Slashdot Mirror
Study Says Massachusetts Best State For Technology
Anonymous Coward writes "The Milken Institute (site is cnn/msnbc/wapo dotted it seems) has released a study claiming MA is the best state for technology while Texas has dropped to 26th. I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this. It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space. I just don't see (in my job hunting) very many start-up or expansion in the states they list at the top.
Lots more at Google News."
Reader footh adds a link to a PDF of the results.
India is the Best state for tech.
Is that the heat produced by your CPU is a dry heat.
(It's a joke, I lived there for 16 years.)
(site is cnn/msnbc/wapo dotted it seems)
They havn't seen anything yet.
Seriously though, we're not going to start saying "My site got cnn-dotted" are we?
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
Maybe it's an election year ploy. Think about it - MA on top, TX dropping hard... hmmm... Either that, or a precursor of things to come...
Massachusetts isn't dropping its suit against Mirosoft.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
There is plenty of open space outside of Boston, much of which is accessible via public transportation.
Read it in the paper this morning. "The index is a composite of indicators such as the growth of venture capital funding, number of new start-ups, research and development spending, percentage of workers in high-tech fields, number of technology companies and percentage of people with college degrees."
And as the owner of a venture-capital-less internet small business in Texas with no college degree, I find the survey a poor indicator of technology in a state - especially coming from a company that can't even keep their server online.
How you say? I fart in your general direction.
RadicalBender.com
With all those colleges in MA (including MIT), it's not surprising that it's the top state for technology. It's virtually a breading ground for it.
Good thing about Massachusetts:
MIT.
Bad thing about Massachusetts:
Ben Affleck & Matt Damon.
Massachusetts does seem to be (slowly) embracing open source software. There's an article on ZopeZen discussing the use of Zope in particular in Massachusetts, but it looks like the Zope adoption is just a small part of a much bigger plan.
should not be that high. The state of tech here is not that great. I guess there has some push lately to try and spur bio stuff- but I haven't seen much come from it.
People I've talked to in CA say that AZ is behind the times on tech stuff and when I'm writing vb 6.0 code to create access 97 spreadsheets I can see what they mean.
We've got some big defense contractors here- Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing but I don't think any of the facilities here have huge numbers of engineers at those sites.
Frankly I think our state and city government types have really missed the boat on luring businesses out of CA to here. The costs are so much lower here. But what do I know?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I've lived in Austin my entire life. I've seen the town grow from peaceful and comfortable to rude and crowded.
You may THINK there is lots of room in Austin... but really, THINK AGAIN! The traffic here is AWFUL!!! I have an hour+ commute each day one-way (and it use to be 20 minutes before the big boom). The city is just not prepared to deal with all you folks from all-over-creation trying to come and live here because its some sort of "fairy-land-great-place-to-live." It USE to be. That's before everyone and their dog moved here.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
You've never actually lived in Austin. The cost of living is NOT cheap, particularly when you factor in the amount of traffic for a city of its size, and the cost of living in other areas.
Blake
State Rank(2004) Rank(2002) Rank Change Score(2004)
Massachusetts MA 1 1 0 84.35
California CA 2 3 1 78.86
Colorado CO 3 2 -1 78.77
Maryland MD 4 4 0 78.19
Virginia VA 5 5 0 72.27
Washington WA 6 6 0 69.87
New Jersey NJ 7 7 0 69.03
Minnesota MN 8 10 2 67.49
Utah UT 9 9 0 66.49
Connecticut CT 10 8 -2 66.26
Rhode Island RI 11 21 10 64.01
New Hampshire NH 12 13 1 63.43
Delaware DE 13 11 -2 62.51
New Mexico NM 14 20 6 61.75
New York NY 15 12 -3 60.66
Pennslyvania PA 16 16 0 60.36
Arizona AZ 17 18 1 58.47
Georgia GA 18 15 -3 58.10
Oregon OR 19 23 4 57.76
North Carolina NC 20 17 -3 57.28
Illinois IL 21 19 -2 56.59
Vermont VT 22 31 9 56.00
Texas TX 23 14 -9 54.91
Ohio OH 24 27 3 54.18
Michigan MI 25 24 -1 54.01
Kansas KS 26 22 -4 53.12
Wisconsin WI 27 25 -2 51.76
Nebraska NE 28 32 4 50.91
Indiana IN 29 30 1 50.73
Idaho ID 30 26 -4 49.03
Missouri MO 31 28 -3 48.11
Florida FL 32 29 -3 44.47
Maine ME 33 36 3 43.47
Tennessee TN 34 40 6 42.77
Oklahoma OK 35 37 2 42.65
Alabama AL 36 33 -3 42.36
Iowa IA 37 35 -2 41.90
Montana MT 38 34 -4 40.65
Hawaii HI 39 43 4 40.05
Alaska AK 40 39 -1 39.91
Wyoming WY 41 38 -3 38.72
Louisiana LA 42 44 2 36.66
Nevada NV 43 42 -1 36.09
South Carolina SC 44 41 -3 35.94
North Dakota ND 45 45 0 34.55
West Virginia WV 46 48 2 33.65
South Dakota SD 47 47 0 33.31
Kentucky KY 48 46 -2 32.61
Arkansas AR 49 50 1 29.53
Mississippi MS 50 49 -1 27.48
State Average 52.64
It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space. When discussing states, Austin doesn't seem to apply. It's a (small) city, (capitol of Texas,) not a state.
As for living here -- I'm a New England native and can't stand the Boston area. Crowded, difficult to get around, insane taxes, the Big Dig and so, so expensive. I make 7x what I earned in grad school and still feel poorer now than I did then. I'd love to get a job in, say, north Route 128 that allowed me to live someplace cheaper/nicer without the insane commute, but if you're in a comfortable situation elsewhere, don't go thinking the grass is greener on this side.
And don't get me started on that long-term capital gains worksheet...!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Obviously you never have been to Phoenix. Sure, it's 115 degrees in the summer... But the grass is greener and better watered than anywhere!
I go to San Jose, more often than I care to. I talk to people who work there, and the horror stories they tell. Many of the H1B types I meet are "hot-bunking", 7-9 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment. Sending as much cash as they can back home. Certain valley companies engage in a kind of white collar slave labor, IMO.
For other Americans, who actually want to make a living wage, and go home to a family, you need to think out of the box. If you have a clean record, and are US born, look at the Aerospace industry. Look at Florida. I met an entire group of high level EE/CS types who were relocating to Alaska to work on a missle defense program and one other had a job with the State of Alaska.
