Things are definitely relative. You couldn't rent a 1 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area for my parent's mortgage on a three bedroom house, which my dad manages to pay as career military. But there is huge resentment against teachers because of how much they make compared to the bottom half in town.

My real concern isn't with the take home pay of the local college educated elite, but rather the tremendous gulf between what professionals make and what "regular people" make. By national standards the community doesn't have many truly wealthy, but the disparity is still there. For example, an acquaintance of mine who is a kindergarten teacher had to cancel a class field trip because her principal wasn't comfortable asking parents for $3/child to cover the busing cost. To me, that suggests a big problem with poverty.

> But there is huge resentment against teachers because of how much they make compared to the bottom half in town.

That's amazing, considering that in many places, this is the exact opposite...

I wonder what my teachers think of me? I never felt the need to leave my rural community and "get by" just fine on my HS diploma.

I remember in high school my peers would lament about getting out of here as soon as possible, but I never had the same affliction. I always felt I could bring the perks of the world to me, and feel like for the most part I have succeeded with that. I've maintained "big city" programming jobs for more than a decade now, and I get to do a little farming on the side for the enjoyment of it, which brings in it's own not-insignificant income.

I feel like I might lose a little bit on the entertainment side of life, especially as I get older, but frequent trips to the city does mitigate that problem somewhat. On the flip side, if anything, access to technology might be better here. For instance, the farm has a fibre optic connection to the internet and top notch cell service. I don't even find that when I visit the neighbouring cities. I think that is pretty important for someone with an interest in technology, like myself.

I guess I just don't see why teachers hearts would be broken. The rural life is pretty great, and really not all that limiting, in my opinion. Maybe once upon a time, but technology has bridged most of those gaps.

Clearly there is a world of difference between being a telecommuting programmer earning a large salary and remaining in your hometown because you want to be a stay-at-home parent and follow God.

I admittedly missed that context, but it doesn't exactly seem mutually exclusive either. Why can one not follow God, be a stay-at-home parent, while also being a telecommuting programmer (or whatever suits someone's interests and abilities)? Staying in a small town does not really seem to be the limiting factor.

That's not at all consistent with my experience. I'm from rural MS, but was educated in Memphis. I went back to a small town (population: 4,500) to run a business there. Before I moved on, we had built it up to just over 40 employees. Except for technical jobs (finding programmers was damn near impossible), general labor jobs were easy to fill with a variety of skill levels.

The people we paid $35,000 were quite well off in that in that town. Hell, I rented one of the largest houses in the area when I moved, and only paid $800/mo (for 4,000 sqft). Nice two bedrooms ran $400-450, with three bedrooms running a hundred or so more.

The single wide culture fell into three main camps, as far as I could see:

1) Those who bought land and put a single wide on it, so they could own their place. Usually the intention was to some day build a house. Not a horrible decision.

2) Those who were renting, and opted to have a smaller trailer on a lot of property (to be able to have horses, etc), instead of going for a real house in town. I can respect that decision too.

3) Those trapped in the "pay weekly" rent treadmill. I feel bad for this group, because they're paying as much or more overall for their trailer rent as a decent rental house ran. But it's almost as bad as the payday loan treadmill .. once you get on, it's hard to get off.

I didn't notice your reply otherwise I wouldn't have deleted my post. In my home town in northwestern MN there is an agricultural experiment station which paid $35,000 for a programming job a couple years ago. I made a spreadsheet and even as a single guy with my car paid off I'd only be able to save about $700 a month on that salary. And that's as a renter. Granted, heating costs are much more expensive in northwestern MN than they are in the south and a rental is a bit more expensive than $400. That said, if I had kids to support I would have had to live in a trailer park and would have qualified for food stamps.

I don't think that living in a rental and saving $700 a month is "solidly middle class" in the USA. Perhaps it is now, though, in a world of permanently diminished expectations.

You may be slightly out of touch if you think saving $700 a month is poor. Huge portions of America have no savings and live paycheck to paycheck. Many more have only a few hundred in savings total.

50% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 in an emergency (citation: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/news/economy/americans_lack_...). Only 25% were "certain" they could come up with the funds.

Not being able to save $700/month or to come up with $2,000 in an emergency situation in the USA is poor, no matter how much useless crap you bought with the rest of your money.

Perhaps it's not "poor" but I was questioning whether it is really considered "solidly middle class." If it is, I guess I am out of touch.

Where would you place the middle class? While it might not seem abnormal around here, a $100K income puts you in the top 3-5% of earners.

$35k individual income is solidly middle class. If your wife works and makes $20k, you're at the median household income.

For some weird definition of "middle", I guess. "Middle class" is a designation without meaning, the kind of label that nearly everyone is eager to claim for themselves. Hardly anybody but the most indigent will admit they are poor, because in the US it's like admitting a moral failure. Otherwise you'd be middle class, just like everyone else.

To me, referring to a "middle" when the distribution looks like this is not very useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_Annual_Ho...

Is the median $55k household in the US reasonably comfortable, able to have a family and buy a home without frequent financial stress over expenses like buying groceries, filling up the tank, or paying the water bill? If it's true that most Americans could not quickly produce $2000 in an emergency, I find that hard to believe. $55k DINKs are doing okay, but add a couple babies to the mix (not unreasonable for a "solidly middle class" family), and I think you're in for a rough time if you're saving for college and retirement like you ought.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_22490345/kline-americas...

Median or average is hardly a weird definition for "Middle" in terms of salary/place in society.