Jewish communities in US cities: size or age

This is a question for members of the Jewish community (of which I am a member) or others with insight on it: If you look at Jewish communities in American cities/metro areas today, which of these two variables is more important in determinng the vibrancy of the community, its ability to offer both the religious and (for lack of a better term) ethnic aspects of Jewish life: • the age of the Jewish community • the size of the Jewish community Let me explain. Cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston have deeply rooted Jewish communities. Jews came in large numbers to such cities in the late 19th/early 20th century mainly from eastern Europe. Virtually all these immigrants were orthodox and the vast majority settled in heavily Jewish neighborhoods (paralleling other immigrant grops of the time like the Italians and the Poles). Jewish culture and religion flourished and Jewish institutions strongly served the needs of the people. In general, these cities have seen many Jews move to the south and west in the post-WWII years, dispering into cities across the nation. Yet these cities still retain a Jewish structure and traditon that newer Jewish communities may lack. Each has its own story of immigrant neighborhoods and how the community moved from one part of town to the other. Even today, many heavily Jewish neighborhoods can be identified. Eliminating perhaps two unique cities....Miami with its long history of Jewish resort and retirement as well as LA with its huge Jewish community that grew in the 20th century but is still pervassive (virtually all Jews, it seems, have relatives in LA....and some connection with Miami)...how does Jewish life differ in cities where the growth has come in more recent time, an era when Jews are more assimilated, less ethnic, often less strictly relgious, in less of a need for Jewish community services. I'm talking about places like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas, among others. Each of these cities has a noteworthy Jewish community and the sizes of these communities may not be far removed from the traditional cities of the northeast/midwest (i.e. Cleveland, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, etc.); in fact, they may exceed these cities in Jewish population.But does their recent age, and the fact that the growth took place in this more assimilated era with its great degree of intermarriage make the newer communtiies appear "less Jewish" than older ones, even older ones with a smaller Jewish community, but one with strong community ties? NOTE: this discussion could apply to other ethnic communtiies as well but the American Jewish community, among the European immigrant groups may differ to the degree that being Jewish has both religious and ethnic overtones.>

Best suburban college town

Probably our first thought of an ideal college town is in a bucolic setting of its own, creating the perfect atmosphere for town and gown to create their own world. A second image may the big campus in the big city, the university that thrieves on its urban offerings. What about the third choice: suburbia. By suburbia, I'm referring to the immediate suburban area around our major cities. WHICH SUBURBAN TOWN OF A MAJOR UNIVERSITY DO YOU THINK MAKES THE BEST COLLEGE TOWN.....AND WHY? Are there others than aren't on this list, but should be?>

Detroit as a metaphor

Think about a city like Detroit, a place many Americans assumed died, was dying, is in the process of dying, or is already dead. List all the things that "went wrong" in Detroit: the decline of the automotive industry, decline of schools, racial change and violence, welfare, the gap between rich and poor, out sourcing of jobs, rapid suburbanization at the expense of the city, labor issues, etc., etc., etc. And then look over your list and come to the startling realization that every point on your list applies equally to the United States as it does to Detroit. We are Detroit. And it hurts a lot less to assign those negative traits to the Motor City, to keep on our blinders, to look the other way, than to look in the mirror, face reality, and see we really are becoming the very same thing that we ridiculously mock.>

