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This is surely not the only factor at play here, and there are several exceptions, but I would bet that "Most Educated Cities" is strongly correlated with a list of "Highest Cost of Living Cities."
Greenville, SC has incredibly low housing costs and other costs of living. It is easy to live a decent life here without being fabulously wealthy. This is the opposite of the case in some of the cities on top of this list, like San Francisco or Boston, where absurd housing costs have driven away less-educated lower income people.
Because 1. wages, 2. jobs, and 3. housing. The more educated your city is, the more high paying jobs you have. Cost of living is low here, but so are wages. Cost of living is high in San Francisco, but so are wages. The big difference is housing. San Francisco and NYC have high wages, but yet also have astronomically high housing. Raleigh has high wages for the south, but housing is affordable.
The problem with Boston and SF is they've 1. been overran by tech, 2. they have limited land, and 3. they have a criminally low housing supply. Seattle is heading for the same problem. Yet Austin and Raleigh have a high amount of tech, but housing is in abundance and they have endless land so their cost of livings are much more reasonable, even with the high growth they've been seeing and higher wages they have.
The better educated your city is, the better off it still typically is. We should want education levels in Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston to get as high as they can. Yes COL can increase, but so will our wages. As long as we keep building housing and don't let the market get overran with "luxury", then it's not a problem. Yet we get lower crime, better health, better tax base, less ignorance, and more desirable amenities and projects.
There is more crime in Raleigh and other cities with more people than Greenville.
By your logic New York City is the #1 crime capital of the country. There were 290 murders in NYC last year. There was 366 in South Carolina. Yet SC has 58% the population of New York and has a density of 157 people vs NYC's 28,000. So everyday you're around less people that can murder you, which is the logic you use, yet we still have more murders...
Greenville has a higher crime rate than Raleigh, that's just a fact. You act like that's saying "Greenville isn't safe", and no one has said that. Nor is it as big of a difference as it looks on paper because unlike Greenville, Raleigh has plenty of far flung wealthy areas annexed. But it's still a statistical difference.
Again using your logic, if Greenville annexed Five Forks, then Greenville would become "more dangerous" because Greenville now has an extra ~17,000 people, but in reality... because Five Forks is so safe and affluent, Greenville's crime rate would go down. Same way Raleigh's population would go down yet crime rate would go up if you sliced off those northside neighborhoods...
You're well aware of this, but you have an obvious inferiority complex. As people have told you countless times, it's crime rate, not total crime. And it's tied to education, jobs, and income. But you use total population and absolutes to make things look worse than they are for larger places because of your complex.
Fun fact, Greenville is 3x larger than East South Louis yet had 2 murders in 2016 compared to ESL's 27...a rate of 3 vs 100...but by your logic Greenville is more dangerous than the statistical #1 most dangerous place in America, simply because it's bigger. Makes sense as always...
Also San Francisco's homeless problem has been majorly caused by the California and San Francisco governments, lack of space, inflation of the tech industry, and the heavy Nimby culture when it comes to housing. Has no correlation with college degrees and no one said being educated prevents homeless. Like everything else, that should be quite obvious.
According to this report by Greenville police department, there were 6, 2, and 4 homicides in Greenville in 2015, 2016, and 2017 respectively. It is hard to believe more populated metros than Greenville had a lower number.
I don't recall reading a story about Greenville similar to the one that I linked to about San Fran. According to that NPR article, the conditions on the ground in San Fran are so bad that a 'Chicago-based medical association recently decided to cancel future events in the city, including a major convention that normally hosts more than 15,000 attendees.'
This story blows my mind given San Fran is Wallet Hub's 5th most educated metro. I would have thought the tax revenue from all of the educated rich people in San Fran would be enough to take care of the poor.
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Last edited by ClemVegas; 08-02-2018 at 05:07 PM..
According to this report by Greenville police department, there were 6, 2, and 4 homicides in Greenville in 2015, 2016, and 2017 respectively. It is hard to believe more populated metros than Greenville had a lower number.
I don't recall reading a story about Greenville similar to the one that I linked to about San Fran. According to that NPR article, the conditions on the ground in San Fran are so bad that a 'Chicago-based medical association recently decided to cancel future events in the city, including a major convention that normally hosts more than 15,000 attendees.'
This story blows my mind given San Fran is Wallet Hub's 5th most educated metro. I would have thought the tax revenue from all of the educated rich people in San Fran would be enough to take care of the poor.
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The metro includes much more than Greenville City which is the only thing the Greenville police reports. That number is only for the 26 or so square miles, which is very small. I understand exactly what Jandrew is saying. Despite those few murders the percentage is still higher than other cities because the city limit boundaries are so small which makes the population smaller. People outside of the city limits come into the city too. If they were to annex it to it's true size the percentage would absolutely go down. It spreads it out and adds more affluent areas. Jandrew is talking about percentages, not raw numbers which is what is used in these rankings.
