Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Prime2]

General Sherman, I've been to Atlanta on several occasions, compared to the rest of the South it's light years ahead.

Bought a car at a dealership in Roswell, they live very well.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Re infrastructure and to keep this on topic..........

It's a slam dunk. European, most Asian and and some parts of Indian infrastructure, when it comes to CATV and Telecom technology, are light years ahead of the US. You don't want to argue the opposite ..... and I really don't think you are or would.

Where you are correct is that most of the technology these countries have implemented has come from little guys in the US because of our basically "free enterprise" economy. It gets stolen because our courts won't protect intellectual property or patents and go after the thieves. So, I think a lot of what you say about "options." Carry a good deal of weight.

Atlanta ....... If you lived in Fulton County, yes, infrastructure is awful. In fact, it's a joke as you correctly point out. Interestingly, anyone with a brain started the great migration out of downtown Atlanta, moving northward in the 80s. Much to the chagrin of mostly white folks moving north to escape the idiocy of Atlanta and Fulton County, the mayor and city council, annexed a good deal of where these people moved and made it part of Fulton County. The impetus was to increase the dwindling tax base. Thus, there are two parts of of it. Both egregiously run. If you lived in Fulton County, yes, you had poor services.

I don't live in Fulton County and would make every effort to avoid it much like Sandy Springs (adjacent to the Roswell area OP speaks of) has done by incorporating and withdrawing from Fulton County. I live in Gwinette Co. Good schools, good roads, a sewer system that actually works and wasn't built before the civil war, great emergency, police and fire services and home prices that would rival anything that is offered in norther Ohio, especially if you live anywhere around Cleveland.

Our local propety taxes are rock bottom, I don't pay income tax in GA. On the other hand you are probably getting screwed in both these areas. The weather is mild. An occasional bad winter intervenes but, for the most part it's fine and I'm not dealing with the snow, ice and bad roads you deal with. So, move from Arlanta? I don't think so and I can assure you access to good internet services, telephone services and CATV are going to not going be high on my list of things I'm looking for in a community.

[Mike]

Guys, I provided a link to all the pertinent data. You can see what the average download speed is for every country in the world and each state within the U.S. as well as what that breaks out to in USD per mpbs.

Japan and South Korea are far and away the leaders, doubling and tripling most of the world. The U.S. is firmly in the heart of the bell curve, on par or better than western Europe/Canada/Australia. The average price for 1 mpbs in the U.S. is $3.52 compared with $3.32 for the European Union and $3.49 for the G8.

In the U.S., average download speed in Michigan is #30 at 29.53 mbps. Georgia is #31 at 28.94 and Ohio is #48 at 21.16. Because Ohio fucking sucks.

Atlanta checks in at just under 30 mbps, which is more than Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Akron, and Cleveland.

Georgia: http://www.netindex.com/download/3,18/Georgia/

Ohio: http://www.netindex.com/download/3,149/Ohio/

[Dr. Strangelove]

FWIW, plenty of Cleveland suburbs have pretty good schools. Between the Cleveland Clinic and the University Hospital system, I would imagine they blow away Atlanta's hospitals. Cleveland's cultural legacy from when it was a top 10 city (namely the art museum and orchestra) are world-class and also would blow Atlanta away. Traffic? Atlanta SUCKS.

On most other things, sure they may be better.

But you can't have rock bottom property taxes & no income taxes and add 50,000 people to the metro area every few years and expect to see no strains on the infrastructure. Where the f is the money coming from?

[hack]

Point.

[hack]

I think average speed is the best indicator but there's also the variance. We're on Comcast in DC and the variance is really large. I understand much less about the technical side than the policy side, but we also are unable to stream much other than Netflix here. We get 25mbps on a regular basis on speedtest, but across 5 devices it's been impossible to stream sports this year at reasonable quality. Last year it was fine. I know the speed we have is sufficient. Netflix is no-lag and Youtube over Chromecast is fine too. Everything else is dicey.