I wonder how much MA's pro-open source plays into them being pushed to the top of the list. I remember several /. articles on how MA is gpl friendly
Massachusetts kinda... sucks. I lived there for 10 years (college +6) and it got more and more expensive, the people got REAL nasty after 9/11 and the Big Dig will never end! Calling it the "best tech state" also depends on whether you actually HAVE a job there - the dot-com bomb slammed a lot of young info-workers. Also, it's called "taxachusetts" for a reason.
Still, Boston has some advantages: the James Gate Pub, unbelievably hot college girls (Portsmouth is still better...) and some great bands.
This might be flame-bait, but the place has got some real problems.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
really understand what you are saying about natural migration- in fact I don't get your point at all- sorry
But arizona is not a desolate land. It is beautiful with a wide range of environments. I love to spend time in the desert as well as the mountains. I wish it weren't so beautiful sometimes because frankly I'm sick of so many people moving here every year.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Ummm... I think they mean Phoenix.... Other than than that... Arizona sucks for tech.
What does "Lots of Space" have to do with technology? You mean that scientists in urban Boston cant develop technology than someone in a suburban 1 story building with 7000 space parking lots and a 10 minute drive to go to the next building over?
If that's the case than Alaska should be #1. They have the most space - and since it is so cold people would have no choice but to sit inside and innovate... Hmmm. What about Siberia - where is all the technology from Siberia? They have lots of space there... And we all know about Soviet Russia.
It's not surprising that the top ten states this year were the top ten states last year (and the bottom 10 states were, with one exception, the bottom 10 states last year.) But what's up with Rhode Island??? 21 to 11 in one year isn't too shabby....
More sugar!
Everyone knows that it's best to start a company in a state with legendary high taxes! *roll eyes* What a joke.
Gosh, Timothy, why would you have chosen to compare Taxachussets and Texas? There wouldn't be a political reason, would there? I mean, we all know you're not a Bush supporter, but can you try to be less transparent next time than to choose a liberal-biased pro-government cheerleader such as the Milken Institute.
Anyone doubt me? Just look at the Milken Institute front page which is currently promoting it's Global Conference, a forum on "affordable housing" (which is just a tax on those who buy their homes to help pay for those who don't) and fawning interview with Pat Cox, President of the European Parliament.
Yawn.
I recently looked into forming an LLC in Massachusetts. LLC's minimum tax is second to only California, state income taxes suck, and the state was the last in the country to allow single-member LLCs. Not sure how that would qualify as a "magnet for high tech companies"...
My only problem with Microsoft is the severity of bugs in their software.
On the other side of the survey, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Kentucky are 50, 49, and 48, respectively.
For a business owner looking for tech talent, it means bad news for those states. But what about for us, the aforementioned "talent"? Shouldn't this mean that if I move to Jackson, Little Rock, or Bowling Green, that my skills will be in higher demand?
Interestingly, in my family's home town of Hazard, KY, there's a call center for SHPS. Those are a few hundred jobs that are staying here instead of going to India. Would moving call centers to MS/AR/KY help those states improve? That's a policy I'd like to see Kerry implement.
BTW, word in Hazard is that SHPS absolutely sucks as a place to work, with high pressure and no advancement. But it's better than the welfare office.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Seems like we should give the people at mit something to do at least... They are starting to exhibit some strange geekish behavior. Just look at this: Random Hall Laundry
... because it is indirectly dirty: IIRC, "fark" is intended to be a euphemism for "fuck".
So, not only is it amusing, it's also accurate (at least in popular parlance)... and perhaps not quite as confusing as saying "I've been slashdotted by cnn.com".
Yes - it's that Michael Milken - the securities fraud guy.
So if we were to drop a Win98 machine into an office in mass. would it make it any less likely to freeze? Oh wait...that would require a pool of lava to keep windows from freezing.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
is where I used to live, it is probably the worst state, and moved to Dallas. Every other business here has "tech" or "net" or such in its name. Plano is covered with Tech companies including Microsoft, Intel, IBM. I don't see how TX could be 26th.
... that way my home state (ND) would do better in the rankings. I think this would be a more fair comparison because 'doing more with less' is generally considered a good thing.
in Texas
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Wait. Where's India on this list?
I always think all Dallas girls look and act like Morgan Fairchild. She was the prototype Texas BWA.
Did anyone else notice the state that ranks last has the abbreviation MS?
_____
Thank you.
I lived in Massachusetts for 8 years and only set foot in the boston metro area 5 times. Boston isn't everything. Backwoods New England is VERY purty.
When you say "Arizona" for technology, you actually mean "Metro Phoenix." In the Phoenix area you certainly have plenty of "space" mostly occupied by roads and red tile roofs: my commute is over 25 miles one way, with an average rush-hour time of 40 minutes by freeway. I live in the north Valley (far-north Phoenix) compared to the "East Valley" where the orifice is. Mass-transit consists of two busses and a transfer, net time about two hours one-way (not counting a half-hour walk to the bus stop in 110F weather.)
Despite the north/east thing, I have a shorter commute than several cow-orkers who live in the East Valley because (a) they actually live farther out, and (b) the east-west rush hour traffic through Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, and Gilbert crawls on a good day.
Technology employment used to consist of Motorola, now it's Intel that employs more engineers than everyone else combined. They sack 10% of their staff every year.
Education consists of Arizona State University, with 60,000 students who all commute and haven't any other schools to choose from: ASU knows that and treats them as nothing but revenue sources. The only requirement for tenure is hitting your quota of grant money. This might matter more if students ever saw a professor, but they have better things to do, like fill out grant applications.
Oh, and the only "open spaces" any of us see are when SR101 takes us past the Salt River Reservation (cotton fields, whiteflies that gum up your windshield) or SR202 takes us along the (dry) Salt River bed. Otherwise, it's a pretty fair drive to get out of town.
Don't forget those 110F summer days; it was 97F yesterday (late March). I happen to love the heat, but partly because I grew up here and partly because it keeps the riffraff locked up in air-conditioned denial. Yes, you can see mountains when the air clears. Just don't kid yourself that you'll be able to live in those "open spaces" and still work for Intel; even Craig Barrett has to fly to Montana for that.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Too bad they're running IIS:Ah well.
