Great bit on The Daily Show about Sean Hannity saying he’s going to leave New York after Gov. Cuomo’s comments.
At about 2:45 The Jersey Boy’s cast does a great song, in full costume, on the stage.
Category: NYC
Does it make sense to buy a house?
Here’s a great interactive graphic from Trulia.com that shows the ratio of renting to buying. The ratio is how many years of paying before you paid full price for an equivalent house. This data is comparing the median list price with that of a two bedroom apartment.
For example, in NYC renting is so much better that you’d pay rent for 39 years before you’d paid the amount the house costs. A good estimate is the rent-to-price ratio should be about 17:1.
The size of the circle shows how much the rent is (e.g. bigger circle means more rent). The color indicates the ratio (e.g. red means better to rent; green means better to own).
Who can live here?
Here is similar data to to the Interactive Census Data but with a little more Manhattan orientation. The interactive chart lets you look at different neighborhoods and shows the income distribution. You can also see how many people can afford to live there assuming they can pay 30% of their income for rent.
Interactive Census Data
Great interactive chart from the NY Times that uses Google maps and data from the census.
You can look at incomes from the census track level (e.g. a few blocks) all the way up to the entire country.
This diagram shows income distribution:
And this one is the change in median income:
You can also check things like ethnicity and various income levels.
Being a Consumer vs Investor
There’s some lesson to be learned here about investing vs consuming but I can’t quite figure it out! Hmm, I wonder if I’m a consumer or an investor.
If instead of spending $5700 on an Apple Powerbook in 1997 you’d bought Apple stock, it’d be worth $330K! If I hadn’t bought a MacBook Pro in 2008 for ~$2,499 but bought Apple Stock it’d now be worth $5,680. I’d have nearly $8,000 more.
Netflix Rental Frequency by zip code
Here’s an interesting, interactive, graphic that shows Netflix rental frequency per neighborhood, per movie.
Unemployment — not if you caused the crisis!
So if you lost your firm billions of dollars, laid off tens of thousands and indirectly caused millions to lose their jobs and drove the unemployment rate to 10.3% well, the good news is it didn’t cost you your job! 92% of management in TARP funds recipients still have their jobs!
From A Fair Deal for Taxpayer Investments:
The executive leadership of the financial sector remain largely unchanged—92 percent of the management and directors of the top 17 recipients of TARP funds are still in office.
Population of the Five Boroughs
I saw a graph showing the population of the Five Boroughs: Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. I tracked the data to: NYC Population and NYC 2008 Population.
What I was surprised about is how the population of Manhattan has actually dropped over the years:
Of course, it’s density that matters! Here’s the population expressed as 1000 people per square mile
Wow! 72,000 people per square mile in Manhattan.
Storm in the City
I’ve never seen clouds like this plus it was at sunset plus I was walking to Columbus Circle.
Closer to a new car?
It’s one step closer to happening! Getting a new car based on a trade in might actually happen. It hasn’t passed the House yet (much less the Senate) but the leadership of both parties agree on doing it.
From House Reaches a Deal on ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program:
Under the House plan, a car trade-in that improves fuel efficiency by at least 10 miles per gallon would qualify for a $4,500 voucher, as would the trade-in of a small truck that improves efficiency by 5 miles per gallon. The new vehicle must have a minimum fuel efficiency rating of 22 miles per gallon for cars and 18 miles per gallon for small trucks.
Pete Ware 