I suspect the person denigrating the West Coast cities is doing so from their basement in East Prolapse, Kentucky, as a way to rationalize their life choices.
The city, the county, and the state all spend increasing proportions on debt service, and the rewards for earning a lot of money are much less than the neighboring state.
The total fertility rate is also one of the lowest in the country. And Portland lacks a flagship university to bring in young talent.
It might be a nice place to visit during the summer months, but I don’t foresee many high paying jobs or highly profitable businesses being made there.
That being said, as someone who took a few graduate stats courses at PSU, I don’t think the library would have been the right place anyway - it always couched itself as a commuter access school that relied heavily on transfers from community college, and the library reflected that. It’s definitely not a well-resourced research institution, and with the retrenchment of federal funding for research and financial aid I’m not sure what it’ll focus on.
I am a critical person and Portland is currently deserving of much criticism in order to fulfill its potential. No one got anywhere by patting themselves on the back reassuring themselves they had already made it.
But we all agree the state is seriously going to have to think hard about how to attract new business to both I-5 corridor and rural areas - whether it’s through investing in OSU upstream, or attracting more downstream manufacturing jobs.
Great place though, definitely might end up there one day
