Seattle Ranks as Sin City
Forbes just cracks me up. They’ve always got some kind of geographical ranking going, and recent lists have included titles such as America’s Fastest Growing Cities, America’s Most Overpriced Suburbs, and America’s Junk Food Obsessed Cities. Seattle usually shows up somewhere in these lists.
Some lists track various real estate data or demographic statistics, and others, like the junk food index use other more obscurely related geographical data, such as the Nielsen Scantrack sales of candy, chips, and other snacks. Then, Forbes staffers attach an amusing interpretation to this otherwise boring data. Most recently up is America’s Most Sinful Cities, which doesn’t generate an overall sin rating, but does examine cities based on the seven deadly sins: gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, envy, wrath and pride.
How do we Seattle-ites rank? We are third for greed, and fourth for both jealousy and gluttony. To generate these “coveted” rankings, Forbes dug up property crime statistics to represent greed, the net worths of Microsoft and Amazon billionaires to represent gluttony, and condom and other contraceptive sales statistics to represent lust. (Can you just imagine their staff meetings–”You, Joe, you dig up contraceptive sales for major metropolitan areas. You, Sue, you look up muggings, and you, Sylvia, you come up with corresponding icons for the pictorial.” LOL!) Well, one thing’s for sure, these articles are amusing, but I don’t have much faith in the validity of some of ‘em. You shouldn’t either, that is, unless you believe that Denver is the number one hot bed of lust!
