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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Take your pick: Phila. is either No. 10 or No. 308

I love top 10 lists and rankings of the biggest, the most profitable and the most valuable companies.

But sometimes rankings make you scratch your head, especially when they’re based on an index of several factors.

On Monday, two different organizations conjured up different pictures of Philadelphia as a place to do business.

First, the Web site of Inc. magazine listed Philadelphia as one of the worst cities in which to do business as part of its annual ranking the hottest cities. (Midland, Texas was the best place overall for business.)

How did the editors determine this? It’s by employment growth rate, and that should tell you that Philadelphia would have trouble gaining ground. Its employment base has been shrinking for years.

Of the 335 metropolitan areas it ranked, Philadelphia was stuck at No. 308.

Among 66 large cities, Inc. magazine tapped the Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina area as the hottest for business. The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn area of Michigan was the worst. Philadelphia was No. 62, better than Providence, R.I., but worse than Rochester, N.Y.

States in the South and West dominate the 20 hottest cities, as determined by Inc. Only New York breaks that trend when it pops up at No. 22.

The second ranking was by KPMG International, and it calculated a “tax index” for 21 U.S. cities with populations of more than 2 million. I feared the worst, but Philadelphia did better than I expected. It was No. 10 - ahead of Boston, but behind Denver.

KPMG says its tax index is a measure of the total taxes paid by corporations in a location and industry, expressed as a percentage of total taxes paid by similar corporations in the United States.

Still Philadelphia’s total tax index of 101.9 was below the U.S. national average of 100, so I’m not sure the Commerce Department wants to be trumpeting the results. In fact, KPMG said Baltimore, our neighbor down I-95, had the most favorable tax structure for business in the United States, save for San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Posted by Mike Armstrong @ 3:05 AM  Permalink | 6 comments
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:44 AM, 07/29/2008
    Philly is a terrible place to do business. The Unions are horrendous and the tax structure on both the employers and employees is outrageous. My firm is in the suburbs and will stay that way as long as the city rapes its tax base. If you have a choice why would you want to put up with the bull$hit hassle of the unions? They are a joke. Look no further than Detroit to see the damage powerful unions do to an economy.
    — Tim34
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:36 AM, 07/29/2008
    In Norway, 80% of all employees are unionized, which has led to some incredible social advances in just a few decades (longer holiday for all, higher wages, lower income disparity, better maternity and paternity leave, better healthcare for employees, very low unemployment, etc). Unions, during the early part of the 20th century, helped push reform in the United States leading to much safer working climates from which we all benefit. So unions themselves are not the only root of the problem. I am not blind and believe that unions are only good; instead, they can be a force for good or bad, much like anything. The problem is greater than unions, and will only be solved if we move beyond name-calling and find nuanced solutions undertaken in good faith by business owners and employees.
    — curtis
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:39 AM, 07/29/2008
    Well...there ya have it folks: NORWAY! The unions around here are a joke. Google some stories with the convention center downtown. Complete disgrace.
    — Johnny Lawrence
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:59 AM, 07/29/2008
    Norway? Norway is the 3rd largest oil exporter in the world. I think they might have some spare cash to throw around on all of those social programs.
    — palvar
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:18 PM, 07/29/2008
    Curtis, while your fifth grade textbook view on the historical contributions of unions is appreciated it has nothing to do with the current state of unions in this country and more specifically this city. They are corrupt and anti-competitive. But hey burning down someone's business because their shop won't unionize is forward thinking. And yes, there are other problems as well (like a bloated and corrupt city government), but they are all tied together. And before we go chasing the European dream let's see what happens to all these Eurpoean models of socialized government in another 20 years with negative birth rates and growing entitlement programs.
    — Tim34
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:08 PM, 07/30/2008
    Yeah and Forbes just made a list of the WORLD's most economically powerful cities and said Philly came in just outside the Top 10. So who knows right? Forbes' List Sprizouse
    — Sprizouse


6 comments
About Mike Armstrong
Mike Armstrong, a business editor and writer for nearly two decades, is the Inquirer's business columnist and PhillyInc blog editor. Contact Mike via e-mail or at 215-854-2980
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