General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Business is booming in Texas! [View all]Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)and not just nursing homes, I believe.
We have food stamps, like the other states.
The public schools are better, and better funded, than Louisiana, where I hail from. Additionally, many schools provide bilingual education.
We have a great free hospital, Parkland, that accepts Medicaid or non-insured people.
People here speak Spanish a lot. The stores have Spanish signs. Free care for people without insurance, regardless of whether they are citizens are not (if they are poor enough...not for people like myself, should I lose my job and insurance). Although I COULD go to the sliding scale clinic, but it's pretty far. Unless there's another one closer.
A lot of work for people with and without authentic visa papers...bus boys, roofers, waiters, landscape workers, store stockers, janitors, maids, clerks, constructions workers, etc.
Secretaries can make a living (albeit a skimpy living) by signing on with temp agencies. There's enough work here to do that.
A healthy number of jobs in a variety of industries, since the economy here is diverse (apparel, banking & finance, oil & gas, headquarters of a few corporations, telecommunications, law firms)...and there's DFW, a hub airport in the country, that flies to just about anywhere in the world, which attracts businesses.
There's a free or sliding scale health care clinic in south Dallas, for those that qualify. There may be others, but I just know about that one. That's not Medicaid....it's sliding scale for those who don't qualify for Medicaid.
There's no state income tax, but the property taxes are high. So the working class who don't own homes pay less in taxes than many other states. (Middle class homeowners like myself get hit hard, though. My property taxes are several hundred dollars a month for mid-level house.)
We have a good bus system, and a partial decent rail system, so it's possible for poor people to get around MAIN parts of Dallas. We're no New York or Boston, but we have a system that enables people to get around main areas economically.
But as I say, it's hot as hell here. And with global warming, that will get worse. Air conditioning is necessary to the point that the more vulnerable might die without it. And do.