The Army reading list
It is alright for tech... not great.. The main issue I hear a lot is that AZ is a little short on good research school for tech.. Both major schools here are trying to change that but when you compare AZ to CA, MA, UT or TX... AZ lags way behind.
BTW.. Open spaces == sprawl from hell.
Sure it is. Unless you actually want a JOB in technology.
Florida baby ... all the way.
I talk about stuff.
It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space.
:-/. (Last year, Governor Davis raised UC fees by 30%, and this year Governor Schwarzenegger is raising graduate UC fees by 40%. For the professional [law, med, business] schools, there's almost no difference between UC and private institutions... except that the privates tend to be better at getting you scholarships. The UC system used to do a great job at keeping our best and brightest in the state, as well as attracting those from far and wide... but we're seriously losing that edge.)
The low cost of living argument doesn't help anyone in the US anymore. If a company is interested in relocating some of its jobs (like call centers) to somewhere with a low cost of living, they have *no* motivation to choose somewhere inside the US. They can do much, much better by relocating overseas.
On another note, I saw Ross DeVol (cited in the article) speak at a panel on Southern California's Regional Economy at UCLA last fall. He had some interesting stuff to say/show about the differences between Southern California and the rest. The issue of importing well-educated labor came up then, too... and he wasn't the only one who brought it up. California is going to keep falling behind as long as we keep raiding our school systems for money
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Arizona is a concealed-carry State.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Austin Texas - easily the most cultured city in Texas (100,000+ students out of 550,000 approx pop, metro and surrounding areas approach 1 million), "Live Music Capital of the World" (self-proclaimed but not without reason), film industry second only to LA, lots and lots of big tech (AMD, Motrola, IBM, etc), beautiful countryside, hills, trees, springs - awesome... and probably the HIGHEST COST OF LIVING IN THE SOUTHWEST. Compared to Austin.... Dallas, San Antonio and Houston are dirt cheap. And IMHO worth every penny. I leave Austin, I leave Texas. I'm sorry. I felt the need to educate.
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
Is this a Kerry ad?
If we are talking about cost of living being the determining factor like the poster of the article says, well then India is the best place along with China.
In the USA Texas would not be the best place because theres places with an even lower cost of living and plenty of open space.
The best state for tech is the state with the best economy, most educated population and the most money. That state happens to be Mass due to MIT, Harvard, Tufts, and the many other great schools here of course we'd have the advantage over Texas.
What great schools are there in Texas? Also places with lower costs of living usually also have a population which generally has less wealth which explains why they live in poor areas where the cost of living is low. If you run a business you want to be where the other businesses are. When businesses move to a place the cost of living eventually goes up and if Texas had become Silicon valley do you honestly think a bunch of poor people would be living there? The cost of living would skyrocket to the levels of Cali or Boston.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Austin is cheap, given its size, the opprotunities here, and how friggin COOL it is. =]
-ashot
As someone who lives in Texas, let me mention some of the virtues of the state.
1. NO STATE INCOME TAX. Yes, there is no state income tax. That's like a 15% raise in and of itself.
2. The Weather - Other then July and August, where it's *really* hot outside, you can always do things outside in Texas.
3. Concealed Carry - Crime rate in Texas has plummeted becasue of it.
4. Music Scene - Whether it's Dallas / Ft. Worth or Austin, there's a lot of good rock bands in the area. Like Country? There's Houston.
I would mention the sports teams... but they all suck. The Stars get owned by the Red Wings, the Rangers get owned by everyone (even the Detroit Tigers), the Astros are called the "Disatro's" for a reason, and c'mon.. the Cowboys are the NFL's most hated team, and the Houston Texans haven't been around long enough for anyone to really care yet. Oh wait - no, there's the Spurs and Mavericks, so yeah I guess the local teams aren't a total wash.
Arizona would be a good place to put an industry. The problem with Arizona is its right next to California, so why go to Arizona for a job when all the jobs are right next to it in Cali? It's going to be tough for people who arent on the coast. When you are on the coast usually its easier to bring jobs than if you live right in the center.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
High taxes, inhumanly cold temperatures in winter...what more could anyone want? :-)
The technology might be great, but let's look at the quality of life.
High Taxes (income, property, real estate, car, excise).
Lots of gubmint interference
High fees for lic, reg, insurance, title, etc. etc.
PITA to own a gun for self defense.
Outrageous cost of housing
6 months of winter, and the roads are salted so your car will rot out (sheds tear for his decapitated but loved car)
Lots of rudeness and Hate (A house for sale near Boston was set on fire by White neighbors when they discovered the people buying it were Black)
The RMV is staffed by people who actively enjoy being rude and hateful.
So yes, the tech might be great, but there is a LOT more to life (cause when you are on your deathbed, no one says "I wish I had spent more time in MA!:) which can more easily be found in TN, for example...
What I see as the problem with startups in AZ and TX is a lack of a local market to sell to, compared to the coasts. There are people who manage to make it happen, but it's still a struggle when the local market has just a few big players, surrounded by a shit load of 7-11's, gravel pits, and trailer parks.
Luke, help me take this mask off
ASU's EE school has an enormous budget for toys, but they don't have a single faculty member who has ever worked with CMOS, don't have any classes in high-speed signaling, and don't have any faculty who have ever used logic synthesis. I've interviewed I-don'-know-how-many ASU grads (I am ashamed to admit I am one) who wouldn't know a Bode plot from a broccoli patch -- and they were the bright ones. I don't even bother with ASU grads any more unless they've managed to actually acquire some useful education or skills after leaving.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The size of a persons bank account should be the metric by which we measure the value of a persons ideas.
Ok, here in MA I am doing Hi-Tech. It's a great state if you are already employed in Hi-Tech and trying to move forward.
It's an aweful state if you've been out of Hi-Tech and trying to get back in. Competition is so fierce, if you were really trying to be rich making a living. This is the wrong state.
Which after 3 years of trying is now 49! , Whoo Hoo!
Seriously, very nice people live thar, (I got relatives), but ... when a kid's goal is hunting/fishing/lazying around, Miss/Ark are paradise!
source: http://www.nasvf.org/ web/allpress.nsf/0/ ad81f29dbd3f1c06862569f1003eeeb4?OpenDocument(and we in Louisiana say it a lot)
Thank God for Mississippi.
Here are a few reasons why Boston is a great place to work for techies:
1. Get to work with smart, old grizzled veterans. They have taught me a few things about discipline, engineering and adaptation. Having a mentor has been invaluable in my career experience.
