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>Also consider that such a thing would totally devastate the local community and surrounding areas in numerous ways How so?

talmand 13y ago
Well, some quick ones that come to mind... Say we have a town that has had a steady population levels of around 50,000 people for about ten years. Now suddenly they have a sudden influx of 10,000 to 20,000 people in a few months time. Local government services would be immediately strained. For instance, suddenly there's a few hundred to thousands of new students that they somehow have to find room for. That means rooms, supplies, teachers, staff, and so on. Your kid was getting a good education when it was twenty a class, now it's forty a class. Unless they had the foresight to plan for that they don't have the money. For the next budget year they have to raise taxes to afford the new stuff they need. This really sucks for the people who have been there the whole time and haven't necessarily seen a raise in their pay because they aren't involved in the boom. Wear and tear on infrastructure is suddenly much worse than normal requiring more frequent repairs ruining the established schedules and budgets. They have to raise taxes to cover the new costs. Housing becomes premium. That house next door your son was thinking of buying with his new wife so you could help raise the grandkids? Can't afford it. Small apartments that used to be $500 are now $1000 or more. New cheap apartments and houses get put together as quickly as possible to meet demand. These will start to degrade around the time the boom starts to decline of which the community will have to deal with. More crime that the small local police force that's accustomed to dealing with people they know will somehow have to find a way to deal with it all. Will need to hire more officers they don't have the budget for. Restaurants are happy about the new business until they realize they need to hire new staff at much higher pay than before. Why work as a busboy at a buck over minimum wage when they can go out to the fields for three-to-four times (or more) than that? Suddenly a low paying job must pay a great deal more to get anybody to apply. That's good right? Until you realize the restaurant raised its prices so that the $5 sandwich you really liked is now $9.99 with no drink. Since house prices have gone up that most likely means your property tax bill will be higher the next time its due. Granted, depending on local laws. So, let's say a few years have gone by and somehow our little town has managed to deal with all these new and strange challenges they found themselves with. Then the boom goes away as they often do. More infrastructure than they really needed has been slapped together as fast as possible and now needs to be maintained because it exists. Now we need to start firing local government people because we no longer require them and the tax revenues are reducing because the boom has busted. Suddenly large number of people needing jobs that don't exist. People who got the restaurant jobs at inflated pay will never leave because now they have the best jobs in town. The restaurant has to fire them anyway because they can't afford them since no one can afford the food now. These people won't be happy about going back to a buck over minimum in this type of job. People are leaving town because no one can afford the over-priced housing and apartments which is currently all falling apart because they were cheaply made. By the time the pricing becomes affordable everybody's moved away. Now you have abandoned housing that's ripe for even more crime. And I could easily think of more but I'm getting long here. I admit that much of this is worse-case scenario type stuff but it's all possible without planning to deal with it. I personally seen some of these things happen in big cities that had the housing booms. The same thing happening in a small town would not go over well.

talmand 13y ago

Well, some quick ones that come to mind... Say we have a town that has had a steady population levels of around 50,000 people for about ten years. Now suddenly they have a sudden influx of 10,000 to 20,000 people in a few months time. Local government services would be immediately strained. For instance, suddenly there's a few hundred to thousands of new students that they somehow have to find room for. That means rooms, supplies, teachers, staff, and so on. Your kid was getting a good education when it was twenty a class, now it's forty a class. Unless they had the foresight to plan for that they don't have the money. For the next budget year they have to raise taxes to afford the new stuff they need. This really sucks for the people who have been there the whole time and haven't necessarily seen a raise in their pay because they aren't involved in the boom. Wear and tear on infrastructure is suddenly much worse than normal requiring more frequent repairs ruining the established schedules and budgets. They have to raise taxes to cover the new costs. Housing becomes premium. That house next door your son was thinking of buying with his new wife so you could help raise the grandkids? Can't afford it. Small apartments that used to be $500 are now $1000 or more. New cheap apartments and houses get put together as quickly as possible to meet demand. These will start to degrade around the time the boom starts to decline of which the community will have to deal with. More crime that the small local police force that's accustomed to dealing with people they know will somehow have to find a way to deal with it all. Will need to hire more officers they don't have the budget for. Restaurants are happy about the new business until they realize they need to hire new staff at much higher pay than before. Why work as a busboy at a buck over minimum wage when they can go out to the fields for three-to-four times (or more) than that? Suddenly a low paying job must pay a great deal more to get anybody to apply. That's good right? Until you realize the restaurant raised its prices so that the $5 sandwich you really liked is now $9.99 with no drink. Since house prices have gone up that most likely means your property tax bill will be higher the next time its due. Granted, depending on local laws. So, let's say a few years have gone by and somehow our little town has managed to deal with all these new and strange challenges they found themselves with. Then the boom goes away as they often do. More infrastructure than they really needed has been slapped together as fast as possible and now needs to be maintained because it exists. Now we need to start firing local government people because we no longer require them and the tax revenues are reducing because the boom has busted. Suddenly large number of people needing jobs that don't exist. People who got the restaurant jobs at inflated pay will never leave because now they have the best jobs in town. The restaurant has to fire them anyway because they can't afford them since no one can afford the food now. These people won't be happy about going back to a buck over minimum in this type of job. People are leaving town because no one can afford the over-priced housing and apartments which is currently all falling apart because they were cheaply made. By the time the pricing becomes affordable everybody's moved away. Now you have abandoned housing that's ripe for even more crime. And I could easily think of more but I'm getting long here. I admit that much of this is worse-case scenario type stuff but it's all possible without planning to deal with it. I personally seen some of these things happen in big cities that had the housing booms. The same thing happening in a small town would not go over well.