I predict this is going to start a trend. For a whole lot less than the $48,000 a job municipalities paid to attract Amazon why not spend a fifth of that and draw in thousands of remote workers?
@soared pointed out that Vermont is also offering $10,000 to move and work remotely.
I can see this remaining a quiet movement. If it's successful I can see states competing for people the same way they compete for tourism (or on the last page of the travel brochure: "You came, you saw. Want $10,000 and are willing to relocate? Call XXX")
I looked into moving to Vermont but the main problem was that there was an extreme lack of housing. The cities in Vermont are incredibly small and have very little in the way of new developments. I tried trawling Craigslist but I just couldn't find many attractive places to live.
Vermont is probably not a place to live in general if you have city living (or even the center of a town with all the amenities) in mind. Mostly, you move to Vermont to get a house in the woods someplace.
Keep in mind that Craigslist may not be the best way to find an apartment. From what I've seen, smaller cities don't tend to use online services for things like apartment hunting. Things are still done the old way: word of mouth, posting signs on the apartment itself, newspaper classifieds.
This is very true. I had a fantastic apartment that I got by walking in and asking about availability. They always seem to have something available within a few months, but don't advertise at all, anywhere. Yet remain at near-100% occupancy.
Actually the only ad they really have is a "now leasing" sign with a phone number near the entrance.
Why would you move from one place to another place to be a remote worker for a third place? This would make more sense if there were businesses in Tulsa which needed more workers.
Tulsa wants your tax income.
If Tulsa can make it attractive, and a person's cost of living is reduced some people may take them up on the offer. Since many remote works choose where to live, a paid opportunity to move could be an ideal situation.
Tulsa has made an offer, that you aren't interested does not mean Tulsa is desperate.
But in actual fact, they are desperate. Property values are dropping, they can't attract people to live there because it's an exceptionally boring place to live.
The political climate and the absolutely horrid public school funding are doing far more to drive educated white-collar workers away than arbitrary measures of "excitement" ever will.
I have worked full-time remote for almost my entire career, yet I've ended up in big cities exclusively (aside from a couple of few-month stints in a far-flung place every now and then). Why?
- most places who beg for workers of any kind are really boring
- I don't ever want to live somewhere where I'd feel like I'd have a really hard time finding a new job if my current job fell through
- since I'm remote, and travel a lot, access to nonstop flights to almost anywhere is a massive convenience
These kind of programs can probably be a great deal for a very narrow slice of remote workers, the freelancers who are at a stage in their life where a big house and yard and easy access to Costco is more important than arts and culture and nightlife and being able to pick from 2 nonstops to LA or London every hour. And thats OK.
The only catch is probably whether the cities who are offering incentives to family-minded remote workers who don't care about the big city amenities can offer school districts and parks and stuff like that which is important to that audience... "Tulsa" doesn't exactly have a brand that makes me think of it as a place to raise a well-rounded child with diverse educational and extracurricular opportunities, but that could very well just be a branding problem.
> "Tulsa" doesn't exactly have a brand that makes me think of it as a place to raise a well-rounded child with diverse educational and extracurricular opportunities, but that could very well just be a branding problem.
The town has its merits. The arts--especially museums--are quite good, as is a lot of the downtown architecture and housing in midtown (gorgeous houses). It is an oil town after all. With that also comes its fair share of conspicuous consumption in terms of shi-shi restaurants and shopping if that's your thing. The oil industry has also brought in more diversity than you'd think, particularly people from the middle east. The music scene used to be great though fairly country oriented (with lots of blues, rock and swing influence and a big independent/DIY aesthetic), though that genre has certainly lost almost all of its vitality and I expect Tulsa's music scene has gone the same way. The philharmonic and ballet also used to be decent (could be still?) and tickets may be cheap and available enough to just drop in if you're interested.
In terms of big-city amenities, arts, culture, nightlife, etc. it definitely beats the South SF Bay area on all fronts except cheap, delicious Asian restaurants. But it can't compete with LA, SF proper, DC...
You can also expose your children to experiences like having horses, which is harder in cities, but contributes to well-roundedness in a variety of ways. You can even go to the museum in the morning and go ride horses in the afternoon because getting from A to B is easy.
That being said, it is a pretty conservative place, and it's a long way from anywhere that's not (outside of college towns), and it's a long way from anywhere that looks different except the Ozarks. You'd probably be fine as a non-surfing liberal atheist except dating could really suck. Life could also be pretty hard for various ethnicities and other sorts of minorities, but less so than most other places within a thousand miles.
WARNING: DIGRESSION
In my experience with many of these places though, a lot of the problems are with the mindset, both of the city itself and of individuals who kind of fall in line.
You can move to a big coastal city and feel the energy of the place--movers moving, shakers shaking--and it's kind of true but it can be very hard to tap into that energy unless you're already connected and have a fair amount of disposable income. If you want to do things, make things, start a business, paint, build boats, join a band, or whatever, it's a lot easier to do in a place where you can afford a garage and not live 40 min outside the city, and where you aren't slammed just trying to pay $3000/month in rent.
