The Best Places in America to Starve

Michael Bowler | RSS | Tue, May 12 2009 | 2 Comments

On the boot heels of a Lucrative Investing article about the top 25 areas in America to succeed in business, an article must supplement that and provide the best places in America to go broke due to the high cost of living and failing economy. There are a few things that this writer finds rather symbolic, ironic even, about these locations, some due to the locations involved in the previous article, which you will see if you read both articles, and some are from personal connections.

One thing that the intuitive reader will notice is that in the previous article, a lot of suburbs and rural areas were credited as the best places to prosper. In this article, conversely, major cities are picked on. That is primarily caused by a more demanding economy, with most of these cities totaling well over one million residents.

Thanks to real estate prices that are ‘through the roof’, pun intended, high costs of living, and the highest unemployment rates in the nation next to Detroit, Los Angeles tops our list. Despite being home to the President of the United States, with high real estate prices, high cost of living that is barely under LA and New York City, and almost 10% unemployment, Chicago comes in second. Miami comes in third, despite having three of its close suburbs on the positive list from yesterday’s article.

Residents of The Big Apple have to try to curb the high costs of living, exorbinant living expenses, as even rent in many Manhattan condos can draw blood, only with a median income of $69,500. That may seem reasonable, but remember, so many television personalities live in New York City, like all sorts of nationally syndicated newscasters and the Olsen twins. Naturally, that brings the salary for “normal” people much lower. Coupled with an 8.8% unemployment rate, that brings frenzy to the streets of New York, and puts them at number four. Providence, Rhode Island is fifh on the list, primarily due to the fact that business activity is scarce. Few businesses are quick to branch out into Rhode Island, few universities there come out with top workforce prospects, and venture business capital cannot be easily obtained. Median salary is around 56,000. That obviously means many people are under 30,000 a year, with which it is hard to provide for a family.

The most ironic thing about this list is the fact that some larger cities that are on this list, namely Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, have suburbs that made it near the top of the list on yesterday’s article about productive areas. The suburbs are thriving, but as soon as you hit the city limits, you theoretically hit poverty central. Unfortunately, this is the pattern of a large recession. These cities will bounce back like they always do. When the economy bounces back, it will bounce back as quickly as it declined, and these cities will thrive once again.

Full list (ties are designated with matching numbers):

19. Boston, Massachusetts

19. Warren, Michigan

18. San Francisco, California

17. Jacksonville, Florida

16. St. Louis, Missouri

15. Orlando, Florida

13. Memphis, Tennessee

13. Tampa, Florida

12. Portland, Oregon

11. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

10. San Diego, California

9. Newark, New Jersey

8. Cleveland, Ohio

7. Long Island, New York

6. Riverside, California

5. Providence, Rhode Island

4. New York, New York

3. Miami, Florida

2. Chicago, Illinois

1. Los Angeles, California

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Tags: failing, tennessee, masschusetts

Best Buy hoarding Wii’s?

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Wed, Dec 10 2008 | 2 Comments

Over two years after its initial release some stores are still having trouble keeping Wii’s in stock. Just the other day Walmart.com said they had “tens of thousands” of them and still sold out within a matter of minutes.

A rumor floating around gadget and electronic blogs says that some Best Buy stores are holding the popular game system until this Sunday.

I can’t believe that the Wii is still so hard to find. After the 2 years it has been out, it has been steadily out of stock in a lot of locations.

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Tags: best buy, location, stock

The Mumbai terrorist seige has ended

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Fri, Nov 28 2008 | 0 Comments

After days of gunfire, grenades, and hostage taking, the terrorist killing spree in Mumbai, India is finally over. Indian commandos killed the last few gunmen that were held up at the Taj Mahal hotel.

Since the attacks started Wednesday night, at least 150 people were killed and many more were injured as more than a dozen terrorists attacked several locations around Mumbai.

The largest amount of casualties were found where the terrorists were holding hostages, at the Taj Mahal hotel, the Oberoi hotel, and the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish center.

The attacks were some of the worst seen by India short of full blown war.

Even though many people will be forever changed by the events that transpired in the last few days, the country as a whole will prevail. Our thoughts and prayers are going out to the families lost in the attacks.

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Tags: location, few days, hostages