2. The girls here are hot, and for the girls there are a lot of very fine and eligible bachelors for are actually nice - sometimes too nice for their own good. This place is like "Logan's Run". It seems like nobody is older than 25 at times.
3. You can walk and bike anywhere. Everything is so close. I don't own a car.
4. Compare to New York, you got nature basically right in your backyard - Blue Hills is a 6,000 acre reserve that's 5 miles from downtown Boston.
5. Great, thriving geek culture and community. I never miss the 6.270 autonomous robotic contest at MIT, for example, or the fact that you can take holography classes in adult education schools.
6. Energetic, creative nightlife. If you're into bars, clubs and dancing, it's here. But if you are into performance art, experimental music, hacking groups, murder mysteries or pot luck dinners w/strangers, they are here also.
There's a lot more. Of course there are problems with the city too, but I think the good outweighs the bad.
I can understand why California is not number one. Our economy has been in the toilet for the last couple of years (thank you, Grey Davis) and I hope the "Governator" can turn that around.
from 1998-2002. I made great money, built a house up near the NH border (just off 95), then sold that sucker when everyone else realized no one could afford to live within 10 miles of Boston.
.5 acre lots that *started* at $650k. Then you had to pay extra for things like cabinets, countertops, faucets, flooring, appliances, etc.
The commuter line goes all the way to Newburyport, so complaining about public transportation is a bit disingenuous.
My house appreciated 33% in less than two years. I used the money to leave my job and come back to my native state...(number 3 on the list, BTW), and it took me 4.5 months, and all of that money to get a new job. (well, plus the downpayment on a house to live in back here...the housing prices skyrocketed while I was gone).
As far as open space goes? In MA I had well over an acre of land, and there were only 5 houses on my cul-de-sac. Anything like that here would either a: be 60+ miles from anywhere you could reasonably work, or b: be 3-4 times what you can afford to pay for it. It's crazy...all this space, and the developers keep building the houses right next to each other (anything up to $350k within 30 miles of downtown Denver is going to be either small or crowded or both) to maximize their profits, or they charge *crazy* amounts of money for larger lots. One small town about 35 minutes from Denver had 3000 sf houses on
Ah... webmastering in a technologial desert with 90% humidity... see, there is a logical reason we don't wear shoes down here.
particlesphere.com - quantum
A quick perusal of realtor.com or rent.net will quickly clear up any misunderstandings.
I can get a 2300 sqft home in DFW based off a single professional salary (even in todays market). What does it take in NYC, SFO or Boston to afford something like that?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Especially the Arkham area.
Aptal soru yoktur; sadece merakli aptallar vardir.
Could you repeat that? I didn't understand a word you posted because of your accent.
Sorry 'bout that, I was drinking a pop at the time.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I wonder if the other tech-savvy states are the same way, or if it's just coincidence?
TAXES!!!!!!! taxechussetts
See Sig! See Sig Zig! Zig Sig Zig!!!!!
I've noticed this anecdotally already.
;)
;)
I was unemployed and living in CT for 6 months (jun-december). I had put my resume info on Monster and well more than half of the responses were coming from the Boston area. I also had a girlfriend in Boston, and one day, I got an offer from a very big consulting firm there. I took the hint, packed up and moved a month and a half ago
To this day my Monster profile (now anonymized) gets at least 1 response a day, and all I am is a wimpy ASP/DHTML/SQL Server developer
There IS work out there, if you're in the right place at the right time.
If the amount of Orkut users is any indication, I'd have to agree with the study.
The ranking is....
1. Cali
2. NY
3. Mass
With such a small state being so "wired", there must be a lot of technology there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
I've never liked any "best state" surveys. It's all subjectively based upon whatever critera the company decided makes a "best state".
For example, per capita income is a criteria. That's a horrible measurement. States like California have high costs of living, and so they generally have higher per capita income to make up for how expensive it is to live there. California isn't "richer", it just costs more to live there. But that isn't factored in. Also, per capita income is horrible in that it counts the total state population, including chilren. States with lots of children appear to be poorer, since the average income will be lower, and states will few children (like Massachusets), will appear to have higher per capita income.
It's the same with any "best state" survey. My home state one year ranked #1 for livibility. Then people complained that we can't be number #1...so next year, the survey gave negative points to states that have lots of snow in the winter. Knocked us from #1 to about #9.
Other surveys like the "smartest state" lists don't really check if the state is performing well on tests and graduation rates, but rather, if the government is subsidizing and funding lots of education programs. That doesn't measure if a state is smart or not, it only measures if a government is funding it more.
Overall, these surveys can't be trusted until you know exactly what they're measuring.
Lets just say that the Vermont taxes are about 100% more than Mass. and health care was about 150% more. (Guess who pays for all that 'free' health care Dean) The difference was disgusting, I don't know how anyone can live in VT.
I also just bought a car and got it from a dealership in CT. Again, it turns out taxes in Mass were a little less than CT.
So.... I don't see how anyone can complain about Mass.
P.S. Did I also mention that becuase auto insurance is completely state government regulated my auto insurance in Mass. is a LOT lower than it was in CT, IL or WA. (Yes I move a lot)
Um, low cost of living? The Austin area may be "inexpensive" compared to California or NY, but the only place you'll get a good rate is if you live in the ghetto, where I live. Only then are you able to get decent 1-1's for about ~$600ish. I meant it, though, when I said "ghetto," so bring your gun. There's a good chance you will need it. This is Texas after all :-P
(FYI I recently bought a 9mm for some home defense because of some recent turbulence in the area... thank god I move in July)
After I read your subject I just couldn't help but laugh. Not in a flamebait kinda way but just the fact that Mass is only 10 sq miles in size, I find it hard to believe that there is "FAR" more to Mass that Boston.
Moved down here in '92, never looked back. IBM, Cisco, SAS, Red Hat, Nortel, Ericsson, Glaxo (and a decent number of bio & tech startups) have a significant presence here. Having UNC, Duke, and NCSU less than 20 miles from each other doesn't hurt either. Business 2.0 recently christened this area as the Next Big Boom Town.
However...
..it will only be a boom town once there is an actual boom. And it isn't here (yet?).
