Everyday Freethought

I am once again considering moving to Seattle.

I mentioned in a prior post that when I was unemployed I asked my friends in various cities what their cities were like. A couple of them lived in Seattle.

I mentioned that one of the things I liked about Chicago is that I do not need a car to get around. One of them, MSL (I will identify them by their initials) said that he did not have a car and got by fine without it. Another, JL, who was MSL’s roommate in college, gave me a different opinion. He said there is mass transit, and you can get by without a car, but it is not too convenient. JL said that Seattle is not as green as its reputation. I told him that MSL said he got by fine without a car. JL informed me that MSL had gotten injured mountain climbing, and was unemployed for quite a while, so he did not really need a car. Taking an hour to get across a city is not that big of a deal when you do not have to go anywhere most of the time. I got the impression that JL and MSL had kind of drifted apart. But JL’s assessment led to my crossing Seattle off my list.

A few years have passed, and I am unemployed again. When I spoke to him a couple of years ago, JL said that he loved living in Seattle and hoped to stay there his entire life. He and his wife have now moved to San Francisco. I think they may have moved for his wife’s job. JL has been working on a book featuring interviews with people who have lived in countries that were/are under martial law. At some point I will ask him why he started this book. His degree is in electrical engineering. How one goes from EE to martial law is a story I would like to hear.

MSL is employed, and he has also left Seattle. He is now in Amman, Jordan. I will call him on Skype sometime and ask him how/why he wound up there.

I needed to talk to EYL, MSL’s sister. I thought she and her husband were living in New Jersey near Philidelphia, but they have moved to Seattle. So after we discussed the topic that I needed her assistance for, we talked about Seattle.

I last spoke to her around the same time I was in contact with JL and MSL. I was looking at job in Madison, Wisconsin. I told her I did not want to live there. It seemed pretty depressing when I went there in February of that year. As lonely as Chicago can be, I thought that Madison would feel even worse. She gave some positives about Madison: It is a pretty liberal town, there is a technology scene, it is a college town with college women. This actually made me think that I should look into Austin more. I realized that just about all of the positive attributes she listed for Madison also applied to Austin, and Austin had one more: Its population is three times that of Madison.

She said that unlike Madison, Seattle actually has a metropolitan area: about 3 million people. She said her nanny gets by fine without a car. Her husband works for Microsoft as a contractor. She said that there are a lot of technology companies in Seattle besides just Microsoft and Amazon.

She told me that while Texas can be hot in the summer, it is only for a few months. But she was not too crazy about the weather in Seattle. It can be kind of depressing.

I have been to Portland, but I have never been to Seattle. I am still leaning towards Texas, but I will also start keeping an eye on Seattle.

Image from Wikipedia

I am always looking at articles that I come across about different cities in the USA to help me decide if I should stay in Chicago or leave for some other city.

Main Street came up with a list of 10 cities that they think will do well in 2012. For the most part I can agree with some of their findings. Some of the cities on the list are Chicago, Austin and Houston. So it is pretty interesting.

The positives for Austin are the usual: the University of Texas, state government, and increasing employment in the private sector. The positives for Houston are the energy sector and a more stable housing market.

The reason that Chicago will do well in 2012 is because the next G8 meeting will be here. So there will be a lot of spending on security and because of all of the people coming in for the meeting. So while that means Chicago will see an uptick in 2012, there is no long-term trend as we see for Austin and Houston.

Many of the other cities are also on the list because they are the sites of one-time events: the Super Bowl (Indianapolis), the Democratic nominating convention (Charlotte) and the Rescumlican convention (Tampa). So what happens to all these cities in 2013? Will they rise or decline? If I leave Chicago, it will not be a short-term change.

Recently there have been a few lists ranking cities. The Milken Institute put out one. The Brookings Institute put out one that was reported in Business Insider: Most Miserable Cities and Least Miserable Cities. Also the Urban Institute put out a list on their MetroTrends website (I found out about this one from the twitter feed of the Urbanophile).

A lot of the lists are pretty equal. They look at things like the unemployment rate, the real estate market, gross metropolitan product, and recent trends in those statistics. Texas cities have done well, California did badly, Illinois did okay (but kind of on the bad side of okay).

When I would tell people that I was thinking about moving to Texas, a lot of people would regurgitate the fact that Texas has no state income tax. A lot of people seem to think that lowering taxes is the answer to all our problems. And the source of all our goodness. But is that true?

