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Comment by atombath | Hacker News Reader

> ...you dream about what your life would have been like if you left the Midwest after college and moved to Silicon Valley or Seattle. You think about how much money they make out there. Then you remember that money doesn’t buy happiness and you’re content with settling down and having a family...

You try out cost of living calculations and they say you'd need to make 250% your current salary on the west coast. Annoyed at the seemingly impossible move, you tell yourself they'll be rioting over water shortages soon anyways. After all, do you even want to be near the coast when the oceans rise?

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Having read the inspiration article, I chuckled at the seemingly satiristic tone.

Then I read this one and cried. There's a lot of truth here (I live in WI).

>You try out cost of living calculations and they say you'd need to make 250% your current salary on the west coast. Annoyed at the seemingly impossible move, you tell yourself they'll be rioting over water shortages soon anyways. After all, do you even want to be near the coast when the oceans rise?

And this. This is so true.

I didn't feel that the author was really from the Midwest. The inspiration article felt like a self-mockery which is what made it special... but the Burger King stuff was where this really started to sound like the outside looking in. I felt the need to apply some actual midwestern(Detroit, MI) thoughts/barbs. =)

Author here. I'm actually from Milwaukee WI and currently living in KC.

This was taking parts of people's lives I know and have met and throwing on a huge pile of satire.

The author wrote this tongue-in-cheek, but he has a point about the appeal of a low cost of living, family-oriented lifestyle in fly over country. I'm from the Midwest and this sounds like several of my friends' lives. I made a different choice than they did. After college I moved to Seattle, Silicon Valley and then New York, working at several big name tech firms. I made decent money and kept my costs as low as a could within reason. Silicon Valley and engineering culture is a lot of hype. After 15 years of working in tech and living in high cost places, I occasionally toy with the idea of cashing out and moving back home into a big, reasonably priced house, starting a family, and living off my small fortune. I suppose you always crave what you don't have.

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