Interesting article though - of course the cheaper the state, the less services.

Bryant

Last edited Mon Apr 1, 2013, 09:45 PM - Edit history (1)

My family lives in a cheap Southern state, but they have all the essential services--- water/sewer, electric, gas, regular trash pick-up, medical, fire and police. The utilities are all far cheaper than they are in most of the rest of the country, as is the general cost-of-living. That's one reason why so many retired Northerners have moved down there.

North Carolina (one of those lower-cost states) just opted to cut unemployment benefits, for example.

including in that Great Blue State, California:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/california-reaches-a-budget-deal.html

I could not withstand the culture shock ... no matter how low the taxes ....

Portland Oregon is cheap enough, and the cultural climate is exactly what an old Liberal like me craves ..

than Portland, don't you?

We have a liberal mayor and tons of outdoor life.

The cities in the South are not any more backwater or rural than those in other parts of the country.

regional bigotry.

And they have the nerve to refer to themselves as "liberals".

I know what it's like to live outside of your element, as a pariah ... The worst 15 months of my life ...

I am not sure what your definition of Liberal is, but I'm pretty sure a Liberal doesn't have to live in a place where they do not feel comfortable and welcome ... Like in the Ozarks, for instance ... This Liberal isn't stupid ...

Your notion of regional bigotry is alive and well ... in your region, especially ...

I'm sure " The South" does all it can to make Liberal Atheists from New York City feel welcome, right?

Tell me that the South is doing everything it can to attract Liberal Atheists from New York City .... Tell me how and what they are doing to do this ...

You know where to put your snide insinuations ...

it's not monolithic any more than the North is. Atlanta, for instance? Relatively liberal despite being in a conservative state. Any urban area in the South is going to be more liberal than the suburbs and rural areas. You can't really extrapolate from an experience in the Ozarks (a very rural area, by and large, with a very insular culture traditionally suspicious of outsiders) and the rest of the South, any more than one can extrapolate from an experience in rural, conservative small-town New Hampshire to "the Northeast".

Boston and he's doing just fine down here.

There's one ...

Maybe you aren't as tolerant as you think?

... Like that you don't have friends all over the world.

Ever think that if everyone in an area seems like an asshole that it might not be everyone else and the problem could lie with you?

more "cosmopolitan" areas in the South...


RUN...RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN and Never look back!!!!

Much more of a rhapsody.

There are amazing people, places and culture in the South.

Half of my family is from the deep South.....trust me. I know...

in Washington state and Oregon. I don't think there's a state one can go to that doesn't have conservative and liberal pockets in them.

I actually gave up the People's Republic of Boulder CO to move to the People's Republic of Portland ....

Either way, I'm pretty happy where I live .... even with the pockets of right wing nuttery here and there on the Left Coast ....

I live in what is the most "conservative" part of the state and we still overwhelmingly vote for Bernie, Peter and Pat. My reps to the statehouse are liberals as well.

It's beautiful and you don't have the right-wing nuttery we have here in Texas. However, I don't know if I could survive that much "winter"!

At least judging by voting records, which are probably a pretty good index.

The red/blue/purple thing breaks down with higher resolution, and you realize that the most blue states have many pockets of red, and the most red states have pockets of blue. If you go down below the county level it gets really interesting - you see the same pattern. It's most a rural/urban split.

Cool map:

Which is also pretty Liberal for the Ozarks ...

But even so, I travelled into the rural areas, and I knew instinctively it was not my place, based on the reigning cultural idioms that ran counter to my essence as a Liberal human being ...

One day I would like to visit Knoxville ... I'm sure I would like it....

It's not liberal for the Ozarks, or anywhere else for that matter. It's about as red as red gets and then some. That part of Missouri is ground zero for fundies.

Read carefully.

Note that I am no longer in Springfield

But I don't agree with the "liberal for the rest of the Ozarks" pretense. It's as fire and brimstone as anywhere else in that region of Missouri.

That reminds me of the time I was invited to a church camp just outside of Springfield back in the '70s. The camp counselors spent a week trying to get us to speak in tongues. It was pretty surreal.

By the way, Springfield hasn't had a Democratic representative in Congress since the early '60s. "Liberal for rest of the Ozarks" is Eureka Springs or Fayetteville, Arkansas.