If you want to be an active participant in arts, music, crafts, etc. it is generally easier to do in a place like Tulsa or Salt Lake City. You'll have more time and perhaps more income, and networking is pretty easy when the networks are small. You may or may not outgrow the scene eventually. The downside is that people spend a lot of time bitching about how nothing is going on in their small scene or small city and how it'd be so much better to be in a big city with the famous people in their field, and this can be demoralizing to the more sensitive or inexperienced.
However if you want to be a passive participant, a spectator, then it's probably better to be in a city where you can go from gallery to gallery and drink wine and gossip, or if you have the cash on hand to see the luminaries in your musical genre of choice play every Friday night.
Financial relocation incentives don't appear to be anything new, but the alternatives never seemed to ring any bells for me. Hard to pin down precisely, but I think part of it was the fact that a lot of them were asking you to settle down in what might as well be the frontier in terms of urban density and amenities, or maybe the city in question was a burnt-out husk of its former self (a different kind of frontier almost), or maybe the incentive wasn't so much cash as much as loan assistance or some other thing that doesn't sound as sexy.
Looking at the website, pretty obvious that they're not asking me to settle in a small town or a burnt-out husk of a city. Despite my biases against Oklahoma, I get the sense that this is a pretty exciting place to be. On top of that, the incentives actually seem very practical. It's cash, plain and simple.
maybe the city in question was a burnt-out husk of its former self
As a joke, I'd say that the actual choice is between a less populated burnt-out husk of its former self, a heavily populated burnt-out husk of its former self, or some degree of truly nowhere.
See, I would be afraid to move to Tulsa with this context. I don't have a firm grasp on the economic outlook of the region, nor the demographics or the culture. Nor do I know how welcoming the citizens in Tulsa are toward gay, athiests like myself. I know most of my friends wouldn't feel comfortable (one calls the place she hails from Misery, in reference to the state and her former state of mind while growing up there).
Seth Andrews, the founder of TheThinkingAtheist.com, grew up in Tulsa and called it "Jesustown" in his book Deconverted. (Not sure exactly how I wrote it as I listened to the audio version.)
It really depends on your definition of normal and comfortable, and how able you are to entertain yourself when you are not working or shacking up in your tornado shelter (which you will probably have to dig yourself.)
Have a friend who went on tour recently and they mentioned how much they liked Tulsa. They live in San Diego right now and definitely can't afford a house in the area. Weird to see this post after talking to them about it.
I mean this with all possible sincerity, but what gives you the impression that Tulsa would be an exciting place to be? I’ve never been to Tulsa, but my grandfather is from the state. My impression is that outside of OKC and maybe Tulsa, Oklahoma is basically a burnt out husk of a state.
And is OKC really much better? I was uncomfortable there and I'm a straight, white, married male. I can't imagine what it would be like to be brown or gay or anything outside a very narrow definition of "normal". I also can't believe that a smaller city could possibly be better than OK's larger centers...
Thought experiment: you are now Mayor of Tulsa and have received a $100M grant to "make Tulsa exciting". Assume the situation is that whatever you propose would not be opposed.
“Brain drain” suggests there is a leak, makes not much sense to try attracting new brain without fixing the leak first. Identify who are “brain”, track their needs, provide intervening opportunities when they feel theyre not satisfied.
Both Oklahoma and Vermont have close to a 5% state income tax on the first 100k of income, so for many on HN, this is more like a rebate on state income taxes over the first 2 years. I guess if you always dreamed of moving to these places this could be that little nudge to finally try it out.
This means that states without income tax (WA, NV, TX, TN etc) are yet still more enticing for most high-earning professionals. I agree with other commenters saying this doesn't do much except help the people who always were considering moving to OK/VT.
If you want to work remote AND live in a very quiet area, there are some nice rural areas of WA state... Remote parts of Chelan and Okanogan counties. Mountains, snow, forests, fruit farms, etc.
it really depends where - a rural area outside of the tricities is going to be super dry, scrubby and bland... If you like mountains with real forests, go to north Okanogan county near the BC border, or Ferry or Stevens counties which are similar to northern Idaho.
The problem though, is you need a job. I've looked at Vermont, and several of these other states, but and while I like the real estate prices, and the locale, the big problem is that I still need a job. Unless I want to work remote, there just isn't a lot of demand of for software execs there.
I've never understood this thinking. A state has a certain amount of expenditures in their budget. They have to acquire those funds somehow. If they don't collect income tax, they bump up food tax, or hotel tax, or restaurant tax, or diesel tax, etc. The money is coming out of your wallet one way or the other.
It depends on your situation. I live in a place where I am able to live without a car, for instance, so local gas taxes don't affect my decision making for whether to live here. Income taxes always will.
Income taxes are generally either flat or progressive. Most consumption taxes are regressive. So you'd expect that a revenue-neutral change from income tax to sales tax would end up benefitting high income earners.
I live in a state without income tax and moderately high property taxes. This arrangement tends to favor the rich, inheritance owners over the working class. In a state income tax state, my taxes are dependent on me working, and a smaller percentage goes to property.
In a property tax state, my taxes are entirely dependent on the property market, regardless of how much or little I make. When there is a budget shortfall the bureaucrats juice the millage rate. Property re-assessments go up, rarely down. And if you owned property for a long while you pay less in taxes than someone younger and on a lower salary.
