San Diego Offers A $30 Taxi Ride
Getting people out of their cars sometimes means getting them into another one. The UT reports a number of San Diego bars, along with the non-profit group RADD, are offering bar flies a $30 dollar taxi ride if they use pre-paid cards accepted by Yellow Cab. The idea is to get potentially drunk drivers home without operating a vehicle.
Lots of people are concerned about hiring a cab because they’re not sure how much it will set them back. Some college students claim it can cost you almost $50 to take a taxi from Pacific Beach to San Diego State. The prepaid card, reportedly, gets you a cab ride for 30 bucks, no matter how far you have to go.
In Des Moines Your Dollar Goes A Long Way
The quality of life in urban America relies on many factors. One of them is affordability. And for that, Des Moines, Iowa is numero uno. Richard Florida’s Creative Class blog cites numbers from the Council for Community and Economic Research to determine what cities have the highest – and lowest – levels of real income.
When you adjust for cost of living, Des Moines has a median real income of $62,446, the highest in the nation. The lowest real median income is found in a town that is poor by any measure: McCallen, Texas, right on the Mexican border. What’s interesting is the second-lowest real income level is found in New York City. Even though NYC has an actual median income of $62,887, it’s real income, when adjusted for cost of living, is only about $35,000.
San Diego didn’t make the list, but I suspect we would be toward the bottom of it. Los Angeles had the 8th lowest level of real income on the list. So if you want to live without a pile of money woes, choose the frost belt over the cost belt.
Saudi Prince Hates High Gas Prices
In an interview with CNN, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal said he wants the price of oil to take a tumble. He said this for reasons that are entirely reasonable. The higher the price of oil and gas, the faster the developed world will discover new energy technologies.
“We don't want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price of oil goes, the more they have incentives to go and find alternatives,” he said.
It was refreshing to hear someone speak so frankly about the issue, even though the prince was telling us something we should already know. The longer oil and gas are affordable, the longer we are dependent on big oil and the longer we bankroll their fortunes. Simple.
See How San Diego Stacks Up On Housing Bust Scale
I was trolling the web when I came upon this handy set of charts, reflecting home prices gathered by Case-Shiller. Click on the link and select the third chart to see how San Diego compares to other cities in lost home value.
The median price of San Diego homes has lost nearly 39 percent of its value since prices peaked at the end of 2005. Dallas home prices, by comparison, have lost a paltry 10.7 percent. On the high end, Phoenix has lost 56 percent and Las Vegas has lost 58 percent.
