Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile I’m an older millennial with kids and live in a suburban community with lots of kids. Most people seem pretty happy. People in Iowa, where my wife went to high school, and Oregon, where she grew up, seem pretty happy too.

Rust Belt decay is obviously less conducive to happiness, but I think “boom towns” (where a marquee industry makes a small percentage of the population very rich) also aren’t conductive to happiness. Might explain why the politics out of place as like San Francisco is so apocalyptic. People want to have a normal life but the economy of the city has bifurcated the population into “rich but stressed out” and “struggling to get by.”

To be fair I get the sentiment. DC was the same way. In DC it was childless wealthy professionals on one side (mostly white and Asian) and service workers on the other (mostly Black and Latino). It was depressing as hell and we had to get out.

View on HN

Population isn’t evenly distributed. Iowa has a little over 1/3 or NYC’s population even excluding everything over the Hudson. Your “boom towns” represent a large chunk of everyone in the US.

You seem to be conflating "boom town" and "large city". NYC is not a boom town.

Why not? It seems like finance fills the “marquee industry makes a small percentage of the population very rich” for NYC.

And many other industries make other small percentages of the population rich. It's not a one industry town like many places in the rust belt were and Silicon Valley currently is

Silicon Valley goes beyond tech with finance being a solid example. In the end many people are getting rich from other industries as all cities need a wide range of services like plumbing and heating/AC which opens up a lot of opportunities to start and grow a business in those industries.

There’s only a handful of cities that I’d call “boom towns” (in that a singular industry creates intense income inequality). Dallas is booming, but it’s got a well-diversified economy with prosperous but affordable suburbs. Same thing for Atlanta, Kansas City, etc.

Lots of rural areas and small cities have broadly shared prosperity too. I was very surprised when I went to East Texas and saw the brand new strip malls and shiny pickup trucks everywhere. (Along with a very racially diverse and integrated population driving those trucks and eating at the new big box restaurants. I was completely unsurprised to see Trump doing better than expected among Latinos in Texas.)

NYC, DC, and SF are probably the only cities I’d put in that category. Maybe Seattle. That’s only 12% of the population.

Those shiny pickup trucks are short term before the repo man shows up.

In towns whose livelihood depends on a feast-or-famine industry like oil, yes. In cities with strong, diversified economies, it's just people spending disposable income on stuff they want.

The median household income in Jefferson County, Texas is $51,000. The median home price is $135,000. That's under 3x.

The median household income in San Francisco is $120,000, but the median home price is $1.5-2 million, depending on source. That's 12-16x.

A $500/month truck payment isn't putting people on the edge of financial ruin when you're talking about an $800/month mortgage versus a $6,500/month mortgage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com