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How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive
- fovc 10y agoWould love to see how much Utah residents end up spending on poverty efforts, including donations and taxes and volunteer time. I believe there are inefficiencies in the current system, but by and large poverty reduction costs money. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative may not be feasible when you do the math
- huffmsa 10y agoThey do cost money, but by not lumping all of the programs into a single lumbering bureaucracy, you can get a lot more fast moving and need specific operations running, in this case probably at the parish level.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoIt seems to be feasible in Salt Lake City, though. If the community picks up where the government is lacking, the work still gets done and the poorest of our society get the help they need.
- alexanderson 10y agoMy perspective is that the government can operate that way, but the church seems to be the opposite: socially conservative but fiscally liberal. Hence the emphasis on nuclear families as well as giving freely to the poor.
- ricardonunez 10y agoIt seems that a big factor is empathy, something that many politicians don't have. Meanwhile in a few Places in Florida you get arrested if you try to feed the homeless.
- josinalvo 10y ago> Meanwhile in a few Places in Florida you get arrested if you try to feed the homeless. Can you please provide some source for that? Not that I doubt you, but that is very surprising (and I wonder what could possibly be their reasoning)
- adventured 10y agoIt made a lot of headlines in the last few years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/03/after-90-year-old-is-arrested-florida-judge-halts-law-that-restricts-feeding-the-homeless/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/0... http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article125306029.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article1253... http://www.naturalnews.com/047802_feeding_homeless_illegal_charity_hunger.html http://www.naturalnews.com/047802_feeding_homeless_illegal_c... And "In More Than 70 Cities, It's Illegal to Feed the Homeless" http://blog.lowincome.org/2016/08/more-than-70-cities-illegal-feed-homeless.html#.WOFACGf_pkg http://blog.lowincome.org/2016/08/more-than-70-cities-illega...
- davidf18 10y agoThe $20K per year per pupil that NYC (and other large cities) spends is skewed because of the enormous costs of special education. I don't know the numbers for NYC, but from an article I saw about Philly: cost to educate non-special need child: $10K, moderately special need: (7% of students) $20K, severe special need: (another 7% of students) $40K. I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs students. Still, we spend an enormous amount of money on K-12 education in NYC and other large cities.
- brianwawok 10y agoJust raw per student spending without adjusting for cost of living is silly also. If a Manhattan school is spending 14k per student, and a school in the middle of Iowa is spending 12k per student... do some COLA adjustments and you may find Manhattan is a "deal".
- jeffwass 10y ago"I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs students." Why do you suspect that? I'm not sure of your overall point, but are you implying it's bad to spend more on special needs students?
- masklinn 10y ago> I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs students. But one could assume the ratio stays the same, and thus so does the average (modulo the notes of other commenters e.g. cost of living). That however might not be the case, for various reasons cultural (does one population tend to homeschool special needs children more?) and "technical" (do parents of special ed children go to big cities for treatment/infrastructure?).
- therpe1 10y agoAnecdote: I suspect if you're the parent of a special needs kid and you're not filthy rich and you want to have access to the best specialists and, frankly, access to other special needs kids then it makes sense to move to the East Coast. This may be changing but for a long time East Coast schools were the only place where your kid could spend any quality time with an autism specialist. Part of it, I think, is just the fact that a lot of the research and the teaching colleges happen to be on the East Coast so there's a kind of knowledge community effect at work and this leads to better infrastructure. It's a situation where you need all the help you can get.
- greeneggs 10y ago> For a girl raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Salt Lake City is a very weird place. I went to Utah precisely because it’s weird. More specifically, because economic data suggest that modest Salt Lake City, population 192,672, does something that the rest of us seem to be struggling with: It helps people move upward from poverty. By this criterion, should Salt Lake City be so weird to a New Yorker? Upward Mobility in the 50 Biggest Cities: 1. San Jose 12.9% 2. San Francisco 12.2% 3. Washington DC 11.0% 4. Seattle 10.9% 5. Salt Lake City 10.8% 6. New York 10.5% ... 50. Charlotte 4.4% Source: Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/documents/ http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/documents/
- Retric 10y agoSalt Lake City is not much better than NYC making the article very disingenuous. A map makes the trends more clear: https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/the-complex-story-of-race-and-upward-mobility/?_r=0 https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/the-complex-st... The difference between good and average is not much, but the difference between average and bad is huge. The traditional 'south' is vastly worse of than most of the US. PS: Further, when comparing NYC vs Midwest is what it means to be upwardly mobile. NYC the top 1% is vastly higher than the 1% in SLS.
