As Expensive As Detroit
Seattle's an expensive place to live, no doubt, and we've been noticing a trend towards taking a certain amount of pride in that fact, even among those of us that are just scraping by here. When someone complains we're quick to kick 'em a few times and remind them that you get what you pay for. Hey, if you can't take the price of the opera subscription go back to Boise. Seattlest is as guilty of this kind of attitude as anyone, of course. We bust our ass to take advantage of everything the city's got. Why shouldn't we bust on the complainers? Well, the Economist just released a list of the World's most expensive cities that's making us reconsider just how pricey Seattle is in the grand scheme of things. Of course we don't expect to compete in the top ten (Oslo 1, Paris 2, Copenhagen 3). Or the top thirty (New York 28). Or even the top fifty. Oh come on, already! Not in the top fifty? We're 61st, actually.
Not that we know the first thing about the Economist's methodology, of course. Maybe our wages are crap compared to our cost of living? Maybe the weak dollar casts us in an economical light? There are a million excuses we can come up with for the 61 ranking, but when it comes to explaining away the fact that we're tied for 61 with Detroit we've got nothing.