The metro includes much more than Greenville City which is the only thing the Greenville police reports. That number is only for the 26 or so square miles, which is very small. I understand exactly what Jandrew is saying. Despite those few murders the percentage is still higher than other cities because the city limit boundaries are so small which makes the population smaller. People outside of the city limits come into the city too. If they were to annex it to it's true size the percentage would absolutely go down. It spreads it out and adds more affluent areas. Jandrew is talking about percentages, not raw numbers which is what is used in these rankings.
He completely understands what I'm saying because other people have told him the same thing numerous times. He has an inferiority complex so he uses the argument "Rockville has 50k people, but Jonesville has 500k people, so Jonesville is more dangerous", even though Rockvilles crime rate is 20x higher than Jones'. He will just repeat that point or use a strawman, ie. "San Fran's education doesn't help the homeless" - even though their homeless problem has nothing to do with their education levels.
He thinks someone saying "Raleigh [or any city] is safer than Greenville" = "Greenville is not safe." He doesn't care about crime rate, or density, or any of that stuff. If Greenville had 4 murders and Los Angeles had 5, LA is more dangerous, though everyone else here would agree that's awful for Greenville and amazing for LA.
He completely understands what I'm saying because other people have told him the same thing numerous times. He has an inferiority complex so he uses the argument "Rockville has 50k people, but Jonesville has 500k people, so Jonesville is more dangerous", even though Rockvilles crime rate is 20x higher than Jones'. He will just repeat that point or use a strawman, ie. "San Fran's education doesn't help the homeless" - even though their homeless problem has nothing to do with their education levels.
He thinks someone saying "Raleigh [or any city] is safer than Greenville" = "Greenville is not safe." He doesn't care about crime rate, or density, or any of that stuff. If Greenville had 4 murders and Los Angeles had 5, LA is more dangerous, though everyone else here would agree that's awful for Greenville and amazing for LA.
He completely understands what I'm saying because other people have told him the same thing numerous times. He has an inferiority complex so he uses the argument "Rockville has 50k people, but Jonesville has 500k people, so Jonesville is more dangerous", even though Rockvilles crime rate is 20x higher than Jones'. He will just repeat that point or use a strawman, ie. "San Fran's education doesn't help the homeless" - even though their homeless problem has nothing to do with their education levels.
He thinks someone saying "Raleigh [or any city] is safer than Greenville" = "Greenville is not safe." He doesn't care about crime rate, or density, or any of that stuff. If Greenville had 4 murders and Los Angeles had 5, LA is more dangerous, though everyone else here would agree that's awful for Greenville and amazing for LA.
It is interesting how you put words in quotes as though I said them while also accusing me of using strawmen.
I don't think that you have demonstrated that Raleigh, NYC and other more populated cities are more safe than Greenville. I worked in NYC and Manhattan for 4 months and my brother used to live in Raleigh and Durham so I think that I have some insight into these cities.
I know NYC has had over 2000 murders in a year in the past. I don't think Greenville has ever come close to that.
The per capita crime stats are based on the reality that crime increases with population.
A few years ago, little Aiken SC had a higher per capita murder rate than NYC. It had 4 murders that year and it wasn't even 1 percent of the total number of murders in NYC. I would say Aiken was much safer than NYC. That's my opinion. The crime stats that I care about are the total number of crime stats for a metro, not the per capita stats.
I don't see how having an opinion about crime stats is proof that I have an inferiority complex.
You said this last night:
'The better educated your city is, the better off it still typically is. We should want education levels in Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston to get as high as they can. Yes COL can increase, but so will our wages. As long as we keep building housing and don't let the market get overran with "luxury", then it's not a problem. Yet we get lower crime, better health, better tax base, less ignorance, and more desirable amenities and projects.'
I think the San Fran news that I linked to does contradict this. San Fran is 'better educated' than Greenville but it does not seem to be better off.
This is the first line from the NPR article about San Fran: ' San Francisco's streets are so filthy that at least one infectious disease expert has compared the city to some of the dirtiest slums in the world.'
I can only conclude from this that increasing the number of educated people doesn't help and it might even hurt. Sometimes really smart people come up with some bad ideas.
If I ever read an article about Greenville similar to the NPR article about San Fran, I'll be moving away.
Last edited by ClemVegas; 08-03-2018 at 12:44 PM..
I don't think that you have demonstrated that Raleigh, NYC and other more populated cities are more safe than Greenville...The crime stats that I care about are the total number of crime stats for a metro, not the per capita stats.
I guess if town A has 10 residents and 5 are murdered in a year, and town B has 100,000 residents and 6 are murdered that same year; one would feel safer in town A since there were fewer murders?
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