- DINKDINK 10y agoI wasn't able to glean it from the website (on mobile) but what method is used to distinguish between the phenomenon of "the income distribution of the generation living here now is more than the previous generation" vs "for this specific family, the children make more than the parents" It's seems to me that if a government instituted policies that in effect make it so that poor people cannot survive given the other economic pressures (for example: restrictive new-housing permitting in SF) that that phenomenon could lead to a fallacious inference from "the income distribution of SF citizens has gone up!" to "this generation of SF citizens is earning more than their parents" Additionally, how meaningful is it to a child that their income is ~10% higher than their parents if their cost of living has increased beyond that. Essentially all the surplus has been consumed. Edit: it seems that the intergenerarional method is potentially sound "Linking Children to Parents Parent(s) defined as first person(s) who claim child as a dependent Most children are linked to parents based on tax returns in 1996 We link approximately 95% of children to parents"
- huffmsa 10y agoA strong sense of community anchored on one set of religious and cultural mores generates a harmonious and accepting society? But what are they doing to make safe spaces for Pastafarians?
- kelukelugames 10y agoI have a couple of girlfriends who moved to/from Utah from/to a costal city. They think it's backwards as hell.
- huffmsa 10y ago> I have a couple of girlfriends Slow your polygamous roll there Warren Jeffs
- tp3z4u 10y agoWomen are on the internet now. The times they are a changing.
- yorwba 10y ago@kelukelugames claimed to be male once (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967181), so assuming they haven't changed their gender identity in the mean time, talking about multiple girlfriends does seem to imply polyamory. Of course I'm a non-native English speaker who has trouble keeping the various context-dependent interpretations of "girlfriend" straight, so I might still be misunderstanding something.
- tp3z4u 10y agoWow that is a fair point. I presumed he was more likely a woman given the wording and that polygamy is uncommon. Even in Mormonism. I concede my position.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoFor future reference, generally your posts are better accepted if you explain the reasoning behind your main point, especially if they are controversial. Controversial posts are generally well received on this site as long as they are logical and thought provoking.
- 10y ago
- alexanderson 10y agoAs a Utahn, the most disappointing thing about this article is the racial homogeny. It's true - nearly everyone is white. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some diversity. When my father was a Mormon bishop, he would dole out orders for the Bishop's Storehouse to everyone just the same, whether they were white, black, Latino, or Asian - Made no difference to him. They got the same food, but also had to live by the same requirements - coming to church and serving in the community. I recall one day after my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Out of the blue one of those families my dad had prepared an order for brought over a casserole for our family out of gratitude for what he did - not only for the food, but for helping him get back in their feet. And this was one of the latinix families. My point is that I wish there were data on what this experiment would be like with the racial diversity of NYC, DC, or elsewhere. While there are Mormon congregations in these places, with the same bishops storehouses, they aren't nearly as pervasive in their communities as In Utah, so it's hard to see the effects of their efforts.
- boomboomsubban 10y agoI wonder how much the missionary movement helps counteract the homogeneity. A benefit of diversity is an exposure to different ways of thinking, knocking on strangers doors will give you plenty of that.
- austenallred 10y agoI'm a white Mormon in Silicon Valley. We had the missionaries over for dinner last night (we generally distribute the responsibility of feeding them). One is from the Philippines, one grew up as an Ethiopian refugee in Kenya. I served a mission in eastern Ukraine and speak Russian fluently. My wife served a mission in Peru and speaks fluent Spanish.
- hkmurakami 10y agoIirc Matz (of Ruby) is Mormon. I've always wondered what the Mormon roots are like outside of the continental US and how they took hold and continue to be.
- itchyjunk 10y agoWhen I was first about to move to Utah, few years ago, lot of people asked me "why?" and told me a lot about a lot of things. Of course, I didn't even know who the Mormons were (I am not from USA originally). Most of what I heard was wrong. I've met Mormons who have asked me where I am from and not only know where that country is but spoke to me in my NATIVE tougue. I was very impressed. The key word in the article is the Mormon Church and its not an exaggeration. They do a lot in a lot of different areas (as if helping is ingrained in their blood). I am not sure why Utah has such an odd reputation outside of the state. But I am sure its something to do with the history that I haven' cared to look too deeply into. The downside of SLC is the smog though. You can feel the burn in your eyes some days. Also, the housing market seems to be booming here. I have seen so many housing complex start and finish and sell all the new houses in the last few years its amazing. I am not convinced it's planned out as best as it can be, though. SLC could do with more parks and trees inserted in some places.
