In 1929 in New Mexico, which I believe was a State at the time, a "mythical man" earned 420 dollars per capita on the average. In fact the average earned wage could be up to two or more times that, as per capita include men women and pets. Of course the "average wage" is not what 66% of the wage earners make, as the average is skewed by the wealthy a tad. (The "normal curve" graph of the number of persons versus what they make bulks below the average value of what they make.) Most people make close to the "modal" or "most frequent" wage, not the mean or arithmetically averaged wage.
NM had 420,000 souls living in 1929 and about 1,800,000 in 2000. Its meagre per capita income was a measly 22,000 dollars in 2000.
What is offsetting this is the fact that desert rats, cactus, sand fill, rock, and dry air are pretty well free and plentiful in those parts. As well, anyone needing lots of wide open space can find lots of it there to swing a cat in. Vegetables often grow to gian size if irrigated. People needing to shoot bullets at random will find few things to harm, as long as they watch for ricochets. New Mexico has silver, gold, oil, and mountains with plentiful snow. It also has lost mines and solid rumour has it, buried by late modern pirates, some caches of gold whose wealth beggars description. (100 tons of Gold), One could have asked F. Lee Bailey or Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote about them in his some of his non-fiction books.
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