Hacker News Reader

Comment by vostok | Hacker News Reader

I feel like every statement of that form has an implied "with the lifestyle that I want".

If you remove that constraint then it's always possible for a software engineer because they make more than average and that average person does live somehow.

View on HN

Yep.

Invoking Reductio Ad Absurdum, there's always a place for us in the ghetto too, the only question is do we want to live there?

The word can't is used in the title.

Suburbs are perfectly reasonable places to live. You just have to get over yourself a little bit and buy a car.

I know you're responding to a different comment, but I want to clarify that I am not claiming that suburbs are unreasonable places to live.

OP said that they didn't want to live in a suburb, which is a reasonable view to have. I don't want to live in one either.

Right, so instead of simply moving to the place where they can have the lifestyle they want, they should suck it up and buy a car like good Americans.

I think he/she was responding to the post that compared suburbs to ghettos. That's no more useful than me saying the same thing about living in a big city. Suburbs and city can both have perfectly good quality-of-life, regardless of preference, neither is a ghetto.

That doesn't make much sense. A bike oriented life should be the more affordable, more attainable lifestyle than the car lifestyle.

High rents in a bikeable city center can wipe out the savings you get from not owning a car.

My car-related expenses per month for two commuting drivers are $100 insurance, $150 in gas, and maybe $100 depreciation and maintenance. My cars are old and are not a fashion statement by any means. I would have to pay much more than $350 to get the same amount of house near city center. I would also sacrifice the ability to conveniently go long distances.

I guess that is my point. How backwards is it that living without a car in a small apartment is MORE expensive than living with multiple cars in a large house.

Not at all. Cars are technology; land is land. Our society is highly optimized to promote the availability of ever-cheaper, ever-better technology, and also to make sure that real estate assets continuously appreciate.

We should certainly expect a lifestyle based around consumer goods mass-produced under mature and technologically advanced industrial capitalism to be cheaper (and get cheaper over time) relative to a lifestyle based on around living on the most central, premium land.

> I feel like every statement of that form has an implied "with the lifestyle that I want".

The perspective confuses me - isn't "having kids" the lifestyle that they want? If that is the priority, then other aspects of life must be flexible to accommodate.

I guess I thought that their preferences were

* Have space for two children, presumably with separate bedrooms. Potentially even more than one bathroom in the apartment.

* Live in a nice, urban area.

* Bike 15 minutes to work.

They are able to afford this in Berlin, but probably would't be able to do the same in the US.

I am genuinely surprised that that combination is affordable in Berlin. Not like that is a small city or anything. How can you possibly find that much space at an affordable price?

I don't know about the differences between Berlin and the US beyond cursory knowledge.

But from having bought a place in a high demand area recently, the thing is always "who are you competing with". When the average person with 2 kids and a dog are looking at the same houses in the same places as the other family with 2 kids and a dog, there will be differences, but overall it won't be too bad. The problem start when that family wants the exact same house/condo/whatever as the 2 highly paid software engineer with no kids.

Then you're screwed: you're competing on a different level. And there's starting to be a lot of people with high dual income and no kid. The US is generally a nation of divide between the haves and the have nots, but the cultural divide is making things waaaaay worse.

Housing size. A 2 bedroom house in The New World is nothing like a 2 bedroom place in Europe. I bet the Berlin housing is a LOT smaller than a US place.

Even in SF, the housing is a lot larger than almost all of Europe. London is a disaster if you expect much if any space.

Agreed about London vs. the US, and the same would hold for Paris, but Berlin is the exception: apartments (and expectations) are huge compared to any other capital city.

I'm not sure why that is. Being physically cut off from the world helped keep prices down for sure, but it doesn't explain why apartments are large relative to the number of bedrooms.

We have a kid and also favor urban living. If we lived in the suburbs we’d be miserable, which wouldn’t be great for our kid.

So we live in the city in a “small” (by modern American standards) condo and we’re super happy with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com