No. But that's why i'm asking.
Because from the outside, it seems like that West Texas nothingness is a lot of actual "rural" but very bifurcated in economic stratas. Like...i'm struggling to envision what "rural middle class" even looks like.
Farmers just getting by kinda alright?
Real small towns where people are doing just fine? What are the core industries driving that?
Or just enclaves of exurb McMansions that pretend they're "rural"?
Like...i just don't really understand how there would be a lot of "middle class" in truly Rural places in Texas, where if you're not in a city...it seems like it's either massive wealth, huge land ownership, or poverty. Trying to wrap my head around the concept. Because no, i haven't been to Texas. So i ask a question...
I’d venture that you’re coming from a very “eastern” perspective where wealth disparities look like this:
If you see a green spot, that’s a city. If you see a red area, that’s rural. Simple as. The embodiment of the principle is the massive swath of Appalachian red which sits cheek-to-jowl with the deep green of the Boston-NYC-Philly-DC corridor.
Texas exists in a region where wealth distribution looks like this:
Yes there is deep green around the cities, but the rural counties are mostly green or at least yellow. Those aren’t being driven by urban wealth, they’re largely agricultural and oil fields. There are in fact a lot of blue-collar families doing just fine in those areas, without being oil barons or cattle magnates. Lots of folks who own a small-town restaurant or a few dozen acres of ranchland, many of them from families who have been living and amassing modest middle-class assets in those areas for generations. It’s not a specifically Texas thing, as you can see the green zones in areas as remote as west Kansas, and all through the upper Midwest:
There are of course wealth disparities within each of those counties, but it’s nothing like urban wealth disparity where you have Elon Musk living in the same county as tent camps. The high rollers in those counties are small fish in the scheme of things, and the worst-off are nothing like the third world poverty of Appalachia or the Delta.
This is what I meant by describing Texas as a sort of mini-America. In Houston and Dallas you can find some of the most extravagant, stereotypically American displays as wealth in the same context as deep deep urban poverty. Austin is one of the nation’s hubs for tech-bro culture. Then you’ve got the deep rural poverty of south Texas which climaxes at the border, and as you go west you’ve got the transition into a desert region which can only nominally be described as “settled”. And in between it all there’s a mini-Midwest where there’s still a predominantly middle class culture and economy.
