The list created by Forbes involves the scrutiny of the country’s largest urban areas which are then ranked via factors such as the city’s crime rates, foreclosures, taxes, home prices, commute times, weather, and decreasing populations.
Go take a look at the list, and note the following: of the 20 most miserable cities, how many are west of the Mississippi? And of those, how many are in California?
Socialism doesn't work because, as Margaret Thatcher said, eventually you run out of other people's money.
5 comments:
Three out of twenty doesn't seem so bad (California has one of the largest populations). St. Louis is on the river. Everything else is east of the river so I'm not sure what point you're making with that. The commonality seems to be big cities that used to have industry ... maybe those who populations got screwed by capitalists?
And I have no clue where socialism comes into this.
1. There are a lot of states west of the Mississippi. California seems overrepresented.
2. If you can't figure out the common thread in the places on that list, it's clear that you choose not to.
You mean the common thread that the cities (and most states) on the list have been run by Democrats for years?
I can tell you that it was the baleful effects of unions that saw to the downfall of Detroit, Flint and Warren. Most of the rest on the list enjoyed the benefits of the union "screw you, I've got mine" philosophy as well which, once the union's monopolistic grip fails are left withered husks.
I like making fun of the poor business climate in California, too, but I don't think this list contributes to that.
The actual Forbes article claims: "This year we examined nine factors for the 200 largest metro areas in the U.S. The metrics include the serious: violent crime, unemployment, foreclosures, taxes (income and property) and home prices. We also include less weighty, but still important quality-of-life issues like commute times and weather."
So ... the worst 20 out of 200.
How many candidate metro areas are in California? I get 19, using a 2009 list of 200 metro areas from Forbes (I expect that there is a newer list, but (a) I can't find it, and (b) it really *IS* Forbes' job to provide this information if they expect people to take the list seriously).
In any event, I don't expect the *SIZE* of these areas to move much year-to-year, so 19 is probably the right number for California.
With 19/200 of the list, I would expect California to make 10% of the top 20. Instead, California has one extra city in the top 20. But we *expect* some statistical noise, right? So I don't think you can conclude anything from this one data point.
More impressive is the lack of metro areas from the South. Other than Atlanta, there are none in the top 20, while the South probably has 50+ of the metro areas in the list of 200. *THIS* is probably statistically significant.
-Mark Roulo
FYI, the Forbes 2009 list of California metro areas in the top 200 is:
1) Bakersfield
2) Fresno
3) Los Angeles
4) Merced
5) Modesto
6) Oakland
7) Oxnard
8) Riverside
9) Sacramento
10) Salinas
11) San Diego
12) San Francisco
13) San Jose
14) San Luis Obispo
15) Santa Barbara
16) Santa Cruz
17) Santa Rosa
18) Vellejo
19) Visalia
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