Transcription
According to Opportunity Insights and Arkbridge Institute research, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana are some of the only US states where a child born into poverty is statistically likely to earn more than their parents and become middle or upper class in adulthood. Salt Lake City, Boise, Denver, Cheyenne, and Billings are among the top metros in the country for upward economic mobility. And over the past 5 years, half of the top 10 states for economic growth were located in the intermountain west, namely Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.
In other words, where I am standing right now is one of the only places left in America where the American dream is still even possible for the average resident. In fact, by virtually every single metric, the interior of the American West is doing far better than the rest of the United States. Utah and Idaho regularly lead the nation in new job creation and have much lower rates of unemployment than the national average. Not only that, but these two states have the most affordable private education rates in the country thanks to BYU, and alongside their neighbors, are among the most affordable for receiving a public bachelor's degree at a traditional 4-year university, with tuition ranging anywhere from 9 to 20% lower than the national average. And just to rub salt in the wound, these states have some of the lowest rates of violent crime, some of the highest rates of fertility, highest reported levels of happiness, and are even physically healthier than the rest of the US in terms of obesity, cancer mortality rates, and the amount of adults leading sedentary lifestyles. While the dream of the '90s may be alive in Portland, the dream of the '50s is, against all odds, alive in the American West.
But why? If you turn on the news, things aren't exactly going well for Americans. Wages have been stagnant for decades. The idea of owning a home is now a fantasy for most people under 40. Birth rates have fallen below replacement levels. Young people, and especially men between 20 and 35, are dropping out of the workforce at alarming rates. And schools are struggling to deliver the promise of employment and a good future salary to their graduates. So why on earth are the only 8% of Americans who live in the Mountain West doing so well compared to the rest of the country? After all, none of the usual socioeconomic suspects seem to be tying these states together. The Mountain West is home to some of the most diverse and some of the least diverse states in America, so it can't be about demographics. The West is home to a combination of red, blue, and swing states, so it can't be about politics. And despite this corridor being extremely LDS, the West does not have a dominating religious force uniting it. In fact, Nevada, Oregon, and Colorado are some of the least religious states in America. So, it can't be about ideology either. For all intents and purposes, it makes zero sense that the interior of the American West would be thriving while the rest of America is seemingly on fire.
So, that's what we're going to investigate today: why this massive yet relatively uninhabited stretch of land is doing so well in terms of economics and standard of living, as well as sitting down with Damon Cassidy in Austin, Texas to see how they're working to restore the American dream to parts of the South and the rest of the country as a whole. This is a lot to go over, so please be sure to like this video, subscribe if you are new, and let's just get right into it.
In the 60 years between the Louisiana Purchase and the completion of the Continental Railroad, a lot of people settled in the American West on foot. These settlers are collectively referred to as the pioneers, and you can't throw a rock in the Rockies without hitting something named after them. Everything from grocery stores to theaters to high school mascots to even burlesque shows at saloons in the desert honor these people and the sacrifices they made to build community here in the mountains. In fact, my wife and I's Christmas tree straight up has ornaments featuring photos of her pioneer ancestors with stories of their lives written in a book that we own. Honoring your recent ancestors is a big deal in this part of the country. And supporting your current family alive today is even more so. In Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, about one in every 20 people live in a household with three or more generations under the same roof, nearly 50% higher than the national average, and growing. Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado are in the top 10 states where children are raised by both their mother and father, as opposed to just a single parent. And Utah, Colorado, and Montana are in the top 10 states of people who volunteer in their communities and donate money to local charities.
Family and community are a big deal for people in this part of the US across the religious and the political spectrum. And all of this culminates into people having something called social capital, which is basically all of the stuff beyond physical dollars that help you and the people around you reach your goals. If you go to a university that has career fairs for your major, that's social capital. If your parents let you keep living with them into your 20s to save money, that's social capital. If you've got neighbors who will shovel the snow in your driveway when you're sick, that's social capital. And while there's not much you can do about the family that you're born into, social capital is almost always a personal choice. It's the decision to be hospitable and generous with friends and family so that they have an easier time in the short term and are able to pay that generosity back tenfold when you need it. It's the decision to pay slightly more in taxes so your town has a free bus system because you know that this provides local businesses with workers and elevates the entire economy, even if you own a car and are never going to ride the bus yourself. Social capital is a culture, and it's a culture that's heavily fostered in the intermountain west while being severely neglected in many other parts of the country. I am always shocked when I go out east and I see things like toll roads and neighborhood HOAs and uninhabited wilderness not being public land. You have to pay to do anything in the eastern half of this country. Whereas I don't—I just checked the map to confirm this, and I live 500 miles away from the nearest toll road. I can go camp and hike and fish basically anywhere outside of town because it's all public land. And I don't know a single person in my life who lives in an HOA.
