Cost of living adjusted, NYC poorest city in America?

For all sorts of reasons, multipliers like the CoL adjustment in this article don't work for New York. (And really, they don't work in general.) To be "equally well off," there are a lot more factors than living in an equally-sized apartment with an identical car ... after all, living in a place that doesn't suck counts for something. As does not needing that car. Or having an immense amount of stuff to do (much of which is free or close) that keeps you out of that apartment.

On a personal level as a NYC resident, I live in a nice apartment in a nice (though not ritzy) neighborhood for $600/month, my transportation costs are $100/month and everything else is just about the same as it would be elsewhere. Every time I think about moving somewhere else, I have a hard time figuring out how I could come close to my current level of expenses without sacrificing quality of life.

I think costs in New York can be crazy if you live a certain kind of lifestyle. But I think we're just used to living with less of certain things (mostly due to our space restrictions) that don't necessarily translate well across other cities (We rented a whole house in Cambridge when we were there for YC last summer for about what you'd spend on an apartment 1/3 the size in New York).

There are certain things that augment the high cost of living though: * We don't drive cars and most of us take mass transit most of the time. * We buy fewer possessions (no place to put them). A side benefit is that when you do buy something, you tend to buy better quality. * When we do buy something, it usually involves recycling or selling what we had before. * We don't see our living space as our own private paradise. We don't tend to duplicate resources the public already has. We have parks instead of lawns. We'll use taxis and zipcar when we need them instead of owning cars. * We tend to live very close to where we work and could walk there if necessary. * Restaurants face a large amount of competition. You can get excellent food with excellent ambiance for less money than I was used to paying for a comparable experience elsewhere. * Lots of free or nearly free experiences. Art, museums, concerts, performances, groups, and lectures.

The way I feel about (or rationalize) New York City is that I get to live in a place that offers so much more for only a slight premium on what I'd pay to live in San Francisco.

The big down side is that you miss out on the tech community in SF, although others argue that this can be a net positive.

CoLA figures for New York are B.S. They're all based on buying an identical basket of goods. New Yorkers don't buy the same goods. 54% of New Yorkers don't have cars, because we have good mass transit. New Yorkers live in smaller apartments and don't have gardens, because we usually opt for walkability and nearby culture and entertainment instead of square footage. If you want the square footage instead of the walkability, you move to the suburbs of New York... problem solved.

I just read "The Corner", about life on the drug dealing corners in West Baltimore. (It was the basis for the show "The Wire".) When they quote a cost of living for "Baltimore", do they average over all parts, even the ones where no one wants to live unless you really are using all your cash for drugs and can't afford the hundred bucks a month it would cost you extra to live one block away from the drug dealers?? Because that average would seem to indicate an unfairly low cost of living then...

How have they accounted for purchasing residences in New York? Which, unlike almost everywhere else, has not seen a precipitous decline in property value?

quality of life != standard of living