The 35 Best US Cities For People 35 and Under

Our semi-exhaustive, mostly scientific guide to America’s most livable cities

If you’re 24, buried in college loans and looking for a job in a city that’s affordable but not completely depressing, you’re probably wondering where to start (while spoon-feeding yourself ice cream in your high-school bedroom). On the other hand, if you’re in your early 30s and New York or Los Angeles is grinding you down into a quivering husk of financial and emotional instability, it might be time to get out. Either way, with new data showing that 36 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 31 are currently living at home with mom and dad (the highest number in 40 years, according to Pew Research Center), we thought it was high time to crunch the numbers and figure out where the hell you can actually live these days and still retain some self-respect.

We started with the 50 most populous cities in the country, according to the 2010 census, and pared down results from there using Open Internet sources. Our Livability Index takes into account essential indicators for those between 18 and 35, like average salary, employment rates, and the cost of rent and utilities measured against everyday factors like bike lanes for commuting, low-cost broadband and the availability of good, cheap takeout. We also considered all-important lifestyle metrics like the price of a pint of beer and an ounce of high-quality weed, and the level of access to live music and coffee shops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following 35 cities represent your best chance of not dying jobless and alone in your parent’s basement. You can slice and dice the data by city or across categories, depending what you care about most. In the end, some bigger cities like Los Angeles and Chicago didn’t make the top 35 (though they may have ranked in individual categories).  Grab your patchouli; it’s time to move to Portland!

Which America Do You Live In? – 21 Hard To Believe Facts About 'Wealthy America' And 'Poor America'

Did you know that 40 percent of all American workers make less than $20,000 a year before taxes?  And 65 percent of all American workers make less than $40,000 a year before taxes.  If you work on Wall Street, or have a cushy job with the federal government, or work for a big tech firm out on the west coast, life is probably pretty good for you right now.  But the truth is that most Americans are not living the high life. In fact, most Americans are just trying to figure out how to survive from month to month. 

For many Americans, making a choice between buying food for your family and paying the light bill is a common occurrence.  But if you don't live in that America, hearing that people actually live like that may sound very strange to you.  After all, if everyone around you has expensive cars, the latest electronic gadgets and million dollar homes, the notion that America is in the midst of a very serious "economic decline" may seem very bizarre to you.

On Wednesday, the Dow hit a brand new record high, and Wall Street celebrated.  Since the financial crisis of 2008, stocks have been on an unprecedented run.  The top performers in the market have not just made millions of dollars - they have made billions of dollars.  Luxury apartments in Manhattan and beachfront homes in the Hamptons are selling for absolutely astronomical prices, and it seems like life in the good parts of New York City is one gigantic endless party these days.

Meanwhile, life is quite good down in Washington D.C. as well.  The wealth is spread more evenly, but on average the D.C. region actually has the highest standard of living of any major U.S. city.  The reason for this is the obscene growth of the federal government.  Over the past couple of decades, the U.S. government has ballooned in size and so have government salaries.  During one recent year, the average federal employee living in the Washington D.C. area received total compensation worth more than $126,000.

Out in the San Francisco area, Internet money is flowing like wine right now.  As I wrote about yesterday, top employees of companies such as Facebook and Twitter can make millions of dollars a year.  And if you were lucky to get a piece of the ownership of one of those companies at a very early stage, you are essentially set for life.

And with the Twitter IPO coming up, Internet euphoria is once again reaching a fever pitch.  For example, just check out what a 56-year-old administrative assistant said this weekabout why she is going to buy Twitter stock...

“I’m just buying because everybody’s talking about Twitter,” she said. “I’m just gonna take a chance.”

Is that how we should make our investment decisions from now on?

Just buy a stock because everybody's talking about it?

That is the kind of insanity that is going on in "wealthy America" right now.

Unfortunately, the gap between "wealthy America" and "poor America" is greater than ever before.

If you live in "wealthy America", what you are about to hear next will probably sound very strange.

CNN recently profiled a 44-year-old overnight prison guard named Delores Gilmore.  She works really hard, but a lot of times she simply does not have enough money to pay all of her bills...

"The first of the month, I pay the rent," she said. "The next check, I pay my light bills. Sometimes I won't pay my rent and I pay the light bill from last month -- if they cut if it off. Then I pay the rent the end of the month."

Her life consists of going to work, taking care of her children, going to sleep, and then getting back up and repeating that same cycle once again...

"I'm not fooling anybody," she told me. "I don't have any friends. And that's sad. ... I go to work, come home, take them where they gotta go, if they gotta go somewhere, come back home, lay down, go to work.

 

"That's what I do. All day, that's what I do."

Sadly, the truth is that tens of millions of Americans can identify with what she is going through on a daily basis.  In millions of families, both the husband and the wife work multiple jobs and it is still not enough.

