Well, just keep in mind that averages don’t mean much when the gap between the lowest and highest wages are so large. You’re looking for the mean, not the middle. Sure, wages have gone up all across the country, but when combined with the massive increase in home costs, rent costs, food costs, etc. it still means that a huge number of folks don’t make as much when you look at how much of a percentage of those folks’ wages are taken up by those things.

Anecdotally, my wife and I make more money an hour than we’ve ever made in our lives, but a greater percentage of that wage is taken up by various costs associated with just getting by. Rent’s gone up, food has most certainly gone up. We struggle more now than we did prepandemic.

I see more homeless folks on the streets than I used to. That’s confirmed by the studies showing that homelessness has gone up.

The Texas government has banned books in schools, even recently doing so for textbooks that paint the oil industry in a negative light when it comes to climate change.

Abortion in the state is straight up illegal now.

The government is actively looking to reduce the rights of LGBTQI+ folks.

When Austin tried to divert some police funding to non-police responses to mental health crises, the state government made it illegal to ever reduce local PD funding if the city has a population greater than 100k.

The electric grid failed multiple times over the last few years. The government recently allocated more funding to build more natural gas power plants… the same type of plants that failed during the last freeze. All the funds that went to the power companies to weatherproof their infrastructure have mostly gone straight to the folks running the companies, not to the work they said they’d do.

The state government recently passed a law that allows parents to take their kids out of public school and use a $6000 voucher to help pay for private school. That’s most of the tax dollars that would be spent on that kid in the public school, which means taxpayers are now funding private schools that aren’t subject to the same laws and regulations as public schools.

Women are actively being forced to give birth to babies that have no way of surviving, whereas previously the pregnancy would be terminated before putting the woman through that physical trauma.

Some cities have passed laws that prevent women seeking abortions to travel on their roads.

The Governor, against the law, put razor wire barricades in the rio grande, as well as shipping container walls on the border. When challenged, the federal government elected to continue to allow these things. Both are paid for by Texas taxpayers, and none of it was voted on.

Suicide rates for national guard folks on the border have skyrocketed. The things they’re being forced to do, nobody should be forced to do. It’s inhumane.

The citizens of Uvalde, in response to the school shooting where a shit ton of cops stood around doing nothing, continue to vote for the same leaders that allowed such a thing to happen in the first place.

This state does not care about people. The government literally only cares about making money. And none of the people seem to be interested in changing that.