The biggest French assholes I’ve ever met are not “from France”, but from the “South of France”, and they never let you forget that distinction. Everyone’s mileage varies.
Well, there are assholes everywhere (je suis entouré de connards). In my experience of decades of doing business with a French company based in Paris, and having spent (cumulatively) a few months in the south, I can honestly say that the biggest asshole I met in the south would be the nicest person in Paris.
French rednecks are fun, in their own special way
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Rougenecks?
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There are nice people in the North and South, also assholes in the North and South. Just remember what Raylan Givens says, “if you you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
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Or following too close.
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If you can’t figure out who the sucker is…
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I had a bit of schadenfreude today when I met a colleague for lunch. I have many friends and family in Texas and California bashing has been a regular activity at any family event. When was I going to join the “mass migration” to Texas and leave wacky, socialist, California? I usually respond with a weather report but in truth, it doesn’t make sense at all. Property tax rates are more than triple in Texas AND there’s no protection on assessed value, like California’s Prop. 13. My property tax would increase almost ten fold. Sure, there’s no state income tax in Texas, but Ca. doesn’t tax Social Security and so the difference is still very large. There’s the weather difference, of course, but Texas doesn’t seem as friendly as the place I left 35 years ago, and I decided to stay put.
My colleague’s wife is a real estate agent in the area and she said that “all four” of her clients that she help sell and move to Texas in the last year have called her to try and move back. Taxes, weather, and unfriendly neighbors were all cited as reasons.
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The hostility I’ve seen across all forms of social media toward people moving here from out of state boggles my mind.
And shortly after being shitty to recent movers here, these same people complain about how “everyone used to be so much nicer” back in the day.
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The California bashing has morphed from good-natured to something meaner. When I first moved to L.A., I thought people were less openly friendly than in Texas, but pretty nice once you got to know them. Now, it seems in Texas there’s an undertone of hostility that’s unfamiliar to the place I grew up in.
Yeah, I can’t get a grip on just which Californians move to Texas. The complaint used to be that they were “turning us liberal,” but Texas has only gotten more right-wing in recent years. I wonder if it’s mainly the conservative ones moving here.
At any rate, I do sympathize with them when I see a Cali plate on the 56th straight day of 100+ temps.
The four I heard about today all were. Of course, they hadn’t had to live in a conservative paradise.
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In the DC trial date case, Trump’s lawyer had to be told to lower the volume multiple times. He also previewed the defense he is going to mount, claiming that the charges are selective (witch hunt - they even name-checked Hunter Biden) and are being brought for the benefit of Trump’s political opponent (election interference).
So we are seeing a merging of the rally rhetoric and the legal defense. Good luck with that.
Texas is not as tax friendly as we like to claim, and even less so if you’re retired. Property taxes are outrageous, and like you point out, are limited only by an annual increase limit and certain ones are frozen at a certain age. But at least your income tax is limited by your income. Not so for property tax.
I saw a similar thing happen when I lived in North Carolina in the 90s…a sudden massive influx of people from places like New York and Massachusetts drove property values ridiculously sky high in just a few years (like a 500% increase in two years), and lifelong residents could no longer afford the property taxes and had to move as a result. The gubmit take a bite, one way or another.
I think about moving to another state all the time.
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High property taxes are a modern day red-lining.
That is our biggest question right now, and has been for some time - where do we move when we retire? I was born in Austin and I don’t want to leave it, but it’s harder and harder every day to stay in Texas. Finding the right place to go to is damn hard though.
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This was the place I had picked out. They had me at “craft breweries”.
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I’ve got friends in Denver and another in a place near Boulder, but I don’t think it’s any less expensive than Austin is right now. Santa Fe was on the table, as was Taos, as was Memphis, upstate New York, Atlantic Mexico, Ireland, Austria, but nothing seems right enough to make the jumps necessary. I have a friend who spends six months in Pittsburgh and six in Austin; we’ve sorta edged six in Wales and six in Austin to a spot on the table as well. I’m trying to shake my recent grapples with mortality enough to imagine I’ll be able to spend time somewhere and enjoy things for a stretch so hell, we may just get stuck in this tar pit ere long.
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