“Only New York City fares worst than Providence when it comes to income tax rates.”
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Well that part is WRONG. Both Modesto and LA as well as Stockton have a 10.3% income tax as they are in California, the “gold medal”- we are only the silver-though that may change soon.
All in all, it is no surprise to see Providence metro ranked right along with those other progressive run, third world infested sewers like NYC, Chicago, LA, Modesto, Flint, Philly and the king-Deeeeeee-troit. The real RI Future.

Take a bow, GOP governor and Democratid leadership.

Greg, I will make an urgent, respectful appeal on your behalf to the governor to reconsider his funding cuts for state-provided mental health services. Sounds like the budget cuts will hurt you more than I.

Gents, this is more specifically about Providence. So shouldn’t we be bashing Cicilline? Go ahead Rhody, you go first.

I find the Cicclline bashing ironic, given his long feud with Providence firefighters.

This is one of the silliest rankings I have ever seen. When New York, LA, and Chicago are listed as “miserable” cities, you really don’t need to read much more about it. What did Twain say about statistics?

Oh yeah, and dittos to Pragmatist. Providence has its flaws, like most urban areas, but I love it.
I’ve lived in two of the other ten of Forbes’ “worst” cities: Chicago and Philly. Both are marvelous, fun, and exciting places to live.
I give Forbes a D- for their rankings.

Andrew,
My earlier comment about the cost to the state of Providence schools, relative to Providence’s contribution to the state economy, was made in a good faith hope for a serious debate. I have had some respect for the seriousness of your posts here, so I’ll look forward to your response and ignore the gratuitous remark about Simmons.
Meanwhile, here’s a bit more to add to my previous comment. The 2000 census report on commuters gives the following results:
Of 110,615 jobs in Providence, 33,938 were held by Providence residents, but 66,510 were held by R.I. residents from outside Providence. (The other 10,167 were held by out-of-state residents). In eight of the state’s 39 towns outside of Providence, more residents worked in Providence than any other town, including the worker’s home town.
Of Providence’s 67,169 working residents, 25,551 worked in RI towns outside of Providence. After subtracting these out-commuters from the in-commuters, Providence provided a net 40,959 jobs to non-Providence Rhode Islanders in 2000.
At an average 2006 salary of $45,434 for Providence jobs, Providence would have provided a net outflow of $1,860,931,206 to residents of other towns.
As I said earlier, It is only possible to say that the suburbs are subsidizing Providence by looking solely at the expense side of the equation and ignoring the income side. If critics want to insist that fairness requires not transferring money from one community to another, then what is really unfair is that people who derive their income from Providence’s robust economy use that money to pay property taxes to finance their suburb’s schools, and then say “isn’t it terrible that those Providence people want our money to educate their children. This money belongs in Barrington (or E. Greenwich or whatever).”

Frank, You say, I don’t get why deriving one’s income from Providence has anything to do with having the town the employee lives in subsidize our capitiol city. The anti-Providence argument frequently seen here goes something like this: 1) Providence gets more per student in income-tax-produced state aid than do suburban and rural districts 2)When income tax receipts from suburban/rural citizens are used to fund Providence schools, those towns are “subsidizing” Providence education 3)This is unfair to those towns because each town somehow “owns” the state income tax dollars of its residents and they should not be used for the children of other towns. If you read my earlier comment (if not, I’ll ask that you do) you’ll know that I believe the way of thinking that pits “my town” against “your town” is mistaken. However, if we must play that game, we should ask not only where the tax dollars go, but also where they come from. When you do that, you’ll see that Providence provides a large net flow of income to the rest of the state….somewhere around $2B, which is roughly 10% of the total income of state residents. It strikes me as unreasonable for non-Providence residents to say “we’ll take this income from Providence (and use its services while there) back to our suburb, use it to pay our property taxes to fund our schools, but Providence schools must shift for themselves.” For one thing Providence’s businesses need the workforce as much as the workforce needs an employer…. Exactly! But, the anti-Providence crowd has been unwilling to recognize that that the workforce, and the state, needs Providence, or at least that the state benefits because Providence produces a large net outflow of money to them. That money gets used to pay property taxes in outlying towns… Read more »

1. My comment John Simmons couldn’t be possibly any more on point with respect to the topic being discussed. The residents of Providence …. don’t have a right to demand that their spending on their luxury items be subsidized by taking money from other communities. The only way this could be relevant to this discussion is if in fact Providence is spending your money, i.e. that other communities are in fact subsidizing Providence. That, however, is precisely the point under debate. I disagree that they are. 3. Incentives do matter, which suggests that’s it’s a mistake to give a municipal governments of any size a large pool of money, taken from people who are not allowed any say in how that money is spent. I agree with you about incentives, but we are talking here about the use of state income tax receipts. Each voter in the state has exactly the same amount of say in how the funds are allocated across cities and towns. As to specific expenditures made by the towns, I don’t get a vote in how your town spends the money it receives either. Your argument is that Providence is spending your money, but that again assumes the issue under debate. My argument is that Providence is only spending your money (more than your town is spending Providence’s money) if Providence is consuming more state income tax receipts than it is producing. My evidence says it is not, though some towns are…possibly yours. With regard to education, as I pointed out before, Providence jobs generate roughly 27% of the state’s income and gets roughly 27% of the total aid to local schools. I just did the same thing with the 2006 total state aid to cities and towns. Providence’s share is 27.8%. My conclusion remains that… Read more »