Get Paid $10,000 to Move to Tulsa or Vermont

[Henry]

At some point in the future, this program will explain to media consultants why "OnlyFans strippers capsizing" went in and out of Google's most searched list within a year's time.

[unemployable]

https://ascendwv.com/terms-conditions-e ... uirements/

You have to have a remote-work job first.

[Henry]

I read a 2021 NY Times feature on Welch, WV. They did what a lot of poor communities do, brought in a prison. But it didn't work out. Most of the employees were commuters. The prison eventually split from Welch. They now have a housing shortage because of the condition of the homes. All of this has led to a 50% population decline in two years. The only real job opportunity is teaching. The way I see it, they are looking for socio/economic fire fighters. People willing to run into a burning building while everyone in it is running the hell out. I think it also explains the front loaded incentive structure. It's opiated laced Hail Mary.

[Ego]

Seems like a catch-22 to me. The kind of people who are capable of becoming pillars of the community (tax base and otherwise) would not be enticed to relocate for $10k and the kind of people who would are probably not the pillars this community needs.

That said, the €1 Italian homes gimmick seems to have lured a lot of money into certain dying villages where people toured the €1 homes with authorized real estate agents but then bought €70-100k+ fixer-uppers that the agents just happened to have available for showing. It will be interesting to see if they stay after they realize what it is like to live in a rural Italian village without all of the familial connections that sustained the place for generations.

[Henry]

I think the difference between Italy and West Virginia is Italy offers a false sense of adventure for the Eat, Pray, Love demographic (see Lorainne Bracco who bought a one Euro Home and turned it into a TV show). My guess is with WV, it's really an inducement for those living neighboring states, doing better than average, but where 10K might actually mean something.

[chenda]

I read a 2021 NY Times feature on Welch, WV.

It's only 24 hours from Tulsa.

[Henry]

So they are competitors in the pay to live arena. I'd be interested in reading about people who try this. I also wonder if they thought about identifying younger people who they think can contribute to the community and start paying them as incentive not to leave.

[jacob]

It's the small (=individual) version of cities/states/counties giving tax breaks to attract [big] businesses: Upfront payment for long term/delayed income stream. Like buying a bond. TAANSTAFL.

In theory, something something NPV to see who will be interested in that deal for a given interest rate and tax bracket.

In practice, "cash now" does seem to attract a certain demographics, because "cash now". I've noticed car commercials pursuing that strategy to get people to sign up for 72 months of payments.

[Henry]

A few differences I see is (1) corporations negotiate terms and can play community vs. community. Plus, it's not a one size fits all structure. Terms for the xyz pencil pushing company are different than those for Amazon. I don't see that in play here, at least as of yet; (2) there are usually long(er) term benefits involved with companies i.e. no property taxes for 10 years along and/or performance based incentives included - x amount of job creation from year to year and we'll discount your employment taxes correspondingly. So although deals may be front loaded, like guarantees in personal contracts, there are incentives to remain long term.

To me it's really just government bail out money where one has to keep some type of employment and relocate to another area to collect the bennies. I could see an itinerant remote workers community developing with entrepreneurial AIRBNBers working out the housing issue.

[Slevin]

Remote working is more prevalent than ever thanks to the pandemic, and it is turbocharging a program designed to diversify Tulsa’s economy. Tulsa Remote offers a $10,000 bonus to workers willing to make Tulsa their home base for their remote jobs for at least one year. More than 1,600 Tulsa Remote participants have earned a mean income of $127,000, about three times the city’s average. Ninety percent have stayed on after their one-year term was up.

—Matthew Winkler

Saw this in a Bloomberg article I was reading this morning. It seems to be a relatively successful program, bringing in a new set of people (from that salary average I’m guessing mostly software engineers) who don’t care about location as much. Interestingly you would think normal people who make 130k a year shouldn’t really give that much of a damn about 10k (less than 1 month pay). I would guess the actual win here is the advertising of cheap of housing, etc, combined with just enough incentive to stay until you get the 10k, after which you adjust to liking where you live, but obviously that is just speculation.

[Ego]

Sardinia is offering €15,000, with limitations. The money must be used to purchase or renovate a home. The grant must represent less than 50% of the renovation costs. The home must be purchased in a village with less than 3000 inhabitants.

