I was in Vegas for the first time this weekend and also noticed that it’s mostly a concrete jungle. There were some small olive trees planted near Park MGM, but everything else we saw was concrete.
Vegas is depressing man, I don’t think I wanna go back.
The strip is depressing, but the actual city outside of the strip is pretty cool. It's rapidly growing with very affordable housing. The food scene is excellent because of a diverse population. The nature scene is excellent. Electricity is very cheap, no income tax, low property taxes. Extremely well maintained and overbuilt infrastructure, very little traffic. A very nice airport (my favorite in the US) that is very near the population center and also with reasonably priced parking.
Vegas has a lot to offer and the strip really dominates the perception of it which is unfortunate.
I'll agree with everything you've said except the part about low property taxes. I pay about 20% more in property tax on my Vegas house than I do for my LA one, and the LA one is worth about 40% more. The main reason for this is the lack of a Nevada state income tax.
I get creamed by the SALT cap, but I'm not in favor of repealing it, because it rightfully punishes states that aren't fiscally responsible.
The "fiscally irresponsible" states provide more tax dollars to the federal government than the "fiscally responsible" states, all of whom would be completely insolvent without the extra tax dollars they receive from the federal government.
The fair alternative to not eliminating the SALT cap would be to allocate federal dollars spent by the amount of tax dollars paid by the citizens of that state. But then every GOP state would be insolvent, so obviously that's not going to happen.
I was curious about the difference, and a quick search suggests Nevada has property tax rate of 0.44% and California is 1%. I'm not from the US so wasn't sure why your experience differs from my very brief and naive comparison. Are there multiple layers of marginal rates or something that contribute to the actual property tax rate in each location?
He may be paying a much lower property tax rate in California due to Prop 13, which limits property tax increases to 2% per year as long as the property doesn’t change owners. If you bought a house for $200k in 1990 which is worth $1.5 million today you don’t pay anything close to 1% because of that 2% annual increase cap.
Its PR is also made more difficult by the fact that some people _love_ the strip, so this is often the only thing people know about. The most iconic part of Vegas is the strip, so it's the only thing people know to try, and then we get really polar opposite opinions on the city in general depending on who you ask.
Vegas is depressing man, I don’t think I wanna go back.