The ever-changing Austin, Texas
by Mike Burnham, 49, Austin, Texas, USA
August, 1999
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Austin was a beautiful, unknown little gem in the 70's. Then the 80's came along, and more people moved here, but not that many. But then the 90's came along, and a nice little university/Texas state government Capital city turned into a high tech mecca. All hell broke lose!

Now we are crowded, and the air is dirty; we have smog alerts and traffic is terrible. High tech companies like DELL and Samsung are moving out, and others are changing their minds and not moving here. The price of housing is the highest in Texas, and the 3rd highest in all the south. Taxes are terrible with a basic 8.25% on everything you buy, plus they put fees on everything, disguised as taxes. Our electricity and water is very high, and the city council and major are old hippies and socialists who know nothing about practical matters and are only anxious to raise more taxes for welfare and social programs, while the streets decay and infrastucture dies. Our newspaper has finally noticed this and in this sunday's paper has written an article about the flight of the middle class to suburbs, and the decaying of our fair city. Unfortunately, it takes years and years to just get started fixing these problems, but our city doesn't seem to care or have any vision to do so, so in a nutshell, you'd be a fool to move here.

I would visit Austin, but I would immediately go stay out in the hill country where its beautiful, smog and crime free instead.

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