As you noted Washington State has no income tax. If guns are important to you, here are the gun laws: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9.41 As an adult I've lived in AL, WA and NC and I found WA to have the easiest gun laws. Only downside is that the WA CPL isn't good for many states, but it does last for 5 years. Of special note is: And while the state has a reputation for being pretty hippy, it has some of a libertarian bent as well. For example DUI checkpoints are deemed illegal search and seizure, marijuana is basically legalized in Seattle (lowest level of enforcement priority), and the people (by a pretty large margin) just voted down a High Income Earner's Tax (over 250K) and for the second time instituted a 3/4 majority vote requirement on raising taxes (the legislature can overturn an initiative after 2 years). Plus it is God's own country. You want mountains, got it, you want rain forests got it, want beaches got it, rocky shorelines, got it, deserts, got it. And b/c of the topography of Western Washington, sprawl is kept decent. From where I lived in Bellevue I was 15 minutes from out of my car in Pioneer Square (heart of DT) one direction on 90, and 25 minutes out of my car at the trailhead for the Rattlesnake Ridge hike in the other. Not perfect, but best place to live I've seen in the U.S. Although I have only heard good things about Austin. I wouldn't touch Atlanta or Jacksonville with John M's dick.
Thanks, Anc. Great to hear from you. I'd be lying if I gave a high probability to us ending up on the west coast, but if had to pick a place on the pacific, it would be a place like Portland or the Seattle area. Plus, if San Diego wasn't in California, I'd add SD to the list. Over here, if it wasn't located in chilly, liberal, New Eng., a place like Portland Maine could also be interesting. But all these places were formed or at least shaped by my bias as an avid sailor, but I've since spent 12 years living on a sailboat, and I've come to accept that it may be time to settle down and grow up, and become a lubber. I spent a couple of weeks in Seattle in the early 90s and really liked what I saw - it was before the full flower of the silicon valley-dot com boom had bloomed, but the signs of growth were clear (construction, new developments). On the topic of gun laws, it's the single subject on which I'm most sitting pretty - I can go anywhere in this gorgeous country except maybe People Republik de Californicommie and substantially improve how the state I select respects my rights under the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. Anyplace is better than here. If you get a few minutes, would you drop a couple of bullet points on why so negative about Atlanta and Jacksonville? I'm interested in your perspective, what you've seen, where you're coming from. I ain't exactly looking for a wife, though good booty is always nice, and a good quality of life and good people and good policies, you already seem to know where I'm coming from at least in part.
FL is not going to add an income tax anytime soon. We got rid of ours long ago and the Republicans won't allow it to come back.
No income tax here in Tennessee. Despite claims to the contrary, it is NOT unconstitutional. The state's constitution doesn't address the issue at all. Nashville considered one a few years ago. Tennesseans converged on Nashville expressing their displeasure and put a stop to that shit post haste.
I don't know that I'd move out here to start a business. I mean, Oregon is great for starting a business. Dead easy. $50 (now I think it's $100) one page LLC form you can fill out online and no sales tax to fuck with. Conversely, across the Columbia, in the 'Couv, there is sales tax, but no state income tax.
Well that is the reservation I have. The People's Republic of Portland foisted a law on the rest of the state last year punishing The Rich and corporations for being successful and this year I gather we elected the dipshit Governor who got us into this mess, back in the '90s.
I didn't vote for him. I had my reservations about Dudley, but I liked his points over Kitzhaber's...
I live out near Gresham. I may not have any good bars or restaurants near me, but I'll see non-ironic "Support our Troops" and "McCain/Palin" bumper stickers regularly.
