My experience is in a city that has not been positively affected by globalization. I know the housing market is quite different in the tech hubs of the country.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/dentists.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
People also confuse revenue with profit. My coworker's OB/GYN has great revenue, but her insurance costs are amazing, almost as much as my salary.
From memory of my kids birth the hospital direct bills expensive equipment, certainly my buddies wife did not personally fund the construction of the birthing center room, however if my dentist wants a new x-ray or new chair AFAIK its literally cash out of his checking account.
Its comparing apples and oranges. Much like comparing U3 employment stats in an employee culture like the USA where as in Japan I understand they hire once a year for new grads and if you don't make it into a real job at a real company (and very many don't) its a lifetime of either NEET or temp work, so their concept of U3 means very little compared to our concept of U3. Their concept of U3 is kind of like our concept of U3 of military service academy recent officer graduates.
(This is in pretty stark contrast to my experiences in America, where I spend most of my waking time at home, even when hanging out with friends.)
When I came to that conclusion, suddenly the density didn't bother me so much. It was a change in mindset rather than actual physical space.
I on the other hand would never want to live downtown. I like the suburban feeling. Love it. I commute for an hour and third. Downtown areas just feel too busy for me; congested, noisy, claustrophobic.
Edit: Addendum, Toronto native.
Yet even with that, it took 3 police cars to get a dude with a ton of warrant who has been attacking local women to get off from my stairway...for the second time in 2 weeks. We keep having to call out to get drunk homeless people from my parking lot, and crack addicts hide by the door to our storage rooms.
You can pay millions and still deal with that crap. Or you can move a 30 minute drive away and have a fancy house with a yard and instead of drunk people screaming you'll hear your neighbors kids screaming at each other while playing in a pool (which most people like better).
I'm a city person, but it's not hard to figure out why people would not want to deal with the city, and why people in the city quickly become NIMBY.
Now, I hear Japanese cities a somewhat more civilized. It might be a stereotype, but if its true and people can actually respect each other in close quarters, it changes the game completely.
Not sure about others but personally the yard, larger home, parking etc are a huge quality of life boost. I can sacrifice for a while, but eventually need to enjoy life a bit.
The US "beef industry" irresponsibly used antibiotics to artificially fatten their cattle, causing everyone who ate their products to also consume those antibiotics. Also, the US' own companies push sugar saturated products to their youth without any disposition to responsibility, where sugar is known and has been known to cause serious health deficits.
The US practices culling of their population to reduce density.
edit: People have trouble viewing it in this light. A simpler way is to view it through its parallel in warfare. European and "civilized" warfare is the sudden loss of large portions of the population and able bodied men through massive violence organized by their "ruling parties". "Jungle" warfare is one where the losses on the participants isn't high per encounter, but is very high over the duration of their "war".
Despite the West criticizing Mao and Stalin of killing off many of their citizens, the US can also be found to have killed off many of their own citizens through the use of subtler methods.
For example, as the US' population became aware of the detrimental effects of tobacco (whose mortal danger to health was known in the West's "ruling class and educated" for centuries), the population loss related to tobacco induced health deficits dropped, while other issues began to surface and increase. The observable culling of the population is far more active in the US than it is in Russia or China for example (once one becomes aware that it is more subtle, and more like 'jungle/islander warfare')