If we truly did have a free market capitalist system, the entire country would be a land of opportunity and things would be getting better for everybody.  Unfortunately, that is not the case at all.  The following are 21 facts about "wealthy America" and "poor America" that are hard to believe...

#1 The lowest earning 23,303,064 Americans combinedmake 36 percent less than the highest earning 2,915 Americans do.

#2 40 percent of all American workers (39.6 percent to be precise) make less than $20,000 a year.

#3 According to the Pew Research Center, the top 7 percent of all U.S. households own 63 percent of all the wealth in the country.

#4 On average, households in the top 7 percent have 24 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 93 percent.

#5 According to numbers that were just released this week,49.7 million Americans are living in poverty.  That is a brand new all-time record high.

#6 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#7 Household incomes have actually been declining for five years in a row and total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.

#8 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americanscombined.

#9 The homeownership rate in the United States is at an 18 year low.

#10 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americanscombined.

#11 18 percent of all food stamp dollars are spent at Wal-Mart.

#12 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

#13 It is hard to believe, but right now 1.2 million studentsthat attend public schools in America are homeless.  That number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.

#14 One recent study discovered that nearly half of all public students in the United States come from low income homes.

#15 In 1980, CEOs at S&P 500 companies made 42 times as much as their employees did on average.  Today, CEOs at S&P 500 companies make 354 times as much as their employees do on average.  In fact, there are many CEOs that make more than 1000 times what the average employees in their companies make.

#16 U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#17 At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

#18 Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.

#19 Approximately one out of every five households in the United States is now on food stamps.

#20 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 milliontoday.

#21 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5 percent of all the wealth in the United States.

So which America do you live in?

Average:

The 13 Gods of Food

Sometimes, a decision in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant far, far away may end up as the vegetable you serve your kids on Wednesday. Take kale, for example. A few months after chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York wrote up a kale recipe for a food magazine, the once forgotten vegetable became the focus of a healthy trend, a fashionable addition to the foodie plate and now has dug itself into the mainstream. There is something almost otherworldy in the way that happened and the other people (and one company) that we have designated “Gods of Food” have their own roles in working the magical thinking and eating that reaches our dinner tables. Here is the pantheon as we see it:

Jonathan de Villiers for TIME

Andrea Petrini dines at Takao Takano Restaurant in Lyon, France. He’s studying ceps with risotto, thick chicken stock and cress.

1. Andrea Petrini. The Paris-based Italian food critic is the impresario of gourmet spectacles that showcase talent and make stars of young chefs. The events he organizes have also resulted in many friendships among cooks who may never have had the chance to meet each other.

2. Yottam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The cookbook authors were both born in Jerusalem on opposite sides of the city’s deep divide: Ottolenghi is Jewish; Tamimi is Arab. But their collaboration Jerusalem is a magnificent compilation of the Holy City’s cuisine, a delicious alternative for what’s on the political menu.

3. Sergio Nuñez de Arco. The Bolivia-born entrepreneur caught on to the attractions of the indigenous grain quinoa—and now the poor man’s food of his native country has struck it rich in the U.S.

4. Amrita Patel. She has overseen the continuing growth of India’s cooperative milk industry and distribution system, making it an engine of socio-economic progress in a nation where dairy was once scare.

5. Michael Pollan. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Those words are his and they are the three basic commandments of the sustainable food movement. His books are its scripture.

Martin Schoeller for Time

David Chang, Rene Redzepi, and Alex Atala

6. Alex Atala, René Redzepi and David Chang. They are three of the best and best known chefs in the world—and also best buds. Their friendship and openness reflect the new, more open world of the haute cuisine, a positive step away from the secretive and egotistical realm of old.

7. Albert Adrià. He will soon be running five restaurants in the same district of Barcelona—and literally runs across the street to manage them. But he is more than a good chef—that is, commander of the kitchen. Of all of his ilk, he is probably the best cook, a magician of the kitchen, able to sew together inspiration and execution seamlessly.

8. Wan Long. Once a soldier, he is now the chairman of the largest meat processing company in China, a country that loves its pigs. And to help satisfy the Middle Kingdom’s hunger for pork—and for safe pork—he is purchasing Smithfield Foods, the largest pork farmer and producer in the U.S.

9. Dan Barber. Apart from being perhaps the only name that can be really attached to the beginning of the kale revolution, Barber is trying to begin a philosophical and practical consideration of the way we breed plants—all the way to the seed level—as a way to make sure the food we eat is more flavorful as well as healthier.

Alessandra Sanguinetti / Magnum

Coffee producer Aida Batlle

10. Aida Batlle. As a child, she fled her native El Salvador to grow up in Miami. But when she returned, she revived and transformed her family’s coffee plantations, plugging into a new appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of site-specific coffee cherry and beans, part of a new wave of flavors that come from careful roasting. She is teaching us to delight in slow—not instant—coffee.