Well, I HATE suburbia. Hate it. Give me rural where I can drink beer, shoot guns, try and get my jeep stuck (all at the same time) on my farm, build a bonfire whenever I want (here in suburbia I have to have a package of hotdogs at the ready in case an asshole neighbor calls the police again, fires are only allowed for cooking), where I can get fresh produce from either my farm or a neighbors OR give me a place where I can drink beer any time of day and take the damn train everywhere, or even better have most everything I need within walking distance, and cultural and entertainment activities a short train ride away, with a weekly farmers market. Suburbs seem to be to be the worst of both worlds. The time and distance to go anywhere/do anything of a rural area and the lack of privacy of a city. Also I don't think suburb cities are going to fare to well in the future. My generation increasingly is looking to live in cities, and public transportation is making a comeback* AS well as baby boomers looking to sell the big house in the suburb and move to a smaller one in the city with easier access to amenities. Throw in rising energy costs and I just don't think the post war paradigm is going to hold, in fact if foreclosure and vacancy rates are any indicator the suburbs have already started to lose ground to central cities. And Atlanta and Jacksonville are basically suburb cities. Traffic blows in Atlanta. Horrible horrible traffic. MARTA is a joke (we surrounded every station with giant parking decks, wonder why there is no development and people find the system sketch?!?!?) which in my experience is only useful for getting to and from the airport. Only other time I've ever used it was to get to the Olympics back in 96. *One study I read said that environmentalism, or cost wasn't always the biggest factor, but the fact that while in a car people were 'disconnected' while on public transit they weren't so cut off from the world/internet. LOL
Don't listen to those bozos, they're just pissed to stuck in a second rate city in a crappy state. Na, honestly though, I don't think you can go wrong in any of the three big PNW cities, Portland, Seattle, or Vancouver, it just depends on what you are looking for. Seattle is a bit bigger than Portland, a bit more dense, a bit more cosmopolitan, more diverse economy, but Portland is a bit more laid back IMO. Vancouver is a bit more Canadianish.
This.^ Last night on the way home, I felt like stopping off for a happy hour beer and maybe some conversation. Unfortunately all the bars on the way to my house are joyless cinderblock roadhouses that make Moe's Tavern look like Cheers. Eventually I realized I could detour into a less suburban-ish part of town if I took the long way home, but I still wound up in a lot more depressing place than I'd have been if I lived downtown. Lots of fat old dudes instead of young pretty hipster chicks. And the restaurants are the same.
And Volpone gives a perfect example of the kind of old person wanting to move back to the city to be closer to amenities that I described earlier.
If I was to strike out on my own then I would want to do one of three things. 1) Open a geology/environmental consulting firm (that's what most of my experience and background is in plus state regulations help build up the demand for such services her in California) 2) open some sort of aqua farm especially shellfish like oysters, clams, and abalone; this could be combined with some sort of other organic produce business using hydroponics as such a business is in high demand here and I think I could do well selling at farmer's markets or my own little farm stand 3) Open a winery, cidery, or beer brewery. I honestly don't have the $10-$20 million needed to get a winery going here plus the market place is very crowded so it is difficult to build up a brand name (not to mention I have no experience as a wine maker). I do have some experience home brewing but that's entirely different from brewing and bottling on a commercial scale plus San Diego already has the most breweries of any city in America so, once again, the market is pretty crowded. That just leaves a cidery and while the local mountains (the Julian, CA area) do produce some fine apples they tend to be baking apples rather then juice apples plus lots of apple farmers are getting out of the business due to cheap foreign imports (especially from places like Chile). If I was going to do it then I'd want to do an all local product as that would be my unique sales proposition to customers.
Come to think of it an artisan dairy would also be a hard but interesting business especially if you located it near a well know wine or luxury food area. It would have to be near a city with a lot of relatively well off people who care about high end foods (any where in California would work but likely other places in or around Seattle or NY). Selling luxury items like high end cheeses can indeed bring in a fair amount of money though most states regulate who can or can't become a cheese maker via an apprenticeship process so that would be one hurdle.
The chances of a state income tax being imposed in Florida rank up there with me winning the lottery. So nothing to worry about. Actually sections of the greater Atlanta area aint THAT bad. Jacksonville, FL is best described as such: It is the biggest small town you will ever see. Geographically it is the biggest city in the US. Mentally it's about on par with any one traffic light town. Crime wise, its a shit hole. Just avoid it. Atlanta, yeah the core metro area can be a night mare. But get north of the core and things start to lighten up and get a bit nicer (Alpharetta, Marietta, Kennesaw). If I had to move to GA it would probably be some where like either Kennesaw or Dawsonville. On the demise of suburbia, folks have been singing that song for ages up to and including the "new urbanism" movement folks. Face it, families full of young kids love having decently open spaces, their libraries, soccer and baseball fields, and schools near by while also having easy access to big box retailers. That is only gonna happen in the burbs.
If you were looking at the Twin Cities at all, I'd have to give them some good points. They feel like a cross between Los Angeles (in terms of sprawl and traffic) and Portland, while taking on more of Portland's livability standards. My recommendation would be to at least look at both Portland and the Twin Cities.
