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Mark Rober did a fairly scientific self-run experiment where he sent 200 wallets around the country to be dropped in various cities then collect data on who returned them (if possible). He controlled for age, big cities vs small city size, gender, poor/rich, etc.

Summary: 2/3 of the wallets were returned, and of those 96% still had the money inside. He got lots of other interesting data, but I thought his summary was the most impressive:

Lately it seems like so much of what you see online is meant to stoke outrage at some group of people versus ourselves because that’s what gets shared. That begins to warp our perception that the only good people out there are those within our own group. But this data shows that across any age or gender or socio-economic background, across the whole religious spectrum through middle America and along the coast there are lots of good people everywhere.

Not only that, but they constitute a [very clear] MAJORITY. They didn’t call for some reward or Facebook likes or because they knew someone was watching. They did it because it was simply the right thing to do and I think that’s pretty cool and something worth remembering.

Things that didn’t seem to make a difference:

• Gender – pretty much equal return rate after slightly method change.
• Rich or poor areas – same return rate
• Age – average age of person that returned the wallet was 36, which is pretty much the average age in the US. (Would be interesting to dig into the average age of persons who walk in these areas vs driving/etc. Old people probably don’t walk as much, kids under 7 probably don’t walk alone either. But I agree this is probably a fair representation.)
• Religious* – 60% were returned by people who were religious vs 40% who were not. This largely matches the average city population, so he didn’t consider it statistically meaningful.

Things that did make a difference to at least some degree:

• Small cities averaged better return rates than big cities
• City itself – huge difference

Here’s the city results in order from best to worst:

• Perfect (10/10 returns): Chicago, Salt Lake City
• Good (9-7 returns): Nashua, ID, Hill City, SD, Portland, Parma, ID, Las Vegas
• Middle (7-5 returned): San Francisco, Winnipeg, Washington DC, Huntsville, New London, Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Edmonton
• Worst cities for return rate (4 or under): Detroit and NYC

Oregon is one of only 2 states that still has a 50’s era laws banning customers from pumping their own gas. This has been changing though. Several counties in sparsely populated areas of eastern Oregon have been allow you to pump your own gas for the last few years. During recent heat waves, snow storms, and COVID – residents have been increasingly able to pump their own gas.

That might become permanent as a repeal on the ban just passed the Oregon house. It now only has to pass the Oregon senate.

What will that day be like? Some have suggesting Oregonians are utterly doomed like this:

Or maybe this:

If you’ve driven much of Portland, you’ll see strange, unfinished ghost ramp branches like this one off the right of the connector ramp between I-5 to I-84.

Peter Dibble does a fantastic job of talking about these interesting historical artifacts from the sometimes bizarre history of Portland road building.

If you think this kind of poor planning is a new problem for Portland, a desperately needed improved and seismically safe I-5 bridge across the Columbia has been worked on for over 17 years. It has absorbed hundreds of millions of dollars, produced dozens of plans, yet not a single shovel of dirt has been moved in all that time.

In 2019, Walmart’s local Portland tech hub was about to hire dozens of new employees. Fast forward to 2023, and Walmart Labs is closing it’s Portland office. Employees can either move to their California or Arkansas offices – or take severance. Along with the move, employees will be expected to be in office at least 2 days a week.

Portland’s ballot measures have resulted in the second highest tax rates in the country as of this year – a tax rate only second to New York City:

Starting in 2017, Multnomah County voters passed several tax measures aimed at improving life in their burgeoning city. After Metro and the county levied taxes to combat homelessness and provide preschool for all, Portland now has the second-highest total state and local income tax rate in the nation—14.69%—exceeded only by New York City at 14.78%, according to a report from Ernst & Young commissioned by Oregon Business & Industry.
That’s the top marginal tax rate, meaning you pay it only on income above $125,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing together. By comparison, the only New Yorkers paying the top rate there are those making $25 million or more, single or married. That means plenty of nonplutocrat Oregonians are paying taxes rivaled only by those levied on Gotham millionaires.”

https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/02/01/they-left-portland-is-losing-some-of-its-biggest-fans/

We also have had an over-zealous city sending tax penalties and threats of IRS actions to anyone that wasn’t paying – even though thousands of taxpayers and their companies didn’t know how to file payments for the new taxes.

Get out

Another option is to get out of Portland, Multnomah county, and the Metro area. Before you move, you need to make sure you’re really out. Portland, Multnomah, and Metro have continually gerrymandered their boundaries to absorb as much of the tax base as possible. This is important because the most recent tactic is to levee taxes against residents of the county and ever-expanding metro area to even further spread the boundaries.

How do you know if you’re in those jurisdictions? There’s a tool for that from the tax notices they sent out:

1. Go to portlandmaps.com, enter your address, then check the ‘Jurisdiction’ info box on the right. If it says ‘Portland/Multnomah’ or any combination that has either ‘Portland’ or ‘Multnomah’ – you’re still stuck with at least some of the new Portland and Multnomah county taxes.
2. Go to Metro boundary address lookup. Enter your address. If the Within Metro Boundary column says “Yes” – then you’re still going to have to pay the new Metro taxes.
3. Double-check your address against the global Metro boundary map – and watch for areas it is likely to expand and absorb you. It’s been growing a lot recently.

Just down the street from me is an old firehouse. It was retired years ago and now serves as a private residence. This last year for Halloween, they actually partly converted it to a Ghostbuster themed Vacasa complete with props and even a really cool replica ghostbuster ambulance. How’s that for cool?

Here’s an article and pictures of it renovated into a home:

Links:

• https://www.oregonlive.com/life-and-culture/g66l-2019/10/7ad6f9b9fa2126/old-portland-firehouse-built-to-hold-horsedrawn-trucks-is-now-a-home.html
• https://www.vacasa.com/discover/book-a-stay-at-a-ghostbusters-firehouse-in-portland