Red states, like Texas, Georgia and Utah, have done a better job over all of offering a higher standard of living relative to housing costs. (snip) Red state economies based on energy extraction, agriculture and suburban sprawl may have lower wages, higher poverty rates and lower levels of education on average than those of blue states — but their residents also benefit from much lower costs of living. For a middle-class person , the American dream of a big house with a backyard and a couple of cars is much more achievable in low-tax Arizona than in deep-blue Massachusetts. As Jed Kolko, chief economist of Trulia, recently noted, housing costs almost twice as much in deep-blue markets ($227 per square foot) than in red markets ($119).Housing costs in TX, when we lived there briefly a decade ago, were unbelievably cheap. In 2003 one could buy a new home on a city lot in a Dallas suburb for less than $100K.
The article's author says red states sponge off the largess of blue states. In this allegation I do not concur. Choosing not to enable poverty and sloth while at the same time having jobs for those who will take them is simply a superior economic strategy.
