Do *not* move here. (Phoenix, Mesa: for sale, second mortgage, home)

[Finger Laker]

I'm from the northeast where I worked throughout college .... then I got a job out of college ... then moved and got another job ... then moved here and got a career

everyone I know from college that I graduated with and am friends with were able to find employment when graduating during the tech bubble and then have remained employed through this downturn

but then again, we have work ethics and other desirable traits

i also work for a company that is at college job fairs and constantly hiring

maybe you should have had some foresight and learned a marketable skill or figured out what you wanted to do with your life and then worked towards that goal instead of throwing gobs of money without any direction into a degree thinking it's a cure all ..... and then when that failed, re-up and throw even more money into a graduate degree

interesting how you are so quick to judge others about their work ethic and bad decisions - yet you are the one with no job skills, "underemployment", living in a place you hate, saddled with debt and a very bleak future outlook as every day that passes is another day where more people simply pass you by

the rest of us will continue on with our happy lives

you can continue to be miserable regardless of where you call home

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

Millions of transplants who wouldn't recognize .... loyalty to sports franchises,.....

So I guess the fact that I blow kisses every time I drive by Kurt Warner's house doesn't count, huh?

[Finger Laker]

also - as an interesting note, for people 25+ who hold a college degree the Feb 12 unemployment rate is 4.2%

for all people with a graduate degree the unemployment rate is 3%

"healthy" unemployment is often peggd to be around 3% .... so those two buckets are really doing pretty well right now

if your have skills on the higher end of the spectrum you can be doing really well ....... if you are on the lower end and can't differentiate yourself from a high school graduate or a high school dropout then obviously you are going to be just a statistic

[Finger Laker]

Originally Posted by DewDropInn

So I guess the fact that I blow kisses every time I drive by Kurt Warner's house doesn't count, huh?

Shh ... this guy is an AZ resident and doesn't pull for the Cards or D'Backs ...... so he is exhibiting the same traits he's blasting other transplants for ..... there is a word for it somewhere

[Arcadia Camelback]

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

I'm concerned that the ugly terrain is causing permanent retinal damage. The mountains look like giant piles of untended dirt

I lived in Dallas (a real city?) for a week or two about 15 years ago, and one of the things I most enjoyed about coming back to Phoenix was being surrounded by beautiful mountains once again (in sharp contrast to the featureless landscape of Dallas).

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

Practically everyone here is transplant who doesn't give a damn about anything local.

I'm not a transplant. My paternal grandfather was born in the Arizona Territory, several years before statehood.

[lauramc27]

My husbands job transfered him here to work at Intel in Chandler. He got here January of last year and my daughter and I followed June of last year.

We have lived in Oregon (x2), Utah, New Mexico and now Arizona, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have to say I love Arizona! I have always been a sunshine girl, so this state is my utopia, lol. I have always been a believer of you make of it what you put into it. I was not fond of living in Utah County, but I tried to make the best of it for the two years we were there, and Oregon with it's rain depressed the heck out of me so Arizona is perfect. Yes the Summer heat is crazy, but I didn't find it all that bad last year.

I think if he would stop the pity party and actually look for the postive he would be a happier person.

[Zathras]

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

But I guess cash lost all meaning to valley denizens once your endless expansion caused one of the largest housing collapses in the country. You reap what you sew, I suppose).

HOOOOOLD onto your lugnuts thar pardner.... The expansion in Phoenix (or any other city) did NOT cause the housing collapse. It is a fact that the regulations put in place by our federal government in the decade leading up to the collapse, which incentivized banks to loan money to people who had no business owning a home (or as much home), without worrying about the outcome because they were backed by Freddie and Fannie, was the root cause of the housing disaster. So don't go throwing blame on this city. This city got nailed hard because guess what? A lot of people want to live here.

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

So, yes, let me happily rebut every single claim about the wonderous nature of this landscape and its people by directing you back to the original post. Mountains that look like globs of dried mud? Check.

wrong. opinion.

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

No trees? Check.

wrong. We have plenty of trees here. Just different kinds.