Don't accuse others of lying when even a modicum of good faith points to them simply holding opinions different from yours.
In this case, they are also right. At least under the assumption of taxation linear to property value.
Thats because richer people tend to spend less (as a %) of their income on housing. I hope that's intuitively obvious: making minimum wage, you're likely to spend 40% or 50% of income on rent. At the other extreme, the Bill Gates of the world spend about a Pentium III rounding error of their income.
It's the same with every other consumption taxes. Often, the first $100,000 in value or so are free. That helps a little, but only for the balance between the poor and the middle class. It's almost impossible to adequately tax the super-rich within this framework.
This is very cool, great website too. I actually looked up Tulsa while reading this. Well done. When I search Tulsa in Google maps the default street view is a desert looking place though. I wonder if they could affect that.
I have a sister who recently bought a house in Tulsa.
Their house is so large it's got rooms she's forgotten about...
Pretty new, pool, nice neighborhood. Cost less than $300K.
I don't know about the school district (Jenks).
I'd sure like to see some progressive voters move down there.
Jenks High School class of 2016, MIT class of 2020. Honestly, Jenks was an incredible high school to go to since it was public; having a $20M Math and Science center let me go to places like MIT.
My high school having a brand new computer lab completely rebuilt every year, an agricultural sciences program that put most corn country colleges to shame, and a $xx million a year budget surplus let me drop out at 16.
This reminds me a lot of patio11’s fascinating write up about Japanese Hometown Tax. It makes total sense for small cities to pay for high earning remote workers to move there. Perhaps this will become a trend. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown-tax/
Because it could create a situation where small cities and counties are competing against each other to win the favor of workers. It’s not an identical situation, and arguably this competition already exists, but it’s much more obvious when direct cash incentives are being offered.
Its interesting - given the 48k/job incentive that was being talked about for the amazon hq2, I wonder how the 10K in Oklahoma incentives compares. Of course, one is a corporate incentive in a place where a lot of skilled workers would likely be either way, and one is a place trying to attract talent, but on some level, it makes me wonder if the outrage over the tax incentives actually makes sense. Given the state income tax revenues and local economy inputs, it would seem that a 10K RAC (Resident Acquisition Cost) for someone making > 50K would be a no brainer assuming they still in Oklahoma for 4 years and the tax obligation is 5% to the state. Not sure what the numbers would look like in NY instead and whether the opportunity cost really applies since it would likely be full of ppl either way.
Overall Rank Out of 50: #43
Health Care #48
Education #39
Economy #36
Opportunity #38
Infrastructure #31
Crime & Corrections #34
Fiscal Stability #22
Quality of Life #17
Those aren't great incentives for people with families to want to move. Might be more tolerable for younger folks?
Of course, getting fresh tax revenue etc may be important towards getting those various things improved, and Tulsa might be significantly better than the rest of the state.
I guarantee that if I spent more than one week in Oklahoma or Kansas, I would get into a terrible political argument with the locals. I can only bite my tongue for so long.
I've never seen a Confederate flag in California, and haven't really encountered any noticeable prejudice from small town / rural Californians in my travails through Northern California. Nothing like Oklahoma.
Are you in an interracial relationship? I grew up in a small town in Illinois so I know what rural towns are like. I've definitely walked into bars and restaurants in rural Northern California and have had the entire place stare at us while we got seated. Felt exactly like rural Illinois.
I have family members who are openly gay and I know places in Northern California I would _never_ take them.
I also know of areas around the North along the coast where you can end up in a fist fight if you're an outsider especially from the Bay Area. That's less a red vs blue thing and more of a "I don't want outsiders in my town" vibe.
If you go where the tourists aren't going you'll encounter some interesting things.
No, I'm not in an interracial relationship and not gay either. I do look Muslim though.
I'm sure there are places like this in NorCal, as you attest, and I haven't encountered them because I go mostly to the places where tourists go (while I tend to avoid the most popular tourist destinations in the state, my travels have still been for camping purposes, which means the places I go to are not strangers to outsiders).
But the mere fact that I can live and travel in the state without encountering this kind of stuff is precisely the point. In Oklahoma, there is prejudice anywhere you go, even the towns and cities.
(In fact, the main group of people in Oklahoma whom I remember being inclusive towards me were actually rural / very-small-town farmers)
I ask this out of genuine curiosity since I can't pick a definitive meaning: outing options? Is that ability to go somewhere or the ability to be publicly gay? My confusion is the first two adjectives tend to imply not pro-gay.
And when did you make this move? OKC has been undergoing a renascence of sorts over the last decade and barely resembles the rest of the state. The tech scene is really taking off and diversity is expanding rather rapidly. There are a lot of great people working hard to make a difference here and just because you like one place over another doesn't mean that other place has to be bad, it is fine to just be different.
The Portland area would dominate the aggregate because they have 80-90% of the population. I mean, how many in tech are going to move to Pendleton anyways? I’ve heard Bend is kind of hot these days, but went through during a forest fire and wasn’t impressed.
Oklahoma is a bit more balanced on population than Oregon.
I work remotely, in Bend, and am quite happy with it. It's dry enough to be habitable, which the western half of the state where I grew up is, sadly, not. Lots of great outdoor stuff.
