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Comment by pxeboot | Hacker News Reader

I got sick of living in a HCOL area and moved somewhere super cheap. Put 20% down on a nice house and have a $500/month mortgage payment. My total annual housing expenses are less than the taxes on a similar house in Seattle or San Francisco.

Pay is less on paper, but actually quality of life and savings are much higher.

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I quit my job in Bellevue WA and moved to Oregon City Oregon. Here's some things it has going for it:

5) It has a train station that connects it to every city from Los Angeles to Portland to Seattle via Amtrak

4) Portland's train system doesn't connect to it yet, but it will soon. At the moment, it takes about 15 minutes to get to the city train station.

3) Portland is overrun with homeless people, but Oregon City isn't.

2) The traffic isn't as bad as Portland

1) You can get a nice house for well under $1800 a month. If you can live with a condo, you can get that down to about $1200.

I’m in Wilsonville, moved from Seattle (but I grew up in Portland).

One thing that WA has over OR is no income tax. I’d gladly have sales tax again to not pay the income tax.

We’ll see how long Washington can maintain its income-tax free environment [1].

1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...

> “Whoever goes against this is openly causing suffering,” she said.

This quote really stands out to me. Is this demonization of opposing viewpoints a new thing, or am I just noticing it more in the last two years?

>Is this demonization of opposing viewpoints a new thing, or am I just noticing it more in the last two years?

I think it's more in recent years. Especially in the US where things are highly polarized and every issue seems to have a "Republican" take and a "Democratic" take. So points of view on specific situations are taken to reflect much more about a person's overall position than they actually do. And we have more echo chambers reinforcing our conviction about being right in the first place.

Finally I think there is also something legitimate about connecting viewpoints to consequences and evidence where possible, and discussing higher level concepts with the low level consequences in peoples' lives, in order to understand the tradeoffs that each point of view entails. I do think certain viewpoints are tightly linked to certain outcomes, and it wouldn't be demonizing to say "If you are for policy X you are accepting the likely effects Y and Z".

I think that this is probably a logical extension of the underlying logic.

Sales taxes are inherently harder on people with less money than people with more money. That's demonstrable just based on simple math.

Any argument for sales taxes over income taxes that doesn't recognize that fundamental mathematical truth is not being intellectually honest (or doesn't know the topic very well).

The problem is that no one is naive enough to believe they'll somehow lower any existing taxes (either sales or property) with the introduction of an income tax. They'll keep them all, and try and introduce some new program that helps a specific demographic.

From what I see, this usually ends up with money moving between pockets with a bureaucracy taking its cut along the way. I try not to be overly political, but I can't stand the idea of a strong, central planning government.

Let's see a balanced, itemized budget. Even in the article they're just spitballing ideas with what they could do it an extra $140m.

It doesn't seem like it logically follows to me. The government having more money is often a good thing, but it has to be weighed against the damage government programs can do and the costs to the people of higher taxation. It's debatable, and people like the woman in the article want to short-circuit the debate by calling the other side the devil.

Except this law violates various state laws, as well as the state constitution, so it will be struck down upon judicial review.

Those facts are not an exception to "we'll see"

> as well as the state constitution

Given the current makeup of the state supreme court, it's a coin flip.

Where did you move to? I'm looking for a good area like this with the biggest requirement of having fiber or otherwise just a very good 250Mbps+ service.

If you can telecommute a lot, I recommend Maryland b/w D.C. and Annapolis. You can get a 4BR house for what a 1BR apartment costs in D.C., you can be at a farm in 20 minutes in one direction and a downtown bar in 10 minutes in the other, and I've got two different fiber providers available (I'm getting 2-gig installed soon). Unfortunately, the tech scene in the DMV area seems to be mostly in northern Virginia, which is probably the most overrated part of the entire country.

Northern Virginia has very low unemployment and high paying jobs. The area also has all 4 seasons fairly balanced, zero significant natural disasters, plenty of rainfall to stay green in the summer etc. Granted, you may not like that tradeoff, but it has a lot going for it.

Sure I moved to MD due to my current job, but I am seriously considering moving back.

Even with high paying jobs (if you are fortunate to have one), NoVA also has incredibly high housing costs unless you decide to live in the less desirable locations (which come with their own problems) or move far out and give yourself a massive commute.

Depends on what your comparing it to. Northern VA has a mix of jobs and houses so it's possible to have a very short commute. It's easy to find an nice apartment around 1500$ / month just about anywhere which is not cheap, but not so crazy as NYC or SV.

A dual income professional family can generally afford a 4 bedroom home, but that's hard on a single income without a massive down payment or over sized salary.

In terms of living further out, it's frequent for people to telecommute 1-3 days a week which makes a huge difference.

And some of the best public school systems in the country.

You just described any suburb in the Midwest.

Literally any.

Minus the fiber, but not entirely ("300mbs ought to be good enough for anyone").

Care to share a couple of zips?

I'm in 21140. I'd say east to Annapolis, west to Bowie, and north to Glen Burnie are all worth looking at depending on your needs.

I moved from Seattle to a midsized city in Texas. Gigabit is available, but expensive.

While my house is by far the nicest I have lived in, most of my neighbors have far larger/more expensive homes. It would have been easy to spend twice as much for more land and square footage, but I am very happy having something we can very comfortably afford.

I moved from Seattle to the Raleigh/Durham area. I absolutely love it so far. Everything is cheaper here, and quality of life is (in my subjective opinion) far superior.

Feel free to ask me more about it.

I don't know where he went but I've occasionally thought about Raleigh or Chicago as like, way cheaper than Boston, where I am.

I moved from Seattle to Raleigh, and love it so far.

I'd be happy to answer questions about it if that would be helpful to you.

Chicago and Illinois in general are in rough financial shape. Taxes are very high with no end to raises in sight.

I looked it up and Illinois just raised its income tax rate to just below that of Massachusetts.

Me too. That's one less state we can escape to.

I don't know about you but income tax isn't my main concern

Property and sales taxes are also high.

I think one major problem is the number of government bodies with taxing authority:

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/too-much-government-i...

Essentially, Illinois has a long history of corruption and political patronage that I find detestable.

sure, its not the first concern. but, if you're going to pick everything up and leave all your friends and family behind, don't you want to find someplace ideal (consider all your choices and all factors involved) ?

Raleigh or Chicago aren't $500/mo mortgage for a nice house cheap.

No, but they have a livelier job market than, like, Rochester or Buffalo, and comparatively they still look quite cheap.

And you'll actually get to retire!

You got 80% of a nice house for something like 120-140k (guessing at interest rate and term here)? In the states, or a cheap foreign country?

I have seen a nice 4 story house sold for under 60k in the US. It's really all about location, location, location.

Wow, 60k USD for a home, incredible. That's an older home then probably? Here in Belgium the absolute minimum would be double that, those would be the smallest, oldest buildings with nothing of insulation or modern comforts.

Here a building-stop has been announced for 2040 as all available land in flanders will be used up for homes!

I did. It is easy to find nice places for less than 200k in Texas. Prices are going up, but still very affordable.

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