Honolulu makes that claim as well--there's a string of islands in the Pacific that, for whatever reason, are technically part of the city of Honolulu. As far as the Twin Cities, my biggest problem is that they get to be a million below zero in the winter time. Minneapolis even has a network of "skyways" downtown, so you don't have to go outside. Any place that is so cold that they have human habitrails is not a place to live. Also they have one of those creepy TV Land lifesize bronze statues--Mary Tyler Moore, throwing her hat in the air--on the Nicollet Mall. Those things are astonishing. It is like they try to make them fucking ugly. If I was a person that they wanted to make one of, I'd very likely try to stop them. If I were a mayor, I'd have serious reservations about allowing one in my city.
I don't have the money to invest in a new business right now the way Tuttle does but I do enjoy reading the weekly segment in the local paper about local entrepreneurs and their business plans. My fantasy businesses tend toward the agrarian (as I enjoy being outdoors) but three which recently caught my eye were 1) a middleeastern immigrant who opened up a goat and camel milk dairy in the desert east of San Diego. He didn't have the money to buy any where other then the desert but he's reportedly doing well selling fancy cheeses as well as both goat and camel milk to foodies and immigrants from the mideast. 2) a mushroom farmer who gets all of his raw materials free (animal dung) by agreeing to truck it out of the local zoo. Believe it or not he's doing great selling both the normal mushrooms you find at the store as well as unusual specialty mushrooms plus he's supposedly figured out how to treat oak trees so that truffles grow on the oak roots. 3) high produce stands tend to do well here in California and none are more famous then Chino Farms. The family that owns it is Japanese America and after getting out of the internment camps in 1945 they moved to San Diego and have been practicing organic farming ever since. People are willing to pay 5 or even 6 times the regular going rate simply because of the Chino Farms brand name and high end restaurants around the country brag on their menu that they use Chino Farms produce. It doesn't hurt that the area their farm is in (Rancho Santa Fe) is now the second richest zip code in the US according to census data so lots of rich customers who only want the very best and who can afford it.
True, paradigms don't shift quickly, especially when you have 60 years of government enforcing/subsidizing the status quo (free infrastructure for the suburbs, restrictive zoning laws in the cities, mortgage tax credit, subsidized gasoline etc). HOWEVER, even with the government's hands pulling the other way on the rudder, the titanic is slowly changing course. Or rather was slowly. The Great Recession has sped up the process. Notice that the forclosure crisis has hit the suburb cities in the Sunbelt the hardest. Also, outside the rust belt, central cities have bit hit less hard by the forclosure and commercial vacancy crisis than their suburban counterparts. The biggest impediment to this trend continuing is in many cases not the market, but the government through zoning laws artificially restricting what can and can't be built in the city. Even in a progressive city like Seattle relaxing zoning has it's detractors: http://www.publicola.net/2010/11/30/rowhouses-and-no-parking-requirements-coming-to-seattle/
Could it also be that in central citites the majority of properties are already rentals (apartments, co-ops, etc..)? I dunno but I think its an idea worth exploring. Keep in mind that the forclosure rates of residential properties in those areas was fueled by folks fleeing the cities. As for commercial vacancy rates, that is nation wide and pervades all the way from the strip mall in Walla-Wall through down town Manhattan. The commercial vacancy rate is tangentially connected to the residential foreclosure rate. The zoning is changing, in large part due to the new urbanism movement. The problem is that new urbanism works best in new construction, which just so happens to be in areas outside of a city center (I.e. the suburbs). For example see Disney's Celebration.
I don't know about your city centre but in mine it is not mostly rental property. Most of it is owned businesses or apartments many of the later sell for over $1 million for a loft. It's true, I assure you.
The thing about real estate is location, location, location. That's a big part of why I was able to afford my place--it was way out in the boonies. But I'm going to be socking away money like a whorehound and while real estate is still low as soon as I save up a down payment I'm buying a place closer in. Then...I dunno. I like my current little place. And my neighbors. And I don't know how much I could get for it in rent. I might just stay where I am and rent out the closer in place. But eventually I hope to be able to afford a deluxe apartment on the East side.
'Deluxe apartment on the East side.' Hehehehe. If only they looked good on the outside. When I'm able to afford shit, I want to look at an apartment in the North Macadam district.
