Why do so many people born in Colorado leave the state? (Pueblo: gated, maintenance)

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

That is a personal preference one. I am a 4th generation Coloradoan and still love it here.

A lot of stay or go decisions are of a glass half full / half empty sort with many being more subjective/preferential (don't like x y z) than objective/factual (job moved).

[Indigo Cardinal]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

That is a personal preference one. I am a 4th generation Coloradoan and still love it here.

Agreed. I'm a transplant who's been here sixteen years now. I've lived a number of places and there's always things I love/things I don't love about every place. There's always a trade-off wherever you are.

[Colorado Rambler]

Originally Posted by Josseppie

That is a personal preference one. I am a 4th generation Coloradoan and still love it here.

I hope you'll get back to us on that when Pueblo is finally forced to impose water restrictions and you have to give up that lawn! I bet that will break even a tough guy like you and you'll be posting from the heart of bluegrass country in Kentucky in no time!

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by Colorado Rambler

I hope you'll get back to us on that when Pueblo is finally forced to impose water restrictions and you have to give up that lawn! I bet that will break even a tough guy like you and you'll be posting from the heart of bluegrass country in Kentucky in no time!

And taking daily tours of the Bourbon distilleries in Bourbon County for the free samples! BTDT.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by Colorado Rambler

I hope you'll get back to us on that when Pueblo is finally forced to impose water restrictions and you have to give up that lawn! I bet that will break even a tough guy like you and you'll be posting from the heart of bluegrass country in Kentucky in no time!

LOL We will see.

[CosmicWizard]

Indigo Cardinal wrote: Agreed. I'm a transplant who's been here sixteen years now. I've lived a number of places and there's always things I love/things I don't love about every place. There's always a trade-off wherever you are.

I am in the same boat. I believe that most others agree also, even long term 6th generation residents of ANY state. Anyone thinking that any place is 100% perfect or 100% f*cked up is living in the virtual reality of their own mind!

I've lived in many states and several Canadian provinces over the course of my lifetime, and the only state I left because I disliked it was Pennsylvania, the state I grew up in. Got outta there in my 18th birthday. All other places I left mostly because I had a desire to move on and live elsewhere, or simply wanted a more favourable climate.

[lurtsman]

I find no place is 100% perfect or 100% awful, but it sure feels like you can hit at least 90% to 95% perfect or awful when you are looking through the eyes of an individual person and recognizing all of their preferences. If someone can't get close to 90%, they either don't know what they want, or they don't know how to conduct an effective search for it.

Note: To be fair, you could rig the system by saying 30% of your preference is to live near your family and 70% is to live somewhere hot. If your family all lives in Edmonton, Canada and refuses to move, you'd be screwed. However, when evaluating places if you are using the "where my family already lives" as a factor in rating them, the potential destinations are extremely limited. If you actually open it up and evaluate the places on their own merits, there is a city or area for almost everyone. (Not necessarily within this state, but within the world)

[lurtsman]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

You missed one:

5) State becomes so screwed up and wrecked that even the transplants who came a few years ago want to leave, too.

I haven't seen this being a factor for me or any of my friends. The biggest complaints I have heard about the state are:
1. There won't be enough water to support the people living there because Colorado should not be allowed to keep the water that falls in the state. I've read the compact, I know a bit about the laws.
2. Colorado won't tax people enough. Beat them with taxes. Punish them. How dare they have nice things when they aren't paying for enough schools for their neighbor's children. Again, this is personal preference. People should move where they find the laws to be acceptable. If they want to live in a high tax nanny state, they can do that. There is no reason to proclaim that we need 50 of them. Variety is critical to allowing people to find what works for them.

If anyone moves here and finds they need to leave for one of those reasons: They are an idiot and failed at doing research before moving. I don't know a single person that falls into that category, though I'm not prone to hang out with the kind of people that would seriously treat moving as: "Herp Derp, let's go THERE!"

[jazzlover]

I don't think that you understand water or taxes very well, Lurtsman.

The water problem is very real for Colorado. Colorado could choose to accommodate a few million more residents with their Kentucky Bluegrass lawns, but it will come at the expense of decimating agriculture, wetlands, free-flowing streams, and water quality. Anyone who is dumb enough to think that any of that is a good thing should go get their head examined.

As for taxes, I'm no advocate of high taxes, either. Unfortunately, Colorado's entire tax structure is very unbalanced. Productive enterprises, especially tangible-asset-intensive ones, pay nearly four times the effective tax rate per dollar of fair market value on their property compared to residential property owners, the latter who actually consume more in services than they pay in property taxes. So, Colorado effectively subsidizes non-productive service consuming residential property and taxws the hell out of productive business operations. That will come to haunt Colorado's economy in very negative ways in the years ahead. Of course, the land developers and residential property owners love it, and--since the formula is buried in the Colorado Constitution where only a majority of the voting public can change it--it likely won't change until Colorado's entire network of essential public services (things like law enforcement, fire protection, etc. that are funded primarily through property taxes) gets run into the ground.

I am also not one who believes that simply throwing money at education will necessarily make it better, but strangling school funding to the point that educational quality suffers makes no sense, either. In the end, everybody is hurt by a poor educational system--whether they have children or not. I don't consider a high quality educational system a "nanny state" program--in fact, it usually is just the opposite: A well educated population is usually LESS likely to follow off nanny-state or welfare state politics.

[Xander_Crews]

If you want a lawn, and you live in Colorado, you are almost stupid if you don't get artificial turf. The stuff has come a long way and looks/feels better than grass. Any water that falls on it filters through and goes into the Earth. It is a real prudent move, and a great way to be part of the solution rather than the problem.