Best Place in the USA to Live on a Middle Class Income?
07-06-2010, 12:53 AM
A place that used to be awesome for middle class citizens was Las Vegas. You used to be able to get out of school and go find a job making $20 an hour to start off, and only pay $350-400 a month. This was very common. I responded to an add in the paper one day, first place I called, it was hooking up cable for our local cable company. The pay was $7-1200 a week, and I was an 18 year old punk right out of highschool. Too bad I didn't pass the UA test they popped on me. Construction used to be huge in Vegas and pay well. Henderson, Vegas' biggest suberb, used to be the fastest growing city in the nation for a while. A lot of other well paying jobs for middle class citizens include deal (tables, but drugs too), bartending, stripping, valet/bell, waitressing. Some of the guys that work those jobs are even upper class. The head bellman of the Venetian makes some where around $2-300k a year from what I've heard. I think that's why college might not be as big of a deal in Las Vegas than many other places (Could also be the sinful way of life). The economy went WAY downhill though a couple of years ago when we went into a recession. People aren't going to Vegas to waist money they don't have, so Vegas got hit hard. I see it coming back though in the near future. My friends say it is getting much better, and they have opened many new attractions, such as city center.
Percs:
Beautiful women all over who are relatively easy to meet. I feel you didn't put in too much work if you couldn't at least get a make out on the strip.
Awesome house parties going on all the time. I feel like if you are living there for a couple of months it wouldn't be hard to find a good connection out there if you play your cards right. A lot of Las Vegas is who you know and how you know how to hustle. It seems the big parties are getting less and less comon as people grow up, but there are still plenty of get togethers and the like.
Lots of good clubs everywhere, of corse.
A lot more outdoor things to do than you would think. We have a lake, river, lots and lots of bike, truck, ATV, etc. trails in the dessert and a ski mountain. Also, the beach is only a 3 1/2-4 drive and California is right next door. For anyone going to Vegas, I suggest checking out Nelson. Its a ghost town with a bunch of caves and old closed down mines around it that you can check out (not the mines, the caves). It's also the place where they "blew up" that 5 story barn in 3000 Miles to Graceland. The barn's still there and there's an old World War II plane cemetery. It's pretty nuts. 10 miles outside of town is the Colorado River and there's an awesome spot out there to camp and spend the day drinking beer. There are all sorts of cliffs to jump off of into the water ranging from 5-70 feet. In my highschool years, it was extremely common to find groups of 100+ people from the ages of 16-25 getting hammered with 2-3 kegs. Last time I went there though, it was more like 20 mexican families and was a lot dirtier than it used to be. Reguardless, it's a cool place and I could have just gone on a bad weekend.
A lot to do period. Tons of shows, Restaraunts, Strip Clubs, conventions, and all sorts of other different events going on.
It's always sunny In Las Vegas. We get more than 300 days of sunshine a year, I love it.
No natural disasters really. Every couple years we'll get a couple of flash floods, and maybe every 10+ years we get bad floods. I've only seen it once in my life to where it ever really did much damage, which wasn't even comparable to really any of the hundreds of natural disasters that occur in Cali, the South, or the Midwest.
Negatives:
It's hot as fuck, all the time in the summer, even at night. And the winter is fairly cold (At least I thought so before I moved to CO). There are only maybe 3 months of what I would consider mild/nice weather.
You have to have a lot of self control to live there. You have so many options of vices from drugs, to gambling, to alcohol and everything in between.
It seems as though people are extremely superficial, even more so than most places. Most of my generation in Vegas Are Vegas born or California born with families who grew up in CA, which can be a pretty superficial place as well. But those guys sure know how to have fun.
The traffic sucks, but not quit as bad as California. Doesn't even compare to a city like Sao Paulo. But reguardless, some mornings it would take me an hour to go around 15 miles, others it would take 20-30 mins.
The clubs are really expensive, and Vegas can be real expensive all together, but that's if you are balling out. I would compare it to Brazil in terms of if you want to live it up and be high class, you are gonna spend a lot. But if you are just trying to get by and only go out maybe once or twice a week and keep a good budget, it is very easy to get by.
A lot of Vegas is pretty white trash and if I know the forum like I think I do, it will probably get pretty anoying to you. In some ways it's the
It's pretty ugly for the most part. There are some nice spots though if you go outside town, such as Lake Mead, Mt. Charelston, The Colorado River, and some pretty crazy shit your gonna find in the dessert, like the gost towns.
It's pretty polluted, but again, doesn't compare to a City like Sao Paulo or LA.
As far as economics go, like I said, it's not looking good right now. But now is an awesome time to buy, and if Vegas gets
back on track to where it was 4-5 years ago, it is a great place to invest. My father bought his house around 10 years ago for $150k. It had to have been 3 or 4 years later it was worth half a million. It went almost all the way back down to $150 again though once the recession hit. I would never live in Vegas again, and I would never raise a family there, but I wouldn't have really wanted to grow up anywhere else. It's an awesome place, I liked living there, but I feel I have a lot to do in my life and 20 years in Vegas was plenty for me. It's time to see other places. Not to mention most people I know aren't doing anything with their lives that stayed in Vegas. Not saying they aren't making money and have houses at 23, but they just date and bang the same girls they did in highschool and party with the same kids. I couldn't imagine living that way still. It's always the same every time I go back. Nothing changes except some chick got knocked up in highschool by some dude whos friend probably banged her a couple of years ago. A couple people get married, a couple get divorced a year. That's just kinda what my friends who stayed in vegas lives are like with a few exceptions if you grow up there.