On Sep 27, 2007, at 12:40 PM, MICHAEL YATES wrote:
> Our dinner at Hurley's told us something important about Portland,
> and about the United States itself. An abiding inequality haunts
> this city and every city in the country. It strikes you like a
> hammer. In a city with one of the nation's highest unemployment
> rates, with homeless children on every street corner, with adult
> beggars at every highway entrance ramp, diners were packed cheek by
> jowl in a restaurant whose prices were surely among the highest in
> the nation.
Hey, look on the bright side - it's one of the few places in the U.S. where house prices are still rising! Up almost 4% for the year ending in July, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index - lagging Charlotte and Seattle, alas.
Doug