New York in Top 5 Most Miserable Cities, Says Forbes

Photo by Benzadrine.

New York City faced some stiff competition in the Forbes Top 10 “Misery Measure”, but ultimately moped away with a respectable fourth place, losing only to such perennial dystopias as Detroit (#1, forever); Flint, Michigan (#3) and… Stockton, California, in the #2 slot? Apparently, the Bay Area satellite has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country and a swelling population.

To compile the list, Forbes compared 150 of America’s largest metro areas based on data from Bert Sperling, a researcher from Portland whose city, conveniently, is not one of the ten most miserable. Here’s how New York fared compared to the other cities, with 150 being the lowest score:

Commute times 150
Income tax rates 150
Superfund sites 78
Unemployment 99
Violent crimes 105
Weather 86
Total Misery Measure 668

Thanks, Forbes; we’d be high-fiving each other if this town wasn’t always sucking the will to live out of us. Perhaps the most disheartening part of the top ten list is that they declare Los Angeles (#7) to be somehow less miserable than us, with a Total Misery Measure of 632. Anyone who’s spent time in L.A. knows that people there are actually much more miserable; they’re just not aware of it unless the coke somehow runs out. (Which never happens.) Also: Andy Dick lives there.

The capitalist tool points out that while New York’s financial services, media, advertising and tourist industries provide job opportunities, the cost of living “can make all but the super-wealthy miserable.” You don’t say, Steve Forbes? Tell us other reasons why we're so miserable! Well, at 10.5%, income taxes are also more than twice the national average, while, inexplicably, our average commute of 36 minutes each way is the worst out of any major city.

Maybe we've lived here long enough to internalize the misery, but a 36 minute commute sounds like warp speed to us.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on January 31, 2008 11:12 AM

Comments [rss]

lasucks

That guy who said he moved from "Happy" LA to NY must be on medication. I'm the last of my friends to get the hell out of here, I'm just waiting for my job transfer to come through next month so I can never again visit this hellhole. The traffic is a nightmare, and I'm just talking about going 3 miles on the street. The weather is absurdly hot all the time, makes it impossible to even go for a decent walk - today it's 80!! The people are the worst, spoiled brat children of spoiled brat rich morons, mainly in the entertainment industry. Then there's the insane number of illegals from all over the world who speak zero English, don't know how to drive and cram 10 people into a 1 bedroom apt so there's no parking, no quiet and the smells coming out of those places are disgusting. I live just 3 blocks outside Beverly Hills and it's like being in a slum. Crime is about 200% worse than just 10 years ago.

People are NOT happy here, they act like a**holes - in stores, on the freeway. I moved her 17 years ago and it WAS a nice place to live. People WERE friendly and happy. But when it became impossible to afford a decent place to live in a safe area, when it became a 1 hour drive to go anywhere, when getting a new job meant taking a pay cut because so many people are willing to come here and work for peanuts - there is ZERO to recommend about LA. It's a cesspool.

detonti

I was shocked to find out Newark did not make the list. Oh, I forgot I think the goverment took its charter back.

west side Michael

It's a rotten place to be old or lonely other

than that ,I still love this city at least the

parts that are not looking like the generic city

this is rapidly becoming. I remember Greenwich

Village before NYU took over that's how old I

am.Wow!

allie25

no one from Boston thinks that Bunker Hill is glorious, you idiot.

Are you just sore because Harvard/MIT/Northeastern/BU/BC/Wentworth etc rejected your application.

Haters.

centurion

I Escaped from NY at age 18 and can only say that in the many years since then.... yeah right on hooray way to go boy zip flash teeeeerific wow

But I will say I do Miss the Bway shows, the museums, the vast cultural exposure, the energy, how "nice" people can be.....TOP OF THE SIXES The Village etc.

AH yes..then there's the other side of that GRIMEY coin

annieuro

NYU is also getting much harder get into...and the schools in New York are pretty well funded. As for UCLA being the top...yeah...maybe for public schools. But seriously, it depends on the program.

But my commute time is ridiculous...it ranges anywhere from 45 minutes to 20 minutes from the Upper East to NYU. Everytime I think I'm early, I'm always late.

