Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This shouldn't be a shocker to anyone who's lived or traveled through rural towns. Also not a shocker if you think about it. What's someone with education going to do in a rural area? Not much. So unless you're fantastically wealthy you can't afford to live there.
I wouldn't say "fantastically wealthy". More appropriately, a guaranteed income stream that exist independent of the local economy, that allows one to live a comfortable lifestyle in a low cost-of-living area. In other words, an average retiree. Which is why the average age of these locales is skewing older and older.
I wouldn't say "fantastically wealthy". More appropriately, a guaranteed income stream that exist independent of the local economy, that allows one to live a comfortable lifestyle in a low cost-of-living area. In other words, an average retiree. Which is why the average age of these locales is skewing older and older.
Right, if you can get $1,000 to $1,500 a month from SS or a pension, you can support a family and do okay in a low COL rural area.
I know a lot of fellow retirees who have moved here with their pensions. A guaranteed income of $1200 /month can seem like wealth when everyone else is struggling on 3 p/t seasonal minimum-wage jobs.
I have to laugh when people talk about small towns being full of poverty.
I live in a town of 109 people in Montana....a bunch of farmers, rich farmers with thousands of acres of land..
Poor?...ya i dont think so, you ever priced out a 150 HP John Deere?
Good point. What some view as signs of wealth are only show.
Where I live, the stereotype of wealth is a huge log McMansion with prow-like vaulted ceiling with ginormous windows, with lawn and big trees and a pretty splitrail fence around it. Sometimes the yard is only a couple of acres, but it looks very attractive from an urban or suburban standpoint.
In reality, most working ranches (and they aren't poor) have relatively nondescript houses and outbuildings, wire fence, and lots of land with *irrigation water rights.* Plus all the mechanical equipment which, as you pointed out, is expensive but is used for work (i.e., makes money). And livestock.
Land, livestock or crops, and enough water to maintain all of those.
I have to laugh when people talk about small towns being full of poverty.
I live in a town of 109 people in Montana....a bunch of farmers, rich farmers with thousands of acres of land..
Poor?...ya i dont think so, you ever priced out a 150 HP John Deere?
You do realize that Census data is what matters, not your personal anecdotes about your neighbors, right?
The Census data indeed confirms that rural areas are the poorest, unhealthiest, least educated, most drug addicted corners of America. They're basically the new inner city.
Rich farmers are like 1% of rural America. They're essentially irrelevant.
"Today, however, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows that by many key measures of socioeconomic well-being, those charts have flipped. In terms of poverty, college attainment, teenage births, divorce, death rates from heart disease and cancer, reliance on federal disability insurance and male labor-force participation, rural counties now rank the worst among the four major U.S. population groupings (the others are big cities, suburbs and medium or small metro areas).
In fact, the total rural population -- accounting for births, deaths and migration -- has declined for five straight years."
Statistics are statistics, you get what you want to measure.
The issue for the rural areas is that, except for agricultural policy and perhaps the rural electrification program, government policies are set up for urban areas. Need some shiny new trains for a money losing mass transit system, no problem. Need $50 million for a brownfield clean-up, no problem.
On the other hand, need to widen a two-lane road, there is $500,000 study to identify some slug in a field somewhere. With hands in the public's purse, some slug-specialist from Brooklyn will travel every 6 months for the next 5 years to look at the field while complaining how the kale salad just doesn't measure up to the locavore fare like back home. Another $500,000, please.
You do realize that Census data is what matters, not your personal anecdotes about your neighbors, right?
The Census data indeed confirms that rural areas are the poorest, unhealthiest, least educated, most drug addicted corners of America. They're basically the new inner city.
Rich farmers are like 1% of rural America. They're essentially irrelevant.
Lived in the country my whole life, no idea what you are talking about to be honest. All i have ever seen around me was farms and ranches. You like to eat right?
Good point. What some view as signs of wealth are only show.
Where I live, the stereotype of wealth is a huge log McMansion with prow-like vaulted ceiling with ginormous windows, with lawn and big trees and a pretty splitrail fence around it. Sometimes the yard is only a couple of acres, but it looks very attractive from an urban or suburban standpoint.
In reality, most working ranches (and they aren't poor) have relatively nondescript houses and outbuildings, wire fence, and lots of land with *irrigation water rights.* Plus all the mechanical equipment which, as you pointed out, is expensive but is used for work (i.e., makes money). And livestock.
Land, livestock or crops, and enough water to maintain all of those.
We have those people in western Montana, the same people that have 4 horses on their 10 acre "Ranch"
haha
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