My 15 months in Springfield were spent huddled with friends and immediate family, and as long as I didn't stray too far afield, it "seemed" Liberal in comparison to other parts of Southern Missouri ...

My other options? ... where my rw family lived; in Willow Springs ( or as they say .. willer springs), or Mountain View ....

I am so happy to live in Portland ... You have no idea...

At one time I was considering attending MSSC (now MSSU), because I seemed to have a lot of luck in Joplin back in the '70s. But I didn't seem to have too much luck in the rest of the state

and listened to John Edwards give a rousing speech during the 2004' ...

Nice campus, but it's still in Springfield ...

SO glad to leave that place ... it was a disaster ...

MSU (Missouri State University, formerly Southwest Missouri State University) is in Springfield.

the coastal part of the state is considerably more moderate than the interior part of that state.

and lived there and I am now soooooo glad to be free!

Cause the rest not so much!

not to mention the Medicaid in Tennessee SUCKS.

Regional bias or not...there are isolated towns in Red Hell that are Liberal friendly...but the sad part is that the laws are not regional, they are state.

Portland, OR would have a really hard time being more different. I suppose that they are not quite as different as Pyongyang and Amsterdam, but what you wrote is beyond absurd.

Have you ever even been to Portland, or did you decide that because you watched an episode of Grimm, that that was good enough.

Last edited Mon Apr 1, 2013, 04:47 PM - Edit history (1)

percentile of every single subject nationwide.

I think his IQ is higher than 65... it's probably higher than most people on this board, for that matter.

The cities in the South are no different. It's just that our four large cities in Tennessee are no population match for, say, the two largest in Pennsyl-tucky (we always called it that). Therefore, we're redder than we really are.

they shouldn't live up to the accusations! Yes cities in the South are different for that reason. Not saying there aren't a few good folks there....but for the most part....people in the south deserve the reputations they have gotten. Perhaps your son deserves even more respect for achieving despite the fact...know what i mean? South Carolina has no teachers Union and 1/3 of recent High School grads applying to the local Community College needed remedial help in Math, Reading and English. So spending a large part of my life in the south and north and also my experience as a military child going from southern to northern schools and back repeatedly also colors my opinion. The over-all disgust with anything successful outside of their "southern rightwing Christian bigoted world view" is really what I believe that is holding them back in these and other areas. I just haven't seen in my lifetime much pushback by those that oppose that in the South. The fact that Mark Sandford has a chance to win in SC says alot to me...

- No one around here even talks about the Civil War, for example. I hear more about it on DU.
- Not everyone votes Republican. Between the gerrymandering and lack of alternative media, yes, there are far more Republicans than there should be, but most Southern states are just about five to 10 percentage points from being blue.
- While a know a handful of Southern rightwing Christian bigots, most of the people I encounter daily are much more diverse: Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Atheists and of all walks of life. My son's school is a virtual melting pot of diversity. He's half Arabic and has never once had anyone tease him about his name - that would be kind of stupid in a school full of people with Spanish, Mexican, Russian and Indian last names.
- Teachers in Tennessee have a union, so maybe it's only South Carolina.
- The South is different than when you were a child.
- Mark Sandford is an idiot, but, again, with few media alternatives (the right owns talk radio down here - you have to pay to get liberal talk - even in cities like mine that are blue and have been for years), it's hard to ween the people off Republican propaganda.

"Most"???? No they are not!

No I JUST left SC again 2 yrs ago!

You obviously live someplace in the south that is unique. I have lived all over the South. After I graduated High School I married a man who also moved us all over the South. It is YOU that is basing your anectdotal evidence on one Cosmopolitan city ...I however am not. Your experience is the exception to the rule as I have stated.

That's from "The Beverly Hillbillies."

What's funny about that is that hillbillies were on the side of the North. I know, because I'm related. Us Irish poor folk and all.

You may have come across as being a butthole or something, but my Boston-born husband has no problem here.

And, I'd hardly call Knoxville, TN a cosmopolitan city. Fuck, we have fucking Stacy Campfield representing a portion of it (not mine).

I just live here and no one talks about the Northern Aggression or any of that sort. Our problem is that we only talk about stupid shit.

