The Wall Street Journal has published a “misery index” that ranks Portland as the nation’s second-most miserable city after Phoenix. Or, at least, the second-most miserable of the 20 cities included in the ranking. The newspaper’s index is supposed to be based on changes in unemployment, housing prices, and gas prices in the last year.
As much as the Antiplanner likes to read articles bashing the city I love to hate, I have reservations about any such “indices” of misery or anything else. Here is a conundrum, for example: why is it that higher gas prices (meaning transportation is less affordable) are considered bad, but higher housing prices (meaning housing is less affordable) is considered good?
The Journal‘s answer, no doubt, is that housing is an asset while gasoline is a consumption good. This isn’t really true; housing is a consumable as well. But even if it were true, not everyone bought their home a year ago. Over the last five years, housing prices dropped 15 percent in Boston but rose in Dallas. Yet, because the index is based on an annual change, Boston is considered less miserable than Dallas.
