Queen City of the Plains is what Denver used to be referred to. Then sports got to be big and the moniker was changed to the Mile High City. With all the dirt and other stuff in the air, Denver isn’t much of a Queen City any more. Maybe a dowdy has been. Sitting a river basin, creates a failure for air quality. There are temperature inversions that trap the dirty air for days at a time. Creating a pretty ugly city skyline.
Also being a city dominated by liberals there tends to be stark contrasts between neighborhoods. Most of the middle class has left the city for the burbs. In Denver are the upper class/elites and the poor wannabe’s.
Yet the spectacular view of the mountains will always be there. Denver has one of the most picturesque settings in the world. Even when it obscured by the haze, there are clear days when the view is beyond compare and for that reason people want to move to Denver.
Denver is not a blue collar town. Most of industries and factories have been chased and all that’s left are government jobs and the service industry. The closest thing in the area to a factory is Coors Brewery in Golden and it is so despised by liberals for the Coors family is supper rich and very conservative plus they fought off the union from getting into the brewery.
At one time Denver was only second to DC for federal government jobs to Washington DC. The feds set up lots of regional offices in the area so they could go out and visit the mountains plus Denver is a central location for the Rocky Mountain region. As a result there are lots of government contractors in the area.
The location also is a nice distribution area for the major factories back east/midwest. There are huge warehouses surrounding the city and small support businesses.
These jobs are skilled/semi-skilled workers so for the poor people there is not a lots offered to them. This sets up a good conflict and the poor me mind set. So the politicians have easy prey and can promise lots of things and deliver hardly any thing.
Yet this large government payroll pros up Denver and kind of insulates it from economic downturns.
Look at the pay scale of the government workers, most are in the $70-80,000 range and into six figures. Then look at the pay scale for the workers in the service industries, the Wal-Mart workers, the Kwik Stop stores, most of them pay in the $20-30,000 range. Even the good union jobs are seldom over 50K a year.
A low level government administrator gets a nice mid six figure income. The socio economic gaps are growing between the work a day person the one who lives on the government payroll trough.
It was this type of gap that the Bolshevik's and Lenin used to overthrow the Tsars of Russia.
Kind of makes one wonder what is being set up?
Having lived in the Denver area for over 30 years I have seen lots of changes. It moved from a CowTown to a oversized metropolitan area. People have moved from other parts of the country to escape their problems and in the process brought more problems with. No longer is it a simple pleasant town built on the plains. It has become a complex metropolis intertwined in the bureaucracy of government.
Ah well, it has its days when all things are great, so I will go visit on occasion and remind myself why I live in a small one horse town now.
1 comment:
This sounds like a story of many cities in the US now, I'm saddened by it. The most successful thing in our country is that which perpetuates itself and is really nothing short of a cancer destroying all that's good in our country.
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