Knoxville IS cosmopolitan compared to MOST places in the south..

I have lived all over the south....I am not making shit up! this took me all of thirty seconds to find...



http://www.jedreport.com/2010/12/historians-find-virginia-textb.html

State House....

in Charleston wearing full war regalia AND hired black actors to play slaves? This was not a war re-enactment but a celebration of the Confederacy!

South Carolina even has Confederate Memorial Day holiday as a response to Whites being upset about Martin Luther King Day!

I still haven't gotten over the shock.

Where my liberal newspaper columnist friends routinely gets death threats from the mouth-breathers.

Where I, an educated liberal can't get a date for those reasons. Now, granted this is a small town and a shithole at that. Probably I would find Raleigh to be much more to my liking. But jobs in my field happen to be in small towns like this. So I either change careers or deal.

I hate small towns anyway. There are no good small towns as far as I'm concerned. But small southern towns are hell.

Sometimes you pay in other ways..............

other fees that cost more than a tax would have been. Like private garbage collecting, fire and police. most are south...sorry too many bugs and too hot, with climate change we get too many hot days up here the way it is.

including air conditioning to survive the hot.
And I was quite willing to earn 2/3 here of what I would have earned elsewhere, because I could afford to have a mortgage of under 400.00, for a really good house, have a good car, and have decent medical insurance at a good price, along with a very good job for many years.

I am amazed at the stereotypes people still have about the South.
But, hey, if it keeps ignorant folks from moving down here and ruining a good thing.....

Melanie Foley at Appalachian Voices tells us Where Are the Country's Least Happy and Healthy Americans? New Studies Reveal America's "Sadness Belt". The study looks at the evidence at the city, state and congressional district level:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/31/1198256/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-Well-being-index-has-a-lot-to-do-with-where-you-live

And, this isn't south bashing........I live in Georgia.

and all I know is, after half a lifetime of living in different places across the country,
this lil southern town is what makes my heart smile.

Than again, I don't need a lot of external things to bliss me out, so a quite life in a beautiful and gentle place works so well for me.

• Life Evaluation: how a person’s current life compares with their expectations

• Emotional Health: deals with the respondent’s experiences and feelings on a given day

• Physical Health: encompasses diseases, physical pain, sick days, body-mass index, etc.

• Healthy Behavior: addresses both positive behaviors (i.e. exercise) and negative (i.e. smoking)

• Work Environment: questions for workers on job satisfaction, treatment from superiors, etc.

• Basic Access: includes access to food, housing, healthcare, etc.
--------------------
And, while I love my community, I will be the first one to admit there are a lot of folks around here who are not only miserable, they set out to make everyone around them just as miserable. I've never seen a more ill tempered, just plain mean group of human beings than our County Commissioners.

Vermont

Income tax: 8.95%
State sales tax: 6%
Property tax per capita: $1,896
Inheritance tax: None
Estate tax: 0.8% to 16% with a $2.75 million exemption

But let's compare Alabama and Vermont in other ways:

Alabama HS graduation rate: 72% v. VT HS graduation rate: 91.4%- highest in the U.S.

Alabama Health ranking in 2012: 45th v. VT health ranking: #1 (also #1 in 2011)

Alabama Teen pregnancy rate per 1000: 73 v. VT: 38 (Alabama 14th, VT 2nd)

Alabama unemployment rate: 7.2 v. VT: 4.4

and on and on. You get what you pay for.

My state is right in there with yours Cali. BTW, why didn't you list the state that is #1 in educational attainment?

zero income tax! Yay! It's a "fair tax" utopia!

Not so fast. Because it has no income tax, it has the most regressive tax system in the country. Bill Gates pays about 3% of his income in state taxes. The guy with the 20th percentile pays about 17%.

If you are Jeff Bezos, Howard Shultz or any of the other six billionnaires here, it's a great place to have your mail sent.

http://www.forbes.com/static/bill2005/state_Washington.html

Hydroelectric power is all about us up here, along with gray skies, long winters and mud.

I'm in northern Michigan. Water everywhere, lots of woods just a few minutes away from our fair city on the bay. I love all the seasons (especially fall!) and like to think our summers are a little cooler than down south.

