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Comment by tjpaudio | Hacker News Reader

City-based salary adjustments are really something only educated professionals get, low-wage earners are screwed in big cities. I think also it will shock you how much every day items are compared to Europe. For one, public transportation is not available to most of America. So you have to have a car and car insurance, thats hundreds of dollars more per month right there. Cellphone service costs 3x as much as anywhere in Europe. And yes, the housing is absurd as a percentage of wages compare the the EU. Health insurance is really expensive as well; the employee's contribution to a company sponsored health plan is often as much as 20% of a minimum wage workers wage.

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Agreed. For context, in the Netherlands you pay about $100 in monthly healthcare insurance. You pay about $160 a month for college tuition. You don't need a car, and transport to work (by public transport, car or indeed bicycle) is generally paid for by your company. Student loans are available at 0% at the moment. There's housing and healthcare subsidies for lower-incomes. (<$34k)

I'm not sure about housing though. There's a few crazy cities in the US, NY, SF, LA etc. But by and large, the median American pays a substantially lower square footage price than citizens of somewhat similarly rich European countries like the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany, as far as I'm aware. And we also have our outliers in London, Paris etc where the price-income ratio is off the charts. The US has far more land and is far less dense than Western-Europe, with land prices as a function of density (demand for land) I'd say Europeans have less real purchasing power on housing.

Cell phone service in the US can be cheaper than Europe. I have had Project Fi for over a year now, and it's $24/month including taxes. This includes voice, text, international texting, data, and international data. You pay per MB so I don't watch videos on my phone, but use it for everything else.

Compared to the UK this doesn't really sound that cheap.

That doesn't sound right to me. Both UK and Netherlands' most expensive plans are cheaper than most plans in the US I've seen. Looking at Three, now it costs £15 for 12GB (reduced speed afterwards), but 4 years back I had an £8 unlimited (or maybe I just never hit the limit) plan.

Now I spend ~$80 with Google Fi, but I could rely exclusively on wifi and reduce that to ~$20/30. Every other american company seems to want to extract >$80 per month from you.

> City-based salary adjustments are really something only educated professionals get,

That's not entirely true. In many cities, minimum wage is substantially higher ($12-$15/hr) than the Federal minimum ($7.25/hr)

> in big cities > So you have to have a car and car insurance

Not in big cities.

Very few of the big cities in the US have public transit that's even sufficient for most people to get to work, let alone to sustain the rest of a reasonable lifestyle.

I'm saying this as someone who previously had a 1 hr 20 min commute via public transit just to go 16 miles, and that was with the relatively good public transit in the Portland metro area and me literally living a block away from main downtown transit hub.

Phoenix is pretty big. You could very easily spend 2 hours getting halfway across it on a bus.

> Not in big cities.

Name five big cities where a average-wage worker can get by without a car and car insurance.

5 can probably be done. (assuming "average" is average for that city, not national average). NYC, DC, Seattle, SF, Boston, Chicago... Naming 10 is probably way harder.

Seattle can be tough at least. Really depends on a lot on where you live and where you work. Almost any commute can be done but it easily gets to 2h+ which is just ridiculous.

Seattle is the only one I have personal experience with and I've found it to be pretty good. Usually walking < 1 mile total is reasonable. If you live out in King county things are a little different of course. Are the other cities better than that?

Hence why I mentioned "average-wage" in GP; usually you can avoid owning a car only by living in housing that is out of reach for anyone making <$6k/month.

I don't understand the comment. Is Seattle not doable for <6k $/mo?

Most places in the US, housing near transit options is pretty expensive. Further out, where you get to housing being affordable, is nowhere near transit.

Yeah, that's fair but, from experience, the threshold in Seattle is much less than 6k

It's probably any of the five big cities with a public transit program.

No demand, no program. Ride a bus in a large city, and you'll see a majority of bus pass users.

Can you name one that doesn't?

LA. San Diego. Salt Lake City. Atlanta. Houston. Dallas. Miami.

If you are making $36,000 per year, you are not making minimum wage. People that make around this much, their salary doesn't vary drastically like a software engineer's does city to city.

I can think of maybe 2 or 3 cities where minimum wage is anywhere near that high. And at least one of them that's coming close, Los Angeles, you absolutely need a car. New York, maybe San Francisco or Portland, you could reliably get around without a car.

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