Poorest place in US? McAllen, Texas, and here's why

[panzerfaust]

Source: MSNBC

It's a top 10 list no one wants to be on: a new Census brief named the McAllen, Texas, metro area the poorest in the nation.

Roughly a third of the residents in this Mexican border area in the Rio Grande Valley live below the poverty line, in spite of a healthcare industry that continued to add jobs during the recession and a retail sector buoyed by Mexican shoppers who cross the border to buy American name-brand clothes...

Read more: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/21/8432089-poorest-place-in-us-mcallen-texas-and-heres-why

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Texas: Numero Uno!!

Again.

[barb162]

1. American name-brand clothes

Huh? All made in China?

[alp227]

2. hey Rick Perry! How's that trickle down working out down there? n/t

[Ilsa]

3. Texas is also number 1 in Child Abuse. Interesting, isn't it,

How poverty and ignorance and child abuse all go hand-in-hand?

[Igel]

6. Sure.

Except most people forget that ignorance breeds poverty more than the other way around.

Most of the immigrants don't have a high school education. That fast-tracks them for really low paid jobs.

Ignorant parents tend to produce ignorant kids, who grow up to be poor on their own.

Immigrants tend to have families larger than average. Larger family = higher income needed to avoid poverty. Then again, ignorance --> larger families, on average.

The colonias along the Texas/Mexican border are large, downtrodden, and a crime against humanity. Texas didn't build them but is responsible for trying to bring their standards up to at least 2nd world. However, since most infrastructure is funded at the local level, the colonias have pretty much no money for infrastructure and iffy credit for going to the bond market. It matters fairly little if a (D) or an (R) is in power--they've been growing under both, both make noises about helping, but both find that the enormity of the problem and the structure of state/local government doesn't admit of an easy solution.

[FarCenter]

4. Thought that McAllen to Harlingen area had a large population in the winte

Overrun with Midwesterner snowbirds fleeing the cold.

[UTUSN]

5. Wow, those immigrants are just SO busy how do they have time to be poor?!1

(insert the sarcasm drill here)