College town & starter town, nothing more, nothing
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2/13/2010
Believe me, Austin is a College town & a place to get a starter job once you graduate. There are so many college students that flood the market on graducation, the wages and salaries here are pathetically low & don't even come close to the high cost of living. Plus, Texas has a very high State sales tax on average of 8.25% and nearly everything is taxed. Yeah, there isn't an income tax, but you get shafted every other way in extremely high property taxes and automobile registration taxes. Austin's electricity rates are outrageous because they have a natural gas fired power plant and are still paying on the South Texas Nuclear project that has never generated electricity. The cost of living is only worse in the suburbs like Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, although electrical rates are the only thing lower. They keep threatening to lower property taxes here and Governor Perry actually did around 3 years ago, but then the greedy real estate agents raised home prices and the cities around here raised their own "city taxes". It's pretty corrupt here. Most of the drivers are not only unsafe, they aren't friendly and are pretty dumb.
Jim James | ,