- Kellee Speakman, a conservative elementary school teacher, moved from California to Texas in 2022 but returned after four and a half months due to Texas’s political obsession and unexpected living costs.
- Speakman found Texas to be not much cheaper than California, with high property taxes, expensive services, and lower wages, which contributed to her dissatisfaction.
- She returned to California, appreciating its lifestyle, public lands, and better teacher benefits, realizing that her idea of freedom involved peace and everyday adventures rather than political rhetoric.
Exactly the trajectory Florida is on. I grew up here, we had low wages, cheap housing, very cheap groceries, ugly sprawl, beautiful beaches, so many queer people, circus folk, immigrants from everywhere and environmentalists. Rednecks in the country but cities so blue. So far south we were not the South.
It shifted right some over the years but COVID-19 brought all these racist northerners to our cities, with a lot of money, now we have cost of living average for anywhere but wages still lower than all those anywhere places. Cities still diverse but state politics ridiculous and very Southern.