My sister-in-law sent me this and within a few minutes it made me want to vomit.
Basically, the link takes you to a link that shows you that if you only count the part of Texas that has cities and universities you'd have a region with a really strong economy. Well sure, if you exclude poor western ranchers, the economically depressed border region that counts on trade (and a lack of drug violence and flu epidemics). Not to mention depressed East Texas and the entire Gulf region.
Come to think of it, my sister-in-law is conveniently leaving out her mother, who lives in still-hurricane battered Galveston. Nice.
Like any state with a few big cities, you can probably make up some stats to make you look fantastic. I imagine North Carolina's tech zone looks pretty good by itself, or just San Francisco-San Jose, or maybe just Seattle, maybe Miami just looks good if you leave out the rest of Florida.
I honestly don't know, but having lived in Illinois I've seen this whole "if we didn't have to carry Chicago" or "if Downstate didn't exist" argument all the time.
As for Texaplex? I imagine the place would be an infrastructure nightmare if not for the sales and property taxes paid by the rest of the state they refuse to admit exists.
Just for chuckles, I've seen this idiocy along to the guys at FiveThirtyEight to see if they want to prove/disprove the theory. I hope they take to it as I'm pretty sure this is a BS argument.
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