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/08 ... -the-catch

[Henry]

Interestingly you would think normal people who make 130k a year shouldn’t really give that much of a damn about 10k (less than 1 month pay). I would guess the actual win here is the advertising of cheap of housing, etc, combined with just enough incentive to stay until you get the 10k, after which you adjust to liking where you live, but obviously that is just speculation.

I think it's both. I have seen family owned entrepreneurial companies move to other states because the entire economy of scale - the personal such as housing, food shopping etc. - as well as the corporate side are life changing. Of course you have to be a business that is not tethered to a geographical region. And if you are now netting 3x above what everyone else is making, it's the equivalent of moving to a foreign country. I also think 10K is 10K especially if you carry any type of personal debt. For the truly entrepreneurial, being a pioneer can truly be lucrative if the region resuscitates. But I don't know, these places look pretty damn bleak.

[7Wannabe5]

The only real job opportunity is teaching.

I currently reside in a low income area where the population has greatly decreased in recent decades. I previously resided in a low income area where the population had greatly decreased, but new immigrants with lots of kids were pouring in. To some extent low-income, underprivileged kids share the same experiences, but IMO there's really a different vibe teaching the poor kids who are pouring in as population goes back up vs. the kids who have been left behind after everybody who could bailed.

Another oddity is what Vicki Robins refers to as NORCs (naturally occuring retirement communities.) These are areas that are nice to live in, so therefore expensive, but not in possession of a lot of basic industry/employment opportunities. This can happen at a regional or neighborhood level. This results in schools or whole school districts where most of the residents are older, childless, affluent, so most of the kids live in the one cruddy cheap apartment complex their service worker parent(s) can afford. When I was teaching in one of these NORC zones, I had to walk a group of these relatively poor kids through the quite affluent neighborhood where the school was located to the public pool, and one of the kids, looking around, said "They don't want us here."

[Henry]

You know more than me. I was merely referring to the NYT article that addressed the kids who grew up in the community, usually raised by extended family members, made it through high school, got through some trade school and/or community college and decided to return to the community. The only opportunities are teaching at the schools in which they were taught. In a somewhat related note, I hope JD Vance gets trained by the entire population of a Louisiana penal colony.

[7Wannabe5]

@Henry:

Or they could work in nursing at the regional rural medical center caring for all the left behind old people slowly dying on Medicare.

I recently had the semi-surreal experience of being invited out on an outing to a Christmas Festival at a decrepit amusement park with several Boomer age females who grew up poor/working class and are now dealing with issues like having step-grandkids dumped on them by their drug-addicted parents or living in subsidized senior housing complex as one of the few residents who is still functional and able to help with very elderly neighbors who are starving due to neglect. There really are still (again?) places in the U.S. where the prospect of just "doing the needful work in front of you" is absolutely overwhelming.

[Henry]

That's a calling, not a job. You need a Mother Theresa of West Virginia.

[chenda]

I saw a documentary about some dodgy new age cult who took over some dying town somewhere in Oregon I think. They kept buying up all the cheap houses, drove all the locals away and got up to all sorts of crazy shit. They literally had to bring the army in to arrest the guru in the end.

[Henry]

Wild Wild Country

[chenda]

Wild Wild Country

Yes that was it. Gripping.

[Henry]

These types of areas built around a specific industry and sometimes a specific company whether coal, steel, mills, were feudal in nature. The corporations owned the houses, the general store, the town infrastructure so wages collected by the workers were just handed back to the employer. Matewan is a good movie about the coal industry in the early 20th century in West Virginia and the attempts to unionize in order to break the system. Harlan County USA also documents it in the 70's. I'm not sure this is reverse feudalism as it's a government/citizen not employer/employee relationship but it's reminiscent especially since the goal is to put that $833.33 per month back into the community, just not to the local pill mill or pawn shop so the area can increase their ratables now that the industries that built the area are gone. This is also why I never support missionaries in any church I attend. They fly over this disaster in order to go to Uganda or some lost tribal bullshit civilization so they can come back and deliver a power point of themselves dancing barefoot around a fire.