The telecomm meltdown has caused a LOT of pain locally. (Did you notice the high incidence of telecomm equipment manufacturers in that list above? I know many many underemployed or unemployed software developers.) In anticipation, the Tragedy of the Commons is in full effect down here. The locals are cheerily turning North Raleigh (near I-540, which didn't exist 5 years ago) into an overpriced, suburban wasteland to handle the influx of the likes of you, since the local suburbs can't absorb you anymore. (Cary, NC had a population of about 7,000 forty years ago; now it's up to 100,000 -- and not because the natives take the phrase "bedroom community" to heart.)
My advice to you: the Triangle area is great, but our grass is no greener than yours. Should you show up here someday, well, welcome to beautiful North Carolina. Then go home!
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
better stopping power - less danger of through and through killing unintended target.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Mass is only 10 sq miles in size
Hmm, you might want to re-check your own link:
Massachusetts covers 10,555 square miles, making it the 44 largest of the 50 states.
Yeah, it's small (44th of 50), but you're off by more than 3 orders of magnitude.
everything in moderation
Just wondering...
There are no tech jobs here and the real estate market is the priciest in the country. Please stay where you are.
Mass. is the most racist and intolerant state in the union... after Texass that is. They don't deserve tech, they deserve a public spanking. IMHO.
I call computer-illiteracy job security
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Baz (Dryer 3) has been off for 8 days.
Doesn't look like there's much of a shortage of dryers at MIT...
Or (more likely) maybe that one's just broken. Someone should call maintenance.
Rank Presidents by th
Oh, and the corruption. The still have mob hits around here. West-coaster that I am I thought the mob was just De Niro and Danny Devito being funny. But no - last month a guy got whacked not too far from where I live...
And don't even get me started on the cops. I love how no matter how small the job, you will guaranteed see five guys standing around watching a guy with a backhoe do the actual work. Two of those guys will be cops of the donut-eating persuasion.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Now, if Phoenix is the cheapest place to live don't you think that more people are going to flood phoenix? I mean if cheap cost of living is everything, why not go further down to Mexico where its even cheaper?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I almost bought 10 acres near denver in '84...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sure there's a lot of wide open space...ever go outside in the summer while in one of these places?
I'll take less open space over sweltering heat any day.
Follow the money,
It really looks like a DNC paid for ad.
I live in florida, come visit, leave your money
and GO HOME,
and take your parents with you!
D'oh, forgot the stinking k!
Cost of living isnt everything. The cost of living is high where I live, so I live with roomates and suddenly my rent is the same as yours. The only difference here is when raising children cost of living might begin to matter, but like I said Texas is not known for having good schools, or for being a place to raise doctors and lawyers. I'd choose Boston or even New York if I were trying to put my kid in the best schools or live in the best possible environment. Texas is cheap, so is Utah, Idaho, and many other places. The problem with cheap places, they usually don't have a very good learning environment. U.T. Austin may be a good school, how about your highschool system? What percentage of kids actually graduate with a diploma? What percentage of Texas is college educated? While Texas has no taxes, no taxes also means no education for the kids in public school.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Check the list at this article about where people are moving to more than moving away from. Turns out the top states as measured by Allied Van Lines moving truck trips are Vermont, Alaska and Montana. Now, I'm in Vermont and can tell you that the population total's pretty stable. What those Allied stats really reflect is that the people coming into Vermont can afford a full-service commercial mover, while those leaving are packing it all into the back of their pickup or renting a U-Haul.
What does this have to do with future tech jobs? Aside from IBM's big facility in Burlington (the biggest single employer in the state) it means there's a lot of fresh money here brought in by the folks who have afforded the moving vans. So how entrepreneurial are you? Plus the weather isn't much different than Boston's - a few degrees cooler traded off against a beautiful landscape you can actually live in. In homes that cost 1/3 as much. Don't tell anyone....
Montana would be my second choice. Those winter days are just too short in Alaska.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
So Kerry's state is better than Bush's state when it comes to a matter that would interest the high-tech demograhic. Yeah, nothing political here...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_baeo_t2 .htm
you can see the graduation rate for Texas on the list.
Basic cause and effect, if Texas can attract an educated population (usually this population has enough money to pay taxes), this brings jobs and the cost of living goes up.
You can't win, you bring snobby Harvard or Yale grads to your state and they'll raise your taxes and rent because they can afford the high cost of living and you cant.
Thats exactly what happens in New York, Boston, Cali, the elite basically take over and can afford the high taxes. Your option then becomes, be an elite or leave.
What I'm saying is, it works like a pyramid, the jobs don't go to where the cheapest cost of living is, the jobs go to the highest educated cheapest labor. Paying someone to work in Texas in the USA is going to cost almost exactly as much as to pay them to work in Silicon valley, it might be slightly less but unless you take a massive pay cut its not going to work. The only industry I know thats in Texas is the video game industry. Overall Texas while it could become an economic force, if it does become the economic force it will cease being Texas and will become another California, Massachusettes, New York, etc. Is this what you want?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
It's George Bush's insistence on saying "newkyalur".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
"The only industry I know thats in Texas is the video game industry."
That's because you are stupid.
Massachusets has less people in it than Houston does.
Texas has Austin, Houston, and Dallas/Ft Worth, which all have significant tech corridors producing a hell of a lot more than video games.
The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, and Rice University are all superb schools, and depending on what subject you are talking about, everybit as good in some cases as your vaunted ivy league schools (oops, Rice IS an Ivy League school).
I love the desert, and I spent 25 years growing up there, but I would not want to move back to Phoenix. The traffic is as bad as LA, and there isn't much to do aside from watch the same 8 movies shown simultaneously at all the theaters. The open space you mentioned is filled with identical sprawling suburban homes. Clubs are spread out and hard to get to without incurring a DUI. Bars close at 1a. You can pretty much forget art, and there are still a lot of bands that skip Phoenix. It's too hot to go outside 5 months out of the year. Plus, the low cost of living is reflected in low IT wages. My brother literally makes half of what I'm making with the same experience, and a lot of the IT work available is from behemoths like Honeywell, Intel, and Motorola. Tucson is slightly better, but it's smaller.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As we all know, MA is chock full o' nerd women, which makes it the best state for tech, hands down.
GreyWolf3000 wrote: > where labor unions drive up the price of Ice Cream to 5 or 6 dollars a scoop Yep, the dps (dollar per scoop) metric has many long-overlooked benefits: 1. enables concise regional comparisons 2. identifies regions that might be controlled by them pesky commie/atheist/labor/lefty types - who, like the mafia and garbage, use their domination of ice-cream parlors in the NE to peddle their wares. Remember the Alamo!