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

No weather setting other than 'too hot' or 'too dry?' Check.

wrong. "too" is subjective and so that's just your opinion as well.. although many might agree that it is too hot. We also have 4 or 5 months of "too perfect" and 2 months of "too monsoony" to interrupt your "too dry".

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

Hundreds of thousands of lost old people? Double check.

wrong. hyperbole. while there are a lot of retirees here, there are plenty of younger people as others have pointed out.

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

Millions of transplants who wouldn't recognize culture, loyalty to sports franchises, passion or hard work if it walked up to them and punched them in the face? That's a big ol' triple check.

wrong. opinion.

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

You believe this valley to be perfect because it is as devoid of character as you are.

wrong. No place is perfect. Pretty much everything you are whining about is your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But don't come waltzing in here trying to lay your opinions down as fact.

[cacto]

It's good to see so many sticking up for the Valley. All too often PHX posters badmouth their own town or seem to suffer from a Phoenix inferiority complex.

I was born and raised here and love it. The Sonoran Desert is my favorite place on Earth and I never want to leave.

[SpeedyAZ]

Originally Posted by ShrikeArghast

[mod cut-personal attack]
What would you like me to rebut, precisely? The repeated claims that I do not currently have employment and am living off my parents and wife? At no time since grad school have I done either. I do currently have work (although it is certainly in no way, shape or form a career), but it definitely isn't on par with the position I had in Maine (yeah, I had a job there, too. We were living with my parents trying to save money, not because we didn't have jobs. But I guess cash lost all meaning to valley denizens once your endless expansion caused one of the largest housing collapses in the country. You reap what you sew, I suppose).

In your desperate hand-wringing to try and cleanse this wasteland of the 'blight' that my words appear to be, you were all too eager to grasp at false truths because it made your sloppy pigeon-holing of me easier. And, let's face it: if there's one thing that the people in the valley 'do well,' it's easy. Little rain bother you? Let's move to a place where there is none. Too much grass to mow on that fourth of an acre? Time to drag the kids and the dog to some place where people use rocks as a lawn. You needed a city where every single road was on a grid; each and every corner had a Starbucks, because you and your ilk cannot handle the real world.

So, yes, let me happily rebut every single claim about the wonderous nature of this landscape and its people by directing you back to the original post. Mountains that look like globs of dried mud? Check. No trees? Check. No weather setting other than 'too hot' or 'too dry?' Check. Hundreds of thousands of lost old people? Double check. Millions of transplants who wouldn't recognize culture, loyalty to sports franchises, passion or hard work if it walked up to them and punched them in the face? That's a big ol' triple check.

[mod cut-- personal attack]

Making character accusations eh?! You do realize that when people have no real substantive gripes, that they sink to schoolyard insults?! Obviously for a college graduate, you don't know how to handle yourself among adults without name-calling.

Ok so you have a job but admit it's not a career. By the age of 30, you do realize that the majority of young adults have already started on a true career PATH?! I'm 31 years old and I've had a true CAREER for many years and have slowly worked my way up a few prongs on the corporate ladder.

Maybe in college you should've learned a skill set instead of wasting those hours trying to come up with creative ways to write complaints. Maybe would've been a good eh?! I work as an engineer for a Valley firm, engineering is an actual SKILL and is valuable in this job market. This is why I'm not one of those masses standing outside the unemployment agency nor working for $8/ hour at Walmart.

So you have a high priced education and are now 30 years old and still haven't used it? Don't you think maybe you should be actively pursuing a job instead of relying on your wife's income to support you? I hate to think of people like you being part of MY generation....

[stephen431]

[mod cut-- quote of deleted post and response]
It's truly incredible to have a city of 4 million transplants, and not a single one brought any culture with them. Phoenix is such a melting pot of white. White, 55-year-old, OLD people.

We totally understand. It's because our mountains are mud-looking that you've been unable to focus on finishing (starting) your novel. It's because our grassless yards are so gauche that you've lost the inspiration that drove your success all through college.
It's because our roads are so, darn, SQUARE! How can a person live their extraordinary life in a place where the roads are so unoriginal?

There can be no other explanation for you having reached your 30's without all of your dreams coming true.