Forbes' followed one of my suggestions from last year for adjusting their misery ranking, adding property taxes and removing sales taxes. Unfortunately, they didn't follow my top suggestion, adding a measure of income.
Nevertheless, Stockton dropped from #1 to #11, in large part due to this one change. Notably, all of the California metro areas dropped significantly in the rankings due to this adjustment; except Sacramento (which is getting pummeled in the rankings by the futility of the Kings). While I approve of the change, they are using property tax rate, as opposed to property tax burden which would be an even better measure in my mind. That kills places like Detroit with very low property values where the property tax rates may be very high even if the property tax bill is not.
Interestingly, the top 2 cities on this years misery list (Miami and Detroit), are identical to the top 2 on our adjusted misery list last year.
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