Part of the reason why is that high-tech, biotech, medical, and research undergrads don't have to go somewhere else to get summer internships. They can say in the area and work, and develop a relationship with a company/organization which they may parley into a job come graduation. MIT allows their students to rent dorm rooms over the summer and something like a full third of the undergrad population stays all summer.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
What's your point? We make more money in the USA than they make in India. So what exactly are you saying? The amount of people has nothing to do with it, its the percentage of educated people which decides the population's employability.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I don't get it. I have a tech job in MA, and I've hired 5 people in the last year here. Some of them came from CA, where "there were no tech jobs to be had that weren't whored out to H1B's". Yeah, competition is fierce and people judge you based on measurable performance and experience -- sandals and a "whoah dude" attitude do not fool New Englanders into thinking you're so good that you're that cool.
Sorry it didn't work out for you, but for many it does. Me, for example.
Now, how is this +1 Informative again? Oh, that mod didn't get the job he wanted in MA either, I guess. Good for us.
everything in moderation
MA and Boston in particular is a great place to live. It's got a really good public transportation system (it's not perfect in any sense but it is actually quite good). It's got all kinds of things to do (sports, entertainment, history, and city-walkability). Is incredibly wired (universities, wireless hotspots, the "technology corridor", etc). Has a lot of good companies headquartered in the reagion and thus plenty of money looking to be invested. And Boston is a vibrant town with a lot of young people with fresh ideas. Put all of that in one place and you have the ingredients for a great place to live, work, and strat a business.
If Massachusetts is #1, and it sucks this bad, then it must REAlLY suck everywhere else.
There's no jobs here. There's rumors of them. I have actually gotten a call for one recently, but it turned out they needed someone with a Masters Degree with 18 years of experience to be a help desk tech.
I like the Boston area, because I don't live there. I worked in Boston once, and I loved taking the train to work. So easy, no worries about cars and gas prices.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Speaking as someone who at one time wanted to go to Rice AND has friends at Rice, it is part of Rice culture is deluding themselves into thinking they are Ivy league. Go figure. Don't take it so seriously ;)
As for me, I ended up at a higher ranking engineering school (electrical engineering @ UT Austin).
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
bkrrrr-
I'd have to say that what I have is a real love-hate relationship toward Boston & Mass. I still live in New England, have all my life. People are a lot nicer here in Providence RI, there are jobs here in my field (video/web) and if I want to go to Mass, it's only a short drive/bus away. For coders, sure the Rt128 belt is the place to be, but other parts of the tech industry (advertising, web, dotcoms) have really suffered in the area. Scenery and personality-wise, back home in Maine is always finestkind.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
"Investors" don't think Massachusetts or Arizona or North Carolina when they go shopping for tech companies to invest in.
They believe first in "critical mass", and they think the best critical mass is in California.
They don't think about the cost structure of running a company in California.
Now, by "investors," I don't mean banks or venture capitalists. I mean stock-market speculators. The banks and VCs understand this facet of public stock picking, and since they are the suppliers to that retail market, they angle for position in it.
The result is, just having a CA address on your prospectus is worth 5-10% intangible boost.
Hence the boom then the bubble and now the inability to get a sniff from a VC in any of these locations that are much more attractive from a sincere management standpoint.
The economy is out of control, slamming from rail to rail. Someone needs to reign this in so that it becomes an economy again, instead of just a money pump into the pockets of a few people.
I think you may have been a little overwhelmed by the smell of fresh proscuito and canolis in the North End, but the "mob" has been over and done with in Boston since the 80's. Take it from an aquaintance of Mike Anguilo; any "hits" that happen now are just petty thugs, robbers and addicts.
You can still sometimes see some of the old faces around, but they keep to themselves and are neither organized nor criminal.
I find it hard to believe that there is "FAR" more to Mass that Boston.
Actually -- the appropriate description is compact. You can go hiking or hunting or skiing or whatever a short trip from downtown. I'm a native, and it always strikes me when I visit FL or CA that you have to drive forever before things change. Don't get me wrong, I love California and parts of Florida, but in Mass you have ultradense downtown Boston and mere 20 miles away you can be in the boonies (although this has to some degree chagned since I was a kid, but still the gradient is much steeper here).
In part, it's physical geography: Boston was originally a peninsula bordered by water and marshland. In part its historical geography: Boston was mostly developed half a century before the automobile.
Having grown up in the city and moved to the suburbs, I can definitely attest that there are huge advantages to density. Granted, you have to get used to living in proximity to so many people, but there is tremendous convenience. Back when my wife and I first got married, if there was no cream for the coffee the debate would be whether to go downstairs to the corner store to buy some, or to chuck it and go around the corner to the french bakery for some coffee and croissants.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
that technology is synonymous with start-up company expansions.
In fact most of the companies hiring are only hiring people for specific roles and responsibilities. The days of hiring "interns" or employees "to have on hand" "just in case we need them" are over.
Massachusetts consists (economically) mostly of the Boston metropolitan area, which also includes the south of New Hampshire. Things don't look so rosy business-wise in the western part of the state, but it doesn't affect the average for the state all that much. (as opposed to e.g. California or Texas, where any averages are going to include a lot of farmers and oilmen, kind of bringing down the tech index)
Lots of people on this thread have talked about cost of living and whatnot, but let's face it - if you're starting a new company, you want to locate where you can steal someone else's employees without their needing to move. And if you work for a little startup company, you sure as hell don't want to have to sell your house if they go under or turn weird and you have to jump ship. All of which means, if you want to work for a hot company, your cost of living is going to suck. Such is life - when engineers are expensive, houses tend to be expensive as well.
Which sort of leads into another point - I think that Boston, and Massachusetts in general, is a center of technology just because it is. It's not just because of the universities - there are other places (Amherst/Northampton, for one) with even higher concentrations of college students, who leave as fast as they can after graduation. Boston (or 128/495/whatever) is a good place to start a company because you can find people who started companies, and you can find them because it was a good place to start a company a few years ago.
You are so on the money with that. I've lived in south Texas, Houston (17yrs), Nacogdoches (7yrs), and now Dallas (1yr). Dallas women are so fucking stuck on themselves it's ridiculous - and SMU in your backyard doesn't help.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
have these people ever been to Vermont? my best friend is from Vermont, i've been multiple times, the only "technology research" place there is IBM in South Burlington which laid off something like half of their workforce a couple of years ago! what are these people smoking?
data from the most recent census shows pretty convincingly that people are more likely to spend the first 5-10 years after they get out of school in the place they went to school, rather than returning to their homes.