- purity_resigns 10y agoBoise, ID has the same problem with air quality (and it's also in the Mormon heartland). As a non-Mormon growing up in Southern Idaho, it's hard to argue the church isn't very influential politically and also good at social works.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- arconis987 10y agoI grew up Mormon in Utah and I love the Mormons in my life. Every leader in local congregations is an unpaid volunteer. Everyone in the congregation has a responsibility to carry out in the community (sunday school teacher, youth mentor, clerk to track finances, etc). As a Mormon kid, I was taught to work hard my whole life for the good of others. I served a Mormon mission in Europe, which was an extremely difficult experience, but I learned the value of persistence and diligent hard work. There are definitely some interesting positive cultural influences from the Mormon church. There are some negative influences however. A few years ago, I decided no longer to participate in the Mormon church because of its harsh policies/teachings about LGBT people and because I found myself agreeing with agnostic atheism. I told my family and friends that I'd always respect them and their beliefs when I decided to leave the church. I was surprised by the harsh reaction: my Mormon loved ones told me that they were concerned about the future of my children, that I was depriving my family of happiness in heaven, and, as one of my own parents told me, they didn't know who I was anymore. I think Mormons are extremely kind to non-members of the church and to the church's current members. But if you are a member and you want to leave, sometimes they can be extremely harsh. I also think Mormons are some of the most kind people in the world on the person-to-person scale, but on the group-to-group scale, they can be pretty brutal sometimes. Blacks were denied access to the most sacred temple rituals until 1978, and today LGBT people in long-term relationships or marriages are considered apostates and their children are not allowed to be baptized. Weird mix of super kind and super harsh.
- jordache 10y agoIf the american dream means sucking down some of the worst polluted air in the country, then yes SLC is that realized. http://www.sltrib.com/home/4762483-155/utah-will-welcome-2017-with-bad http://www.sltrib.com/home/4762483-155/utah-will-welcome-201...
- kylesethgray 10y agoYupppp. and it seems like the government here doesn't care as long as it brings in profit.
- suresk 10y agoOur governor cheered Trump rolling back anti-pollution laws, because clearly the cause of the nasty inversions we get here is not enough pollution. Meanwhile, our legislature is focused on the real public health crisis in Utah - porn.
- paulddraper 10y agoYou are not wrong, but to bring some context to this: this is not because Utah doesn't care. Since moving to Utah from Florida I've often grumbled at the strict yearly emissions checks. Utah has emissions checks, has very functional public transit, and pushes for reductions. The primary reason is geographic. SLC is an urban area in a valley, which traps the smog.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jordache 10y agothe geography is a huge enabler of this, but the government is also complacent in not doing anything to ensure this issue doesn't bubble up to the extend it currently is. With the recent disastrous handling of the OR show. It is clear how the the Utah government prioritizes.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- princetontiger 10y agoSLC suffers from inversion, and this article fails to address it... Would never live there. Worst air quality in the nation during the winter.
- jordache 10y agoI'm sure the author didn't research enough to make this realization.
- ythn 10y agoAlso, lower oxygen levels in the air have been linked to higher depression and suicide (not just Utah, but everywhere near the Rockies).
- ghaff 10y agoMaybe because it doesn't have anything to do with the topic of the article? And SF can be cold and foggy.
- supremesaboteur 10y ago"Utah is a deep red state, but its conservatism is notably compassionate" Or maybe conservatives are not ruthless towards the poor ?
- ythn 10y agoA lot of progressives think that if you oppose government welfare programs, then you are being "ruthless" (even if you have a different solution in mind)
- patrickaljord 10y agoNot just a lot of progressives, accusing people who oppose "government welfare program to support X" to be against X has been a thing for the left that's been going on for centuries. Frederic Bastiat already said in 1850 in his famous quote: "Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
- philipodonnell 10y agoIn general, conservatives tend to regard poverty as a self-inflicted state, or at least that remaining in poverty is a failing of the individual by not escaping it, and thus addressing poverty should be left to that individual. Liberals think of poverty more as a systematic social condition that individuals bear little responsibility for, either getting there or remaining there, and thus addressing poverty should be undertaken by formal social support systems. It's not ruthless as much as different views of why poverty exists and how to address it, and like many issues, not all conservatives hold 100% conservative views. It's common to refer to conservatives who have a more liberal view of poverty as "compassionate", but it's just a word, not a judgement.
- lukaa 10y agoMost Utahans are of Northern European descent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah#Demographics. Northern European culture stayed with them with Mormon religion.
- tomcam 10y agoMy stock joke about it is that when you land at SLC and are waiting at the baggage area it's like you're surrounded by cheerleaders--and that's just the moms. Seriously, I'm not Mormon but I feel that they've got a ton to teach most of the rest of us. Bloomberg article quantified it effectively.