On one of the lists, Seattle ranked pretty low. Las Vegas scored the lowest. And everything in Florida scored near the bottom. Washington, Nevada and Florida have no state income tax. If no state income tax was the answer to all the world’s problems, then why aren’t those states doing better?

On top of that, some of the states that have no income tax (like Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska) get a lot of money by leasing land to oil and gas companies. Which sounds kind of socialist to me.

Image from Wikipedia

 In the past I  have thought about going to North Dakota for a job. I have no idea if there is a need for software developers in North Dakota, or if my options would be oil rigs or nothing.

I saw an interesting article on Business Insider (the original article is here) about some of the things North Dakota has done over the past decade to improve their economy and stop the brain drain. It’s more than just oil.

One interesting tidbit was that people are moving there from many states, and some people are moving there from Texas. So it looks like my Plan B is someone else’s unsuccessful Plan A.

Image from Wikimedia

Here are the Twitter accounts that I follow relating to Texas:

MyABJ Austin Business: The Austin Business Journal is the business authority for Central Texas

I am back in Chicago. As James Altucher said, things don’t always work out.

I am in Dallas. I will be here for three months. I will post about my previous trips to Texas, interspersed with events from this trip.

I have been here for a week. I may not have a whole lot of time to post. We will see. The boss is looking forward to working long long long days.

There have been some plans brewing for Latino Atheists. I do not know if I will be much help while I am here, or if I will be able to go to any atheist/skeptical groups while I am here.

Image from Wikipedia

On my way home from work I got stuck at an intersection for about 10 minutes because there was some sort of “bike parade”. There were hundreds of people on bikes going down the street. They passed by the Belmont el station right when I got off. They turned left onto Clark, so I was kind of stuck. For about 10 minutes. As were the cars. As were all the other pedestrians.

I am really getting tired of this sort of thing. When I got back from Texas a couple of weeks ago, the traffic in my neighborhood was even worse because there was some neighborhood street fair. I do not think that I should have to change my routine for any fest or parade or art fair or any of that junk.

All people did during this fest was get drunk and make a lot of noise. Which is usually what they do in that part of the neighborhood when there is no fest.

If our new mayor wants to make Chicago a better city and if he wants to make it more business-friendly, here is my suggestion: end all of these fairs, fests, parades, etc. I want to live someplace where I can just go from Point A to Point B without anything unexpected getting in my way. I leave. Then I arrive. That is it. I honestly would not recommend that anyone move to Chicago. I really do not care about taxes. I just want to go about my business.

Going back to the bike parade: I am pretty sure that it had some sort of city sanction or permit. There were quite a few police officers in the parade. I am not sure what the point of it was. Was it to encourage people giving up their cars and bike more? If so, I guarantee it was a failure. It made bad traffic even worse. If you are the reason someone is spending even more time in traffic, they will not listen to what you have to say on transportation.

Image from Wikipedia

I was in Texas a couple of weeks ago. I have migrated all my posts from other blogs onto this one. I have still not looked at my brokerage account since I have been back. I have to enter any dividends I have received into my dividend spreadsheet and GnuCash.

Now I will be going back to Texas. My company will be part of a technology incubator on Dallas for three months. I leave in a couple of weeks. So I will see more of Texas. I am not sure how much of it I will see. The CEO is looking forward to working 10-14 hour days. I would like to get to some technology user groups during the week. We shall see.

Originally posted on 2011-07-26 21:56:05

As I said in my intro post, I am a software developer. There is a programming language called Ruby that has gained popularity in the past few years. I am learning it in case I need a Plan B for my life.

There is a Ruby conference happening in Austin from August 11 to 13: The Lone Star Ruby Conf. As soon as I am done crying over the cost, I will sign up. I will also visit Dallas. Perhaps I will see my cousin. Perhaps I will have more tres leches cake at the Guatemalan place my roommate from college showed me.

So in addition to pictures of Texas from my trip last year, I will have even more pictures.

I will also write a post before I go about the job markets in Chicago and Texas. There was an article on Yahoo Finance today that echoed some thoughts I have had on the subject. Also yesterday Governor Quinn signed a law that may help technology start-ups here in Illinois. I was there when he signed it. Perhaps I will post a picture.

Image from Wikipedia