Being only the 8th largest economy would rule you out as a superpower from the jump.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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I’m not sure I get it… some ports can stay open all year, some cannot. The ones that can are called warm water ports. It’s a very helpful geographic feature for any country to have so they can enjoy uninterrupted shipping for trade and transport. Dude is making the case that Texas could stand alone as a country.
Because its an "inglourious basterds" three raised fingers giveaway that tje poster is not American, probably Russian
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/major-hellstrom-sees-three-fingers
Russians care about warm water ports because they have few of them and the ones they have are inconveniently located.
Americans don't even think about specifying that a port is warm water because they all are in the contiguous 48.
Ergo the poster is probably a Russian bot.
It's the same how certain spellings give away Yanks trying to Larp as British
Either that or its a person who read "prisoners of geography" and now considers themselves to be an expert in geopolitics
Excellent clarification. Love the IB reference. QT is a dipshit, but that scene is a fucking masterpiece.
the term is Shibboleth
Yeah, we have so much fucking ocean access. Apparently the ports of Houston and Corpus Christi are our numbers 1 and 3 used ports by tonnage, but it makes sense because oil. We have major ports all over the place including in multiple landlocked states. Our entire northeast coast is geographically cheating to being a major maritime power, and our west coast is as well between the PNW's Puget Sound and Columbia River, northern California's San Francisco Bay, and southern California's plenty of choices as well.
It’s the same how certain spellings give away Yanks trying to Larp as British
Or like that fake British post a week or two ago where a guy mentioned someone hitting his “fanny.”
I see, thanks. I consider it a general term but I can see how it may have strong associations with Russia, especially because many Americans probably heard the term for the first time after Crimea.
Texas is a massive welfare state that lives on federal contracts
You’re not wrong. Was looking at this for a different reason today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Texas is bolstered by their hill country tech sector, gulf port refineries and west Texas crude. The rest is a lot of prairie land and mountain ranges. What surprises me is that Texas has lower productivity per capita than Alaska (another oil rich, wide open spaces state), and Nebraska, which I can only assume one man is doing some very heavy lifting there.
Many of the more large-population liberal states have higher gdp, even with their typically higher taxes.
This chart you shared identifies Texas as having the 44th highest GDP per capita out of every region in the entire world out of 454 regions, which is actually really good. It's especially good given how much rural land Texas includes, where an entire state's per capita GDP is being compared to much smaller urban regions like Luxembourg, Warsaw, and London.
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/
And here is a screenshot of the relevant data
Texas clocks in at $1.21 receivers for every $1 sent to the federal government.
I live in Texas. I love where I live, and also fuck this place, but either way what you're saying just isn't true. Sure, there are a number of defense contractors plus NASA and military bases operating in Texas, but between energy, healthcare, education, tourism, tech, and over 50 Fortune 500 companies, Texas's economy is actually really diverse. California has a ton of military bases and defense contractors too, because like Texas they have the workforce to pull it off
For people who don’t continue down the thread, here is the proof suggested by another user and found by me:
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/
NJ low-key goated as usual
I think this is the first time I've ever heard NJ described as goated in my life. Thank you for the experience!
Meanwhile WA and NH are just getting their money back
I lived in Texas for 30 years, I left 10 years ago and have no desire to go back. Apart from texmex klobasnek and a few other things, I don’t miss it at all.
I think people underestimate the differences between living in a deep red state vs a deep blue state.
It's like night and day. I would never voluntarily step foot in a red state again for the rest of my life if I don't need to.
Fuckin hell growing up in ohio it was a swing state, and I remember watching it slowly get worse and worse before I left for the PNW. The busses come with reasonable frequency here, and they even go to suburbs beyond a single commuter bus. Portland and Seattle both even have light rail systems (Columbus adamantly rejects the premise of building a fucking train, despite being quite blue). When I was unemployed they didn't care that I had savings when I applied for medicaid, just that I wasn't earning too much in interest on them to qualify (ohio rejected me for having less money in savings). There are still problems and bigots and I don't love everything about here, but I feel safe and I feel like this place actually is attempting to improve while Ohio just kinda started giving up when manufacturing went away and is convinced that trying to improve things will only make them worse, which the state legislature has fostered.
I’m in a pretty purple state now, there isn’t a blue state that really interests me in moving too. Far too many of them have unreasonable taxes or bad weather or both. And they few outliers like Oregon and Washington are too expensive for me to attempt to move to.
You have no idea how much of all those industries you just named get corporate welfare or other federal grants. Texas is a net tax sink not payer to the federal government
What is your evidence of this?
Rockefeller Institute of Government and analyses by the Tax Foundation. Texas consistently receives more in federal funding than it contributes in federal taxes. In 2023, for every dollar Texans paid to the federal government, the state received approximately $1.20 in return. This net inflow of federal dollars places Texas among the states that benefit most from federal redistribution.
Have a link to these? All the sources I see indicate Texas pays more in federal taxes than it receives back in aid
Not OP; here’s the most likely link.
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/
And here is a screenshot of the relevant data
Texas clocks in at $1.21 receivers for every $1 sent to the federal government.
If Texas became it's own nation, it would probably become a cross between Russia and Switzerland. It would quickly develop a highly centralized oligarchy, basically operating off of oil and gas exports, while still having good relationships with it's larger neighbors and have beneficial tax policies.
It would become a great safe place for super rich people to hide money while it's actual population declines economically.
I don't know much about Texas. Is this meaningfully different from how it is now?
The biggest difference is that the state is still controlled by the federal government. If it wasn't subservient to the US Federal government then a lot of things about it would have to change.
It would be a completely different place. I imagine it would closely resemble a Christian version of Turkey in a lot of ways.
Nope. Pretty much all already checked off. Though those "beneficial tax policies" are only for the wealthy of course just to be clear.
“Texas” is not a monolith. It’s like five different states staple-gunned together.
And then gerrymandered to shit
Reasonably accurate. Most people don’t understand that the regions of Texas are pretty diverse, except maybe politically. The state has taken such a turn for religious monarchy in the past few years, I barely recognize the Texas of my youth. I miss the actual weirdness of Austin, the plucky Ann Richard’s type democrats, the lack of tech bros, the country feeling like the country instead of suburbs of the nearest city.
"staple-gunned" there is a word for that. stapled.
The city state of Dallas-Fort Worth, home of corporate headquarters.
They're already trying to annex counties from New Mexico
"They" are not.
It's just one dude and that's not going anywhere. It would require agreement of not only New Mexico (which is a non starter) and the federal government, which is equally not going to happen.
The most powerful elected official in the state, who won his election by a very clear majority, is representative of the state. I agree it's not going to happen, but it's not like it wouldn't if they had the power to.
Yeah cross-state county annexation fantasies happen anywhere that a blue state borders a red state. They'd never happen, not only would the donor state have to willingly give up perfectly good land and taxpayers and the recipient state accept, the federal government would have to approve the change.
Half my family lives in NM, and I just returned yesterday from a month there.
No one in New Mexico wants this or even takes it seriously. All the news reports are laughing at it.