The Glade 4.0

Article about Obama failing the middle class, blah blah.
http://wcbstv.com/politics/barack.obama ... 50735.html

What caught my eye is the idea some Republicans are floating that if you live in an expensive area you should pay less in taxes:


Really? In a high-income, high-expense area they should pay less in taxes? Wow...

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Hopwin:

Let's say you make $65,000 a year where I keep my weekend home.

Let's say you make $65,000 a year in Atlanta.

Who has a better quality of life?

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That depends on where you keep your weekend home... if you keep a weekend home here in Vegas at Bonanza and Martin Luther King Drive... not a great example.

If you keep a weekend home on Park Avenue... probably a decent example

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

You are ignoring the bolded statement about incomes above.

My company does business in all states and we have a geographic modifier to take into account cost of living. Ohio is our base rate with a 1.0 factor, NYC is our highest with a 1.35 factor and I want to say GA is our lowest at .85. If the cost of living is high, wages are naturally higher to compensate so your analogy above is false.

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As long as we work for your company, sure.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That is not the case with all companies though. My company for example, has not provided cost of living increases in two years.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Hopwin:

Really? It's false? Based on what? They make better wages? Too bad your anecdote disproves your theory, since the cost of living in NYC generally exceeds 135% of Cleveland, Ohio. And the wage differential doesn't account for taxation differences and increases at local, state, and federal level, because they are tied to gross income, not the living costs associated with where ever that job happens to be.

DS:

I thought it was pretty common knowledge that my weekend home is in a rural town with less than 20,000 people.

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Yes Khross, it is false. Unless you are seriously going to try to say people in NYC & San Diego don't have a higher wage than those in Missouri, Kentucky and Idaho? If you are going to try I am sure I can locate some tax tables for you... While wages may not perfectly offset the higher cost of living you are ignoring the opportunity gains you have by living in such an area (or if you prefer the opportunity costs you pay for living in the mid-west).

You are also ignoring the obvious fact that high-income, high-expense areas = rich neighborhoods.

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What opportunity gains and losses are you referring to?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Because we all know that all of New York City's residents get paid a high income, that is why no one is poor there.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Hopwin:

I'm not ignoring anything at all. I don't think you know what constitutes rich, poor, or the relative purchasing power based on actual cost of living. Your own company underpays its NYC employees; and it's better than most.

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Whether I live in PA or MD, I get paid the same. Whether I move to a plant in Illinois or to expensive *** Tom's River, NJ, I'll get paid the same. I believe you'll find the policy for such things is largely company to company.

Khross:

I don't argue your point is invalid, that quality of life depends greatly on the cost of living in a given area. However, I don't believe you support capital controls, either. So what exactly is your contention?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I would like to know as well. There seems to be a sentiment pervading those who live on the coasts that the middle of the country is some sort of **** wasteland. The opportunity to experience a more diverse culture, as unassimilated, "FOB" immigrants tend to congregate in either Southern Cal, Miami or the Tri-state area. Perhaps that's what he means.

I would say the opportunity costs paying nearly several times in property prices and other expenses associated with living on either coast far dominates any perceived benefits.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Rafael:

Well, the notion of what constitutes the "Middle Class" in the United States continues to be terribly inaccurate according to both historical and economic models. That said, a "high-income" does not invariably relate to a better stand of living or higher relative purchasing power based on the micro-economics involved. My 800 square foot loft apartment in Atlanta cost me $1400 a month when I was attending Emory many ages ago. I can buy a 3000 square foot house where my weekend home is for $600 a month. And a lot of examples are more dramatic than that when it comes to the disparity in income and actual economic power. Indeed, this is probably one of the few cases where macro-economic averaging is useful, because it can be used to show disproportionate taxes and the cost of living are relative to average income.

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I think that's what's going on as well. It seems to me to be a sentiment of "there's more to do in big cities".

That ma be strictly true in terms of a greater variety of activities, but its sort of useless to define "opportunity" as "things its possible to do". I may have a much greater opportunity to buy crack in NYC but it's hardly an "opportunity cost" to me if I'm in the country to not have that available.

The opportunity cost of living in the country or benefit of the city or vice versa really depends on the individual and their desire or need to engage in certain activities. If I want to hunt, living in NYC is a cost and living in rural Wyoming is a benefit.

There's also the fact that there are decent-sized cities in the middle of the country such as Omaha which, while perhaps not as cosmopolitain as NYC, certainly allow one to have an urban center nearby while living in a much more rural sort of area.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Hopwin: You grossly underestimate how expensive New York City is. For example, if you live in midtown Manhattan, $250k a year with a spouse and two dependents is basically poverty. This is an area where a tiny one-person studio apartment costs over $5000/month to rent.

The disparity isn't as wide as I originally thought:

Average wage in NYC: $46,000
Average wage in Cleveland: $40,000
Average wage in Atlanta: $41,000

I found a few calculators that guesstimate the amount of money needed to maintain your lifestyle but their results vary widely. So instead I am trying to use the CPI as a substitute.

According to the BLS the CPI for the midwest is 202.527 and for the northeast it is 229.343 (all results 2009).

As to the opportunity costs, NYC is the financial mecca (or at least has traditionally been) of the world for the past century. Cleveland? Well take a look.

How does New York stack up?

Those are opportunity costs.

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Ok, and? Those links don't demonstrate that there's a significant opportunity cost as far as career development is concerned for living in the Midwest.

Do many people not relocate where their job takes them? It may be that once people's career develop to a certain point, that they moved to NYC from other places. It would be a fallacy, therefore, to assume that their career developed solely based on being located in NYC from the start.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

yeah; I had no frikking clue.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

That's pretty much the point I was making Rafael, thanks for summing it up for me so succintly. Yes you can take your career so far before you must relocate to a larger market.

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"Must" relocate implies a condition where your argument is always correct - it's a fallacy by assertion. The fact that there happens to be a lot of people in Manhattan or the greater Tri-State area who relocated to further career simply does not mean that in order to further ones career, one must move there.

In fact, if a higher percentage of people living there relocated specifically for their careers, it seems to downplay other aspects for moving there which could be taken to imply that there are very few other merits for living there other than one's career.

In either case, this supposed opportunity cost associated with not living there has yet to be established.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Wages are might be higher, but tax brackets don't change. If you make $50,000 a year and live comfortably in Ohio, you could make $120,000 a year in Silicon Valley and not be able to pay your rent. Nevertheless, you're still paying far more in federal taxes living in Silicon Valley.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I am confused. An opportunity cost is a benefit I could receive but chose to forgo. Career advancement opportunities, a broader job market and higher wages would fall into this category... are you saying there are other opportunity costs such as social status, networking and "city life" or are you saying these benefits are non-existant?

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Hopwin:

You really don't get it, do you? CPI for the Entire Northeast doesn't cover the disparity between Manhattan and Hell's Kitchen. And comparing Atlanta, Cleveland, and NYC is kind of silly, since Atlanta is the fastest growing city in the nation and Cleveland suffers from a whole slew of problems caused by dumping its industrial based.

Even then, if you think $46,000 a year is enough to live on in New York City, you're sorely mistaken. A friend of mine just took $190k a year in St. Paul over $390k a year in NYC, because he'd be able to save ~$60k more a year in St. Paul than NYC. Real Cost of Living is not region average CPI.

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Hi unconstitutional.