When you are in a culture that does not value long-term thinking and that does not value the collective good of all people, even those you disagree with, then your local community is eventually going to collapse. And that's a big part of why we've seen so many once booming economies in the United States eventually go bust. In the 1950s, Detroit, Michigan was the richest city in the world. But half a century later, it became infamous as one of the most dangerous and dilapidated metro areas in all of America. And while foreign competition and the offshoring of manufacturing kicked cities in the Rust Belt from their economic throne, their collapse into abject poverty was a direct result of politicians and local residents no longer placing emphasis on social capital. Urban leaders made property taxes skyrocket. Donation networks and charities stopped receiving funding. And virtually all educated and middle-class residents fled Rust Belt cities to instead create sprawling suburbs that were impossible to supply with adequate infrastructure, schools, or first responders, slowly but surely allowing crime to increase, communities to collapse, and corruption to become the only pathway to financial stability.
And the Rust Belt isn't alone. From the end of World War II to the mid-1990s, Southern California, and particularly Los Angeles, was seen as a literal paradise on Earth and became the world's blueprint for the ideal city. And now, much like Detroit, parts of Southern California are infamous for their homelessness problems, crime rates, and lack of support to lift people out of poverty. And while the reasons for this are complex and multifaceted, they almost all come down to politicians and residents placing short-term bets on fragile businesses over the well-being of their own people. Whether it was redirecting water to make citrus farmers happy, sabotaging the largest urban tram network in the world to make suburban real estate developers and car manufacturers happy, placing too much emphasis into STEM to make emerging tech companies happy (#learn to code), or making it way too easy for low-tier millionaires to buy up all the property in the region for their own investment portfolios. Failing to serve your people first will always come back to bite you. Especially in one country that's the literal size of Europe, where it's far too easy for people to simply pack their bags and leave for absolutely any type of residential setting, geography, or tax codes that they want. The United States's biggest competitor is not China and it's not the EU. It is the United States itself. And so the regions of the US that are "winning" right now are the ones that invest in making themselves an incredibly attractive place for people, and especially young professionals, to settle down in for the long term. And that's not just the intermountain west, but also portions of the upper Midwest and even urban centers in states like Texas.
Between 2019 and 2023, Austin, Texas saw their GDP grow by 51% as a direct result of their diversified economy, boom in housing development, and a focus on combining an affordable cost of living with world-class amenities. However, I don't live in Austin, Texas, so I don't want to speak on their behalf. So, I've invited fellow economic commentator and YouTuber Damon Cassidy to come talk about what he's seeing in that part of the US and what people living in other parts of the country can do in order to support their local communities right here at home. Damon Cassidy, thank you so much for being here.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on and uh, I've really liked what you've been doing with your channel and I really appreciate you, uh, you know, being your first guest. It's a real honor. So much like where where I live in the Rockies, Texas has, you know, received a lot of attention for the economic growth that it's experienced since 2019. So I make the case in this video that a lot of that growth can be attributed to things like social capital and having a diversified local economy and really just communities placing a greater emphasis on standard of living than maybe other parts of the US necessarily are. So, I was curious on your end if that's what you're seeing in Texas and if there's anything else that you think has been contributing to growth in your area.