[Hannibal]

Atlanta is a great place to drive a fancy car. Arguably the best place East of the Mississippi. And, by golly it has some great strip clubs. If your ambitions are more along the lines of "having a shower with good water pressure", then you're shit out of luck. But at last the stereo system on that BMW sounds good for 130 minutes a day that you spend going to and from work!

[Dr. Strangelove]

I'm assuming the low water pressure is due to the extreme water shortage all of northern Georgia is facing in the coming century?

[Jeff Buchanan]

...... But you can't have rock bottom property taxes & no income taxes and add 50,000 people to the metro area every few years and expect to see no strains on the infrastructure. Where the f is the money coming from?

On your first point about Hospital care, are you in that business? No? STFU then. I'll take Atlanta's Hospital systems and their medical schools, including the one I attended at Emory, over most of them. I'll tip my hat to Cleveland's medical services and schools. No slouch there but, blow Atlanta's away? Don't think so.

On your second point and the one which I quoted above, I don't pay income tax because I get an exemption as I am over 65. So, it's a great place to retire ..... and I don't have to put up with the likes of Florida as a retirement destination which has comparable tax status for retired folks but has the down side of being part of the Cuban and South American land mass with most store signage down there in Spanish with English underneath it. Most residents of GA pay income and sales tax and the financial status of the state, despite your totally uninformed misgivings about it, is actually pretty good.

Traffic. I hate it. It is bad odwn here. But, as far as major cities go, its not bad. I love the internet. Average commute time in the most populous zip code in Northern Ohio,4 4108, is 31.2 minutes. In Atlanta, 30315, its 36.6. So, if I chose to commute in Atlanta, something I would assiduously avoid doing if I were still working, I'd spend 5 more minutes in the car drinking coffee and eating granola bars than you would. Stunning. Noteworthy is that Atlanta does not even make the US top 10 list of worst commutes. So, once again, sit down and STFU.

Culture? You are so sorrowfully wrong I'm not even going to bother with this one. Besides that is such a subjective category to compare cities you'd have to be a moron to do that .... oh, yeah, strange..... from ohio. Now that makes sense.

Fuck ohio and everyone in that sorry state.

[Dr. Strangelove]

If your idea of culture is Andy Griffith impersonators, tractor pulls, and strip clubs, then Atlanta is a mecca.

http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings

Cleveland Clinic #1 in the country in Cardiology, #1 in Urology, #2 in Rheumatology, #2 in Nephralogy, #2 in Gastroenterology, #2 in diabetes, #3 in Gynecology, #3 in Orthopedics, and #3 in Pulmnology. No Atlanta hospital is ranked top 3 in anything.

Golf clap for Emory though.

Saudi princes come to Cleveland to get heart transplants. They go to Atlanta as sex tourists.

[lineygoblue]

I can't believe that Cleveland is being held up as a "better" place to live than ANYWHERE in the US.

I've been to both Cleveland and Atlanta on multiple occasions. Nobody in their right mind would choose Cleveland over Atlanta.

[hodgkal]

I'll have to agree with DSL here. I spent 4 years at the Cleveland Clinic, and it was world class then, and has grown immensely in stature in the many years since I left. The area of the city that encompasses Western Reserve University, University Hospital, several outstanding museums, and the Clinic can stand comparison to any city in the world. JMO.

[hack]

I would certainly pick Cleveland over Atlanta. I like the culture of the Midwest much better and I like living with the four seasons. One thing important to me is that it is an older city. I like buildings of older eras, from when the quality and appearance of the building itself was what the builder measured itself by, rather than by its quarterly earnings statement. Newer cities just don't have any or nearly as many beautiful and sturdy structures that were built that way, and that matters to me.

[Hannibal]

I'm assuming the low water pressure is due to the extreme water shortage all of northern Georgia is facing in the coming century?

It's due to the complete absence of urban planning. Every node of infrastructure, from roads, to power lines, to cable and water, is built with the belief that no more will ever have to be built. Which is why five years later when another 100,000 people have moved in, it's a hopelessly overloaded clusterfuck.

[hack]

But you can't have rock bottom property taxes & no income taxes and add 50,000 people to the metro area every few years and expect to see no strains on the infrastructure. Where the f is the money coming from?