Texas

Texas is a southern state known for its conservative politics. It is not as free as New Hampshire.

Taxes

Texas has a 6.25% sales tax, and this applies to online purchases as well. Counties can apply an additional 2% sales tax, meaning that many parts of the state experience an 8.25% sales tax on all purchases. This is in stark contrast to New Hampshire, which has no sales taxes.

Like New Hampshire, Texas does not have a general income tax.

Politics

The cities dominate politics in Texas. Due to mass immigration from California, Texas has been headed in a blue direction for decades.

The Texas House of Representatives has 150 members, with each member representing about 168,000 people each. The Senate has 31 members, representing about 806,000 people each. This makes the Texas state government much more difficult to penetrate by pro-liberty candidates, compared to the New Hampshire (where House seats represent about 3,300 people and Senate seats represent about 54,000 people).

In recent decades, Texas state level politics has been ruled by the near single-party control of Republicans. The last Democratic governor was in 1994, the last Democratic Senate was in 1996, and the last Democratic House was in 2002. Prior to Republican control, Texas was under strong Democratic control as part of the Solid South.

Policing

Texas is known for fairly strict law enforcement. The culture is very much "Back the Blue", with Texas being a large battlefield for the Drug War.

Booze

Beer and wine can be sold from 7:00 AM until midnight Monday through Friday, from 7:00 AM until 1:00 AM on Saturday, and from 10am until midnight on Sunday.

Liquor sales are more stringently regulated. Liquor sales are prohibited 1) on Sundays, 2) on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day (and when Christmas and New Year's fall on a Sunday, the prohibition is carried over to the following Monday), and 3) before 10AM and after 9PM on any other day. This is in contrast to New Hampshire, where liquor stores have dedicated rest-stops on major highways and are open on Sundays.

Weather

Texas is incredibly flat and incredibly hot. Temperatures above 100°F are incredibly common in the summer, with droughts and tornadoes in the central and western part of the state, and with hurricanes in the east.

Although Eastern Texas and Houston receive considerable rainfall, most of the state (including the Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio metro areas) receives less than 40 inches of rain per year. Comparatively, almost all of New Hampshire receives more than 40 inches of rain annually. Parts of Texas are currently experiencing extreme drought.

Size

Due to the sheer size of Texas, intrastate travel is a major factor for anyone seeking to enjoy the state's various natural attractions. According to Google Maps, a one-way trip from the centrally located city of Austin to the nearest decent beach (Corpus Christi) is just under 3.5 hours with minimal traffic. For those preferring a more vertical landscape, the drive from Austin to Texas' best mountainous region in Big Bend National Park is nearly 7 hours. In contrast, a drive from the western New Hampshire city of Keene to the coastal city of Portsmouth is approximately 2 hours with minimal traffic; from the southern New Hampshire city of Nashua, a drive into the state's beautiful northern mountain range takes less than 2 hours.

For those preferring urban adventures, the two closest metro areas in Texas are Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth, which are approximately 3.5 hours apart. Google Maps reports that a trip from New Hampshire's northern-most large town of Rochester to the heart of downtown Boston takes just under 90 minutes.

Texas's large size also limits jurisdictional arbitrage. Within Texas, state and international borders are many hours away from most population centers. This limits residents' ability to travel to other jurisdictions to take advantage of lower taxes, reduced regulations, or different legal restrictions. New Hampshire's small size and numerous nearby New England states (plus Canada) give residents many options to leverage different legal jurisdictions (for example, recreational cannabis is available in Massachusetts and Vermont).

Secession

Governor Rick Perry brought up the idea of secession in 2009 at a political rally. In 2021, a bill was filed in the state House to provide for a nonbinding statewide referendum on secession, but it was never given a hearing or voted on by the committee. In 2022, the Republican party released a report urging the legislature to introduce a referendum in 2023 to secede from the United States, although House Bill 1359 also known as the Texas Independence Referendum Act has been filed, it is still unclear whether the state will be able to secede from the Union.