As someone who grew up in Tulsa and have lived outside of Portland for almost 15 years, I feel confident saying that Portland has gone down the drain in the past few years and is completely overrun with heroin camps covering every inch of public parks and green space. It's still better than Tulsa.
Healthcare? You could plausibly have great quality of life for healthy people, but once you get sick you lose access to it. If you're dead, you probably don't notice the quality of life living people have.
But where are they ranked in BBQ? I moved to North Carolina from SF Bay Area and NC has much going for it ... but North Carolinians think NC BBQ is like top-3 (Lexington style, Eastern style, etc.) -- but I don't see it. I much prefer Louisiana or Texas BBQ. I'll say other aspects balance out the mediocre NC BBQ.
If Oklahoma / Tulsa BBQ is in the top-3 that might make up for a few of the deficits.
I find Lexington style pretty good, it's pretty similar to Kansas City/Memphis/St Louis at least. I can't stand Eastern style though. Texas BBQ is a league of it's own for me, I try not to compare to it cause I always end up disappointed.
source: I'm from Kansas City, went to school in Tennessee and Texas, now living in NC.
You're thinking of a grill, which is used to make the BBQ. As for how it differs from state, I think it's the recipes for the BBQ that differ (some places use vinegar, others use ketchup).
Different regions in the US have very different barbecue styles. There's a vast array of different ways to long-smoke meat over wood, and a vast array of ways to sauce and prepare it after it's been cooked.
Since good barbecue often takes years of experience, 16+ hours to cook, and produces more food than a small family can eat, it's a cuisine that is frequently outsourced to restaurants. So the kind of barbecue which dominates an area really has an impact on the kind of barbecue you can eat in that area, unless you've got years of experience, hours of spare time, and either a big enough family or enough freezer space to cook your own barbecue regularly.
Pretty sure they are comparing BBQ restaurants which are definitely a thing, and differ in style from state to state.
As you’ve implied, if you’re cooking the meat yourself in your backyard then you can do any style you want. I believe “true bbq” can be considered more time consuming than just throwing meat on a grill, and would involve the use of a smoker and perhaps other equipment. It’s not just grilling meat.
In this instance BBQ is referring to a specific type of food - that is, smoked meats, usually beef or pork, which is then covered with barbecue sauce, which is usually tomato-based. The specific meats, rubs, and especially sauces vary from place to place, and this is what people are referring to when they debate which state or region has better BBQ.
A barbecue could refer to an outdoor grill, but I don't think that's too common in the US. More often, it refers to a party held outdoors in which food is grilled, usually burgers and/or hot dogs.
What I’ve never understood- what prevents me from, as a remorlte worker setting up a business in a tax haven and charging through that... I mean if this loophole is available to extremely well off individuals and companies why not for services...
CFC laws, which is something most developed countries have. These will in most cases "look through" artificial companies set up in tax havens and attribute the income to you personally.
Tulsa's geographic upside is the nearby Ouachita Mountains. There's hiking, climbing and caving, moreso than in nearby cities like Dallas or Wichita.
The downside is five snowy days per year and eleven above 100 Fahrenheit, and occasional cases of scary spinning sky triangles. This rules it out for me.
Oklahoma is ground zero for crazy severe weather. I think they turn the tornado sirens on at the start of spring and just leave them on until about mid summer.
Remote workers already know they can live anywhere, and $10K is nice but for a professional software engineer it's not that great. So while I'm not looking to move, I'm curious what they're using to entice me to want to live there.
What I see is ... a whole lot of drinking-related activities. "Experience" Oktoberfest, "Toast" at lots of bars, "Hang Out" at lots of other bars, "Brew" more beer. I wonder if this is more a reflection of what's in Tulsa, or who their target audience is.
I think it's target audience. If you're in late 20's early 30's and single it hints at a vibrant social life that could lead to a relationship. It's probably easier to move your single self than transition to a long distance relationship or move your whole family. The cash incentive too of $10k goes a lot further in your 20's.
I wonder if it would be useful to start including political culture in these comparisons. They tend to focus on cost of housing and “quality of life” metrics like the existence of third wave coffee and cocktail bars. And yet, clearly, there’s more to decisions than that. So many people who are queer, minority, or allies, disgusted by Trump and those who vote for him, may deeply resent living in hostile environments. I’m not saying this as a political statement but genuinely trying to highlight a major factor in deciding where to relocate.
I can cite many anecdotes of folks who have tried living in different environments and fled due to (lack of) diversity and the political culture. These pitches and comparative analyses should give it due consideration.
That's a fair point. The average voter in Oklahoma goes to the polls the night after watching Rosanne, drinking their 40, and reveling in the latest anti-abortion ad.
They don't necessarily want more remote workers, they want to attract workers that already have out-of-state jobs so they can collect the easy income tax and income from you living there.
One thing to note, the state income tax rate in Tulsa is 4.44%, so if your business makes $100,000 a year in profit, expect to pay around $4,500 in state taxes. I live in the great state of Tennessee with zero state income tax, and I'd much rather be in Nashville than Tulsa.