11. Vandana Shiva. Trained as a physicist, she is the intellectual firebrand that scorches big agriculture and the proponents of genetically modified food. Her charismatic appearances and speeches help energize the battle against so-called “Franken-foods”—despite arguments that GM foods might actually help the poor and the starving.

12. Ertharin Cousin. The head of the U.N. World Food Programme is responsible for feeding more people than anyone else on the planet. But she does it with an eye to what actually satisfies people—not just basic nutrition.

13. True World Foods. The sushi you eat may be from this mysterious but ubiquitous purveyor, perhaps the largest supplier of raw fish across the U.S. To add to the murkiness, the company has links to the controversial Unification Church founded by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Read more: The 13 Gods of Food | TIME.com http://time100.time.com/2013/11/07/the-13-gods-of-food/#ixzz2k1VAQAcP

www.mohanvamsi.com

This is how a department can succeed in a company

This is how a department can succeed in a company:



Mr A is responsible to perform Job 'X', but Mr A have Job 'Y','Z' in his task list.
Mr B knows how to perform Job 'Y'
In this case i will recommend Mr A should supervise and give a chance to Mr B to perform Job 'Y'. eventually Mr B will take over Job 'Y'.
By freeing up his task bucket, Mr A who is a senior and responsible resource will get enough time to work on process improvement while Mr B performs the tasks in conventional way.
When Mr A takes time off, Mr B will be able to fulfill his tasks.
eventually Mr B will take over the roles of Mr A and Mr A will scale up the Organizational ladder.
In this case, Mr A is both successful as a resource and a mentor. Mr A's matured approach allowed the department to strengthen its knowledge base. Mr A's good work ethics rewarded him a promotion and a salary hike.

What if Mr A is self-centered. Here is what Mr A needs to know:



You work like a donkey but can never live like a king.
You will be always stressed because you are carrying too much burden on your shoulders.
You will not be paid a dolor extra because you are so good at what you do.
You will lose quality family life.
You are annoyed, irritated and angered at the slightest things.
Your job will become mechanical, doing the same task again and again.
Your adaptability qualities will slowly diminish.
When you leave the company, none will laud you as a resource.

What happens to Mr B, If Mr A is self centered:



He will continue making same amount of money he is making every month.
Initially He feels rejected.
He will spend most of his work time in cafeteria or Browsing.
He will be working on his pet projects during office hours.
His practical knowledge will slowly diminish.
He will become more dependent on others.
Some day When Mr A suddenly stops coming to work, He will stand as a big failure before the management.
He will get stressed when he suddenly faces mountain of work.
He will either quickly learn and come up to speed on tasks or get laid off.


After reading all of the above, Whom do you think the loser is and as a department head What will you do to avoid this situation ?

www.mohanvamsi.com

India is quite capable of sending a rocket to Mars and fighting poverty at the same time

This morning, India successfully launched a rocket to Mars. Christened Mangalyaan, or Mars vehicle, the rocket is part of a scientific mission that cost a grand total of Rs 4.5 billion, or $73 million. In terms of the space business, that’s a bargain. By contrast, NASA’s next Mars mission will cost $671 million and do the same thing as India’s craft: orbit the red planet collecting data.

+

The secret to India’s low-budget space program is a simple one: operating within constraints and without luxuries. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) adapts what technology it can, strips out costs wherever it can and is staffed with modestly-paid yet incredibly hard-working scientists, explains the Economic Times. It is willing to take more risks, for example by building just one physical model of its craft compared to the three employed by NASA in case one fails. And it sets tight schedules to reduce costs even further.

+

Won’t somebody please think about the children

Mangalyaan is an impressive achievement, both scientific and budgetary. But as several news reports have noted, India remains an extremely poor country with many millions still going hungry. One piece on a US site, headlined “India Swears Its Redundant, Mega-Priced Mars Probe Is Totally Worth It,” is explicit: “How does a country with one of the lowest development levels in the world justify spending on a space program?” This is as familiar and predictable a formulation as the articles by foreign correspondents that begin by calling India a “land of contrasts”  and note with wonderment the sight of slums and great luxury apartments existing side by side.

+

ISRO’s founding father addressed this criticism several decades ago:

+

There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally and in the comity of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.

+

Bangalored

Indeed, India’s space research and other advanced technological efforts are what birthed its technology industry. Bangalore did not become a tech hub simply because of its pleasant weather and lovely gardens. It is the home of ISRO, the Defence Research and Development Organisation, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, and other high-tech industries that created an environment for and pool of engineers.