- thedevil 10y agoI'm from Utah. I moved to Seattle, then San Francisco. When I had a kid, I moved back to Utah. One thing I noticed is that Utah is almost all middle class. Some have more money, some have less, but most of them are middle class. It's relatively easy to go from poor to rich if you're really middle class. I mean that if your parents are well educated but a high school teacher and a stay-at-home-mom in a middle class neighborhood, you're poor but you can become a medical doctor almost as easily as a rich kid. It's not so easy to become a doctor if you're raised by your high school drop out grandma because your mom's working and your dad's missing and the adults around you are unemployed, going to prison, or working at fast food restaurants. If you can lift up people in situations like that, I'd be much more impressed. I think the Mormon welfare system is very impressive (and I do recommend that progressives take a look at it) and Utah government is vastly better than California's. But I think the lack of a real lower and upper class would make mobility look artificially better.
- itchyjunk 10y agoMaybe that is true for SLC. But how would you explain the million dollar houses and mansions in Park City, Provo etc without upper class? I see kids driving brand new cars and trucks that their parents bought to the SLC community college as well. My parents told me to use the bus.
- thomastjeffery 10y agoIt's only relatively true.
- DanBC 10y ago> If you can lift up people in situations like that, I'd be much more impressed. > But I think the lack of a real lower and upper class would make mobility look artificially better. I'm a bit confused. Aren't these contradictory? By not having poverty haven't they achieved the raising people out of poverty bit already?
- thedevil 10y ago
- skywhopper 10y agoThese sorts of comparisons inevitably don't mean much because there's just too many factors that are different between Utah and the states the author compares them to. It helps upward mobility if you start out better off, and Utah has the the fifth richest bottom quintile in the nation (See http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/state-income-quintiles-acs http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/sta...) in a place where household expenses and housing costs are probably lower than three or four of the states with a higher bar for being "bottom quintile". It also helps if you don't have entrenched poor communities, and are extremely culturally homogenous (meaning that those with power and money are far more likely to identify with and support the bottom quartile of people since they mostly share the same cultural and religious identity). In other words, Utah is so different than the counterexample states that making facile comparisons of "education spending per pupil" and concluding that "big government is not the solution" is a ridiculous argument to make.
- wang_li 10y agoIt might be ridiculous but not for the reasons you state. All those differences are the result of culture and governance.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoTwo points: 1. You're wrong about it being just culture and governance -- history and geography play a big role in why we see things developed as they are. 2. Even if it were, your comment is useless. You claim it's culture and governance, not just governance. With part of it being cultural homogeneity (as the GP said...), which is itself a quirk of history and geography, it doesn't follow that changing governance to match would lead to the same outcomes, since cultures wouldn't match (and likely be less homogeneous).
- ythn 10y ago> It also helps if you don't have entrenched poor communities Even still, the article does address this - "another economics professor at Brigham Young told me that his church ward had recently deliberately expanded its boundaries to include a nearby trailer park." I think this is a key ingredient to effective upward mobility: mixing of social classes. If you have setting multiple times a a week (church) where entrenched poor (trailer park) can mingle and interact with middle and upper class, that's a huge boon for the poor. Simply giving money to the poor in the form of an impersonal government check on the other hand is very ineffective.
- anovikov 10y agoI can't see how 20% is a 'perfectly just world'. It is not a perfectly just - it is a perfectly random world. If it was 20%, it means that person from every family (wrt. parent's incomes) has equal chance to end up rich or poor, meaning that there is nothing that parents could do to help their child. It means nothing but a totalitarian, concentration camp society, because even if education, healthcare etc. are perfectly equal and free for everyone, there is still a personal example and values taught to the person by his parents that define a lot of his future. If i could not do anything at all to help my children succeed, i'd call it anything but fair. Of course, reverse - 0% chance - is called a caste system. It is also completely unjust. Middle ground - 10% - sounds about right.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago> If it was 20%, it means that person from every family (wrt. parent's incomes) has equal chance to end up rich or poor, meaning that there is nothing that parents could do to help their child. That's not true. It would just mean that the parents' financial circumstances have no bearing on their ability to help their children.
- literallycancer 10y agoYou could have equal chance to end up in the top quintile when measuring income, and still do things to help your kids succeed. It would just mean that those things wouldn't depend on the family income. E.g. people whose family is more educated than the average would have better chances to end up in the top quintile by income, regardless of how much money they make.
- anovikov 10y agoWhat's the point of being more educated if you don't make more? Fancy way to waste time?
- literallycancer 10y agoIntellectual satisfaction. But you can ask that question about anything, really. What's the point of being stronger, if you can't just go and take other people's stuff? What's the point of being faster, when the first place prize is the same as the last?
- losteverything 10y agoI am not convinced that people in the bottom or top have the same dream as the rest; and I am not convinced the article title is the best one for the content. Her comment: "Salt Lake City is a very weird place." made me think more. Having experience in nearly all the states, SLC is truly unique. It is easy to imagine myself in almost all of the US, but SLC is hard for me, and thus I would agree with her statement. HOwever - UTAH is probably the best state for national parks and state parks. If you had to choose just one, I would choose Utah.