>> Yeah, I think that I I'll have to address it in two parts. And so, going back to maybe 2019 to 2023, Texas is unbelievably massive. So, our economy is now bigger than countries like Canada and Russia, which is crazy that one state is doing that. Now, California is still bigger, but you know, if you if you remove uh certain aspects of California, like their their tech companies, which were coming to Texas, well, that disrupts their economy quite a bit. So, we do have a diversified economy. We all of a sudden Dallas was becoming the new Wall Street and all of a sudden Bastrop was was becoming the next Hollywood. Austin was becoming the next Silicon Valley. So, you had a lot of this massive disruption. Texas. I think from a citizen standpoint, it was frustrating, but as a as a state standpoint, they were doing really good at bringing companies to Texas. They were offering massive subsidies. And I think for a business mindset, that's great. And when you when you kind of have that environment and you have the infrastructure already built, Austin has always been kind of a tech-oriented city. We had Dell, we had different things. we still have Dell, but you you start to have these the the infrastructure to where it wasn't necessarily a hard move for them to be able to just kind of come. It's also it's an attractive city. There's a lot of different things to do um in in a a living standpoint, which I'll address in just a moment. But one of the things that I think is is rarely mentioned is Texas as a whole has a societal perception that it's just a bunch of country truck drivers with big hats and belt buckles and we just shoot guns. And it's like, well, obviously there's some of that happening. There's a reason why there's that that stereotype, but that that's that's not the case of really what Texas is. So when you have that societal perception about a state and also cities like Houston or Austin or even Dallas, those aren't necessarily cities you go to spend a full 7-day vacation on. There isn't really enough to do and it isn't that exciting. You'd much rather go to Chicago or New York or go to LA or many different parts of California. So when you don't really have people thinking about it and then you have this cultural emergence of Elon Musk moving the entire Tesla headquarters here and building a massive factory that does a massive uh ripple effect to these other corporations thinking, "Yeah, I could come here too." You then have Joe Rogan basically the the biggest online voice and all you hear him say is how amazing everything is. And so then it brings all of those similar voices along with him. And when everybody is saying, "Man, Austin has no traffic. It's affordable. It's great. It's clean. It's healthy." Then other people are thinking, "There's job opportunities. I can afford this place compared to New York, compared to California, compared to Chicago. Why would I not come here? It makes total sense." But I think that the issue when you offer such massive subsidies to these companies is that it almost forces their hand to come temporarily. And so when Texas was offering so much of this to other states, they were like, well, why don't I just go to Nashville now and just rake it again? It's so easy to just keep moving to different states. And especially, you know, Texas isn't California. The weather just isn't the same. The the infrastructure just isn't the same. Uh, Dallas just is not Wall Street. That's just it's just and Bastrop will never be Hollywood. And so there's just some of those things that um, like you were mentioning, it it wasn't quite ready. And you also can't just disrupt something and replace an institutionalized—you can't just Wall Street that's been around forever and just say, yeah, Dallas is Wall Street now. That just it it'll never work. And so I think that there was a lot of hype built into it and uh, a lot of disregard to what the people already living in those areas uh, were thinking.
I really appreciate you kind of bringing that um, th those counterpoints on how the economic growth moving into certain areas does not necessarily trickle down to the people who are already living there because you do just get a lot of like transient companies and even transient industries, arguably like tech, you know, that are really just trying to find the most convenient kind of tax footing somewhere who are then likely going to just up and leave as soon as it's no longer convenient for them. So, it's a bit of a double-edged sword where if you do happen to live in a place where a lot of tech companies are moving, like yes, there might be an opportunity there to, as you know, someone who grew up in rural Idaho, to be able to get a $200,000 a year job and that's a crazy thing. But, you know, that's not necessarily the reality that most Americans are experiencing.
So, another question that I have for you that relates to a lot of the things that you talk about on your channel is, let let's say that someone isn't living in one of these boom economies. Let's say that they're living in a region of America that is struggling right now. Maybe housing is too expensive, wages aren't where they should be, and like jobs in general are just kind of hard to come by. What are some things that you think they could do in order to start to make a better life for themselves, maybe without necessarily just up and moving to Nashville or Silicon Valley?
