Things That Are Valuable

I had this thought the other day while looking at Zillow ... why not put together a site that more or less comprehensively details how much people pay for commoditized goods and services throughout the United States?

For example, how much does a person in Chicago pay to heat their 1,800 sq. ft house each month? What are their property taxes? Car insurance? Average car payment? I mean, these are the nuts and bolts of all our lives.

Say, if a person lives in Milwaukee has a house payment, on average, of $1,300 per month, what does that mean compared to the person living in Cerritos, California who has, on average, a house payment of $2,200 per month? Do the people in Cerritos just make $900 more per month? Somehow, I doubt that it is as simple as that.

My point is that real people lack the basic information that they could use to live their lives better [that is, their choice making would be more informed, and their lives would reflect actual decision making, as opposed to guessing]. I think it would be both surprising and interesting to have an actual working tool on the internet that would allow people to see how other people live their financial lives and realities.

On a related note, the City of New Orleans is still around 40% of its pre-Katrina population [according to that venerable source Wikipedia].

While I do feel some sadness about the lack of population resiliency, I would stop short of doing anything much about it [short of providing funds to rebuild actual infrastructure]. Why? Because people have the right in America to live where they choose. It's always been this way, and so it should be.

The Great Depression drove people en masse out of the South, and out of the Midwest. The collapse of the traditional manufacturing sector drove people out of the rust belt, out of Detroit and Pennsylvania.

Cheap transportation, VA loans and better weather enticed people to populate California after World War II. The advent of air conditioning coupled with cheap land and plentiful jobs has allowed both Phoenix and Las Vegas to recently recognize aggressive growth.

In short, people come, people go. And while I would love to see New Orleans thrive, she, like all other areas, has to to earn it.