- m-j-fox 10y agoA religious organization subsumes state roles, providing social services as a way to reinforce social cohesion as well as the power structure in the religious hierarchy. The authorities dictate everything from clothing style to "volunteer" effort. Young men are exploited for their energy and lack of common sense to expand borders. Guys, am I talking about the Latter-Day Saints or ISIS? I'll bet you a beer that Megan McArdle (author of this article) was born and raised in the Mormon religion. How else do you explain the leap from social mobility to social services to yay white Mormons? This isn't the first piece she's written cheerleading the LDS homeland: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-15/verily-i-say-unto-you-christians-care-about-the-poor https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-15/verily-i-... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-11-08/mormons-peace-with-gay-marriage-only-goes-so-far https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-11-08/mormons-p... Now, I myself was born and raised in the Mormon religion. My view is that social mobility is high in Utah due to high economic growth which is fantastic compared to the rest of red-state America, and definitely due to Mormon influence, but not for the reasons Megan would have you believe: Mormons breed early and often. Their workforce is the youngest in the nation and no surprise, this is a recipe for economic growth. They're having a baby boom in Utah all the time. If government has done anything to help, they've carved more than their fare share out of the federal budget to support jobs in the state. Major exports include rocket parts and spying on you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiokol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiokol Other than that, Utah's major industry seems to be pyramid schemes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_Skin_Enterprises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_Skin_Enterprises https://www.quora.com/Why-are-multi-level-marketing-companies-MLM-based-in-Utah-USA https://www.quora.com/Why-are-multi-level-marketing-companie... Just google Utah MLM, theirs too much good stuff. The reason I bring it up is that economic growth through high fertility is very much a pyramid scheme. At some point they will run out of room in the desert and then they will have to grapple with caring for an aging population like other formerly frothy reproduction based economies (Japan, China, most of the US).
- dang 10y agoReligious flamewars are not welcome on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoAll the California transplants should take not before they become politically active and turn it into the kind of place they left.
- jeffdavis 10y agoIn other words, the left and the right are both wrong. The left is wrong because it focuses too much on money and entitlements rather than real help. It also uses big government only, which crowds out local solutions, churches, and NGOs. Beyond that, many on the left are actively hostile towards religion. The right is wrong because they scale back government without doing the hard work to build alternative solutions, and leave people stranded. (Obviously these are caricatures and not to be taken personally.) Sounds like the people in Utah have somethibg figured out.
- lern_too_spel 10y agoYou can think of the Mormon Church as a second government in Utah that levies a 10% gross income tax on nearly everyone in the state and spends a portion on welfare programs.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoWhile a majority of Utah is technically Mormon, only like half of those are active in the church. So in practice, you're probably looking at like 30% of households paying tithing.
- tomcam 10y agoNo. You don't get thrown into jail if you don't tithe.
- jeffdavis 10y agoA church is not a government. Governments have special powers that churches do not. Because it has those powers, government has an incredible burden to be fair. That doesn't sound so bad, but really limits how effective it can be at many things.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> A church is not a government. A church can be nothing like a government, very much like a government, a de facto government, or a de jure government. In practice, relevant to the specific situation at hand, a religion which is both dominant in a region and possessed of a strong centralizee heirarchy often acts a lot like a government, though it's direct sanctions are generally social (though potentially very powerful in effect, including economically) and often also has substantial influence with the formal government.
- paulddraper 10y agoA few observations as a resident of Utah for the past 6 years (1) Fantastic for outdoor activities: skiing, mountain biking, hiking, camping. Has some of the most popular national parks in the United States (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Zion). 2/3 of the state is federally preserved. (2) Software industry is huge. Both historically (Novell, WordPerfect) and nowadays. If I had to find a SE job right now, it would take a week, because I'm picky. (3) Geographically, most of the population lives in a 60 mile stretch along the Salt Lake Valley in the north. South Utah is warmer, more rural, and attracts retirees. (4) Cost of living is relatively low. Two years ago I bought an older 5 bed, 3 bath, 2000 sq ft, 2 car garage, 0.19 acre house 10 minutes from downtown Salt Lake for less than $200k. Utah is growing fast, so that is changing a little. Still, my income is 33% less than what I could get in SV, and housing is a fifth the cost. (5) The culture is hugely influenced by Mormonism (similar to say, South America and Catholicism or the South and Baptists). This means industrious people, larger traditional families, more sobriety, and conservative government. I've seen people come here and hate it, and others come here and love it. The gist of the article is correct: it depends how much you like the traditional "American dream."
- narrowrail 10y agoI live within an hour of the Utah border and there is great outdoor opportunity. Unfortunately, it's easier to have four wives than smoke a plant.