>> What people need to start doing is they need to actually pause for a moment and think very specifically, what is it that I want to do and what are actually my values? Not what the the corporatized American dream values are, what your parents' values are. I think too many people are living lives that they think they're supposed to or that they were told to. They never pause to think, what is it that I actually want to do? I think that we're in an interesting period of time where maybe things haven't been as expensive as they are now, um, as difficult to get a job or things like that. I think it also has never been easier to just put in a little bit of effort and have that really return some value. I think there's so many people that are giving up. When you have when you have people kind of falling into the societal void of just doing the consumer products or social media or these other things, well, if you just try, it's going to be a little bit easier for you. Now, that's not that's not relating to going and get a getting a job in some of these other societal things, but I think that I think that I'm a pretty good example of I just I just worked hard for the YouTube channel and it's worked. It just wasn't that it it's just I cared. And so what I had to do is I had to say, "Okay, I have an 11-cent raise. I'm not able to afford the place that I'm in. I hate my job. Um, I'll never be able to afford a house. I won't be able to have kids. I won't be able to have all of these things." But I said, "The most important thing for me at this period of time is that I hate my job and I'm not able to provide value to other people." And so then I said, "Well, I could technically buy a home in say the Kyle area where it's a little more affordable. Nothing against Kyle. I don't want to live in Kyle. I don't want to be house poor. I don't want to have to commute to a job that I hate." And now I become almost a slave to my job because I have to do whatever it is that they say so I don't get fired or else I lose my house. I thought I I've always saved money to where if you're going to fire me, I don't care. And so I'm going to act the way that I want to act within the corporation. And so I think that it's just it's it's it's recognizing a little bit more of what is it that that I truly want to do. If you don't want to go to college or you think college is stupid, don't go to college and take on that student debt. Maybe are you good with people? I wouldn't say just go to some stupid sales job and just try to make money that way. I would say maybe is it possible to live with your family or to to get kind of a side job and then maybe just try to find local networking events, maybe a like a a young Republicans association or young Democrat association or some sort of Rotary club, some sort of something uh, a a a men's chapter was something that I was doing for quite a while. And gosh, you go there and it's flooded with job opportunities. And I [clears throat] was always thinking that as I thought, man, I could get a job just because I've done two men's chapters because so many people are networking and they're talking about that. And um, I I do think that there are opportunities out there. I just don't think that there are any of the ones that traditionally were available. And so I think that I would just be thinking I have to go about things differently. I have to be very sure of what it is that I want because it is you are going to run into a lot of hurdles. But I want to make sure that I can fall back on my values. I can fall back on the things that I already know that um, that are important to me. And it kind of I think helps you go through um, some of the difficulties. I think if we're just going to do a broad-based societal statement, I would say that probably being some sort of blue-collar worker would be good. Now, there's a lot of blue-collar industries that are not doing good. I think that's the the challenge of saying go be a blue-collar worker. Well, that doesn't necessarily work. But if it's being an underwater underwater welder at an oil rig, you know, you probably are going to get a job doing something like that. It's very specific. Um, and so I think that the challenging thing and something that I don't address too much on my channel is the societal advice or what should you do is so nuanced. It's very difficult. You know, again, I I think it's it's hard because I'm not giving the answer I think people want to hear, and it isn't even the most concise answer, but I I just think if people look within themselves, I've always loved doing this. This is something I'm passionate about. I like polishing guitars or I like recrafting wood or something like that. I can guarantee you that if you find like-minded people, you use social media, you you just research about it, you could probably create something there that would do better than going and getting 50, 60, $70,000 in debt for a job that you hate that probably is already outsourced to, you know, some some other area.
>> You've said on your end that, you know, may maybe you don't see that as necessarily the most like concise answer, but it it's the answer that I think is the most effective and valuable. Oftentimes, you know, we'll use these shorthand business-bro-y terms in order to communicate what it is that you just said. We'll say, "Oh, you need to go out and network." Without really communicating what that actually means. We'll say, "You need to meet opportunities where they are at" without actually telling people where those opportunities are for what it is that they're doing. You know, and this is a hard thing to quantify, but when you do a lot of job uh market research, the estimate right now is that 73% of all jobs are not filled by online job boards. They are filled by some type of in-person event. Now, that doesn't necessarily have to be like career fairs, per se, or like industry showcases. That could also be things like a Rotary club meeting, you know, where people are just interacting with someone and they say, "Hey, you know, my company needs an entry-level graphic designer and Johnny, who I'm talking to, has been getting really into, you know, working in Adobe Illustrator. Like, let's let's maybe bring him on and like teach him the internal, you know, skill set that he needs in order to do like kind of our proprietary marketing approach." And a lot of people end up actually getting jobs this way. It seems like a lot of people are ambitious. They are very, you know, intelligent and they want to make a good living, but they fall into certain traps of thinking, oh, the way that I'm going to get my graphic designer job is to, you know, throw 200 resumes at Indeed and hope that someone gets back to when really if they were also, you know, just kind of engaging in the community, this might happen a little more organically. It's tough because it's really difficult in one sentence or one sound bite to say, "Hey, this is what actually works."