I mean WOW the comments here are snotty against Tulsa. Relatively little discussion of the incentive itself, the fact that a single private individual is paying for the incentive (!!), or other dynamics of relocation to cheaper, easier towns for remote work.
I visited Tulsa a few months ago to just check it out. I enjoyed it greatly. The Tulsa Gathering Place is absolutely unreal for a free public park. There is enough going on there to make it a worthwhile place to move to for a few years. A considerable amount of very high end architecture and art there.
I am doing a multifamily development with similar (not nearly as generous) relocation incentives tied in through a medical district. Very interesting way to move the needle and encourage shifts in living. For most cities, this is a much cheaper way to approach affordable housing as well.
> I mean WOW the comments here are snotty against Tulsa
If there was an article about paying remote workers to move to SF, you'd get the exact same thing. I mean, obviously the specific complaints themselves would be different, but you'd still get the same rough tone and criticism.
I grew up in Tulsa as a minority. Went to Jenks Public schools.
Two students in my graduation class got accepted to Harvard, and others to MIT, U Penn, and Duke. They have gone on to become successful tech entrepreneurs and professors. The graduating class after my year had 4 students accepted to Stanford.
Non est ratio ad gustum ... Über Geschmack lässt sich nicht streiten ... Les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas ...
There is a reason why almost every language has an idiomatic expression to express the same idea.
Tulsa may be a great place for you, it may be a not so great place for you. But dismissing an idea based on no real experience and innate prejudices is pretty stupid.
Hey there, another Jenks graduate here. I'm currently more towards the OKC area but definitely would love to live in Tulsa again. It's a laid back kind of place, great cost of living, plenty to do... Not for everyone I'm sure but perfect for me.
I think the state of education in our state is a pretty big problem, but there are nationally ranked high quality schools like you said, Jenks, Union, Norman.
Oklahoma senior from Jenks High School accepted to all 8 Ivy League schools
Sarah Cameron boasts a long list of extracurricular activities, including academic clubs and an impressive tennis career. Now she can brag about her eight college acceptance letters, all to Ivy League schools.
Yeah, I think people are just squeamish and judgemental sometimes. I'd kinda like to know what they're doing this for etc. There is an expense crisis in people's lives right now; they aren't even considering obvious ways they could spend less money because the norm is to spend outside your means. I'm down for any incentive that encourages people to spend less money for similar opportunity for a quality life, and invest the difference.
P.S. For what it's worth, it's hard to tell that this is being offered by a private individual, the site doesn't have an about page or anything.
P.P.S. For anyone who wants/needs to keep their guns, Oklahoma is pretty good. Governor Mary Fallin & Co. opposed the constitutional carry provision proposed earlier this year, but I suspect Governor-elect Kevin Stitt will be more open to it following these recent midterm elections. Downshot for me with this Governor-elect is that he seems to have promised to be distinctly pro-life, something I suspect will be more of a polarizing political trial and less of a successful policy direction. I think this could cause a considerable amount of time wasting in state government, taking away from more hopeful causes.
I was born in Tulsa and left before my teens (to us, Oklahoma was the South West/South as opposed to Midwest). Lived elsewhere in the United States, Germany, and now live in Switzerland.
I have a lot of fond memories of the place, but returning there after 25 years completely shattered my romantic childhood feelings. The city was not doing great when I lived there, but it felt far worse now (husk comment earlier). You want to know where MAGA came from? All you need to do was live in Tulsa 25 years ago and compare it to today: the rust and rot. The place is sprawling; you’ll need a car. Summer is oppressively humid against biking. It is far more diverse than it was, but I have doubts about the true level of comforts minorities (all stripes from ethnicity to political) feel. I felt somewhat insulated from religion with Unitarian parents, but the prevailing religion runs strong here. I don’t think they’d accept me if they really knew what I thought today. Infrastructure is laughably in poor shape. My father tells me corruption/nepotism/patronage still drives most appointments in OK civil service. I recall fondly of the — can’t believe I am saying this — sweet smell of crude oil refinement from West Tulsa that permeates the entire town and ambient sounds of the pump jacks (yes, sporadically in the neighborhood).
Food is certainly better than what it was. Folks in their early 20s seem to be pushing for more. I actually had a respectable bowl of ramen there. Growing up, there were two Chinese restaurants only. That tells you a lot!
I always appreciated how direct the people were — zero pretense or two-faced behavior. A lot of small talk. You’ll have to be OK with the provincialism. Miss the intense Thunderstorms a whole lot.
My parents were not especially political or conveying of class or social consciousness. I recall a few trips to Arkansas when I was young and crossing the border from OK into AR and wondering what the hell was wrong with that place. It seemed like that much of a step down.
Tulsa has — or had — it’s quirky charm. Everyone knows about the South Park episode about that Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita. Well, guess what, that one in Colorado it parodied is based on an original in Tulsa. Also: in that same strip mall (yep, you’ll love Tulsa if you love sprawling one-story drags of strip malls), there was Starbase 21, a store dedicated to Star Trek franchise paraphernalia, which I think closed recently (sadly). Let’s not forget the world’s largest McDonalds in Vinita that spanned an interstate. These days, the place feels dreadfully big-boxed.
I am a parent now. While nature access is OK (not great but not terrible), certainly faster to reach than in the Bay Area (sorry), I would be concerned with the schools. They have been starved to death and the school day largely cut to four days.
