Thanks for the number crunching. It proves my point in another thread.
I did a little bit of the analysis for you. Living in Manchester, NH making 40,000 a year is the equivilant of making 30,000 in Casper, Wyoming or 33,000 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. That is a clear 3-5 dollars an hour less to live the same lifestyle. Try Concord, NH the difference is 5-7 dollars an hour. How about Hanover it is 8-10 an hour more to live there. Nashau and Portsmouth is similar to Concord.
I am beginning to think that I may not be able to afford to move there, without a job guarantee first.
More ZionCurtain disinformation. If you are dumb enough to even CONSIDER living in Hanover, I don't see you making it here. Hanover is expensive because the snotty liberals of Dartmouth College live there. Few people who actually work for a living actually live in Hanover (not unless they have trust funds).
I live four miles down the road in Lebanon, where things are a bit better, though by no means perfect or preferable. I am seeking City Council election in the spring to change that by eliminating local government interference in housing development.
The cost of living problems here in NH are not environmental like they are in Wyoming, they are self imposed by some communities imposing growth limits, which tends to economically exile many working families and causes the demand for family housing to outstrip supply that is restricted. This is certainly something that needs changing. I intend to be one of the people changing it.
If you instead look at the sort of communities that we natives have recommended, areas that are already strongholds of libertarians and conservatives, you would find life to be quite affordable while allowing you to commute fairly easily (15-30 minutes at most) to high paying jobs in economic core communities like Lebanon, Hanover, Concord, and Manchester.
With Michelle's above per capita income post. Wyoming people live better when you factor in cost of living:
On average a Wyoming worker makes $14.70 per hour
On average a NH worker makes $16.50 per hour
When you factor in that it takes 5-10 per hour more to have the same kind of living in NH.
THis is plainly false. I've been to Wyoming and nowhere does it allow you to live the 'same kind of living' as New Hampshire. There isn't the same access to water, to wildlife, to jobs, or to social opportunities. There certainly isn't the same sort of landscapes or seascapes.
To live the same kind of life in Wyoming that I live here in NH, I'd need to spend billions of dollars to build a whole new habitat, and keep it watered by confiscating water from other states. I'd need to spend billions more building a high tech infrastructure to give Free Staters the same sort of job opportunities, not just new jobs pumping gas at truck stops, slaving in mines or on oil derricks, or working away in government bureaucracies.
If Wyoming spent the money to have the same sort of standard of living as we do naturally, you'd be under a mountain of debt that would make your taxes immense.
It is truly unfair to use NH averages in these statistics, because the majority of tax burden here is imposed at the local level. A few communities that tax a lot skew the data for the state as a whole. The communities you cite are the highest tax and most statist communities in the state. It is entirely normal that they would have high costs of living.
I think the LP candidate who said " that most families in New Hampshire are struggling to pay their bills" is correct and I do not want to be one of them.
Most families everywhere struggle to pay their bills. Wyoming is no exception. It is a political truism that every community is no more than two paychecks from revolution.
NH is far less so. We have far more capital investment here in NH than other states, esp Wyoming. NH has one of the higher savings rates and the highest average personal net worth of the candidate states (and second in the US).
Have you actually LOOKED at what a "standard of living" entails here in NH vs what it is defined as in Wyoming? I doubt it. A standard of living here entails having many more tons of water at the disposal of each citizen, to start with. It entails having far more internet access at higher bandwidths. It entails having more of just everything at less cost.
Here in NH, we keep our tax bills concentrated in the property tax so that people viscerally KNOW how much they are paying, instead of hiding it in a Chinese water torture of hidden taxation in every element of living. People DO struggle to pay those tax bills these days because of the Claremont decision only because so many have owned their high value homes for so long that they are not used to having to suddenly pay a lot more in taxes.
