All Posts Tagged With: "michigan"
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: California, failing, new york
GM to close Grand Rapids, Mich. plant
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Oct 13 2008 | 0 CommentsGM is having a hard time regaining their growth and seeing profits. Recently their stock price has dropped to levels from the 1950’s. Now to help recoup some of the money lost, they are closing the Grand Rapids, Michigan metal stamping plant. The result will be over 1,400 jobs lost.
GM is hurting not only because consumers are looking for more fuel efficient cars, but are also looking for quality. Last night Chris and I were watching a special called "Saving GM" on CNBC and one of the head researchers said that the quality of the cars has improved, but that won’t change the minds of thousands of previous GM owners (like me) who were burned by a poor GM vehicle. However, when someone pulled off a lot in China with a new Chevy Aveo, it still sounded like a Chevy…puttering right off the lot.
I believe they have a lot of ground to make up and really need to appeal to their "burned" customer base.
Thousands of jobs being lost is definitely not good for any local economy either. Hopefully those who are losing their jobs will find something.
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Should you think about buying an American car?
Buying an American car is for SOME buyers!
Tags: economy, job, jobs
House sells for $1.75 on Ebay
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Oct 09 2008 | 0 CommentsSaginaw, Michigan has its newest homeowner.
30 year old Joanne Smith from Chicago outbid 7 others to get the winning bid of a whopping $1.75 on eBay. However she will be responsible for back taxes and some serious clean up to the yard and house. She only bid on the house hoping to be able to sell it for a profit.
Saginaw, Mich. has been hit very hard by financial trouble and the town has a pretty high crime rate. City-data.com has Saginaw’s crime rate index at 1082.3; the national average is 320.9. And the population has been declining for the last decade.
Related posts:Ebay ex-CEO Meg Whitman is going to run for the Governor of California? (Plus, an update to our eBay situation)
Another EBAY update
Another Update on our Ebay situation
Tags: Chicago, decade, michigan
