The whole midsection of the country is a rural ghetto.
That is true, there are a lot of good places in the plains. In Oklahoma, all of your bigger cities, like Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Norman, Lawton, Stillwater, Enid, Muskogee, Moore, McAlester, Broken Arrow, Edmond, etc, are doing alright. All of the college towns are doing quite well, like my college town of Alva which only has 5,000 people. Its losing people slowly, but they have a good state representative (Republican Jeff Hickman D-58) who is doing everything he can to bring more jobs to Alva and the northwest part of the state. The oil and gas dominates up there and in Woodward. It is a college town of a small NAIA school (Northwestern Oklahoma State University) and also has a Supercenter Wal-Mart, the smallest in the state. That town is not going away any time soon. There are some towns that are pretty much dried up (Carmen, Lookout, Byron, Ingersoll to name a few), but every state has those.
Personally, I like the scenery up there. I like that you are able to see about 10 miles down the road on a good day.
We have a saying in Northwest Oklahoma that you can see your dog run away for three days.