+

Moreover, the $73 million India spent on Mangalyaan is hardly snatching food from the mouths of starving babies. Two months ago, the government signed into law the Food Security Bill, which will provide roughly 800 million Indians with subsidized food and cost just under an estimated $20 billion every year. Whether you think that the bill is an outstanding piece of humanitarian legislation or a colossal scam that will only enrich middlemen and bureaucrats, it is impossible to argue that Indian government is splashing out on sexy space rockets at the expense of the poor. Mangalyaan costs less than 0.4% of the bill’s annual budget.

+

Questioning a poor country’s decision to launch a space program also implicitly ignores the fact that rich countries have poor people too. In 1962, President John F Kennedy declared to Americans that “we choose to go to the moon.” That year, 38.6 million Americans, or 21% of the nation (Excel file), lived below the poverty line. Last year, it was still 15%.

www.mohanvamsi.com

Want to be an entrepreneur? First, ask yourself these five questions

I’m fairly entrepreneurial, having started a few businesses that have made me well off enough that I can now pursue my personal mission, which is to be of meaningful help to my people without expectation of financial reward.

+

Who are “my people?”

+

Over-educated Westerners.

+

My people know a lot about a lot, but often little about themselves. For nearly a decade I’ve been studying what it takes to be of good character, what constitutes a robust personal philosophy, and how to have a meaningful life. I’ve come up with 54 questions that you can ask yourself and I’ve put them all on Q54Club.org. Here are five that are particularly important if you think you want to be an entrepreneur (and even if you don’t).

+

1. Who am I?

+

Many people who say they want to be entrepreneurs really just want to be self-employed because they chafe at having a boss. This is a bad reason. Start your own business and everyone will become your boss. If you’re lucky then prospects, customers, employees, investors, regulators, vendors, lawyers, banks, and markets will all tell you what to do. And if you are unlucky they will just let you fail.

+

These wannabe entrepreneurs have a choice about what they become and I suggest they carefully consider their alternatives because they will be in competition with the people I call “true entrepreneurs” who have no choice.

+

Does the world have a problem you cannot stand to see go unfixed? Do you have an idea nobody understands, or a ridiculous vision you cannot get out of your head? Congratulations, you are either crazy or an entrepreneur, and the only difference I’ve found between the two is success. So you have no choice other than to get the thing in your head out into the world or people will think you are nuts. Of course they will think you are crazy anyway—until you succeed—at which time they will say they want to be just like you, and they will start reading everything they can find on “how to be an entrepreneur.”

+

2. Who is important?

+

A Nobel Laureate in physics once told me that if you want to be really good at, say, physics, then you have to go to bed thinking about physics and wake up thinking about physics and you cannot be thinking about your family. The problems and people you think about the most are likely to benefit the most from your thinking. And your products, processes, employees, customers, and investors all need high priority. Some people you care about might just have to forgive you for not thinking about them as much as they wish you did.

+

3. What do I need to know?

+

I took a class on entrepreneurship near the end of my MBA. The professor started by saying that school is a great place to be if you cannot think of anything else to do, and it is hard to attract great students because they are doing better things than attending his class. Had it been my first class, I could have saved a lot of time and money because most of what I learned in business school was either a definition, self-evident, or false.

+

You need to know just enough to get started. Everything else you can learn just-in-time on a need-to-know basis. Getting a firm grip on everything before you start will only overwhelm you, so don’t do it.

+

4) What do I want to do?

+

A venture capitalist told me he will not invest in anyone until he gets a straight and verifiable answer to, “What (not who) do you love?” My father told me, “It is easier to make money doing what makes you happy than to buy happiness with the money you are paid for doing what makes you miserable.” If there is something you will do only if rewarded then do something else. The best results come from love of the work, not love of the results. Grokking this does not make you an entrepreneur, but not grokking it makes you not one.

+

5. Why do I exist?

+

Purpose trumps profession. If you must become an entrepreneur to fulfill your life’s purpose then so be it. But if being an entrepreneur would be a distraction from your purpose then be something else instead.

+

It all comes down to who you are because personality trumps profession too. I know a student who was considering studying engineering. I asked an experienced engineer if he would mind if the student shadowed him, and he asked, “Is the kid an engineer?” I said he wasn’t yet because he had never had an engineering course.

+

The man replied, “I didn’t ask that. Engineer is a personality type. When he got a toy did he take it apart or did he play with it?”

+

“He played with it.”

+

“Then he is not an engineer, so why would he waste his time?”

+

Of course, he is right. And if “engineer” is a personality type, then “entrepreneur” is a disorder. Too many people are unhappy and uninspired doctors, lawyers, and engineers because they invested too much in becoming those things before discovering it isn’t who they are. You can get stuck doing those other things for a lifetime, but the good news is that if you try to be an entrepreneur and you aren’t one, then you won’t be at it for long.

www.mohanvamsi.com