Bolding mine.
I’m very unknowledgeable about Texas state benefits, but is that true? I know that fees to state universities used to be cheaper to state residents than out-of-state residents. I recall other state resident benefits, but I’m not sure how many were retail marketing promotions versus actual state government incentives. But having exposed my personal ignorance, I have read Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk” where he discussed how provision of benefits varied between states.
So, how does it work between states? If a Texas resident moves to New Mexico, what benefits do they gain immediately and what benefits do they have to wait for? Related to the OP, if a Texan resident moved to a USA-49 state after succession, what benefits could they access immediately and which ones would they have to wait for?
Requirements vary from state to state, but establishing residence requires documenting that you resided at a certain address within the state for a certain period of time. It depends on the specific state and the benefits being claimed, but 6-12 months is fairly common.
I think for New Mexico it is usually 6 months, and for Texas it is 12 months. If you moved there, nothing would apply “immediately” except those benefits for which a residency test is unreasonable (i.e. traveling within the state of New Mexico using your Texas license, because interstate travelers have a right of transit).
What’s interesting is the possibility that for the 6th to 12th month you might be a resident of both states for some purposes. You could register to vote in both, although it would be unlawful to actually vote in multiple states.
Registering in a new state doesn’t automatically cancel any existing voter registrations, so unless people have gone to the trouble of informing their previous states, there are millions of Americans registered to vote in more than one state. As noted, actually voting in more than one state would be problematic.
The real money is in handing off to Texas their share of the federal debt. If we assign it based on population, Texas’ share comes in at around 7.9 trillion dollars. I’m sure that, thanks to the Laffer curve, they will have that paid off in no time flat once they eliminate income taxes.
Texas doesn’t have income tax to begin with. And that’s a potential problem as property taxes are relatively high as a result (and there’s constant grousing about that, particularly around the time appraisals go out). Sales tax can’t be increased much.
Yet there are still people seriously saying we should just reduce property taxes since an improved economy will bring that back in increased sales tax revenue. The numbers don’t add up and never have but still it’s all about hoping a miracle happens. Texas Monthly had a feature on this in their last issue, and it summarizes the issues pretty well.
We can hardly fund our schools. Trying to fund a national government, given the ‘business friendly’ environment, i.e. let citizens pay taxes not businesses and get that sweet federal money to help, would be something to behold. Probably sell itself back to the US within a decade to escape all the debt it would have to take on.
ETA: I’m not even sure what kind of currency they’d use. They’re not going to want to be beholden to the US for currency. And I can’t see anybody really trusting a currency set up specifically by Texas because it decided to leave the US. At least the UK still had its own. Texas would still have to be fiscally tied to the US or risk an exodus of companies not wanting to deal with that mess.
So, sure, everybody’d get a ‘bump’ in income, but in what currency? It’s turtles all the way down.
This isn’t a uniquely Texan problem. The city of Cleveland, hardly a bastion of conservativism, has decided not to collect any property tax on new construction for 15 years, with the idea that rich folks would move here so we could get lots of tax money (somehow) from them.
Of course, what actually happens is that new construction sprouts up like mushrooms, designed to last for 15 years, after which it gets torn down and replaced by new tax-abated 15-year construction.
So for someone moving from Texas to New Mexico, how much of an issue is that 6 month suspension of benefits? I’d guess that for most people in the current world, it’s not much of a big deal. They’re probably moving for a reason, whether it’s a new job, retirement, or a lifestyle change. After Texas-Exit, how big a deal would that 6 month loss of benefits be? And how willing would other states be willing to accept hard-up Texas immigrants?
I suppose I’m taking a contrarian viewpoint. Posters are saying, in effect, let them suffer. But what they mean is let the redneck racist Republicans suffer. I’m presuming they don’t want the non-white low-income Democrat leaning populace to suffer. Or the middle-class liberals who’ve posted within this thread. I’d expect the middle-class Texas expatriates to suffer a loss of wealth, but ultimately come out alright. But the non-white poor seeking to move? I’d expect there would be a lot of social media sympathy while little action to help those ex-Texas immigrants, and very little action to personally pay to help the ex-Texas refugees.
If we’re talking about the normal course of relocation, there would probably be no suspension of benefits (depends broadly on which benefit is involved). Your Texas benefits would continue to run normally until the next registration period when you could no longer prove you’d resided in Texas for the preceding period. By that time you’d be a New Mexico resident. You might even be double-dipping for some period of time.
Given that we’re talking about the secession of a rogue state and not the normal course of relocation, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about how typical benefit entitlements would feed into it.
Most people wait for the event to occur before raising accusations of hypocrisy, so this is an innovative approach you’ve got going here.
Since we’re just throwing out hypotheticals, here is one: The economy of Texas plummets into free-fall. Ideologically it can’t raise money via taxes, and its borrowing costs would be through the risk due to being a rogue state. All entitlements are cut off to everyone. Unemployment skyrockets due because nobody can pay laborers. Texas orders all workers to return to their job site and work for state-issued scrip (exchange rate TBD). They set up checkpoints at the highways and shoot any laborers who threaten to leave. Anyone who can’t or won’t work is forced into a dump truck at gunpoint, driven to the border, and is dumped on Mexico.
I mean, since we’re hypothesizing and all, Texas isn’t headed down a road to become a liberal democracy is it? That’s not what they’re telegraphing at all.
There’s little point in a hypothetical making perfect sense, but what I was predicting is a the return of slavery with a few cosmetic tweaks, followed by prompt deportation of anyone who won’t participate.
yeah. My point is that you won’t want to see what an independent Republic of Texas will do to brown people who won’t go along with that noble experiment in statecraft.
I was under the impression that private corporations in Texas were responsible for exploration, drilling and refining of oil. Are you saying that a new nation of Texas would nationalize the oil resources, and have the state take over the business of crude oil production and refining?
This, specifically, illustrates the difference between a state resident and a state citizen.
One of the things that burns a Texas white nationalist more than standing barefoot on a fire-ant mound is the fact that an undocumented resident (think DACA kids) is entitled to in-state tuition rates at the state universities while a red-blooded American from Oklahoma has to pay the much higher out-of-state tuition, as do resident-Alien students from other countries.
Most of the DACA kids easily satisfy the resident requirements needed to qualify for the in-state rates (which is as it should be, as they have paid Texas taxes that supports these universities nearly all their lives). A resident-Alien cannot qualify because the visa is based on their being a student. If they move to Texas so they can be a student, they don’t qualify for in-state tuition rates.
I’ve never seen state citizen used when referring to college tuition.
It’s usually called resident and non-resident.
ETA: Or in-state and out-of-state.