- jordache 10y ago1) Distance of the SE Utah playground is just as far to SLC as Denver. So it's a moot point. I can also confidently say the drive from Denver to SE Utah trumps the drive from SLC to SE Utah
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- paulddraper 10y agoDon't disagree, but SLC is insanely close to the Wasatch mountains. Colorado has mountains too, though they're a ways away from Denver, Colorado Springs, Bolder. I have co-workers that go skiing in the morning, and come in around 10:00am.
- diebir 10y agoGo ahead and visit Salt Lake (I am comparing to Colorado). I think they either don't have the money or out of principle do not maintain their roads. That's the economy. The geography is not favorable either. Salt Lake sits in a bowl surrounded by dark hills with little vegetation. The hills are all dug by mines and open pits. They have the whole range ("on the other side") that is essentially one big mine. The winter is cold and the temperature inversion traps cold air in the bowl and the air quality becomes worst in the nation (you can't even run outside). There's no chinook winds in winter, so it's colder than the other side of the Rockies. The political landscape is very bleak. This is the most conservative state in the nation. Utah hates their environment so much, that they are working on shrinking or destroying several National Monuments (Escalante and Bears Ears). Their congressmen are loathsome Trump toads like Chaffetz (who investigated Park Service for making a folder with maps for a new monument, but refused to investigate anything about Trump). The anti-environment stance in Utah has become so bad, that the Outdoor Retailer Show (the prime event for multi-billion outdoor industry) has left Salt Lake. Patagonia, Arcteryx and many others initiated it. The only redeeming quality in Utah is the ski areas nearby. 15 miles vs 40-60-70 in Colorado. And the snow is better. BTW, the Salt Lake is empty in winter, in prime ski season. Never seen motels and hotels so empty and so cheap. Good for skiing, not good for the economy. Mormons are nice people for the most part.
- saryant 10y ago> The political landscape is very bleak. This is the most conservative state in the nation. Utah hates their environment so much, that they are working on shrinking or destroying several National Monuments (Escalante and Bears Ears). Their congressmen are loathsome Trump toads like Chaffetz (who investigated Park Service for making a folder with maps for a new monument, but refused to investigate anything about Trump). Utah is also home to some of Congress' most anti-Trump members. Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Mia Love, among others. At the 2016 GOP convention, the Utah delegation was one of the groups trying to overthrow Trump's nomination (along with Colorado's delegation). They failed, of course, but Sen. Lee was instrumental in getting those efforts off the ground. Almost as if a broad generalization isn't an accurate picture...
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- austenallred 10y agoI'm a Mormon (grew up in Utah, served a mission in eastern Ukraine, speak Russian fluently, now live in the Bay Area). I often think of the way the Mormon church works as a distributed system, and the way it operates is not unlike most open source software. It works because everyone knows their role, is dedicated, and willing to sacrifice. In the ward (congregation) I'm in now I teach the fourteen-year-olds on Sunday. My wife teaches the 16-year-old girls in the third hour of church. In our last ward I was the eleven-year-old boy scout leader, and would take one night a week to teach them self sufficiently, how to camp and fish and hunt, knot tying, etc. We'd also go camping four times per year. Both my wife and I fast (don't eat) one day/month and donate what we would have spent on food (in reality a lot more) to the poor. We also donate 10% of our income to the church, a lot of which goes to the poor. We feed the Mormon missionaries once a month (we did so last night; one grew up as a refugee in Kenya, the other grew up in the Philippines). My wife and I each served a mission (me - Ukraine for two years, her - Lima, Peru for 18 months). The organization is what makes it work, and is really top notch. If there's an emergency we know exactly what our role is. When we come across someone who is struggling we know exactly what to do. There are volunteers assigned to be employment specialists, to help with food, over shelter, educational resources, funds earmarked, etc. (For both members and non-members). Every once in a while calls for extra funds or materials come out during a natural disaster or refugee influx, though most of the time those are stockpiled and ready to ship long in advance. There are weekly leadership meetings where needs of the people in our area (mostly concerned with members, but we'll discuss on-members as well), and each member is supposed to have an in-person visit each month to make sure they're not doing OK. I'm assigned three families, and if anything is wrong we report back and it's taken care of. In my teens I volunteered once a month teaching in a prison and once a quarter helping out in a nursing home. Growing up we served on the church farm, my parents frequently volunteered at the canning facility, and we took people into our home that were struggling to get by. There are a lot of problems within the Church, and things we need to work on and fix. But, I think, as an efficient caregiving and charitable institution, there are few in the world that rival it.
