Over the years many cities in the United States have reached somewhat iconic status for better or for worse. Now desolate, Detroit was once the center of the car industry in the United States but nowadays it is merely a shell of what it once was. Such can be said about many American cities but one that is rarely discussed in those harsh terms is Las Vegas. Despite its location in the Nevada desert many people still have this glowing image of this city like some sort of El Dorado of glittering lights and casinos in the middle of the desert. The reality though is much bleaker, especially for those living there and even more so for those who end up leaving. But what is it about Las Vegas that pushes so many people to leave? To understand this, we need to understand why people move there in the first place so let’s take a deeper look.

Despite what many might think rare are those who move to Las Vegas for its casinos or reproduction of European landmarks. One of the reasons many people move to Las Vegas in the first place and Nevada at large is because of its tax laws. For many people weighing the pros and cons of the state and the glittering city of sin, the fact that you do not have to deal with state income tax, as well as sale taxes on necessary products such as food or medical products, made it the perfect place to live. The constant heat and the lack of harsh winters also might seem appealing to many who have not experienced the eyes and lows of Nevada desert temperatures. Things do get a lot more complicated once you move there.

First, we need to talk about one of the most blatant and important problems when it comes to living in a city like Las Vegas. Las Vegas itself is not a city in the same way that we understand cities like New York or Philadelphia for example. Las Vegas in itself is a tourist attraction which means that most of its infrastructure and investment exist in a way to bring in more tourists as well as make sure that they both come back and spend money. The economy of Las Vegas is completely led by its tourism industry. While this might seem like a good opportunity for those who want to work in the tourism business it does create a very unique problem. The job market is extremely limited in its variety of jobs but also in its opportunity to make more money.

One of the biggest problems when it comes to dealing with a tourism-driven economy is that you are reliant on tourism seasons to be strong, which is very much not always the case. This has become especially common during the start of the coronavirus pandemic when many places were locked down and people chose not to travel. It becomes doubly important when you think about the current rate of inflation and the many difficulties that people are facing because of the state of the economy at large worldwide. The order the economy is on average people the less they have disposable income and the less disposable income they have the less likely they are to travel. This means that if your county or your city is extremely reliant on tourism it makes your market extremely hard to predict Ann makes it fluctuate in very dangerous ways. This means that one season you can have a job and the next season the whole company can be shut down.

This might seem like the end of the world but the reality is also that Las Vegas is facing a much more dangerous problem than its volatile tourism-driven market. When you think about Las Vegas you think about the Nevada desert but many people seem to forget the desert part. Las Vegas is built in the middle of a desert. Its only source of water from lake Mead has not been growing over the past decades it has only been shrinking. Has it been that bad though? It has. Over the past 25 years lake Mead has dropped by over 150 feet. This is extremely alarming since Lake Mead is the basin in which Las Vegas gets most of its drinkable water. While it may not seem like a problem now it is a new upcoming problem that is not being fixed currently. So it’s no wonder that many people are getting scared and leaving. As we see Nevada temperatures only rise every year to record levels there is something dangerous there that Nevadans need to worry about.

So whether you are trying to save your own life or give yourself more opportunities to make more money especially if you are somebody who’s looking to pursue higher education, it’s no wonder that you would leave Las Vegas. This becomes even more apparent when you look at the average prices when it comes to schooling and education which is extremely expensive. So like people have done time and time again when it comes to dealing with the rising cost of living people move. This is why even in 2023 we are seeing many people choose to abandon their state and go somewhere else to pursue better chances at happier lives.

So if you found yourself living in these situations and these conditions it’s no wonder that you would be looking to sell your house for cash in Las Vegas or find a realtor that could find you something better out of state. Las Vegas is not an isolated case. More and more as we see climate change affect the way we interact with the world many places will become harder and harder to live in. We can already see the impact it had on California with the rising rate of forest fires or take a deeper look at the currently disappearing keys of Florida. Our world is changing and we need to adapt if we want to make sure that it is a place that is safe for us to live in. While much of the damage is already done we can only hope that we can stop things from getting worse in the future, especially for our kids and our kids kids.

Anthony

Writing about politics and finances.