This is especially true of foreign students--but of course there aren't any of them in the tech industry....
Truth hurts, but the 'fact' that texas has a 'Great School System' is a falsehood.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
I think the thing about Bostonians is not rudeness per se, but a kind of manic pace. Researchers a few years back compared American cities by things like how quickly people talk, the amount of time transactions took to complete at sales counters, how often people interrupt each other, etc. Boston was by far the fastest paced city in the US.
This pretty much bears out my experience. Bostonians are always rushing around, with their mind on the next place their going to be. We don't spare any time for things like making eye contact and polite conversation with strangers,and people who do are probably immediately suspect of being muggers or con-men.
One thing that constantly struck me when I started to do business in other parts of the country is how long people take to get to the point. Of course, this may mean by standards of other parts of the country Bostonians are rude, but the converse is also true: Bostonians consider wasting peoples time as rude. Is this any way to live? I don't know, it seems natural to me. It's just a difference in cultural norms, like the way different cultures have different norms about the appropriate distance to stand from another person when having a conversation. Cities have different norms as to how much beating around the bush is enough to express polite human interest in another person; Boston is on one end of the bell curve, and certain southern cities are on the other. When it comes to more fundamental things like true consideration for others, Bostonians not worse than residents of most other cities, and better than some.
Speaking of bum raps, New Yorkers have a reputation for rudeness that in my experience is totally undeservered. Despite what you see in the movies I've found New Yorkers to be far and away the most helpful and genuinely friendly big city dwellers I've ever encountered. Perhaps their reputation for rudeness has some part in this, because many New Yorkers seem to be almost consciously acting as civic ambassadors.
As far as the Mass RMV is concerned, it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be. It used to be so grossly understaffed and training levels were so low that the people working there had an attitude that making an effort made no difference so why bother? I can attest to this myself having seen examples of amazing incompetence and indifference personally. However RMV went through major reorganization that included increasing staffing, and improving training, systemizing customer service, and expanding regional offices so people don't have to travel as far to get service. Since the 90's my personal experience with RMV is that it is quick, efficient and friendly.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Of course, here in Silicon Valley, I pay more to heat my electrically-heated uninsulated condo in the winter than I paid to heat my house in New Jersey, but that has a lot to do with the building standards of the 1970s vs. the 1930s.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What about Utah? Salt Lake City and Provo?
It's easy for students to cruise over to a local business and set up a job interview or internship that leads to a job. Once you have the job, the chances are you'll stay for a few years; if you get married and your spouse is employed here, there's probably a better than even chance you'll end up buried here. It doesn't happen this way all the time but it happens often enough.
I know my business has hired a number of people as interns right out of college and then offered them jobs. We've actually found a program that seems to turn out decent coders with a high degree of reliability, and it's not one of the prestigious universities. No I'm not tell you the name -- around our office we call it "the secret weapon".
Seriously, how much is that worth? Not to have the pick of the litter, which we can't afford, but to have our pick of litters to recruit from? Sure, we could probably get lower rent in a different region of the country, but we can recruit talent easily. We can even "try before we buy" because you can ask a student stay put for a few months after graduation with no firm prospect of a permanent position, but you can't ask them to move to a different part of the country under the same circumstances.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I grew up in louisville, KY.
The "tech" sector there is just terrible. The same rednecks start one small business after another, then blow all the startup money, and the same dumb guys that work call center / customer support move from failed business to failed business.
There are almost NO technology pure-play companies. That means anywhere you're doing IT or software, you're doing it in somebody's cost center, and that means you're always subject to "cost savings measures"
I know a few really smart guys in louisville, but there are a few really smart guys everywhere.
And louisville is the only part of KY where the tooth:person ratio is greater than 1.
Someone will probably mention "lexington", where there is apparently a university called "UofK". Stop being delusional. There are some neat projects at UofK, but its an also-ran as a compsci school, utterly un-noteworthy.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
1. You can find smart, old grizzled veterans in virtually any city. Boston may have its fair share, or maybe even a little bit more, but to say you should stay in hopes of finding an old guy doesn't make much sense.
2. There are girls that are hot and not so hot anywhere. In Boston, you don't really know six months of the year because they wear parkas.
3. You can bike everywhere when it's not snowing (see six-months-of-the-year comment in 2.). Also, during the summer it's hot, muggy and disgusting most of the time.
4. Upstate New York has plenty of wilderness. It might not be as close as Boston, but once you're in the car, the difference between 10 minutes and half an hour is moot.
5. There's plenty of geek in plenty of sweet cities -- San Francisco, LA, NYC, Seattle, Portland -- and aside from that, I don't think holography classes (whatever those are) at adult education schools necessarily qualifies it as geek.
6. See 5., above, regarding what one can find in other cities. I used to live in Seattle, and may move back there -- and it's all there too.
No doubt, I like Boston, but let's remember that the weather is awful, the roads screwed up and many of its residents are rude. And it's got one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation. The good still outweighs the bad, but think about cities like Portland too.
I moved away from Boston to Seattle, and have to say that I do miss the situation there.
Strong open-source culture vs MS's back yard, historically celebrated mass transit system vs. a slew of sorely overdue and lamely insufficient one-leg transit *proposals*, gas prices befitting a major petroleum port vs. gas prices befitting a Nevada highway rest stop, diverse economy vs. one based on Microsoft and Boeing, strong research community vs a lame two-state-college quasi-rivalry...
Plus any given service, venue, or recreation is much closer, and I was making more money just before I left there than I've been able to find here (though I know that has some economic reasons).
No income tax here, but sales tax is almost 9% compared to MA's 5% (unless it's gone up since I left, doubtful under a republican governor FBOFW).
I also have a strong withdrawal from Pizzeria Uno and Dunkin Donuts. (Lattes, lattes, nothing but frickin lattes, make it stop!)
So yeah, this is my isolated case, but I had to give Boston the credit it's due.