US Metros with High Millionaire Concentrations

Axciom and American Demographics put together an index of Millionaire Households across the country here are some of their findings Married with Money-and Children Metropolitan Areas ranked by millionaire households with preschool-aged children or younger 1 Nashua, NH........................3.06% 2 Lowell, MA.........................2.66% 3 Provo-Orem, UT..................2.52% 4 Salt Lake City-Ogden, UT.....2.48% 5 Danbury, CT.......................2.37% 6 Anchorage, AK....................2.29% 7 Lawrence, MA.....................2.27% 8 Denver, CO........................2.16% 9 Boise, ID............................2.16% 10 Raleigh-Durham, NC............2.15% Up and Coming Millionaire Households under age 45 1 Stamford-Norwalk, CT...............3.20%..........4,457 households 2 San Jose, CA...........................2.56%.........14,954 households 3 State College, PA.....................2.49%..........1,106 households 4 Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon, NJ.....2.37%....10,754 households 5 Nassau-Suffolk, NY....................2.35%..........26,802 households 6 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA..........2.32%.........2,114 households 7 Danbury, CT............................2.32%...........1,963 households 8 San Francisco, CA...................2.22%...........15,111 households 9 Iowa City, IA..........................2.17%...........1,013 households 10 Ann Arbor, MI........................2.05%...........4,925 households Old Money Millionaire Households not by income, but by lifetime accumulation 1 Honolulu, HI........................4.39%..............7,351 households 2 San Francisco, CA...............3.86%..............26,259 households 3 Santa Barbara, CA...............3.72%...............5,138 households 4 Stamford-Norwalk, CT..........3.60%...............5,038 households 5 Barnstable-Yarmouth, MA.....3.40%................3,040 households 6 San Jose, CA......................3.25%..............18,976 households 7 Naples, FL..........................3.20%...............3,963 households 8 San Luis Obispo, CA.............2.89%...............3,210 households 9 Salinas, CA........................2.69%................3,210 households 10 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA..2.67%...............2,430 households The Upper Crust Households with a Net Worth of $2 Million or more 1 Stamford-Norwalk, CT...............25.30%...............35,267 households 2 San Jose, CA...........................12.87%...............75,177 households 3 San Francisco, CA.....................9.87%................66,579 households 4 Danbury, CT.............................8.57%.................7,261 households 5 Nassau-Suffolk, NY....................8.49%................96,857 households 6 Newark, NJ..............................6.94%.................59,090 households 7 Orange County, CA...................6.79%.................65,445 households 8 Bergen-Passaic, NJ....................6.72%.................34,675 households 9 Oakland, CA.............................6.69%.................59,090 households 10 Honolulu, HI............................6.59%................11,035 households>

