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Rural Kansas is dying

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Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#151

Post by pasbesoin »

pnutjam wrote: post #141
eventualhorizon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T dropped fiber in my front yard too. I ignored it for a few months because previously they only offered bundles with tv and telephone and crappy speeds to boot. A coworker told me he was getting symmetric gigabit from AT&T for $70/month so I decided to check them out. I switched from Comcast and everything has been awesome except for the supplied wireless router. My iDevices will not work reliably on it so I adde…

AT&T was offering symmetric 100mb for $40 and gigabit for $80 in my Indianapolis suburb. I understand it still has a cap of 1TB if I'm not mistaken. I guess they waive it if you use Uverse TV or directTV.

Yes, even if the prices aren't extortionary, I worry about the cap.

And the usage monitoring/scraping they keep wanting to do, and the upcharge for "opting out" of that. Especially as more and more online resources block access coming from/through commercial VPN's, AWS, and other convenient means of using a VPN as an individual, to bypass such monitoring.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#152

Post by pasbesoin »

eventualhorizon wrote: post #103
pasbesoin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's supplying the gigabit fiber connectivity, out there? P.S. Answered my own question. Information may be out of date, but quite limited coverage residential plans from a couple of companies, and somewhat more but still limited coverage from a few companies business class offers. Wish I had that many choices. ATT finally dropped a fiber line into our neighborhood, but it's not hooked up yet. Given what Comcast is…

AT&T dropped fiber in my front yard too. I ignored it for a few months because previously they only offered bundles with tv and telephone and crappy speeds to boot. A coworker told me he was getting symmetric gigabit from AT&T for $70/month so I decided to check them out. I switched from Comcast and everything has been awesome except for the supplied wireless router. My iDevices will not work reliably on it so I adde…

Yep, I keep reading about how Google Fiber (or its like) entering an area causes competitors to launch competitive offers -- just in that same area, of course.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#153

Post by Retric »

jonknee wrote: post #32
Retric wrote: post #2

I think the fact Kansas's population is decreasing is likely a good thing. People generally prefer living other places and automation let's that happen. PS: The average household net worth in Kansas is apparently $424,976 which is well above the US national average.

Average household net worth is meaningless. Charles Koch himself is worth ~$60,000,000,000 which comes out to a cool $55,562 per household in Kansas. And that's just one guy!

That's true specifically because the population is low. Someone is going to own the land and industry of the state. Extreme outliers are also part of the national average weath, but your u will find a lot more multi millionaires per capital in Kansas than most other states.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#154

Post by chrissnell »

pm24601 wrote: post #132
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

Meh. Brownback. No funding for my kids' school if I was to move to Kansas. No tourism or things to do that are different. Miles and miles of miles and miles..... I might move back to my home state in the Midwest, if they got rid of their own Brownback equivalent... but Kansas... meh. Sorry!

You're making a generalization that just isn't true. My kids go to a gret public school system. I'm quite happy with the education they're receiving. (This is coming from a guy who attended one of the best public school systems in the US and went to college at Vanderbilt University, so I know what a good school is.)

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#155

Post by chrissnell »

AFNobody wrote: post #113
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

> I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. > It's beautiful out here and I wish more tech workers would consider the Midwest when they decide to leave the Bay Area. I think you are confused to the core issue. Your situation is relatively difficult to sustain long term and I know of only 1 person (out of 20+) that tried it that have succeeded for 1…

I've been working remote for over ten years now and I've never had a hard time finding work. I've never had to work for a subpar salary because of my reduced cost-of-living. Being experienced helps but ultimately it's about delivering results.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#157

Post by pm24601 »

chrissnell wrote: post #154
pm24601 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Brownback. No funding for my kids' school if I was to move to Kansas. No tourism or things to do that are different. Miles and miles of miles and miles..... I might move back to my home state in the Midwest, if they got rid of their own Brownback equivalent... but Kansas... meh. Sorry!

You're making a generalization that just isn't true. My kids go to a gret public school system. I'm quite happy with the education they're receiving. (This is coming from a guy who attended one of the best public school systems in the US and went to college at Vanderbilt University, so I know what a good school is.)

Here is my test of how good a school really is. The conversation among the NON-valedictorians is:

Poor: "Why should I go to university?"

Ok: "Are you going to university?"

Better: "Which university are you going to?"

Best: "Are you going to X, Y, Z university?"

In other words, how much does the community value education?

Red states as demonstrated by their budget choices do not value education. There may be a few local exceptions. As a general statement, Kansas budget choices has demonstrated hostility to quality education. Kansas has demonstrated that tax cuts > education.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#158

Post by AFNobody »

chrissnell wrote: post #155
AFNobody wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. > It's beautiful out here and I wish more tech workers would consider the Midwest when they decide to leave the Bay Area. I think you are confused to the core issue. Your situation is relatively difficult to sustain long term and I know of only 1 person (out of 20+) that tried it that have succeeded for 1…

I've been working remote for over ten years now and I've never had a hard time finding work. I've never had to work for a subpar salary because of my reduced cost-of-living. Being experienced helps but ultimately it's about delivering results.

Ah yes the "well you must not be good enough" response when someone points out the average person is average. Usually followed by crabs in a bucket or pessimists or whatever.

"I can do it so the majority can" is rarely true. Even when it comes to skills I would consider as basic as handling finances intelligently or cooking a decent meal or acknowledging one's limitations.

Be careful about assuming you are exceptional because most people aren't.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#159

Post by daxorid »

bsder wrote: post #11

The problem is quite direct: people do not wish to live there. Getting 100 people to decide that town X is going to be their telecommute hub and doing it is simply not that hard to organize nowadays--if people actually wanted to do it. The fact that nobody wants to do this says more than any amount of development initiatives.

Speak for yourself. Plenty of us want to do it, and are doing it.

Cities are rotten.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#160

Post by Latteland »

walrus01 wrote: post #58
jonknee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need more than internet access (which is probably not all that great in much of rural Kansas!) for people to want to live somewhere. I mean you can get that anywhere, why pick perfectly flat wheat fields? The small towns were a byproduct of needing a lot of people to grow wheat, they weren't destinations that people chose.

If I were going to pick a boring, flat land wheat farm type of place with ultra low cost of living to telecommute from, I would not pick Kansas. You can buy a pretty decent house in Ritzville, WA for $100k, it is on I-90, and it's not a ridiculous driving distance to Spokane or Seattle. And numerous mountainous hiking/camping/skiing/4x4ing locations within a 2 hour radius. Also in the wheat farming sort of region, so…

And there's a tesla supercharger there, so you are covered for everything.
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