I realize this won’t satisfy anyone’s claims for empirical remarks, but it is just the perspective of someone who knew the place intimately and returned recently. My feelings are textured.
234 comments
[ 94.9 ms ] story [ 805 ms ] threadI can see this remaining a quiet movement. If it's successful I can see states competing for people the same way they compete for tourism (or on the last page of the travel brochure: "You came, you saw. Want $10,000 and are willing to relocate? Call XXX")
I would appreciate it if both things become a trend.
https://qz.com/work/1289727/vermont-will-pay-you-10000-to-mo...
Actually the only ad they really have is a "now leasing" sign with a phone number near the entrance.
Why would you move from one place to another place to be a remote worker for a third place? This would make more sense if there were businesses in Tulsa which needed more workers.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tulsa-oklahoma-will-pay-you-100...
Tulsa has made an offer, that you aren't interested does not mean Tulsa is desperate.
- most places who beg for workers of any kind are really boring
- I don't ever want to live somewhere where I'd feel like I'd have a really hard time finding a new job if my current job fell through
- since I'm remote, and travel a lot, access to nonstop flights to almost anywhere is a massive convenience
These kind of programs can probably be a great deal for a very narrow slice of remote workers, the freelancers who are at a stage in their life where a big house and yard and easy access to Costco is more important than arts and culture and nightlife and being able to pick from 2 nonstops to LA or London every hour. And thats OK.
The only catch is probably whether the cities who are offering incentives to family-minded remote workers who don't care about the big city amenities can offer school districts and parks and stuff like that which is important to that audience... "Tulsa" doesn't exactly have a brand that makes me think of it as a place to raise a well-rounded child with diverse educational and extracurricular opportunities, but that could very well just be a branding problem.
Diplomatic. But you know the answer.
In terms of big-city amenities, arts, culture, nightlife, etc. it definitely beats the South SF Bay area on all fronts except cheap, delicious Asian restaurants. But it can't compete with LA, SF proper, DC...
You can also expose your children to experiences like having horses, which is harder in cities, but contributes to well-roundedness in a variety of ways. You can even go to the museum in the morning and go ride horses in the afternoon because getting from A to B is easy.
That being said, it is a pretty conservative place, and it's a long way from anywhere that's not (outside of college towns), and it's a long way from anywhere that looks different except the Ozarks. You'd probably be fine as a non-surfing liberal atheist except dating could really suck. Life could also be pretty hard for various ethnicities and other sorts of minorities, but less so than most other places within a thousand miles.
WARNING: DIGRESSION
In my experience with many of these places though, a lot of the problems are with the mindset, both of the city itself and of individuals who kind of fall in line.
You can move to a big coastal city and feel the energy of the place--movers moving, shakers shaking--and it's kind of true but it can be very hard to tap into that energy unless you're already connected and have a fair amount of disposable income. If you want to do things, make things, start a business, paint, build boats, join a band, or whatever, it's a lot easier to do in a place where you can afford a garage and not live 40 min outside the city, and where you aren't slammed just trying to pay $3000/month in rent.
If you want to be an active participant in arts, music, crafts, etc. it is generally easier to do in a place like Tulsa or Salt Lake City. You'll have more time and perhaps more income, and networking is pretty easy when the networks are small. You may or may not outgrow the scene eventually. The downside is that people spend a lot of time bitching about how nothing is going on in their small scene or small city and how it'd be so much better to be in a big city with the famous people in their field, and this can be demoralizing to the more sensitive or inexperienced.
However if you want to be a passive participant, a spectator, then it's probably better to be in a city where you can go from gallery to gallery and drink wine and gossip, or if you have the cash on hand to see the luminaries in your musical genre of choice play every Friday night.
Financial relocation incentives don't appear to be anything new, but the alternatives never seemed to ring any bells for me. Hard to pin down precisely, but I think part of it was the fact that a lot of them were asking you to settle down in what might as well be the frontier in terms of urban density and amenities, or maybe the city in question was a burnt-out husk of its former self (a different kind of frontier almost), or maybe the incentive wasn't so much cash as much as loan assistance or some other thing that doesn't sound as sexy.
Looking at the website, pretty obvious that they're not asking me to settle in a small town or a burnt-out husk of a city. Despite my biases against Oklahoma, I get the sense that this is a pretty exciting place to be. On top of that, the incentives actually seem very practical. It's cash, plain and simple.
I like it, if you couldn't already tell.
As a joke, I'd say that the actual choice is between a less populated burnt-out husk of its former self, a heavily populated burnt-out husk of its former self, or some degree of truly nowhere.
> Looking at the website, pretty obvious that they're not asking me to settle in a small town or a burnt-out husk of a city.
In reality Tulsa is somewhere in between a "small town" and a "burnt out husk of city".
> Despite my biases against Oklahoma, I get the sense that this is a pretty exciting place to be.
It is not.
Its main benefits are being cheap and not super cold.
Just because this website says it is exciting doesn't mean it is. They are throwing money at the issue of a brain drain and lagging economy.
Tons of people who "went to school in Tulsa" don't live there now because it is the opposite of exciting.