Trusted banks in the US

Put your best bank here and tell us why you trust them. Good luck>

Cost of Illegal Immigration May Be Less Than Meets the Eye

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/bu...=1&oref=slogin NY Times April 16, 2006 Economic View Cost of Illegal Immigration May Be Less Than Meets the Eye By EDUARDO PORTER CALIFORNIA may seem the best place to study the impact of illegal immigration on the prospects of American workers. Hordes of immigrants rushed into the state in the last 25 years, competing for jobs with the least educated among the native population. The wages of high school dropouts in California fell 17 percent from 1980 to 2004. But before concluding that immigrants are undercutting the wages of the least fortunate Americans, perhaps one should consider Ohio. Unlike California, Ohio remains mostly free of illegal immigrants. And what happened to the wages of Ohio's high school dropouts from 1980 to 2004? They fell 31 percent. As Congress debates an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, several economists and news media pundits have sounded the alarm, contending that illegal immigrants are causing harm to Americans in the competition for jobs. Yet a more careful examination of the economic data suggests that the argument is, at the very least, overstated. There is scant evidence that illegal immigrants have caused any significant damage to the wages of American workers. The number that has been getting the most attention lately was produced by George J. Borjas and Lawrence F. Katz, two Harvard economists, in a paper published last year. They estimated that the wave of illegal Mexican immigrants who arrived from 1980 to 2000 had reduced the wages of high school dropouts in the United States by 8.2 percent. But the economists acknowledge that the number does not consider other economic forces, such as the fact that certain businesses would not exist in the United States without cheap immigrant labor. If it had accounted for such things, immigration's impact would be likely to look less than half as big. Mr. Katz was somewhat taken aback by the attention the study has received. "This was not intended," he said. At first blush, the preoccupation over immigration seems reasonable. Since 1980, eight million illegal immigrants have entered the work force. Two-thirds of them never completed high school. It is sensible to expect that, because they were willing to work for low wages, they would undercut the position in the labor market of American high school dropouts. This common sense, however, ignores half the picture. Over the last quarter-century, the number of people without any college education, including high school dropouts, has fallen sharply. This has reduced the pool of workers who are most vulnerable to competition from illegal immigrants. In addition, as businesses and other economic agents have adjusted to immigration, they have made changes that have muted much of immigration's impact on American workers. For instance, the availability of foreign workers at low wages in the Nebraska poultry industry made companies realize that they had the personnel to expand. So they invested in new equipment, generating jobs that would not otherwise be there. In California's strawberry patches, illegal immigrants are not competing against native workers; they are competing against pickers in Michoacán, Mexico. If the immigrant pickers did not come north across the border, the strawberries would. "Immigrants come in and the industries that use this type of labor grow," said David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Taking all into account, the effects of immigration are much, much lower." In a study published last year that compared cities that have lots of less educated immigrants with cities that have very few, Mr. Card found no wage differences that could be attributed to the presence of immigrants. Other research has also cast doubt on illegal immigration's supposed damage to the nation's disadvantaged. A study published earlier this year by three economists — David H. Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Katz of Harvard and Melissa S. Kearney of the Brookings Institution — observed that income inequality in the bottom half of the wage scale has not grown since around the mid-1980's. Even economists striving hardest to find evidence of immigration's effect on domestic workers are finding that, at most, the surge of illegal immigrants probably had only a small impact on wages of the least-educated Americans — an effect that was likely swamped by all the other things that hit the economy, from the revolution in technology to the erosion of the minimum wage's buying power. When Mr. Borjas and Mr. Katz assumed that businesses reacted to the extra workers with a corresponding increase in investment — as has happened in Nebraska — their estimate of the decline in wages of high school dropouts attributed to illegal immigrants was shaved to 4.8 percent. And they have since downgraded that number, acknowledging that the original analysis used some statistically flimsy data. Assuming a jump in capital investment, they found that the surge in illegal immigration reduced the wages of high school dropouts by just 3.6 percent. Across the entire labor force, the effect of illegal immigrants was zero, because the presence of uneducated immigrants actually increased the earnings of more educated workers, including high school graduates. For instance, higher-skilled workers could hire foreigners at low wages to mow their lawns and care for their children, freeing time for these workers to earn more. And businesses that exist because of the availability of cheap labor might also need to employ managers. Mr. Borjas said that while the numbers were not large, the impact at the bottom end of the skill range was significant. "It is not a big deal for the whole economy, but that hides a big distributional impact," he said. OTHERS disagree. "If you're a native high school dropout in this economy, you've got a slew of problems of which immigrant competition is but one, and a lesser one at that," said Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Mr. Katz agreed that the impact was modest, and it might fall further if changes in trade flows were taken into account — specifically, that without illegal immigrants, some products now made in the United States would likely be imported. "Illegal immigration had a little bit of a role reinforcing adverse trends for the least advantaged," he said, "but there are much stronger forces operating over the last 25 years.">

What food is your city famous for?

what food is your city famous for? where are the best places to get these foods? what restaurants and other place have big reputations in your city? for wilmington, subs are very big. the two biggest places are capriotti's and casapulla's. capriotti's is more famous, but i would say it's a draw between the two as to which is better. there are multiple locations for both capriotti's and casapulla's (including the west coast, where capriotti's has expanded to in recent years), but the original capriotti's is on union street in wilmington, and the original casapulla's is in the nearby town of elsmere. capriotti's most famous sub is "the bobbie". it's been called "thanksgiving dinner on a roll", and it includes turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and other thanksgiving dinner items. capriotti's web site other food famous in this area are typical mid-atlantic dishes, such as muskrat and chitterlings. muskrat is a rodent found in the marshes in the area. chitterlings are deep-fried pig intestines. a good place to get these dishes is at "the knotty pine" on 11th street.>