Moses Lake is 'heaven' in new book 'Life 2.0'

City called perfect for telecommuting lifestyle in Karlgaard's work

MOSES LAKE — He's never been here, but Rich Karlgaard just named this city one of the top places to live and work.

Moses Lake is included in Karlgaard's book "Life 2.0." The publisher of Forbes Magazine, Karlgaard visited places like Green Bay, Wis., Bozeman, Mont. and Lake Placid, N.Y. to meet Americans who left the "rat race" behind to "start a new life and career in America's heartland" for his book, according to a press release from Newman Communications, Inc., which is handling public relations for the book.

Karlgaard did not visit Moses Lake, he said in a telephone interview Thursday morning. At the end of the book, he listed 150 places where prices were reasonable and people could live a high quality lifestyle, divided into six categories. Moses Lake is included in the "telecommuting heavens" category.

"Small places where if you had the kind of job where you could telecommute, this is the place," Karlgaard explained. "I'm writing for urban refugees … people feeling really burned out doing the urban shuffle."

Karlgaard said that Moses Lake kept turning up on a lot of publicly available research on the Internet and in magazines, although he couldn't specifically remember what prompted inclusion of the city in the book.

"I kept running into it in my research," he said. When asked if he might consider a visit to town in the future, Karlgaard responded, "Possibly."

With "Life 2.0," Karlgaard said his goal is to show people they have a lot of options about where to live today, noting that the price of housing drops considerably and becomes affordable once one leaves the urban coasts. People with middle class aspirations are being priced out of the more expensive markets, he said, and are "really stressed" about the education of their children and the cost of living.

"My mission was to show that there are so many different places in the United States, and one has your name on it," he said.