The warmer south would be a good place to visit when winter gets too long but I don't think I'd want to leave my home state or, more especially, my little city that is a just-right fit for me.

With that said, I think every region of this huge country has much to recommend it. I don't like to see the regional bashing that goes on here. It only serves to further divide us.

Here we have someone who is very happy with their corner of the world, wants to spread the news that they found a happy place in the world and it spirals into arguments and what-not. Not cool DU.

Thanks for the invite Dixiegrrrrl.

Julie

there are about 6-7 regions I would like to spend part of a year in.

As you say so very well, every region has much to recommend it
plus
us Dems living in red states could really use some support.
What would happen if we all moved out and left the states to the repugs????

No thank you. Alabama is deep South territory, and has a real bad rep. I think they are perennial contenders for top 10 worst states list in various categories. Alaska is full of gigantic mosquitoes and very cold, with lots of snow.

(Alaska, that is.).

While it's true we have a low tax burden, cost of living is pretty high. And shippers think we're not part of the United States.

WE are getting giant mosquitoes now, Fla. is kind enough to share them with us!!!!!

but I don't encourage anyone to live here. A large number of us are dying to get out. We've lost reps. through the years because our population growth hasn't kept up with other parts of the country. If you have the money to spend on a winter home, however, Mississippi's a good place to have one. But take it from me, you don't want to live here full time.

I have lived here in Ala. 3 times since 1964.
The first time when I left I said I would never be back.
After I left the 2nd time in 1999, I did not think I would ever be able to come back,
but missed it terribly.
Now I can't imagine living anywhere else.

There is a tendency to grow roots here......

for a couple of years. But everything around it is pretty scary. I'm from the coast and I much prefer things down here. Biloxi's not a bad town, but it's looked like hell ever since the storm. The people here are very laid-back and pretty open-minded, especially for a southern town. New Orleans is nearby, too, so we can always go over there when we want an urban atmosphere. Down here we say that you don't want to live north of I-10 is Mississippi. Unfortunately, that's almost the entire state.

The main thing I'm concerned about down here is the hurricanes. If we have another Katrina-size disaster again, I'm out of here for good. I just can't go through that again.

My town got hit directly by Ivan, but I was not here then.
A fact which seems to piss off people who were, so i avoid mentioning it.....lol.

I knew Biloxi before the casinos came in. The coast was so damn beautiful back then.

don't know what it is like now.

just moving to a "cheap state", is not all it's cracked up to be. People move all the time for jobs, illnesses in families and other reasons, but to move just to save a buck, is not such a wise idea.

Where you have lived for a while is where your support system is..your friends..your favorite places.

Especially for an older person, it's hard to give these "things" up..

I have known many people who did that (mostly went to TX & FL) and they only stayed a few years before "coming home"..

Paying more to live in a place that feels like "home", is a cost many are willing to pay.

You can buy property cheap because everybody is broke, and the state doesn't collect much in taxes, so it doesn't provide much in services. Cheap property taxes means education isn't funded, so the next generation is just as bad off as the last, and the whole thing slowly grinds itself down into miserable chronic third-world poverty.

Perhaps you wind up in a decent neighborhood and have enough money somehow or other, but moving somewhere with a growing economy, where jobs are available and incomes are good, and where taxes are sufficient to provide good services (particularly education!), where the populace is well educated - that's what I would look at if I were looking for somewhere to go.

Taxes might be low to nonexistent (it helps to have oil money coming in), but cost of living makes up for it.

Housing costs:
http://anchorage.craigslist.org/apa/3717249448.html $1335/month, 950 square feet
http://anchorage.craigslist.org/apa/3717002979.html $750/month in Wasilla, 800 square feet, no smoking inside or out
http://anchorage.craigslist.org/apa/3709683265.html $1315/month, must earn $3945/month to be considered

Food? Don't ask. I looked at Fred Meyer (a supermarket chain in the Northwest)'s website, at their "holiday meals to go" section. The "express turkey dinner" includes a 10-13 lb turkey, 48 oz mashed potatoes, 32 oz stuffing, 24 oz gravy and 12 dinner rolls for $54.99. (I couldn't find any other food prices, but the farther you get from Anchorage the worse they get.)

many years ago
but even then the cost of living was well known to be high as hell.

