21–30 of 249 posts
> For a girl raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Salt Lake City is a very weird place. I went to Utah precisely because it’s weird. More specifically, because economic data suggest that modest Salt Lake City, population 192,672, does something that the rest of us seem to be struggling with: It helps people move upward from poverty. By this criterion, should Salt Lake City be so weird to a New Yorker? Upward M…
Because the cost of living in places like San Jose and SF are much higher than Salt Lake City, even the upper-middle class are relatively poor.
My guess is that kids who grow up in these supercities and get college educations tend to move to other supercities, where even though they might make low 6-figure incomes, they spend a large fraction of that on housing.
edit: Also, parents at the (cost-of-living-adjusted) 25th percentile in more expensive regions make more than parents at the 25th percentile in cheaper regions (and are hence more likely to be college-educated, I'd guess).
> For a girl raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Salt Lake City is a very weird place. I went to Utah precisely because it’s weird. More specifically, because economic data suggest that modest Salt Lake City, population 192,672, does something that the rest of us seem to be struggling with: It helps people move upward from poverty. By this criterion, should Salt Lake City be so weird to a New Yorker? Upward M…
Let's check: Out of the 50 largest cities, here are where those high-mobility cities rank by percentage foreign-born.
3. San Jose 38.1%
4. New York 37.7%
5. San Francisco 34.1%
21. Seattle 17.1%
30. Washington DC 12.0%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
So I'd say this conjecture looks pretty good for explaining cities that have the very highest mobility.
(I could not get foreign-born data on Salt Lake City because it's population is less than 200k. I don't understand why your source would list it as part of the "50 Biggest Cities in the US," since the US' 50th city is Arlington, TX with ~380k.)
Or maybe conservatives are not ruthless towards the poor ?
The $20K per year per pupil that NYC (and other large cities) spends is skewed because of the enormous costs of special education. I don't know the numbers for NYC, but from an article I saw about Philly: cost to educate non-special need child: $10K, moderately special need: (7% of students) $20K, severe special need: (another 7% of students) $40K. I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs stu…
> I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs students. But one could assume the ratio stays the same, and thus so does the average (modulo the notes of other commenters e.g. cost of living). That however might not be the case, for various reasons cultural (does one population tend to homeschool special needs children more?) and "technical" (do parents of special ed children go to big cities for…
When I was first about to move to Utah, few years ago, lot of people asked me "why?" and told me a lot about a lot of things. Of course, I didn't even know who the Mormons were (I am not from USA originally). Most of what I heard was wrong. I've met Mormons who have asked me where I am from and not only know where that country is but spoke to me in my NATIVE tougue. I was very impressed. The key word in the article i…
The $20K per year per pupil that NYC (and other large cities) spends is skewed because of the enormous costs of special education. I don't know the numbers for NYC, but from an article I saw about Philly: cost to educate non-special need child: $10K, moderately special need: (7% of students) $20K, severe special need: (another 7% of students) $40K. I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs stu…
What, that sounds like a tautology?
No. A car costs the same, but you need to pay much more for parking. Your housing costs are much, much higher, and so you need a higher salary. Everyone needs a higher salary to afford to live there, so labor costs are higher. The cost to build a school is higher (both real estate and construction costs) and you need to pay all your staff more so that they can live close enough to work at your school.
I have a couple of girlfriends who moved to/from Utah from/to a costal city. They think it's backwards as hell.