- subpixel 10y agoI would love to contribute to a system like the one you describe that was not based on fealty to any particular system of belief. That being said, I'd argue that the belief (especially the affinity of shared belief) is totally fundamental to the system at any sort of scale. My own beliefs [0] are unfortunately not easily evangelized. [0] https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2013/06/apprecianity.html https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2013/06/apprecianity.html
- redsummer 10y agoUtah is more like what the US used to be like. Demographically, it's like early 60s America. Whiter, higher social trust, more Christian, neighborly, higher work ethic, higher rates of marriage, more kids, fewer illegitimate kids, no grievance industry etc. Many of these factors are looked down on by people of a certain political outlook. Seen as regressive. And yet they're happier in Utah. The Mormons try harder to keep on the straight and narrow because their religion is less authentic - it's made up by a couple of PT Barnum types, rather than centuries of tradition. You don't need to try hard if you're resting on a thousand years of tradition. https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=371&v=7q6brMrFw0E https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=371&v=7q6brMrFw0E Perhaps the lesson is that you should join the most absurd religion (or invent your own) and then make up for its absurdity strive to live a good life in order to prove the effectiveness of the religion.
- Dobbs 10y agoOn the other hand Utah has one of the higher suicide rates in the country[1], and leads the country in use of antidepressants[2]. Despite being tongue-in-cheek I think the lesson is not so cut and dry. In my personal, anecdotal experience, a lot of the behavior in Utah is forced to keep up the image of a particular life style. 1: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm 2: http://articles.latimes.com/2002/feb/20/news/mn-28924 http://articles.latimes.com/2002/feb/20/news/mn-28924
- cookiecaper 10y agoStatistics about Utah must always be taken with a grain of salt, even larger than is typically appropriate for gross/large-scale generalizations. People know that Utah stats are seen as a proxy for the success and/or failure of Mormonism and will distort findings to accommodate their agenda. A quick example of this is that after Prop 8 passed in CA, a "study", using data sourced from a single, unnamed "top 10 pay site vendor" was published claiming that Utah had the highest incidence of online porn use in the US. That myth stuck for a while, but PornHub started releasing state-by-state traffic reports on its blog and have repeatedly and clearly debunked it. By those numbers, Utah regularly ranks in the bottom 10 states for online porn use. Regarding depression, Mormon leaders explicitly encourage people to seek mental health treatment if/as necessary, and actively work to destigmatize the use of antidepressants, so increased use in Utah should not be a surprise. Leaders have told them it's OK, so they proceed without the guilt that may be unresolved in other areas. Just conjecture here, but maybe a correlation between suicide and antidepressant use is a signal that antidepressants are inadequate and/or, at least in some cases, potentially counterproductive, rather than a signal that the populace is less happy vs. the baseline.
- OliverJones 10y agoI live in a racially homogeneous (Euro-American), neoliberal, resolutely secular, generally well-off small city in Massachusetts. I think it's fair to call the city's culture a post-Calvinist post-Christian monoculture of striving upper middle class white people. Most of our kiddos have two married parents. The majority can expect middle class economic success in their lives. I volunteer in a drop-in center for kiddos in the public housing project for families, where our Euro upper middle class monoculture isn't visible. People come from other parts of MA to live in our public housing project for all kinds of reasons. Many households contain just one parent. Many are disfunctional. Many kids don't have enough structure in their home lives to get their schoolwork done. Lots of the poverty is multigenerational. The purpose of our drop-in center is to try to give these kiddos a vision of what it would be like to get out of housing -- to be socially mobile. Statistically, I suppose the phrase "get out of housing" means "move from the bottom quintile to some other stratum." But "get out of housing" is more tangible. And it's very difficult in my city. Why? Because we antipoverty activists get a lot of positive liberal lip-service but not much tangible support from the majority. Most of the kids in town are insanely busy -- music, dance, rock-climbing gym, sports. But, the kids in housing have very little to do; they don't feel like they fit in. It would be GREAT to have a bishop or two cracking the whip and saying, "Look, suck it up. Welcome these neighbors into your lives, and treat them like neighbors." "You're going to Cambridge to check out Harvard and MIT? Take a friend along." etc. We have some small victories: a few families a year stabilize, get jobs, and move out. But we have some defeats too. It's all about keeping at it. But to me the metaphorical grass in SLC sounds pretty green from this article.