What would you do?
How?
Mostly
Better to work in Vancouver without a state income tax and then shop in Portland without a sales tax.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ferry+county+wa&num=100&clie...
The area around Lake Chelan is nice but it get super hot in summer. Not Arizona or NM hot, but nearly.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lake+chelan+wa&num=100&clien...
But even north of I90 (eg grand coulee) is scrubby. It isn’t bland, I meant that this was the area’s best appeal.
Some place to retire I guess.
Drive around on some Houston roads sometime... One time my bumper got popped off by a pothole.
In a property tax state, my taxes are entirely dependent on the property market, regardless of how much or little I make. When there is a budget shortfall the bureaucrats juice the millage rate. Property re-assessments go up, rarely down. And if you owned property for a long while you pay less in taxes than someone younger and on a lower salary.
What a complete and utter lie. What hole are you pulling these "facts" from?
> And if you owned property for a long while you pay less in taxes than someone younger and on a lower salary.
You mean, someone retired and unemployed vs. someone at the peak of their career?
Man...you are projecting so hard, it's palpable.
Don't accuse others of lying when even a modicum of good faith points to them simply holding opinions different from yours.
In this case, they are also right. At least under the assumption of taxation linear to property value.
Thats because richer people tend to spend less (as a %) of their income on housing. I hope that's intuitively obvious: making minimum wage, you're likely to spend 40% or 50% of income on rent. At the other extreme, the Bill Gates of the world spend about a Pentium III rounding error of their income.
It's the same with every other consumption taxes. Often, the first $100,000 in value or so are free. That helps a little, but only for the balance between the poor and the middle class. It's almost impossible to adequately tax the super-rich within this framework.
No it didn't.
http://www.newson6.com/story/12523105/jenks-public-schools-b...
http://su2016.thedude.oucreate.com/uncategorized/jenks-high-...
Related to this, I wonder what the born&raised locals would think of this incentive. (gentrification?)
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oklahoma
Those aren't great incentives for people with families to want to move. Might be more tolerable for younger folks?Of course, getting fresh tax revenue etc may be important towards getting those various things improved, and Tulsa might be significantly better than the rest of the state.
If you're religious, right-wing, and don't care about having outing options, then Oklahoma is the place for you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/opinion/kansas-laura-kell...
https://sports.yahoo.com/barbershop-owner-apologizes-says-no...
California is a lot more Red than you think.. I've seen tons of Confederate flags here (which doesn't even make sense).
I have family members who are openly gay and I know places in Northern California I would _never_ take them.
I also know of areas around the North along the coast where you can end up in a fist fight if you're an outsider especially from the Bay Area. That's less a red vs blue thing and more of a "I don't want outsiders in my town" vibe.
If you go where the tourists aren't going you'll encounter some interesting things.
I'm sure there are places like this in NorCal, as you attest, and I haven't encountered them because I go mostly to the places where tourists go (while I tend to avoid the most popular tourist destinations in the state, my travels have still been for camping purposes, which means the places I go to are not strangers to outsiders).
But the mere fact that I can live and travel in the state without encountering this kind of stuff is precisely the point. In Oklahoma, there is prejudice anywhere you go, even the towns and cities.
(In fact, the main group of people in Oklahoma whom I remember being inclusive towards me were actually rural / very-small-town farmers)
Oklahoma is a bit more balanced on population than Oregon.
I bet your number includes a few people in Washington if it’s the official Portland metro area one.
Edit: Also great public school systems and pretty low cost of living.
If Oklahoma / Tulsa BBQ is in the top-3 that might make up for a few of the deficits.
http://ir.tripadvisor.com/news-releases/news-release-details...
So if BBQ is your criteria, consider Tennessee?
source: I'm from Kansas City, went to school in Tennessee and Texas, now living in NC.
(not sarcastic, I'm just a clueless foreigner)
Since good barbecue often takes years of experience, 16+ hours to cook, and produces more food than a small family can eat, it's a cuisine that is frequently outsourced to restaurants. So the kind of barbecue which dominates an area really has an impact on the kind of barbecue you can eat in that area, unless you've got years of experience, hours of spare time, and either a big enough family or enough freezer space to cook your own barbecue regularly.
As you’ve implied, if you’re cooking the meat yourself in your backyard then you can do any style you want. I believe “true bbq” can be considered more time consuming than just throwing meat on a grill, and would involve the use of a smoker and perhaps other equipment. It’s not just grilling meat.
A barbecue could refer to an outdoor grill, but I don't think that's too common in the US. More often, it refers to a party held outdoors in which food is grilled, usually burgers and/or hot dogs.
No you have to move at the very least.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6363371/Wall-Street...
https://www.capitalism.com/taxes-in-puerto-rico/
Yeah...No.
Even if it wasn't, people tend to overestimate crime.
The downside is five snowy days per year and eleven above 100 Fahrenheit, and occasional cases of scary spinning sky triangles. This rules it out for me.
What I see is ... a whole lot of drinking-related activities. "Experience" Oktoberfest, "Toast" at lots of bars, "Hang Out" at lots of other bars, "Brew" more beer. I wonder if this is more a reflection of what's in Tulsa, or who their target audience is.
