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Comment by nightski | Hacker News Reader

HN has such an absurd view of the Midwest. I live in the Midwest. We have a large MS campus here along with quite a few smaller tech companies. The main economic drivers here are tech, agriculture, and oil (not manufacturing, mining, or conservative ideologies whatever that means). My group of friends averages in the 150-250k range of income which is high for the area for sure but it's evidence of the thriving technology scene. It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years. Nothing in your description comes close to accurately describing our small city in the Midwest.

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> My group of friends averages in the 150-250k range of income which is high for the area for sure but it's evidence of the thriving technology scene.

That's honestly not evidence of a thriving technology scene, its evidence that you and your friends make a lot of money. Would you say you and your friends are representative of the typical worker in the Midwest?

I could see how it is low compared to farmers, but most farm income goes into operating costs. Farmer Joe could be making 500k a year but that doesn't mean he's taking home much in profit, in a lot of cases he's taking far less.

HN has such an absurd view of the Midwest.

It's not just HN, I keep reading many opinions and thinkpieces that reference "the situation in the midwest" when trying to talk about jobs, job markets and localized economies that are often frustratingly and annoyingly WELL off the mark.

I share your frustration.

Signed,

Northern Indiana

I live in Michigan and I've spent a bit of time in northern Indiana. My observation is that it was one of the most impoverished, destitute, and hopeless places I've ever visited, and I've also spent considerable time in sub-Saharan Africa.

I've never lived there though, so I'm curious to hear how far off the mark you consider me to be.

Allow me to be a bit self-deprecating on behalf of my fellow Hoosiers here: I'm from Indianapolis, originally. We have a rule about going into "other" Indiana:

Don't.

More seriously, no you're not really that far off. Most of the wealth concentrated in NWI specifically exists to and from Chicago. In this case, not speaking for anyone else by me and my own experiences: I have many friends who live in towns like Hammond, but with the exception of groceries and utilities spend a lot of their time (and money) over in IL (these are the well to do types, I should clarify). My job is in Chicago. Personally I'd be curious to see if anyone's ever done the numbers on how towns like Merrilville and Hammond are doing fiscally against how many residents hold full-time jobs in the second city.

Brain drain is a real thing too, if kiddo isn't going to ND, IU Northwest or State (or even traveling down to Bloomington or Lafayette), they're probably heading up 55 to Chicago and going to one of the many schools up there. And not returning because...well, there's not much here, big wheel in the sky keeps on turning.

All that said: Housing is affordable. Indianapolis is slowly transforming into something really interesting. Have fun getting there with these roads but..

Thanks for the response. I almost went to IU in Bloomington for grad school, and I still love the town. The Runcible Spoon is still top 5 breakfasts I've ever had. But outside of there, and maybe Indianapolis, the state just seems forgotten by time.

The Runcible Spoon

I'm an IU grad myself and 100% agree it's still one of my favorite breakfast spots; I'll be down there for the holidays and it's definitely on the list.

I went to Purdue, and when I graduated (15 years ago) my best job offer in Indiana was 30k for a 1 year contract in Fort Wayne. I took an offer at 75k/year full time in California. At the time cost of living was comparable to Indianapolis (so more expensive than FW, but not $45k/year more).

It's also low compared to the farmers around here which do quite well in good years

It seems unfair to look at a farmer's peak income and say that they are doing well. Of my 5 uncles that owned farms, all but one had to give up their farms because they couldn't make a living -- now they work on corporate owned farms (which includes their former land) for mid-range pay for the area (which is much lower than tech-industry pay). A few lean years can put a farmer so under water that they can't recover.

The one uncle that still runs his farm (well, he's mostly retired now, his daughter and her husband do most of the work) managed to survive because he had two strokes of luck - he sold some land to a developer for a good profit and he has some natural gas wells on his property, as part of the "rent" for the well, he gets free gas so his energy cost is nearly zero for as long as those wells keep producing.

The "midwest" is probably not the right description since it of course includes, like, Illinois. I was referring I guess to "rural America."

So, a small farming town with a thriving tech scene where one's natural social circle is people with six figure salaries?

Your description doesn't come close to describing the average small city in the Midwest.

Or the east.

Or the south.

Or the west.

Or even most suburbs.

I'd love to know your zip code so I can look at the amazing census data for your area and figure out how to replicate that miracle

HN has an absurd view of anything outside of California.

This. I went to a small rural high school in the MidWest, attended an elite college, and thereafter lived in L.A. and Chicago. Typically, whenever someone talks about 'fly over' country I don't take them seriously. Reality is a lot more banal and unsurprising. People who denigrate fly over country are exactly the same in their inaccurate claims as the people I know from fly over country who denigrate large urban centers.

When I first moved to L.A. I had two different people (on separate occasions at Pan Pacific Park) ask me if I was from the MidWest. I said yes, but asked how they knew. Both responded, "because you're friendly." Doesn't have broader significance, but those encounters always stood out to me.

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