Interestingly, I could charge 800.00 a month for rent for my house here,
but my mortgage is under 500.00, for a 2,000 sq foot 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with deck, on 2 acres..IN town.

Only a native Alabamian can call Alabama...Home. I currently
"lay my head" in Pennsylvania, but My Home's in Alabama.
Carbon Hill, Walker County to be precise. And, Good Lord
willing and the creek don't rise, I WILL return someday.

WAR EAGLE!!!!!!!

And half my friends would appreciate "War Eagle" right backatcha.

Don't give up. I really thought the last move away from here was good bye forever.
But, seems HP had a treat in store for me and I got to come back.
You of course would appreciate how blessed I feel about that.

When people ask if I was born here, I tell them no, but I got here just as fast as I could
and have no intention of leaving.

Therefore, we have high sales taxes, ridiculous property taxes, and high administrative fees, for things like drivers' licenses, license tags, stuff like that.

Gasoline is pretty high here, and it should be really low, because of all the refineries in Houston/Baytown/Pasadena/Port Arthur/Beaumont. People in Houston spend more of their income on cars, gasoline, tolls and insurance than anyplace else in the country.

So there are many things that go into cost of living/quality of life.

not finding it.

We could not afford to retire on the West Coast, not by a long shot.

several major, world class cities. But you love your state, good for you and all the best moving forward.

if you treat people decent they will treat decent back. I am a yankee living in the south and I consider myself a social democrat like my mother was. I don't hate my government. I have lived here about 18 yrs. You will find bigots all over the place in every region. They are that way because they don't want to mingle and learn about other cultures. Funny thing today my daughter-in-law was over. She is about 29 and is liberal thinking. But her family are nothing but bigots and none of them would vote for President Obama because he was black. Here is the sad part. Her grandparents are both on social security and both are on medicare plus they get food stamps. Her grandie was lucky because she has heart problems so she was praying she would make it to medicare. Her grandpa is going blind. They listen to Fox News everyday. Her mother is in her 40s and adopted a crack baby. He needs constant help. He he in a wheel chair and can't walk or speak. He hardly sleeps. He is at the present time on Tenncare. This poor kid is in and out of the hospital all the time. They took her off of Tncare once. But they ended putting him back on it. Now the state is talking about taking him off again. This kid can't even feed himself. He is 12 yrs old and still wearing a diaper. Yet the Governor today said they weren't going to extend medicad under the Obamacare. I mean how many people does the state want to die? Yet her mother still voted for Romney and this ass we have now as governor. Our state is going backwards. We don't have a state income tax. If you want trash pickup you have to pay for it. Same for the Volunteer fire fighters. You get the minimum here in Tn. So yes it may be alittle cheaper but so are the wages and believe me just because its cheaper it doesn't necessarily mean its better. Trust me.

lived in do they let the bigots own and run everything?

We keep to ourselves because loud, angry, uneducated white folks (I can't say redneck, because that's considered racist on DU) always want to butt into conversations in stores, invade our boundaries (that's why we put up a fence with a gate) and just generally are unpleasant.

They're happy to tell us what is going on in the world(they only know what Fox tells them) and why Obama is the devil and how everything is HIS FAULT. We aren't asking for their opinion, either.

Also they drive by in their BOOM-THUMPA-BOOM cars and pickups wherein the stereo is literally shaking the chassis apart and probably cooking their brains. Some of the drivers of those vehicles are white, some are black. Some of them have skinny tires and ugly rims. In any event, it's incredibly annoying and distracting. I can hear the subwoofers in the back of my house, from a long way off.

This is in the country. The good ole boy system protects the good ole boys.

observation only. I can only talk to a bigot and try to change their mind. If they don't want to what would you want me to do? I don't hang with these kinds of people. To me they are to narrow minded. I have one vote and with that vote I pray the person I elect isn't a bigot. That's all I can do.

1300 sq ft house built in 1994 on 1 acre, property taxes are 650 a year, insurance is 550, no state income tax, it's pretty cheap to live here.

Which means your property taxes can stop when you reach 65 ( or blind or disabled).

There are many ways to look at this. How about the cost of food or medical care?

My next state will be one with no prohibition against pot.