- jernfrost 10y agoAs a Norwegian who has spent a lot of time in Utah visiting distant relatives and having them visit Norway, I made a lot of thoughts about Utah in relation to the Scandinavian society model. This article is a nice addition to my own experiences. I admit I felt at first somewhat envious and impressed by the community sense, they have in Utah. Family and neighbors seem quite close. People are very smiling and positive. As a diehard atheist, meeting mormons made me really have to contemplate the role of religion. It seemed to make many mormons happy and create a tight knight society. And despite being anti-religion and atheist I actually wanted to live there for some years just for the experience. I loved my time there despite it being so much at odds with values in many respect. Mormons deserve a lot of praise for what they have accomplished. Yet after staying longer I think it became clear to me that there was a dark side to what looked like paradise at first glance. Too me it is a bit funny to see Americans praise the Utah model, when it is a far more extreme case of homogeneity than any Scandinavian country typically dismissed as a viable model for America for just that reason. To me people in Utah live a complete bubble world, with little idea of what the real world is like or what other people think about stuff. They seemed very confused when speaking to a non-mormon or non-religious person like myself about particular subjects. And if you didn't fit the narrow path designated by the mormon church, you were pretty much screwed. I honestly think the Scandinavian model scales a lot better when it comes to tackling societies problems than the Utah model. It allows for a lot more individualism and ethnic mix. It doesn't rely on the majority being strongly religious and doing huge amounts of volunteer work. In a way Utah is really just doing the same as Scandinavian welfare states are doing. Citizens are contributing a lot of resources towards helping the less fortunate. The difference is that in Utah it happens through volunteering through the church, and a strong social pressure to do so. In Scandinavia it happens through high taxes. I realize that in the US the Utah approach is more palatable as it is strictly speaking not required to contribute, while you can't skip taxes in Scandinavia. However in practice there is a a strong social pressure that means it isn't really an option not to. It is interesting though that creating social mobility and reducing poverty follows very similar receipts in Utah and Scandinavia. E.g. avoiding that welfare becomes a way of life has a pretty strong tradition in Scandinavia as well. The Norwegian labour party's old slogan was "Do your duty and demand your right!" The welfare system has always been generous but also quite a lot more pushy on getting people back into work than what has been the case in many other countries. But the ability for the system to work has also rested on a lot of trust between people as in Utah. I believe in Norway 68% say you can trust your fellow man, while in the US in general would around 30%, while in e.g. Brazil it would be 2%. That is one of my strongest believes about society. One of the most important things for society to succeed is trust.
- innocentoldguy 10y agoI live in Utah, and there are many reasons as to why breaking out of poverty is easier here than other parts of the country. I just want to mention one though: The Mormon church is a huge power in welfare in this state, and while they do focus on feeding, clothing, and housing the poor, their welfare program really pushes self-reliance, education, and breaking the cycle of poverty in people's lives. They spend a lot of money to train people with marketable skills, and they give interest-free education loans to their members, in poverty-stricken countries, in an effort to help elevate the conditions and opportunities in those countries. As part of the help they give, they encourage people to donate and volunteer themselves, to help others in need, as they break out of poverty themselves. A lot of people complain about the Mormon church, over a variety of issues, but this is one thing they do incredibly well, I think.
- Mz 10y agoThe article makes many good points about how upward mobility works. These points generally fit with what I understand: That stable marriage is one of the best ways to become and stay upper middle class; that poor neighborhoods with too few middle class people have much more serious problems than poor neighborhoods with X percentage of middle class residents; that spending on education is not the most critical metric for education effectiveness. etc. It's a really good piece. The conversation here, not so much. I am not hugely familiar with Mormonism myself, but I grew up in the Deep South, a place full of hellfire-and-brimstone Christians. That does not mean all Christians are like that. I am not personally fond of Christianity, but there is a line in the bible somewhere where someone tells Jesus "People will do terrible things in your name someday" (or words to that effect) and he replies "I will say I did not know them." (or words to that effect). Christians behaving in a way that gives Christianity a bad name is not definitive proof that Christianity is an inherently evil organization. Ditto Mormonism. I am somewhat disappointed that so much of this discussion is about Mormonism and so little about upward mobility. I am deeply disappointed that the topmost comment here is one that outright mocks Mormonism. Bad enough it was said, but then multiple people apparently upvoted it. Ugh.
- heynowletsgo 10y agoSimply a kinder, gentler power structure. Not anything the US government hasn't pretended to be working toward for years. All it is is treating citizens as "one of your own" instead of as one of the "them". No great mystery, when power doesn't act quite as much as monstrous assholes people have a better time. People need to stop pretending like a little concern for your fellow man is some difficult, complicated, magical system design based on some secret power. When governments let people help those around them they will. Just get out of the way and give up a little control. All its ever taken for people to build a better system here is just for the Government to get out of the way.That's how the west was won, and built.
- crestedtazo 10y agoHow do you reconcile your ability to use and understand complex technology like computers and the internet, but at the same time legitimately believe it is possible for some dumb hick to find some golden tablets that were literally made by God that only he could translate into English and which had to be hidden forever when he was done so that his claims could never be proven? I just find it fascinating that an educated (or at least semi-educated) human being in 2017 can believe such nonsense. Your mind must be a massive battlefield riddled with the corpses of logic and reason. Thank you for your comment!
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