You express problems trying to find work on 128. What about the 495 corridor? Last I was looking for a job out in MA (3 yrs ago, wow has it been that long?), seemed like nearly everyone hiring was out on 495.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Yes most of the public schools are terrible, which is why we have good charter and pilot schools. Also there are good private schools here.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
It is not surprising to see these rankings. Compare them to national stats that show the most educated states are Mass, CO, and Ca (in that order, if IIRC). What is more interesting is why Texas is at the level it is, considering that it has one of the lower educational level at both High school and College? As to cost of living, Pheonix, Austin, and Denver are very similiar.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In my 12 years of commercial software experience (commercial OS and video systems development) I've worked with a number of MIT grads. The average MIT grad is not smarter than the average geek with a C.S. or engineering degree from any other decent university.
Are they smart? Yes. Smarter than everyone else? Not usually, although they often think they are. On the down side, you have to deal with "when I was at MIT yadda yadda. MIT yadda yadda. Did I mention that I went to MIT? Oh, by the way, MIT". You don't get nearly that kind of inflated ego or name dropping from any of the other well known tech universities.
Sorry to call you fellows (and ladies) out on this, but please, ratchet down the MIT-worship a notch. Yes you go/went to a great school. So did a lot of other people.
I was looking for a house last year - it's true you don't generally get a lot of space between houses but if look for houses with open space in the northwest part of twon (westminster/broomfield) you can get a fairly large house (2000-3000 sq ft) with nice access to space out the back for between $250k and $350k - almost all of which I would say is well within 30 miles of downtown Denver... and with really good HOV/Bus access vi a highway that takes you right downtown.
I think the area where it starts to get really bad is either around Cherry Creek, or closer to the foothills (like - Golden!! good name).
Right in-between dwontown and the mountains on the north side of town - that's the place for good housing, I'd say.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I appreciate the sentiment. Actually, after 9 months of unemployment/self-employment, I did eventually land a job at about half of my former salary and benefits. The problem I'm finding is not that there are no jobs, it's that it's too hard to even get a foot in the door. Most of the hiring managers to whom I've spoken appear to have absolutely no understanding of what we do and essentially disqualify candidates based upon the schools they attended or their GPA. I've got 13+ years of solid experience and a stellar list of references. I fail to understand how the school I attended and the grades I garnered 13 years ago are relevant today.
Why do we (Fordham University) regularly play Brown and I think Dartmouth in football games?
+++ATH0
I live in Cambridge, MA. It looks like I'm leaving Massachusetts. Why? Because I can't afford to live here.
$350,000 will get you a small apartment or a condo in a moderately undesirable part of town. If you want a house somewhere in the Boston metro area, you're looking at $450,000 starting price, $550,000 is more realistic. And no, salaries aren't high enough to make that feasible unless you're married and both working a high-paid tech job.
You can go out as far as Salem and still not see any improvement in housing costs. To get affordable housing you have to go out to some suburban hellhole where the closest thing to culture is the video store and everything closes at 5pm.
That's why people are leaving Massachusetts in their tens of thousands every year. Even in the 1990s boom years, income growth was outstripped by cost-of-living increases.
See http://www.massinc.org/research/index.html
I like it here, and if there was any way I could afford a home here I'd stay. (I'm open to suggestions.) But right now I'm looking at Austin. (Sorry, Austin.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Well first let me point out that the ocean is not in massachusetts. Second you're not going to even approach seeing twenty miles in open ocean.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Well, the case for putting industry in Arizona was compelling enough for Intel to migrate much of its operation to Arizona.
Well, actually Intel has moved more of it's operation to Oregon than to Arizona. Intel is the largest employer in Oregon now.
Arizona (Phoenix, specifically) has a water problem. They can't support much more growth there because of the lack of water. And Fabs do use a lot of water.
Oregon, on the otherhand, has plenty of water.
The other reason they initially found Oregon appealing was that the electricity rates here used to be lower than just about anywhere because of the cheap hydro power. Now that we've been 'deregulated' (and since Enron bought Portland General Electric) the power rates here have climbed significantly so that they are almost the same as everywhere else (we got the short end of the deregulation stick).
plus its super COOL; you keep forgetting that.
-ashot
It's shocking to me that the towns hosting universities don't engineer and demand programs to increase retention. That is usually why towns want new universities so much, isn't it? It's supposed to lift the whole town economically and culturally, not just the few locals hired as university staff.
A particularly sad example is my alma matter: Trent University from tiny (~70k) Peterborough, Ontario. The town is economically depressed because of industrial closures over the last decade, so there are very few summer and post-grad jobs to go around. Instead of trying to create opportunities to make the university students into citizens, the Powers That Be lobby for low-skilled labour like call centres and try and appease their middle class by zoning big-block stores in the suburbs. So the science and business students (who spent all their school years in the empty downtown core) take one look around after grad and quickly run off to nearby Toronto. Some of the arts students figure the'll get more bang for their McBuck and stay around. As a result, the town has an abnormally active arts community, but no home-grown industry to speak of.
I guess that's the problem with small towns: everyone who could put the town on a growth trajectory has already moved away.
Statistics Canada has also started thinking in terms of metro regions, although that is even more important in Canada because we have a higher percentage of our population in urban areas.
Does the book speculate on what impact this economic reconfiguration will have on the political boundaries of the future? For example, a few years ago Vancouver and Seattle wanted to submit a joint bid for the Olympics, but the IOC wouldn't allow it because they needed to be able to lay blame on a single country. And Douglas Coupland has speculated that the Vancouver region will become a city state in the future when nation states cease to exist.
For the present, it certainly doesn't make sense that the people in South New Hampshire have no representation in Boston's municipal or state governments -- is there any precedent for reorganising state lines in the US?
I never said Phoenix was the cheapest. I said it was cheaper than many alternatives.
Pity I already posted in this discussion, or I'd mod you a Troll with that comment. Cost of living, cheap or otherwise, isn't "everything," nor is it even the biggest factor in deciding where to live... unless you're really poor. But it's definitely a factor worth considering, unless you don't care about saving money.
I personally like Phoenix because it strikes a good balance between cost of living and the availability of technical jobs. For me, it works. For other people, it might not.
And you know this because... why? I don't think the correlation is as direct as you seem to think it is. Also, do you mean fewer jobs total, or fewer jobs that you'd consider worth taking? There's a big difference.
Massive Two Shits the best state for tech? I live next door in CT and I am DYING to get out of this #$%^ state. I considered MA but friends who live there say it's very expensive, and AFAICT tech was severely depressed there. And I couldn't find any good Linux sales jobs (I'm not a techie m'self). Maybe things have gotten better *this* year, things have *really* picked up at work in the past month, but it's too late, I've already applied to live in Canada.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!