Yeah, I knew there was something I missed about Cal.

but we eat light.
Medical care is very affordable compared to other places, including the cities around here.
We DO have a dentist who is expensive, in my book, but still cheaper than some states I have been in.

Living in a small town, and being retired, we save a ton of money on gas and insurance and clothes and we don't eat out.

with fifty wonderful states.

There are some states you couldn't pay me to live in, but I'm not going to bother to name them here, because there are folks on DU who live in those states and absolutely adore them. And those people probably wouldn't want to live in any of my favorite places.

So there.

But I do agree that only using taxes or the idea that a particular place being low cost as your only (or even main) reason to move there isn't a very good idea. First of all, you really do tend to get what you pay for. Second, even a lot of supposedly high-cost places can really be quite affordable. I live in Santa Fe, and all my co-workers who commute from Albuquerque are absolutely convinced this is far too expensive a city to live in. Remind me what the current cost of gasoline is. And even if gasoline were ten cents a gallon, for me time spent commuting is time I'd rather be doing something else.

I no longer have school age children, but when I did the quality of schools was very important to me. Oddly enough, the taxes to support those schools is something too many people don't want to pay. And too many retired people are of the opinion that now that their kids are grown, why should they have to pay school taxes? Likewise, too many without children feel the same way. Well, we all benefit from good public schools. I'm very happy to pay those taxes. Too bad I can't opt out of the ones that go to war expenses. But that's another topic entirely.

Climate matters. Personally, I'm not fond of hot summers, and when I was planning to relocate after my divorce five years ago, I decided that I would never again live in a place where I had to have a/c in the summer. And while I understand that a lot of people aren't crazy about cold and snowy winters, let me tell you that anyone that tries to convince you that Santa Fe has a cold and snowy winter simply has never been to any place with a real winter. Like Boulder, or Utica NY, or Minneapolis, all places I've also lived in.

However, as much as I've liked living here, there are things that will eventually drive me away. One is the incredible political corruption. It's really bad. Another is the rather lackadaisical attitude toward getting very much done. Another is the lack of decent public transportation, and that when it does actually snow, they do a really crappy job of snow removal. I keep on reminding myself that no place is actually, literally perfect, but there are lots of great places to live. Taxes are only a small part of the equation.

sweating, and the tempting opportunity to someday have enough to move up to a double wide.

As someone who has lived on both sides of the Mason Dixon, you need to know this:

There are plenty of Northern conservative idiots: Do you think Michelle Bachmann, Chris Chrstie, and Joe Lieberman elected themselves?
There are plenty of Southern liberals: I dare you to call Alan Grayson a conservative. Or Ashley Judd.

The real divide is Urban/Rural. Any city in Dixie will have it's strong blue enclaves. Up north, go oput of the major cities, and you have redneckville. I lived in a part of PA whose main deli was the Wawa.

The real issue is livability. For example, I might like California, but I have no illusions about living there on my SSI. Yes, a salary of 50K plus is great, but if all the rents are higher than what you can afford, what is the point?

I come from Florida, which has no income tax, but I will tell you, the slaes tax is where you get yours, because they use that on everything you buy, and it makes sure the people that feel the brunt of it are the people buying food and supplies, not the asshole who is buying a yacht. Also,started started off dirt cheap,but they got jacked severly, which meant that, even if you bought your house free and clear when there was not a hint of pavement, now you wind up paying a LOT more tax on your home, to where you get priced out of your own house. This sounds like middle class whining, but in reality, the rich people have lawyer to pull off tax dodging that the middle class never can. For example, see a few cows on the land set to be a mall?, the tax code allows it to be a farm for rich people, and not be taxed as that future mall the sign says.

The point is, watch the details...

necessary.

$475/mo = Average car payment in the US
$ 67/mo = Average car insurance cost in the US
$180/mo = Average amount spent for gas for a car in the US
------------------------------------
That totals $722/month every month for a car not including maintenance, repairs, registration, etc. That I and most of the people in my city don't pay where I live.

If there are two adults in your household and they both need a car, double the car payment and amount spent on gas and add another $30-50/month for insurance and now you are at around $1160/month.

A lot of people say my city is expensive because of rent. But if you add $722 or $1160 per month to what you spend for housing now, that is what you could afford in NYC without a car.