>> You you kind of have to give disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Here are a hundred different things that could possibly work. And what you as the job seeker kind of need to do is reverse engineer your actual goals to where you are right now and then start exploring those different avenues to see what doors open. But that's not a very clean or sexy response. And so you often can't get it in a single TikTok. So, I I definitely resonate with what you're saying.
>> Yeah, it's definitely difficult. And and the reason I I even mention those things is because that's exactly what I did. I have never been able to get a job through an online job platform. Not one single one. Every job I've ever had was just cuz I was in the right place at the right time. And you could say, well, that was luck. The reason that I got the job at the bank was because I was I spoke well and I dressed nice. And so one of the things that I I got ridiculed very heavily on early in my channel was I said, you know, maybe take off the pajamas and just wear some jeans and and you know, I understand that people, you know, they want to be comfortable and they don't want to have to just feel like they're just working to live and all these different things, but I think that there is a little bit of if if you just respect yourself a little bit, if you just want to hold yourself in a professional standing just just a little bit, again, you just have to do do a tiny little bit and and just show somebody that you care. It it has a ripple effect. It really does. I mean, even even the channel now, obviously, it's the channel I have, people reach out to me, different things like that. But the connections I've made, and it's just because I care, you know? It's just cuz like on the channel, it's just it's obvious that I care. And I I think that makes people feel like I want to support you in whatever way that I can. And I I just think that if people kind of went throughout their life just feeling like, yeah, the system sucks. I'm not going to let it affect me. And again, you know, there's been I've seen it. I've lifted. I've gone through these things of, man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to put gas in my car. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do these things. I'm hungry. Different stuff like that. Um, but if you can still find a way through all of that to think, I'm gonna I'm gonna do something for myself and I'm gonna and I just think that if you have that centered in trying to help other people, I I think that you have an unlimited um, just vault of of things that you can use to try to to keep overcoming some of these hurdles. I think if you just want to provide value, there's so many different opportunities for you to be able to do that. I just think it takes a little bit more creativity and and hard work, unfortunately. And that doesn't mean that I'm not over here trying to fix the job market, you know, that's what the channel is about. But if I'm going to recommend something to somebody, it's find out what it is that that really uh provides some passion to you and and you care about and hopefully that's in service of other people so collectively we can start going in a better direction.
>> Thank you so much for sharing that. So, we're we're definitely kind of coming up on time here, Damon. Um, but I did have, you know, just one one other kind of question for you. Is there anything else that you would like to share with the people who are watching today that maybe we didn't touch on throughout this conversation?
>> Um, I think that the the thing that we just really need to stress on is that we have to really start looking for better leaders and listening to the people that are really trying. I think that we have such a cynical nation at the moment and we're we're either we're worshiping the wrong leaders or we're tearing down the right ones. It's it's just it's such a difficult period of time. I think that we really need to have young people start to find their voice, start to to let them grow, support them in whatever way that we can and and start to focus on the future. Again, I don't think that I will ever be able to I don't think I'll see a good job market in my life. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to spend my entire career trying to fix it. And so, I'm thinking what are my kids and my grandkids and my great-grandkids going to be able to participate in. And so, I think that I'm fully I have taken I have understood within myself I will sacrifice my entire life or my career to try to help a better tomorrow. And so, I think that if some people start to pursue that, I think that they'll find themselves being more fulfilled. But it'll also create a lot of hope for other people of maybe other people aren't willing to pay that sacrifice, but I can trust that this person is while I go do what it is that I need to do in my life. So I think kind of we have to go back to maybe some of these 1950s, 1960s values where we did have a lot of emerging leaders and we had people wanting to support them. We don't have that anymore, but we have to recreate that.
Massive thank you to Damon Cassidy for coming on to the channel to share his insights. And if you would like to see the full uncut version of my conversation with Damon, as well as a bunch of other fantastic content that I have planned for 2026, then consider becoming a channel member or patron today. I will see you in the next one. So, before I let you go, Damon, just kind of one one final question that I know all the viewers here are asking is uh, when when's the long hair coming back?
>> [laughter]
>> I think people are more thinking when is the beard going to come back.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm also Yeah.