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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

I'm more interested in the effect on metro areas with a lower COL. Imagine an influx of young professionals with Bay Area salaries in cities like Denver, Austin, Huntsville, Madison, San Diego, Nashville, Charlotte, Salt Lake City. I can't imagine current residents would be too happy.

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The only case where residents would be unhappy is when said residents flood the market causing meaningful inflation across local markets. It takes the entirety of the bay area young professionals to keep the bay area as expensive as it is. 1. Would the dispersion of the same talent (assuming talent isn't suddenly growing in size) + local tech talent being paid higher cause the same inflation even when split over a large number of cities? 2. If said inflation happens, would they not move again? I believe incentives here are to distribute this talent across the US, not concentrate in new cheaper centers

My impression is that "this city has too many high paying jobs" is a very isolated complaint in a few outlier big city areas.

Outside of those, almost every community is eager to bring in high paying jobs.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-10/go-back-...

Idaho is experiencing what California had in the 1970s and 1980s, with the influx of people from other states. I remember the bumper stickers, "Welcome to California, now go back home" and "Welcome to California, now get the fuck out."

This is about rich, often retired Californians moving in to Boise, driving up home prices and bringing their alien culture.

That's pretty different from new high paying jobs becoming available to the local job market.

For one thing it means local engineering talent doesn't have to move away to have a career.

You’d need critical mass for that. San Diego (I wouldn’t put it into LCOL either) is close enough to LA that many “creatives” with high Hollywood comp already could (and do) move there and commute. There’s also a decent tech scene.

It has increased some costs, but nothing like Bay Area peninsula for example. You just don’t get the critical mass and no building like that in SD or any other place I’ve seen, save for Manhattan.

Definitely agree. Although maybe the increased dilution of tech workers (roughly same # spread across larger set of cities) will help mitigate this.

Think even smaller for where people might go. There are a lot of small towns (50-100k pop) with great quality of living where some remote workers will thrive. I’m talking places not part of larger metropolitan areas.

In the short-term. In the long-term wouldn't everyone's wages rise?

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