Recent comments in /f/dataisbeautiful

pocketdare t1_jbodurj wrote

Reply to comment by Amerikanen in Debt Per Capita of Major Cities by lemonzestttttttt

Great points. Thanks for doing the legwork. Including the unfunded pension and benefits information would seem, from an accounting standard, to be the more honest, accurate and frightening figure. Also certainly makes me concerned as a condo owner in NYC!

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txa1265 t1_jbod0bn wrote

Reply to [OC] Ratio of Median Sale Price of Single-Family Homes to Per Capita Income, by Metro Area by thatdude333

Funny looking at this - I live close to Elmira NY, and there is one major employer in the area (Corning Inc., located in ... Corning) whereas Elmira has a maximum security prison and hasn't really ever recovered since industry left and the prison economy set in.

The disparity between Elmira and the Corning/Horseheads towns that house most of the engineers/scientists/execs is ... stark. But it makes me wonder how things would compare - sure your income would increase significantly, but there are also loads of 400k+ houses (I think recent report I saw said median home price in area was close to $350k)

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whateveryouwant4321 t1_jbobw79 wrote

Reply to [OC] Ratio of Median Sale Price of Single-Family Homes to Per Capita Income, by Metro Area by thatdude333

live in san diego and have been working remotely under our company's SF salary schedule since well before covid. i'm too extroverted to be fully remote and wish i could interact with people, but every time i look for a job here, i can't take the pay cut and still comfortably pay my mortgage without dipping into passive income. and i bought in 2016 and put 40% down.

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Comfortable-Potato79 t1_jbo5gjv wrote

Reply to [OC] Advanced Degrees Correlated with Democratic Voting Patterns in 2020 Election by gc3c

Cool chart! Definitely implies democrats get elected in highly educated states / smart people vote democrat (virtuous cycle). But! Could there be other factors skewing the data? Don’t K-12 teachers in blue states needs an advanced degree? Aren’t there more colleges (per capita) in MA than any other state? Just having all those teachers and professors could move the needle without contributing to the blue-state=smart story.

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knowknowknow t1_jbnytu4 wrote

Reply to [OC] US State Residents' Bachelors Degree Attainment vs. Political Lean by Kraz_I

I am not a fan of these posts personally. And I say that as a left leaning person with a Masters Degree. I find them to be:
- Potentially divisive
- Ammunition for those wanting to dismiss alternative viewpoints without engaging with them
- A correlative relationship that too many people jump on as a causational relationship
This is a multi-variable relationship where many variables are here ignored, such as level of urbanisation, educational qualification requirements for large state employers, access to higher education, etc.
Too many left leaning folk will look at this and think "see, people who failed in school vote Republican" and there is simply not the available data here to draw that conclusion

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Amerikanen t1_jbnsxr6 wrote

Reply to comment by pocketdare in Debt Per Capita of Major Cities by lemonzestttttttt

I looked at both sources briefly, both are municipal (not personal debt).

However, the data Forbes links to is a much broader measure of municipal debt and the one OP is narrower.

For NYC OP's source is 86B in debt from the city's annual report, and Forbes/Truth in Accounting is 256B. The major difference seems to be the inclusion of unfunded pension and health insurance benefits to city employees.

The use of denominator will also matter for the levels (fewer taxpayers than population), but shouldn't affect the ordering of cities as much as what's included in "debt."

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