on their actions alone it’s quite easy to call bullshit on that.
