I mean, it is to be expected so the title of the article doesn’t pack the punch it seems to.
In NYC and other places there are city blocks or neighborhoods that are the most expensive in the country, if you grouped by blocks.
This is called Simpson’s paradox
I should go dig into the Greek Sophists. They probably had a word for it. They definitely taught it as a technique.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-most-expensive-neighbor...
Relevant topics:
Simpson’s paradox
Multiple testing
Confirmation bias
Tons of people on HN live in the bay area so they can’t imagine things being even more expensive elsewhere in the country. Thus a critique of the methodology behind the loaded headline is dismissed, even voted down.
But back to my point... the true generalization is that the Bay area, broadly, is the most expensive place in the US to live. Worse than New York. If you narrow down, you can find individual blocks of New York that are more expensive, but across the entire metro?
Sure, the headline/argument is a little sensationalist. But reducto absurdum in the other direction is no better.