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If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why maids get $20 per hour or more and people are begging for them.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why restaurants are crowded in October. Granted, the mild weather is still drawing visitors, but tourist season is over.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why there are so many people buying Roquefort by the pound.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why there are so many nice homes on the North Fork and South Fork. Note, you won't be able to see the really nice ones.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why it's necessary to beg for a plumber if you have an emergency.
Come with a willingness to work; stay twenty years; you'll have your million, probably more, and be part of middle class Wyoming. Hard work and investing rather than squandering equal success.
1. You seem to be taking the anecdotal experience of your hosts/clients and extrapolating them to the entire state population.
2. The description you provide of your hosts means that in terms of household income they would be well below median and probably not considered "middle class" by those statistics.
3. Farm/Ranch work is certainly as you describe, but a relatively small percentage of Wyoming residents participate in that lifestyle, although that is probably a dominant image of Wyoming outside the state.
4. You mention the contrary proof is present in the lifestyles, income, and costs of living. I would argue that those are three categories that would suggest Wyoming does have a strong middle class. Income and cost of living are relatively straight forward I suppose, so the debate is lifestyle. My anecdotal experiences are much different than yours. The vast majority of my friends, family, acquaintances, customers, business partners,etc. have a lifestyle that is very middle class by my estimation. They own their own homes, they own multiple vehicles (usually late model pickups and SUV's and sometimes ATV's, boats, etc.), they enjoy multiple recreational opportunities (hunting, etc). They are not wealthy and they work hard to support their families and their lifestyle, but they are not poor by any reasonable measure.
5. To continue on with the lifestyle debate, I would point out the equality of lifestyles experienced living in a smaller town compared to a large urban area (Wyoming residents fitting the former obviously). If you live in Green River as an example, regardless of income level your children will attend the same middle and high school. These schools will be safe and well funded. Compare that to living in Dallas or even Denver. Those on the lower end of the income spectrum are clustered into poor performing schools made up almost entirely of students living below the poverty line. They will most likely have larger class sizes and less funding than the school in Wyoming. On the flip side there will be school districts in affluent areas that are quite different with almost all affluent students and tremendous parental support. How someone feels about that stratification may vary, but its existence is obvious. That great divide between affluence and poverty is not as visible or present in most of Wyoming outside of the NW part of the state and all that entails.
The middle class in General is shrinking in the U.S. and Wyoming is not immune to those effects. Wyoming is also obviously susceptible to significant boom/bust cycles due to its dependence upon mineral extraction and a persistent inability to diversify its economy. Some of those quality jobs in mineral extraction have not seen pay keep pace with the increase in cost of living and that mirrors the experience of people in middle class jobs across the U.S. With that in mind, I am
not trying to paint Wyoming as utopia or as a land of great opportunity. The population is small and the opportunities present reflect that. However, the population that lives in the state is not, on balance, as destitute as you describe and in the context of the U.S. in 2014, still exhibits a middle class profile.
You are comparing apples to oranges. You are comparing stats to real life.
I am your average Wyomingite. I make less than $20k a year. Neighbors all say that I am lucky with my disability earnings. My daughter, who is a medical transcriptionist and does medical billing, says the same thing. She says that my disability is exceptional, I make a lot. Where do you get off saying we make so much???? The stats don't reflect the truth.
You say that a small percentage of the residents of Wyoming are farm/ranch. Wake up! The majority of Wyoming is earn/ranch property. I am not sure where you got those stats but it makes no difference, they are dead wrong. You say a small percentage have that lifestyle. You are correct. The fact that it takes thousands of acres to raise a herd, with just two or three people, makes the stats correct. There are only a few ranchers for thousands of acres.
Come on up, enjoy the view, and then wake up, take off the blinders, and see what is going on. Stop reading the paper and blindly believing everything in print.
Wyoming ranks 1[SIZE=2]st[/SIZE] nationwide in average size of farms and ranches.
more Wyoming Ag Facts Ag Facts
I hear all the time that Ag is insufficient in Wyoming being only 5-6 % of the States gross Product. to which I say California and Texas two of the biggest Ag States Ag is the same percentage , so is it insufficient there too?
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why maids get $20 per hour or more and people are begging for them.
maid services companies might be billing that much ... But the maids aren't getting paid anywhere near that amount, especially in light of heavy laborers at the gypsum plant only being paid $15.66 per hour. Even if the maids were getting that much per hour, they don't work all that many hours per week. My hosts this week work those types of jobs (maid and elder care), and don't make anywhere near $20.00/hr. If such a wage were available, they'd be switching employers in a heartbeat for the wage increase.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why restaurants are crowded in October. Granted, the mild weather is still drawing visitors, but tourist season is over.
because there is enough of the upper class population around the area to support them. But the lower income folk aren't splurging at the Irma Buffet or over at the Proud Cut or anywhere else that it's $25.00 per person (and up) meals.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why there are so many people buying Roquefort by the pound.
