Another Massachusettsian moves to the desert
Tom Casale, writer for Patriots Football Weekly, announced yesterday that he’s ditching Massachusetts for a gambling-related job in Las Vegas. Now, Casale is neither a native New Englander (or even a fan of the New England Patriots) nor one of those highly skilled workers the state is hurting for (I think he has a liberal arts degree in journalism from some college in Vermont), but he is popular with a fair number of Pats fans and, more importantly, probably about to have kids in the not so distant future.
Casale stressed three reasons for the move:
1) The higher pay in Vegas (significantly higher base pay plus bonus).
2) The lower cost of living in Nevada (he’s moving into a $1,200-a-month house of notably higher standard than the $2,000-a-month house in Foxborough he lives in now).
3) His own professional growth – meaning he’ll be able to follow all NFL teams instead of just covering the Patriots – and the ease with each his wife, a teacher, found a job out there. The latter certainly doesn’t surprise me. The desert states all have fast growing populations and are hiring government workers like there’s no tomorrow (financially, I don’t think the desert states, other than Utah, have much of a tomorrow).
(We also learned on yesterday’s installment of PFW in Progress that listener Caligirl doesn’t like it in the bottle and the can concurrently.)
Casale is just one data point (two, counting his wife) but over the last couple of decades Massachusetts has had tens of thousand more data points like them. This state has serious issues (although I’m tempted joke that it is also getting rid of one now that Casale is leaving).
