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No, not really.
For context, I live in New Mexico, which is full of poor people and oil revenue. I had forgotten until I looked it up just now that it produces more than four times as much oil as Alaska, though still half as much as Texas. Unlike Alaska, which gives people money directly, New Mexico invests in various forms of welfare for all, so median income families qualify for pregnancy and early childhood medicaid with no fuss (I was shocked, this is worth tens of thousands of dollars per baby, and I just uploaded a couple of forms, and in the cases of the babies, the hospital uploaded the forms for me). They have a bunch of nice hispanic American ladies (many from the days when the territory literally belonged to Spain) who run nice warm daycares. All the normal daycares are now state funded (with no copay as of a year or so ago), and they have the pre-K program as an optional add-on with more curriculum, or they'll instead pay for regular daycare for four year olds, whatever the individual place decides on doing, which has also been, in my experience, fine. Finding daycare for a 1 year old and a 4 year old at the same time and the same establishment is the main impediment, which has worked out surprisingly well.
This situation has resulted in having a third child, where in another state we probably wouldn't have. As a member of the lower middle class, I like it a lot. If someone institutes low fuss UBI, it will probably be here. And it's democratic without being all that progressive, on account of all the influential people who's parents or grandparents were ranchers, so in general I like it. Also, I didn't save for a house at all, or even think of owning a house, and then a nice local organization said that, yes, we can buy a house, and just led us through exactly how to do that, then sent a non-commissioned realtor who also got up on our roof to show us how to fix the swamp cooler and stuck his hand down the food processor to fish out some broken glass that was inside.
I was more caught off guard by being called up suddenly, out of the blue.
People do often seem to say that crime is pretty high in New Mexico, though, especially around the large towns and cities (and especially around Albuquerque). Are you very rural?
Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard it about parts of Chicago as well, and in both places, I don't drive with the windows down or leave my car for large stretches of time or walk alone, and so on.
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