LOL. I'm a foodie, patronize The Welsh Rabbit Cheese Shop in Ft Collins ... And I've never bought Roquefort "by the pound". Somebody buying that kind of specialty cheese has an affluent food budget and a lot of people to feed. You're seeing a fairly high end food item purchase, and my bet is it isn't working class folk doing that.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why there are so many nice homes on the North Fork and South Fork. Note, you won't be able to see the really nice ones.
I didn't get a chance this visit to check out the real estate market, but my past visits showed price points in the affluent areas catering to folk with a lot of money, not middle class folk. Cody has a sizable wealthy population with that type of disposable income. My hosts helped clean out houses this week where the owners are heading out to Scottsdale or similar places for the winter.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why it's necessary to beg for a plumber if you have an emergency.
like other tourist economy towns, tradespeople have a hard time making a living. So there aren't a lot of them.
Come with a willingness to work; stay twenty years; you'll have your million, probably more, and be part of middle class Wyoming. Hard work and investing rather than squandering equal success.
Better still, bring a million and have a good start in wyoming.
If things are so tough around Cody I wonder why maids get $20 per hour or more and people are begging for them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sunsprit
maid services companies might be billing that much ... But the maids aren't getting paid anywhere near that amount, especially in light of heavy laborers at the gypsum plant only being paid $15.66 per hour. Even if the maids were getting that much per hour, they don't work all that many hours per week. My hosts this week work those types of jobs (maid and elder care), and don't make anywhere near $20.00/hr. If such a wage were available, they'd be switching employers in a heartbeat for the wage increase.
You really are the man who knows everything. I've been living here for seven years and thought I paid just over twenty dollars per hour to a maid, not a service. Apparently, I've been under a delusion because according to you I don't. As the man who knows everything you must be right so tell me how much I pay. What happens to that money I thought I was paying? Tell, O wise one.
I thought people just didn't want to be maids because I had to pay high forty years ago in Colorado; my parents and family as well as their friends in Illinois complained about it as long as I remember. I guess we were deluded.
I guess I don't really buy a pound of Roquefort either.
What are wealthy people? How much do they have? Where do the ''few'' middle class actually live? What do they pay for houses? Are all the people in 500k homes wealthy? Silly me, I thought that they were midddle class.
Please run for president. When the voters hear you I know you'll get 90% of the vote because you truly know it all.
Outside of the fact that my hosts this week work a number of jobs in Cody, struggling to make ends meet ... And they've been here all their lives ... They do landscaping, elder care, bus driving, and do housekeeping/ dog sitting/maid service work around the town.
Your sarcasm re me knowing everything is, of course, well taken ... In that you must be pretty affluent to be able to afford to pay $20.00hr or more for maid service. I know the motels don't pay anywhere near that much ...
Because I'm pretty well connected with on-call maids services in Vail, which is a much higher end marketplace than Cody. I pay $20.00/hr to a couple of maid businesses there, and they routinely show up with a crew, not just one person. First time I hired them, I was astounded to see 6 women show up for a 4bdr/2ba house of mine. They hit the door running with all their supplies, vacuum cleaners, window washing equipment, and kitchen/bathroom cleaning supplies. They didn't hardly talk at all, everybody had their assigned tasks and the place was left a mess by my former tenant. Had another tenant coming in the next day and it was panic time for me. Within 3 hours, the place was spotless, even the walls were washed. Between the call-out charge, mileage fee, maid service, and exterior window washing (2-story house)' my bill was $225.00. That's nowhere close to $20.00/hr per maid. I've had them out many times since that first cleaning, and it's still way under $20/hr.
Maybe you've got an exceptionally dirty house that's difficult to clean with burnt offerings in the rooms presenting an unusual cleaning challenge to get the stench out and clean up the mess?
I don't know your personal finances (nor would I care to) ... But I do know that a pound of specialty cheese is a big purchase. Unless you're doing a lot of sizable dinner parties or feeding it to your intended sacrifices to fatten them up for slaughter, a pound of Roquefort cheese is a huge amount and I wouldn't want to keep it on hand for months to consume it. In any event, your initial assertion made it sound like it was a common purchase here, now it's just your personal shopping .... And not the type of purchase that the average shopper routinely makes. At least not in my view of the shopper's carts in Wally World this week when we bought groceries for our hosts to go with out lamb roasts and pork roasts we brought from our ranch.
Heck, I have a very good job (out of state, near the Bakken fields), but I take $25.00/hr for house cleaning every chance I get in order to stay living in Sheridan. I also take every $10/hr job (day work on ranches, yard work, etc.) I can squeeze in and sock it away.
I've been in Wyoming long enough to know the flush times come and go.
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