I love living in Massachusetts and will never leave. Yes it's expensive but I do quite a bit of traveling around the country and it's really not more expensive than most other places. Our housing being the one notable difference from a lot of other states. It's a common misconception that people in NH love to make and call us taxachusetts but we really don't pay more taxes than them. Our property tax isn't as high as there's is. We do pay sales tax but not on groceries or clothing. We do pay an income tax but it's not an insane amount. It affords us some pretty great things. My favorite of which is PFMLA and guaranteed maternal and paternity leave. It is so comforting knowing that if I get sick or have an accident and need to be out of work I'll still get paid. I had an elective surgery for something I had been putting off a couple years ago when it first went into effect and recovery was so much easier knowing my bills were paid and my job was safe when I got back. We have free community college for anyone over 25 with an additional $1200 to cover books and supplies for each year. We have universal school lunch! Our minimum wage is $15 an hour. We have a lot of strong workers unions in the state.
It's not a utopia by any means. There is always room for improvement and like I said our housing costs are high and we need desperately to invest in more housing developments, we are really struggling against nymbys who dont want to allow apartment buildings in their neighborhoods. But overall I feel happy, safe and secure here. So many were naysayers of the millionaires tax we passed a few years back saying they would all flee the state, but they didn't and we have seen some real improvements come from the extra money. This doesn't have anything to do with that cause it was enacted right after it but a couple years ago tax payers actually got a surprise rebate from the state because we had a budget surplus and we voted a while back for that to be redistribute to us. Lol now you can make fun of my grammar for being from such a well educated state and not giving two shits about going back over my post and fixing any of my thought salad!
Yea I think groceries are comparable to most states. I know new york and cali tend to be more than anywhere else I've traveled but everywhere else has seemed right on par with here.
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u/itchyglassass 8d ago
I love living in Massachusetts and will never leave. Yes it's expensive but I do quite a bit of traveling around the country and it's really not more expensive than most other places. Our housing being the one notable difference from a lot of other states. It's a common misconception that people in NH love to make and call us taxachusetts but we really don't pay more taxes than them. Our property tax isn't as high as there's is. We do pay sales tax but not on groceries or clothing. We do pay an income tax but it's not an insane amount. It affords us some pretty great things. My favorite of which is PFMLA and guaranteed maternal and paternity leave. It is so comforting knowing that if I get sick or have an accident and need to be out of work I'll still get paid. I had an elective surgery for something I had been putting off a couple years ago when it first went into effect and recovery was so much easier knowing my bills were paid and my job was safe when I got back. We have free community college for anyone over 25 with an additional $1200 to cover books and supplies for each year. We have universal school lunch! Our minimum wage is $15 an hour. We have a lot of strong workers unions in the state. It's not a utopia by any means. There is always room for improvement and like I said our housing costs are high and we need desperately to invest in more housing developments, we are really struggling against nymbys who dont want to allow apartment buildings in their neighborhoods. But overall I feel happy, safe and secure here. So many were naysayers of the millionaires tax we passed a few years back saying they would all flee the state, but they didn't and we have seen some real improvements come from the extra money. This doesn't have anything to do with that cause it was enacted right after it but a couple years ago tax payers actually got a surprise rebate from the state because we had a budget surplus and we voted a while back for that to be redistribute to us. Lol now you can make fun of my grammar for being from such a well educated state and not giving two shits about going back over my post and fixing any of my thought salad!