Snoopy

Spirit of 76 I have a personal flute that you might like playing since you are so good at it.

Cal Tech sucks as well as MIT. Have you ever seen their campus? It's a walled fortress in Pasadena and the people that go there don't know realism from reality.

MIT with all their government money still doesn't do shit for solving serious problems. Who gives a shit about putting a man on the sun. They apparently do and they get funding for same.

drexel

i'm with edex. yes there are cheaper places to live. in the middle of freaking NOWHERE, with NOTHING walking distance, no public transportation, no ethnic diversity, no many thousands of AWESOME restaurants. best move i ever made. i freaking LOVE this place.

drexel

i'm with edex. yes there are cheaper places to live. in the middle of freaking NOWHERE, with NOTHING walking distance, no public transportation, no ethnic diversity, no many thousands of AWESOME restaurants. best move i ever made. i freaking LOVE this place.

neckbeard

apparently nobody had any arguments with my comment above?

also, if you're going to talk about universities and/or education, you can't skip LA either. UCLA is consistantly rated in the top 2 or 3 public schools in the country. USC offers everything that NYU offers and more, Cal Tech is continually the most difficult school in the country to get into.

Spirit of 76

How is it Newark doesn't make it into the top 5?

John was surprised at Stockton? He apparently isn't a viewer of World News Tonight. They did a story on Stockton just a few days ago. Some neighborhoods look like ghost towns. The houses may be in good shape, but there's nobody around, lawns are brown and a car on the street may have flat tires from being parked there so long.

And obviously, despite Snoopy trumpeting the specialized high schools and putting down MIT, he couldn't get into any of them to save his life, as evidenced by his numerous spelling and grammatical errors and misuse of apostrophes in plurals. Let's not even get into his logic and debating skills.

Tim N.

Thanks for the backup JMH, but isn't Philly a suburb, too? :>)

Snoopy

The Kennedy's and their extended family suck!

Snoopy

Can you imagine if the talent and intellecual potential coming out of NYC's top schools was channeled into a local post grad school?

NYC is a lot better environment than that town up north that is still living in the glory of Bunker Hill.

Snoopy

Actually you could probably develope a college which would be on the same level if not better than the MIT's, the Stanford's and Cal Tech's if some individual supported and gave full scholarships for the top students coming out of Stuy and Bronx Science.

Snoopy

edEx,

Great compendium of schools that think outside the box of asshole lawyers and MBA's. BOSTON SUCKS creatively speaking! Let them name two schools that have a creative thought between them. They are a bunch of " How can we fuck the USA and retire with a multi million dollar pension?" They are why this country is fucked up economically and politically.

EastRiver

Why you so down on the hometown

I wouldn't go so far as to say down on it but I am trying to be objective. I disagree with the poster that touted education as one of New York's great selling points. And when you throw in the populists rants against any expansion of NYU and Columbia and it gets frustrating. And really, Princeton is about an hour by train. I threw in suburbs because I didn't want some other smart ass saying that Harvard and MIT are not in Boston. But if that's the standard then San Francisco has Berkeley and Stanford within the same distance and in a much smaller population base.

Boston is nothing but a College Town

Right. They certainly don't have a tech industry or anything, finance, medicine, venture capital, etc. The finance scene might be small but the city is far more diverse economically than New York.

No, there's no MIT here. But I'll counter that with........ohh.......the United Nations?

And that has what to do with education exactly? I would take MIT every day of the week over the impotent, useless waste of prime waterfront real estate that is the United Nations. Does having the UN here make your day less miserable? Hardly a day goes by when I even think of the UN being here.

allie25

also your an idiot because Boston and NY have pretty much the same weather.

i'm preparing for a storm of bitter comments on what a TOTAL IDIOT I AM OMFG HOW COULD I SAY SUCH THINGS ON THE GOTHAMIST WEBSITE.

chill people.

The Boston/New York thing is totally lame now. I'm as Boston as they come, and I love NY, live here now, and don't really care.

allie25

also @ snoopy: assuming you are a new yorker, you are letting your blind hatred for all things boston shine through. total ignorance. as a bostonian, i ask, cant we all just get along? the ny-boston feud is so TIRED. they are each different and each to be respected for different reasons.