The City of Coral Gables as an “International Organization”

The more I learn about employees’ benefits at the City of Coral Gables it seems to be an international organization like the World Bank,  the UN or the Inter-American Development Bank with their independent sources of income, back-up capital contributions from sovereign governments and stable income and reserves to cover their operating costs.  Please note that these international organizations have often been accused by the US Congress of paying salaries and other benefits that are outlandish, disproportionate and self-serving.  The City of Coral Gables seems not unlike the accused organizations.

The City of Coral Gables pays better pensions, medical insurance and salaries  similar to the above mentioned international organizations.  In the multilateral organizations employees pay 10% of their salaries into pensions funds, pay about 50% of their medical insurance, international (non-US employees) employees get education allowances similar to those paid by Coral Gables, employees receive merit increases and inflation adjusted incomes (the adjustment now would be 1% or less) and they follow the rule of 85 for retirement (rather than the rule of 70 of Coral Gables) for retirement eligibility.  They do not get many other benefits received by Coral Gables employees such as loyalty pay adjustments.

In short, Coral Gables provides better or equivalents benefits and salaries than many international employees for similar types of work.

Miami in the Global Cities Index 2010

Find where Miami is in a list of 60.

(Okay–its 33rd and that’s not bad with its 58th by population and 54th by GDP.)  How did they get to 33? It must be Miami Beach, or could it be Coral Gables?

Global Cities 2010: The Rankings | Foreign Policy.

Don’t Count on Housing Again

Please see the excellent post in The Baseline Scenario (for my money one of the best economics and financial blogs around) where housing is evaluated as a bad personal investment.  The graph shows that housing values remained more or less flat for years in real terms (adjusted for inflation) and then we had the bubble and its collapse.

Friends of Coral Gables–Do not count on your house ever becoming again an ATM for you and the city (via higher taxes).  All future tax increases will come straight out of your pocket.

…I don’t think it’s correct to say that an era is over–an era when housing appreciation was the key to the economy. The chart above shows simply that that era never existed; housing was flat for a long time, and then there was a bubble. Instead, we had the illusion of an era of housing appreciation, produced mainly by leverage and price illusion. For every homeowner who made a killing because she got a fixed-rate mortgage in 1970, there was a new family that couldn’t afford a house in 1980 because interest rates were too high, or a savings and loan that failed because it was weighed down by those fixed-rate mortgages. That whole phenomenon was just a transfer of wealth within society.

via Housing in Ten Words « The Baseline Scenario.

Check out Coral Gables Restaurants

Check out Coral Gables restaurants and your favorite restaurant on the recent TripAdvisor list.

With few exceptions they are pretty close to the truth.  I love Francesco, Houston’s and Caffe Abbracci.  I think Christy’s is mediocre, and for a steak, take me to Graziano’s.

Coral Gables Restaurants: Read Coral Gables Restaurant Reviews – TripAdvisor.