True. I live near a one-horse town in the south. Not many real employment opportunities, so many of us work in one of the large towns an hour south or north.
Amazing how the prices of services and real estate now are the same as in the big towns.
There is definitely a sort of "bracket creep" going on-- we have an influx of refugees from Atlanta, Macon, and a few other big cities, and of course as soon as they get here you start hearing, "gee, this is so quaint and quiet, but you really need..."
...and they start clamoring for the stuff that drove them from the cities... more goodies from government, mostly. We've seen the taxes on the house quintuple since 1987, and both the city & county collect them, too. So at some point our "forever house" will probably be replaced by a trailer or shotgun house in another county with fewer services.
Then again, I can recall the days of $18 electric bills and $6 telephone bills... dang it!