Interesting write up in the Tribune about the rather precarious economic situation facing the Portland metro area. The highlights (lowlights?) of which were the following:
- regional wages are 4 percent below the national average
- the cost of living in the Portland region is higher than 84 percent of all other metropolitan areas
- Portland housing costs are 31.6 percent higher than the metropolitan average
- health care costs were 10.9 percent above average
- groceries were 4.9 percent higher than average
On the upside:
- the cost of utilities was the only major expense category where Portland was lower than the average U.S. city.
- Portland is still the least expensive major city on the West Coast (12.6% less than Seattle, though their wages are 17% higher)
Throw those numbers in a bowl and mix liberally with some of the highest unemployment in the country and you have a mess. But not to worry, the article does state that our leadership has a plan: community leaders agreed that creating more good-paying jobs is the key to making Portland more affordable to more people. Or perhaps it is just a general statement of the obvious like saying to a bunch of starving people "what we need here is some food, preferably good food." With no real way to make that happen, it is more like a wish or a dream than a plan per se.
It certainly will be interesting to see how it goes. Hopefully well, but Portland will be competing for those good-paying jobs with a lot of other cities. Well, at least we can drink to drown our sorrows........uh, "A heavy drinker might want to move from Oregon, where hard liquor is taxed at the rate of nearly $21 a gallon, to Maryland or Washington, D.C., which have the country's lowest liquor taxes, $1.50 a gallon." Damn! Foiled again!
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