I can cite many anecdotes of folks who have tried living in different environments and fled due to (lack of) diversity and the political culture. These pitches and comparative analyses should give it due consideration.
The opposite is far more common. White Flight is not just the name of my Bee Gees cover band.
If the housing assistance wasn’t tied to a specific apartment complex I’d seriously consider it though.
Just relocated back to my home state of California and my wife and I are already planning to leave when the lease is up.
One thing to note, the state income tax rate in Tulsa is 4.44%, so if your business makes $100,000 a year in profit, expect to pay around $4,500 in state taxes. I live in the great state of Tennessee with zero state income tax, and I'd much rather be in Nashville than Tulsa.
I visited Tulsa a few months ago to just check it out. I enjoyed it greatly. The Tulsa Gathering Place is absolutely unreal for a free public park. There is enough going on there to make it a worthwhile place to move to for a few years. A considerable amount of very high end architecture and art there.
I am doing a multifamily development with similar (not nearly as generous) relocation incentives tied in through a medical district. Very interesting way to move the needle and encourage shifts in living. For most cities, this is a much cheaper way to approach affordable housing as well.
If there was an article about paying remote workers to move to SF, you'd get the exact same thing. I mean, obviously the specific complaints themselves would be different, but you'd still get the same rough tone and criticism.
Two students in my graduation class got accepted to Harvard, and others to MIT, U Penn, and Duke. They have gone on to become successful tech entrepreneurs and professors. The graduating class after my year had 4 students accepted to Stanford.
Non est ratio ad gustum ... Über Geschmack lässt sich nicht streiten ... Les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas ...
There is a reason why almost every language has an idiomatic expression to express the same idea.
Tulsa may be a great place for you, it may be a not so great place for you. But dismissing an idea based on no real experience and innate prejudices is pretty stupid.
I think the state of education in our state is a pretty big problem, but there are nationally ranked high quality schools like you said, Jenks, Union, Norman.
https://www.tulsaworld.com/goodnews/how-i-got-here-how-sarah...
Oklahoma senior from Jenks High School accepted to all 8 Ivy League schools
Sarah Cameron boasts a long list of extracurricular activities, including academic clubs and an impressive tennis career. Now she can brag about her eight college acceptance letters, all to Ivy League schools.
P.S. For what it's worth, it's hard to tell that this is being offered by a private individual, the site doesn't have an about page or anything.
P.P.S. For anyone who wants/needs to keep their guns, Oklahoma is pretty good. Governor Mary Fallin & Co. opposed the constitutional carry provision proposed earlier this year, but I suspect Governor-elect Kevin Stitt will be more open to it following these recent midterm elections. Downshot for me with this Governor-elect is that he seems to have promised to be distinctly pro-life, something I suspect will be more of a polarizing political trial and less of a successful policy direction. I think this could cause a considerable amount of time wasting in state government, taking away from more hopeful causes.
I have a lot of fond memories of the place, but returning there after 25 years completely shattered my romantic childhood feelings. The city was not doing great when I lived there, but it felt far worse now (husk comment earlier). You want to know where MAGA came from? All you need to do was live in Tulsa 25 years ago and compare it to today: the rust and rot. The place is sprawling; you’ll need a car. Summer is oppressively humid against biking. It is far more diverse than it was, but I have doubts about the true level of comforts minorities (all stripes from ethnicity to political) feel. I felt somewhat insulated from religion with Unitarian parents, but the prevailing religion runs strong here. I don’t think they’d accept me if they really knew what I thought today. Infrastructure is laughably in poor shape. My father tells me corruption/nepotism/patronage still drives most appointments in OK civil service. I recall fondly of the — can’t believe I am saying this — sweet smell of crude oil refinement from West Tulsa that permeates the entire town and ambient sounds of the pump jacks (yes, sporadically in the neighborhood).
Food is certainly better than what it was. Folks in their early 20s seem to be pushing for more. I actually had a respectable bowl of ramen there. Growing up, there were two Chinese restaurants only. That tells you a lot!
I always appreciated how direct the people were — zero pretense or two-faced behavior. A lot of small talk. You’ll have to be OK with the provincialism. Miss the intense Thunderstorms a whole lot.
My parents were not especially political or conveying of class or social consciousness. I recall a few trips to Arkansas when I was young and crossing the border from OK into AR and wondering what the hell was wrong with that place. It seemed like that much of a step down.
Tulsa has — or had — it’s quirky charm. Everyone knows about the South Park episode about that Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita. Well, guess what, that one in Colorado it parodied is based on an original in Tulsa. Also: in that same strip mall (yep, you’ll love Tulsa if you love sprawling one-story drags of strip malls), there was Starbase 21, a store dedicated to Star Trek franchise paraphernalia, which I think closed recently (sadly). Let’s not forget the world’s largest McDonalds in Vinita that spanned an interstate. These days, the place feels dreadfully big-boxed.
I am a parent now. While nature access is OK (not great but not terrible), certainly faster to reach than in the Bay Area (sorry), I would be concerned with the schools. They have been starved to death and the school day largely cut to four days.
I realize this won’t satisfy anyone’s claims for empirical remarks, but it is just the perspective of someone who knew the place intimately and returned recently. My feelings are textured.